Beth has been with GotQuestions longer than the rest of us (other than Shea, of course), so she’s next in line for this feature …
Beth was born in Portland, OR, and except for five years in exile in Spokane, WA, lived there until she graduated from college. Her dream was to be an astronaut, and she went into Air Force ROTC to that end, but didn’t find out until her senior year that astronauts can’t have heart murmurs. Even little ones that you actually have to tell the doctor about before he hears it. Her greater dream was to help people, although she didn’t know how or what that would mean.
Her upbringing was instrumental in making her who she is today. Between a father who voted Republican and owned every Doonesbury book published, and a mother who moved from modeling wedding dresses to remodeling homes, it’s no wonder Beth, an evangelical Oregonian, got an engineering degree from a Catholic college, served four years in the Air Force, and now does admin and writing for a Protestant ministry. She is wife of 18 years to Tom (a Kansan Air Force retiree), mom to Jack (a Thai spit-fire), and insufficiently-attentive servant to Cinnamon (The World’s Most Neurotic Dog ™).
Beth started working at GotQuestions three years ago as a contractor. She was hired on when Shea accidentally deleted a week’s worth of monotonous work she’d just completed, and she didn’t break his neck. Tom, Beth, and Jack have known Shea and MeLissa for six years, and Jack is not above calling Shea “uncle” when he wants something.
What she does: Donation logging; light administration; question assigning/approving/answering; foreign languages page building; paper towel stocking; Blogos editing; article writing; anything Shea doesn’t want to do (except talking on the phone which we’ve all agreed Gwen is better at).
Training: Learned Microsoft Office in the Air Force; learned how to write thanks to the personal attentions of Christian YA fantasy writer Donita K. Paul and cyberpunk writer Bruce Bethke; learned about theology by going to church and reading some stuff.
Favorite part of her job: Helping people; the variety; writing something that touches someone (she’s miserable at speaking words out loud); working in the same office as three of her best friends.
Things she likes to do: Running; playing guitar/singing on the worship team; sea kayaking (this is making her sound way cooler than she actually is); fighting human trafficking; figuring out random things like how to make garbanzo butter and why Somalia is such a mess.
Funny quirk: Some would argue that Beth is so full of funny quirks it would be more difficult to identify something normal about her. Those people would get a sound talking-to if they weren’t in charge of her paycheck.
