Anna Benedict named recipient of Notre Dame Alumni Association’s Domer Dozen
Graduate student Anna Benedict was named an honoree of Notre Dame Alumni Associations 2025 Domer Dozen. Alumni honored are recognized for their extraordinary dedication to making a difference and have made significant contributions in one of the four core tenets of the Alumni Association’s mission statement — faith, service, learning, and work. Anna is the youngest honoree recognized in 2025. Below is a brief summary of the work Anna has been recognized for
As an undergraduate inspired to merge her passions for mental health advocacy and storytelling during the COVID-19 pandemic, Anna applied her interdisciplinary skillset to create the Our Stories Project (OSP). OSP partners university students with adults navigating serious mental illness (SMI) at Clubhouse psychosocial recovery centers to co-write Clubhouse members’ life stories and later publish them in a book.
Leading the project three times so far, Benedict and OSP have educated future healthcare leaders, built allyships with and empowered a vulnerable community, and fought stigma around SMI through three published books of lived narratives, impacting nearly 200 students and Clubhouse members. The books have raised thousands for Clubhouse communities, received international translation requests, and been used in graduate courses. The Clubhouse in South Bend is adapting stories from the book into a play for educational use to fight stigma around SMI. In collaboration with Clubhouse International, Benedict is currently developing OSP into a curriculum for global use.
Anna’s work centers on strength-based recovery and addresses epistemic injustices by including own-voices narratives and mixed-methods research. Anna is currently completing a Community Engagement Certificate and aims to continue lifting the voices of those marginalized by SMI and socioeconomic hardship to build more effective, whole-person-oriented approaches to mental healthcare.
Congratulations Anna! To read Anna’s full recognition, please visit Domer Dozen: Notre Dame Young Alumni
Additional information regarding Anna’s recognition can be found at MSU Psychology Graduate Student Named to Notre Dame's 2025 Domer Dozen | Department of Psychology | Michigan State University
