2026 CSB Reunion Awards

The CSB Alumnae Board, on behalf of College of Saint Benedict, presents Reunion Awards to outstanding alumnae from reunion years whose daily lives reflect and honor the Benedictine tradition and mission of our alma mater. Nominations are accepted each year. For more information regarding the nomination process, please contact the Alumnae Relations Office.

Dana Anderson-Helstrom ’91 – Benedictine Service Award

Dana Anderson-Helstrom, from the class of 1991, this year’s Benedictine Service Award winner, has transformed unimaginable personal loss into a mission of compassion, empowerment and community impact through the Team Tucker Family Foundation. 

Coming from a family with deep ties to Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s, Dana followed those family footsteps, becoming a psychology and Spanish double major. She was also a standout student-athlete and Hall of Fame soccer player. 

After graduation, she went on to earn a Master of Education degree in school psychology from the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse and dedicated herself to helping children with special needs – working as a school psychologist, special education teacher, coach and Spanish immersion educator. 

Dana spent 23 years in special education, drawn by her calling to “fix what was broken” – meeting students, teachers and parents with empathy and without judgment. 

Her life changed profoundly when her son, Tucker, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer. With her family as her foundation, Dana navigated a grueling split existence: a constant presence for Tucker, a devoted mother to her two younger daughters and continued support for her students. After an eight-month battle that included amputation of his right leg, Tucker passed away in Dana’s arms on July 2, 2016, at age nine and a half. 

Out of grief, Dana built purpose. 

Five days after Tucker’s passing, the family held a celebration of life event at the local hockey arena. “I walked in and over 1,000 people were there to celebrate my son,” Dana recalls with wonder. “A thousand people with love in their hearts. And I need to scoop that up, because this is Tucker – he built this. But what do I do with it? I asked myself. Then I realized – I need to start a nonprofit to prolong Tucker’s legacy of caring for others.” 

It took her a year to come to grips with the fact that Tucker’s nonprofit was going to mean Dana had to serve seriously ill children and their families. She’d have to take the skills she’d built as a school psychologist and special education teacher, combine them with the strength she’d shown along Tucker’s journey, and walk alongside some Very Important Patients and their parents. 

Tucker’s Very Important Patients program helps families by creating and providing financial and emotional support suited to each family’s situation and needs. The focus is on providing relief, support and joy to combat the anxiety and sadness that comes when a child is fighting for their life. That support might come through funding transportation for family and friends to come visit. Or it could cover travel to life-saving trials and treatments. Sometimes it’s helping a family make a rent or mortgage payment. And sometimes it’s simply arriving with special toys or gift cards for patients and their siblings. 

Through resilience, empathy and relentless commitment to others, Dana Anderson-Helstrom has ensured that Tucker’s team is now a community – one that stands beside families when they need it most. She’s documented her experience, insights and lessons learned in her remarkable book There’s Nothing We Can’t Do. 

Dana grew up in Bloomington as the third of five children in a close-knit family. She is the proud mother of Tucker, Kayci and Siera. Though Tucker’s life was brief, his legacy continues to ripple outward – impacting hundreds of families and thousands of children. 

Melissa Petrangelo Scaia ’96 – Distinguished Alumna

This year’s Distinguished Alumna Award Winner, Melissa Petrangelo Scaia, of the Class of 1996, has dedicated her entire professional life to supporting survivors of domestic violence locally, nationally and globally. Growing up on Minnesota’s Iron Range, Melissa witnessed the realities of domestic violence in her community.  

Today, with more than two decades of leadership, practice experience, policy development and international training, she is widely recognized as an expert in the field of domestic violence intervention and systems change. 

Her years at CSB were transformative – deepening her interest in women’s issues during a J-term experience in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and through her coursework in political science. Saint Ben’s expanded her worldview, grounded her in social justice and shaped the values that continue to guide her work.  

Inspired by the quiet activism of the Benedictine sisters and the call to serve the common good, she pursued a master’s degree in social policy, focusing her research on the impact of domestic violence on women and children. 

Melissa spent 15 years as executive director of Advocates for Family Peace, where she provided direct services to victims, abusers and their children while leading significant organizational growth. Under her leadership, the organization secured a federal grant to establish a supervised visitation center – filling a critical need for safe, structured environments where children could maintain safe relationships with abusive parents. The project was nationally recognized, and Melissa was invited by federal agencies to train organizations across the country on her approach to program development. 

A hallmark of Melissa’s leadership is her commitment to consulting those directly impacted when designing services. She convened focus groups of survivors to shape transitional housing programs, ensuring that safety measures did not compromise autonomy and well-being. This survivor-informed model gained federal recognition and additional grant funding. 

