Alumni Spotlight
Dan and Dawn Coday
Majors: Dan (Business
Management, 1993) Dawn (Music Education, 1993)
Occupation (Dan): Director – National
eCommerce Sales, Verizon SuperPages.com (Dallas, TX)
Occupation
(Dawn): Private voice and piano instructor
Dan and Dawn live in Frisco, TX with their three daughters -- Mollie (5), Maddie (5), and Abigail (1). Dan spent the last three years in various marketing roles for Verizon SuperPages.com, and now manages a team that sells Verizon SuperPages.com advertising to national advertisers. Dawn has been a private voice and piano instructor for the past 10 years. One of her voice students won the female vocal solo at the 2002 National Fine Arts Festival. Mollie is active in gymnastics, Maddie is learning how to play tennis, and Abigail is working hard on walking and talking.
Dan and Dawn are youth sponsors at Christian Life Assembly in Carrollton, TX. Dawn has led a youth ensemble to National Fine Arts Festival for the last several years, and is currently busy preparing for the children’s Christmas program.
Evangel is responsible for many wonderful beginnings for Dan and Dawn. Some of Dan’s closest friends today are still the friends he met during the first week of his freshman year at Evangel. Dan landed his first “real” job after college, which turned into a seven-year career, thanks to a friendship he developed at Evangel (and many of his closest Evangel friends subsequently landed one of their first “real” jobs at the same great company). The best relationship of all that began at Evangel, however, was when Dan and Dawn met each other during the start of school picnic their sophomore year.
Some of Dawn’s favorite Evangel memories include touring with the Concert Choir. Performing in places like Carnegie Hall and churches across the country was tremendous experience for her future career, and there were numerous opportunities to positively impact people’s lives in ministry while on tour. The relationships she built with fellow choir members and diverse people who would house the choir members while on tour are priceless to her.
One of Dan’s fondest memories was when he and his roommate, Chris Hales, decided they were going to try to learn everyone’s name on campus (although they no longer remember why). In spite of falling short of their goal and most people thinking they were running for office, they estimate that they ended up making as much as 500 new friends that they otherwise probably would not have made over the course of their two year experiment. Thanks to that college experiment, Dan continues to meet new people and remember their names on a regular basis often without consciously trying. He notes that “knowing people and having friends, when coupled with working by Biblical principles, can be the ‘secret sauce’ for success in your career – especially when working within a large company. People still think that I’m running for office, but I wouldn’t trade the priceless relationships I’ve been able to build by simply smiling and saying ‘hello’ to a stranger on a daily basis. After a while, those strangers turn into friends and advocates.”
Besides the numerous life-long friendships that made Dan and Dawn’s time at Evangel so special, they also had numerous professors that made an important impact on their lives. “Not only were our professors extremely qualified from a professional perspective, many of our professors, including President and Mrs. Spence, truly cared about us and wanted the best for our lives” Dan says. When considering the numerous positive impacts of Evangel on their lives, they always look forward to recommending Evangel to young people trying to decide which college to attend.