Four alumni from four of the university’s seven schools are making a difference in the Winchester community and beyond by living out one of the university’s core values of cultivating leadership to advance positive change and growth.
Jacqueline Post Shoemaker ’00, ’01, ’08 (Health Professions), Jurgita Sauvageot ’10 (Pharmacy), Jeffrey Scott Dolly II ’11 (Health Professions) and Colt Scott ’17 (Arts & Sciences) are all spreading the importance of health and wellness to others in their communities, in professional settings, and even on national television.
Jacqueline Post Shoemaker ’00, ’01, ’08
After several years of caring for sick patients in intensive care units and emergency departments, Jacqueline Post Shoemaker ’00, ’01, ’08 decided that she not only wanted to help patients, but she also wanted to help prevent their illnesses. So, Shoemaker returned to Shenandoah to pursue her master’s degree and became a nurse practitioner. Once a nurse practitioner, she began to notice a trend with her patients. As her patients aged, the likelihood that they would develop diabetes, heart disease and hypertension worsened, and their weight increased. This raised a level of concern for Shoemaker because it was not a trend in other countries around the world. In order to help her patients, she began to research the subject and discovered that programs existed that facilitated weight loss and helped people with chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.
“Shenandoah University taught me that nurse practitioners could open their own medical practice business with a collaborative relationship with a physician, so, in 2013, I opened Winchester Weight Loss,” said Shoemaker.
Now five years later, Shoemaker is the recipient of the 2017 Top of Virginia Regional Chamber’s Greater Good Award for Entrepreneur of the Year and has recently opened a second location in Woodstock, Virginia. For every patient, Winchester Weight Loss creates an individualized and personalized program designed to help manage chronic diseases through nutrition and weight loss. Shoemaker also speaks to the community about making healthy lifestyle choices.
“I love healing disease with food,” Shoemaker said. “Our patients lose three to five pounds in the first week and one to two pounds every week afterwards. We are able to help patients cease their medications – including insulin – in about four weeks. I love their transformations and their perspectives of their own health changes.”
Jurgita Sauvageot ’10
Like Shoemaker, Jurgita Sauvageot ’10 finds her part-time position as a clinical pharmacist at the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore, Maryland, very gratifying. Sauvageot provides inpatient pharmacy services.
“These services include, but are not limited to, medication order reviews, safe sterile or nonsterile medication compounding and dispensing, dose evaluations, antibiotic management and collaboration with the clinicians to optimize medication therapy,” Sauvageot said.
Sauvageot believes the best part of her job is providing consultation about specific medications for patients to the administering nurses because their gratitude and appreciation is very touching. Even before her career in pharmacy, Sauvageot always had an interest in herbal medicine. After graduating from Shenandoah, she pursued a master’s degree in therapeutic herbalism at the Maryland University of Integrative Health (formerly Tai Sophia Institute). With herbal medicine being one of her most passionate interests, she started pursuing a new method of improving patients’ health and wellness by becoming a junior partner of Tonic Herb Shop in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
“The best part is to blend thousands-of-years tested safe and effective herbal remedies with very recently created pharmaceuticals to achieve someone’s well-being and improve their quality of life,” explained Sauvageot.
Jeffrey Scott Dolly II ’11
For Scott Dolly ’11, working with his rehabilitation patients really hits home, because he knows what they’re going through.
“I have suffered several sports-related injuries in my time, and seven of them have required surgery,” said Dolly. “I have endured the process of injury to surgery, to rehabilitation, back to sports performance, so many times in my life that I have developed a sincere passion for helping others with this process.”
Dolly came to Shenandoah to pursue a master’s degree in athletic training. After graduating from Shenandoah in 2011, Dolly opened his own business, Evolution Human Performance & Rehabilitation (EVOHPR)because he had a vision that was completely different from that of the health care system.
“At EVOHPR, we specialize in movement analysis, injury prevention and physical rehabilitation,” said Dolly. “We utilize advanced manual therapy and instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilization (IASTM) techniques to facilitate optimal healing and performance in the human body.”
Although Dolly’s accomplishments and successes as an entrepreneur are what most people are usually impressed by, he says, “It’s my work with the human-body/condition that is most rewarding to me. I help people get their movement back, their vitality back and their lives back. For some, I help them achieve a level of life they have never had.”
Dolly credits his understanding of the human body, including how to rehabilitate it and how to keep it at a peak performance level, to the education he received at Shenandoah.
Colt Scott ’17
Also serving as an example for promoting health and wellness is Colt Scott ’17.
Despite having Type 1 diabetes, Scott wanted to show the world nothing could hold him or others with the disease back as he took part in Netflix’s obstacle-course reality series, “Ultimate Beastmaster.” At the age of just 18 months old, Scott was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, but he never let the daily challenge slow him down and has learned how to overcome it. Hence, his nickname, “The Diabadass.”
“What made me want to compete on the show was finally having the opportunity to showcase what I had been working on for nearly a decade,” Scott said. “Since 2010, I had been training in a gymnastics gym. It had been a dream that I was chasing, and I finally caught it.”
In November 2016, Scott went to Santa Clarita, California, to compete. However, the first season of the show hadn’t aired before he competed, so he still hadn’t seen the course and had no idea of what to expect. Despite not knowing what he was about to face, Scott gave it his all. To find out how he fared, watch episode nine of the second season of “Ultimate Beastmaster” on Netflix.
Scott still continues to follow his dream and has already applied for the 10th season of “American Ninja Warrior” and is working on an application for the new NBC show, “The Titan Games.” He remains an ambassador for Type 1 diabetes, showing kids with diabetes there’s nothing they can’t do.
“I hope that this career can continue to open more doors for me. The experience of meeting so many talented people from different walks of life was a blessing. We are not all so different; the world seems a little smaller now, and I feel that it has brought me closer to people as a whole.”