During a later merger, Melissa expanded the organization from 14 to 40 employees across four sites and implemented a first-in-the-state “infants in the workplace” policy to support working mothers – an innovation that had unexpected positive cultural impacts within a trauma-heavy workplace. 

Melissa later served as executive director of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Program – home of the Duluth Model, a globally recognized framework for addressing domestic violence. During her tenure, the Duluth Model received the 2014 Future Policy Award for Ending Violence Against Women and Girls from the United Nations. 

In 2012, she represented the United States at a UN conference in Kazakhstan and began extensive international training work. Through Global Rights for Women, UN Women and her own consulting efforts, Melissa has trained law enforcement, prosecutors, probation officers and judicial leaders around the world – including recent work with the Attorney General’s office in Thailand – on recognizing coercive control and understanding survivor experiences within legal systems. 

She serves as a domestic violence expert witness in high-profile cases in Minnesota and Wisconsin and is currently advocating for the passage of the Survivor’s Justice Act, which would require courts to consider abuse histories in sentencing decisions. 

Today, Melissa continues her work as a consultant for UN Women, is a domestic violence expert witness and trainer, and a systems advocate for Domestic Abuse Project in Minneapolis. Her impact spans community-based services, federal policy, global training initiatives and judicial reform. 

Throughout her career, Melissa has remained connected to CSB, hiring Bennies, mentoring students and maintaining relationships with faculty. Her work embodies the Benedictine commitments to social justice, human dignity and the common good – values that were formed during her time on campus and continue to shape her life’s mission. 

Annette (Bouta) Hendrick ’71 – Renner award

This year’s winner of the Sister Emmanuel Renner Award is Annette (Bouta) Hendrick from the Class of 1971. Annette is a trailblazing telecommunications executive, community leader and lifelong steward of the Benedictine values that shaped her at Saint Ben’s. 

Coming from the outskirts of tiny Benson, Minnesota, Annette was drawn to Saint Ben’s for the size of St. Joe and the comfortably safe feel of a women’s college. Ironically though, a tremendously successful career in the male-dominated business world ended up showing her that maybe some of that safety came at the expense of preparation. Since few educational institutions at that time were really preparing women for the business world, she’s spent the years since advocating to make sure Saint Ben’s truly prepares women for the future. 

Annette was hired directly out of college by Northwestern Bell – at the time the large mid-west telecommunications subsidiary in AT&T’s nationwide Bell System– as a management trainee. She was the only woman in her cohort, selected for a track designed to prepare future senior executives. Unlike the majority of previously hired women, Annette’s math degree gained her initial placement in the male-dominated engineering part of the business. 

Annette broke barriers throughout her career: 

• First female district manager 

• First female division manager, overseeing 1,500 employees across five states charged with providing high-speed data services in a business segment marked by extensive growth and expansion 

• First female vice president of new product development at Bell Communications Research following the Bell system breakup – where she led teams that developed groundbreaking services like early caller ID technology as well as early applications of wireless cellular technology 

In 1978, after earning her MBA and beginning that career, she ran into Chuck Villette, her former professor of French and assistant academic dean, while visiting Saint Ben’s. 

“I began telling him about the environment I started in and the fact that there were skills you needed, as well as the broader educational underpinnings necessary to be successful in business – it wasn’t just straightforward,” she says. 

She told Villette how she hadn’t felt prepared for that. Next thing she recalls, “Chuck said, ‘Well, why don’t you come up and teach a course on women in business?” 

So, she did some research, made up a syllabus and taught the night class How to Be Successful in Business. Students benefited from her firsthand experience in management, and she thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to mentor young women navigating professional aspirations. 

Later, at a Saint Ben’s Reunion in 2006, she got the chance to talk with then-President MaryAnn Baenninger. “I said, I spent a lot of years in the corporate environment where I was almost the only woman,” says Annette. “I realized that when I graduated in 1971, I really wasn’t prepared for that environment. So, what is it you do to help these young women be prepared?” 

True to form, Baenninger grabbed that opportunity and invited Annette to step up and serve on the CSB Board of Trustees – from 2007-2016 – where she eventually served as chair of the Building and Grounds Committee. 

She led efforts to establish the first comprehensive long-range facilities management plan with cost projections and budget alignment. “We didn’t have a systematic way of budgeting for maintenance,” she says. “We realized we were going to have to be serious about this and set that money aside, so we would have resources when needed. 

As committee chair, she was also an important voice in bringing to life the recruiting and student-engagement benefits of building the Saint Ben’s Athletic Fields. 

“The world isn’t the same as when I was here,” she says. So Annette continues to support and speak for a Saint Ben’s that reflects that.