Financial Specialist
Lora doesn’t use the word “change;” she prefers “evolution.”
It’s a distinction that says a lot about how she moves through the world — and how she thinks about the city she’s chosen to plant herself in. After a life that has restarted more times than most people could count, she has landed at the University of Michigan-Flint, where she works in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education, and found something she didn’t expect: a community that feels like home.
“As much as I think I would want to go somewhere else when times are rough, I couldn’t do it,” she said. “Being in the community here makes me want to be here, help more, make sure I’m doing something to give back.”
Getting here wasn’t a straight line. Lora grew up in Clio, finished high school in Davison, and launched into adulthood with an uncommon kind of boldness. Her first degree was in automotive technology from Delta College through a GM-sponsored co-op program. She also volunteered as a firefighter and EMT — all while raising a son on her own.
“I wanted to do what the boys were doing,” she said. “I had family who were in the union at GM, and they encouraged me to go for a job there. But I would die before I would go into the union! I wanted to get my hands dirty, to show the boys I could do any job they could.”
That drive was shaped early on, largely by her grandmother, whom she describes as a quiet feminist. “She was a huge inspiration — always letting my sister and me get dirty, make dioramas from insects. She just believed we could do anything.” When her grandmother passed away when Lora was thirteen, that spirit stayed with her.
Health complications from degenerative disc disease eventually forced her out of automotive work and firefighting. Rather than stop, she pivoted — volunteering in her son Zackery’s Head Start classroom, where an encounter with a nonverbal child with autism quietly redirected her path.
“Everyone said, just give him his favorite book, and he’ll be fine,” she recalled. “But I watched him watch the other kids ride tricycles, and I made it my mission to get him okay being on one. We spent the whole summer working on it.” The experience opened something in her. “It was fascinating to me — it put me down the field of wanting to help underprivileged people.”
But life’s curveballs intervened again. She moved back in with her parents in Davison and started over — this time, with her mother’s gentle nudging, in accounting. She enrolled at UM-Flint’s School of Management and graduated in 2012 with high honors. Her son, she said, was adamant that she walk at commencement.
“It was just the two of us,” she said of that day. “I wanted him to see me do that.”
She joined UM-Flint’s staff in April 2013, thanks in large part to her advisor, Nikki Taylor Vargo, who became a lifelong friend and helped her land the interview that changed everything. She later earned an MPA in nonprofit management from UM-Flint in 2016. Today, while working in CASE, she says the college’s diversity is precisely what keeps her energized.
“CASE is one of the more diverse schools — that’s the biggest reason I want to be here,” she said. “It opens me up to so many different types of people.”
That openness extends beyond campus. Lora drives through Flint every single day — down Pierson Road to Saginaw — and she wouldn’t have it any other way. When people express disbelief, she takes it as motivation.
“The naysayers drive me even more to want to do this, to work here, to be a part of the community,” she said. “I don’t look at the city of Flint as a hard luck story or as crime-ridden. I look at it, see what’s going on in it, and want to make sure we live with the strengths of it.”
Those strengths, she says, include the Flint Institute of Music, the Whiting, and the Capitol Theatre — places she visits regularly with her husband, Tony, always making a point of eating in Flint beforehand. “We want to bring our business local,” she said. “There’s a lot to enjoy in Flint and we like sharing that.”
She’s also involved with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in Flushing and volunteered at UM-Flint’s annual Inclusive Halloween event for the community — the kind of grassroots, people-first work that reflects her larger vision.
“If I were fortunate enough to win the lottery, I would love to open a nonprofit in Flint,” she said. “To help people navigate legal and financial issues — because I’ve been on top of the mountain and I’ve been down, living off SSI and state aid. Everyone needs a helping hand, and there are entirely too many people out there who aren’t just in the system to take advantage of it.”
For young people still finding their footing, Lora’s advice comes from hard-won experience.
“You’re going to go through a bunch of crap,” she said, laughing. “But don’t be afraid to come back. Appreciate where you came from — and where you’ll end up.”
