Holly Vradenburgh

By Sarah Pride

Holly Vradenburgh has a vision to serve international adoption agencies

Holly Vradenburgh (’08) is a Tennessean who loves to watch college football. But her life’s mission is to help provide orphaned children across the seas a hope and a future. To this end, she is about to embark on a path traveled by many of her fellow PHC grads, leading to one of the nation’s top law schools. After serving this past year as Patrick Henry College’s female Resident Director, Vradenburgh is scheduled to attend the University of Virginia School of Law in the fall, in its International Law and Human Rights track.

“When I started college I wanted to work for an international adoption agency,” says Vradenburgh. “I dabbled in moot court at PHC and took some history and government classes, and I felt God moving me to study international law in general.”

In the process, she explains, her “vision expanded.” Rather than working for an adoption agency in person, she explains, her vision includes learning how to create efficient infrastructures to allow such agencies to operate effectively.

“Lots of countries need adoptions, but their governments can't facilitate it,” she says. “Organizations like International Justice Mission work to change that.”

Vradenburgh chose to take a “rest” year as RD after finishing her History major at PHC in only three and a half years. Not surprisingly, for those familiar with her industrious love of service, while she indeed took life a little easier in her first semester on the job, by the spring she was also teaching SAT prep to students and working as an administrative assistant for PHC’s summer teen camps.

“It’s been a good year,” she grins, “—with a minimal number of emergency runs.”

The chance to spend another year working amongst her former classmates was enjoyable, she adds, as was learning how to cultivate new relationships while functioning in a position of authority as RD. A genuine highlight, she says, was the almost daily, practical application of “meeting people where they are and discerning what is going on below the surface, at the heart level.”

Vradenburgh says she looks forward to the upcoming challenges at UVA, and anticipates with an even greater urgency the eventual fulfillment of her vision.

 “The important part,” she says, “is the adoption, not the international aspect.”

And with a quiet passion, she shares the heart and the motive energizing her dreams of service: “God has always been identified as the defender of the fatherless and the widow.”