A Lifestyle of Service: Memorial Alumnus Zack Darrah '01

Picture a winter night in November. It was a late night at work for Zack Darrah, who had just come on board as Chief Executive Officer of Fresno's Poverello House. As he emerged into the cold night, he noticed a few distant shapes in front of the gates of Poverello House. As Darrah walked closer to the shapes, he saw they were three children. They were roughly the same age as his children, sleeping comfortably at home. One had no shirt on, exposed to the winter air. The three surrounded a burning barrel, huddled around it for warmth.

"All I could think about was that I had to make sure this doesn't happen in our community anymore," Darrah said.

Darrah is currently serving as the CEO of Poverello House, a Fresno non-profit dedicated for the past several decades to providing the homeless population of Fresno with help, dignity and assistance getting off the streets.

According to Darrah, his dedication to what he calls a "lifestyle of service" was formed in the halls of San Joaquin Memorial High School. Darrah was involved in numerous service clubs at Memorial, including the S-Club and CSF. This experience coupled with Memorial's focus on service in general shaped Darrah.

"I would trace a lot of my desire to go into nonprofit work back to my time at Memorial," he said. "A lot of different components to the education at Memorial is about living a lifestyle of service. Having an education that was centered around the idea of a lifestyle of service made an impact on me."

Darrah graduated from Memorial in 2001, going on to earn a degree from Fresno Pacific University. Nonprofits were immediately of interest to him as a way to combine his faith with his career.

"Having the ability to potentially live out my life’s calling as a follower of Christ and also utilize my interest in business was key," he said. "A job with a purpose."

Darrah spent the years after college graduation working in nonprofits, everything from helping refugees to working with the formerly incarcerated. Then, a little over a year ago, Darrah came to work for Poverello House.

Darrah has been hard at work for the charity, which has served Fresno's homeless communities for decades. Recently, Poverello House even earned  $2.5 million as part of Jeff Bezos' Day 1 Families Fund. The money will go toward a shelter for homeless and displaced families in Fresno.

Ultimately, Darrah said that Memorial changed the path of his life.

"Memorial had a huge impact on my life," he said. "I think a lot of people who went to Memorial have the same type of story as me. The spiritual component of my growth as a young person that happened at Memorial is definitely part of the pathway I'm on now. God has a plan for all of our lives and he works that out in different ways. Memorial was part of my plan."

Visit  https://poverellohouse.org/who-we-are/our-mission-story to learn more about Poverello House