Colette Peters - Distinguished Alumna Award

As Director of the state of Oregon’s Department of Corrections, Colette Peters ’93 sits at the helm of a $1.8 billion organization with 4,700 employees. There are more than 14,700 adults in the department’s active custody, plus tens of thousands more individuals on probation, parole and post-prison supervision. It’s a big job.

Colette is the first woman in Oregon’s history to hold the director title, and she’s one of just a few women in the same role nationwide. Suffice it to say, Colette is in an extraordinarily male-dominated field, particularly at the level to which she has ascended.

And yet, when she first entered the field, Colette genuinely couldn’t have fathomed that her gender would be a factor. It’s not naiveté on her part – indeed, Colette is widely heralded for her shrewdness. Rather, it stems from an upbringing and educational experience that framed her gender as a point of strength.

Colette is one of seven children, six of whom are women. She says, “One of the best feminists I ever met was my father, who convinced us all that we could be whatever we wanted to be and do whatever we wanted to do.” Then she arrived at Saint Ben’s, which further underscored that notion.

“At Saint Ben’s I was surrounded by all these amazing women who wanted to be leaders, to be agents of change, and who wanted to support each other. The students, the faculty, the sisters – there were all these incredibly strong feminists there.” Colette left Saint Ben’s with such confidence that she admits to being a bit baffled by the sexism and inequality she later encountered.

Rather than let that pushback deter her, Colette drew on her strong foundation and pushed forward – not only working hard to challenge and advance herself but also to serve as an advocate for others. She originally discovered a calling for criminal justice while studying psychology at Saint Ben’s and worked her way through graduate school and up through the ranks, always keeping specific values at the heart of her work.

To this day, she hasn’t wavered. “When I look at the core values that I took on from Saint Ben’s, so many of them resonate with our mission today: justice, needing to care for our neighbor, cultivating a sense of community and a sense of peace – it all fits in. One of my passions is teaching the world about corrections, because I think movies and television have created such misunderstanding. Research has shown us that if you treat these individuals like humans, like the Rule of Saint Benedict, they will come back to us and they will be good neighbors.”

Colette’s advocacy extends to her staff, too. “We have so much work to do to create more opportunities and more seats at the table for women and for anyone who is underrepresented,” she says. “For me, it was such a powerful experience to be built up at home and at Saint Ben’s like I was, which allowed me to integrate into a male-dominated society.”

She feels so strongly about her own experience that it “thrills” Colette to share that the eldest of her three daughters has just been accepted to an all-women’s high school near their home outside Portland.