A Community Approach on Giving

Carol and Darryl Wold were for many years fully involved in their professional careers — Carol in her work in community development that included building neighborhoods, schools, retail, and recreation facilities in Irvine and Darryl as an expert in election law — and both have also given consistently of their time, talents, and treasure to Concordia University Irvine and to their home congregation.

“We have been greatly blessed in our lives,” Carol says, “and one aspect of that blessing has been the opportunity to give not only financial support for our Lord’s work, but also our time. We feel faithfulness requires both.”

“The Wolds truly encompass the full depth of Christian stewardship,” says Tim Jaeger, vice president for university advancement.

“Carol has been instrumental in providing insights on how to promote the University in the community. For many years she has helped us engage advocates and partners, fundraise, and tell the story of Concordia University Irvine, in addition to serving in leadership roles within the University.” Carol’s support for Concordia runs deeply in her own family.

Carol’s father, Carl Schroeder, was the president of First National Bank of Orange County at the time of the founding of Christ College Irvine (now Concordia University Irvine) and was instrumental in negotiating the purchase of the hilltop land from the Irvine Company, which wanted a private Christian college to be located near UC Irvine. Carol’s uncle, the Rev. Edward Schroeder, was the long-time pastor of First Lutheran Church of Long Beach and helped facilitate the Synod’s approval to establish a new college in Irvine.

“It was a pretty humble beginning,” Carol says. “There was very little residential development in the area at that time, and adjoining hills were used for cattle grazing.” But the college continued to grow under successive presidents, and Carol observes that “Each president brought their unique talents. I believe we were blessed to have the right person at each time.”

Carol’s own ambitions initially lay in the civic realm, as she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science with a minor in business from Humboldt State University and later a master’s degree in management from the University of Redlands. After college, she hoped to find a job with an elected official, an ambition she realized when she obtained a position with then State Senator Dennis Carpenter from Newport Beach and the Irvine area, “much earlier than I had envisioned,” Carol says.

In that position she came to the attention of the newly-formed Irvine Chamber of Commerce, which asked her to serve as its first executive director in 1979, at a time when Irvine had little retail or business development. “There was still a lot of agriculture in the area,” Carol says, and recalls driving home through Irvine in a rainstorm with oranges bobbing in the water on flooded streets.

As Carol says, however, “commercial development was starting to explode, with The Irvine Company and other developers building retail centers, and office buildings going up around John Wayne Airport. It was an exciting time to be a part of the growth of the community.”

After seeing her work at the Chamber, The Irvine Company offered her a position in public policy and community issues. “I had not envisioned that career path for myself,” Carol says, “but when I saw the opportunity it presented, I felt it was a particular blessing that sent me on a very interesting career path.”

At that time, The Irvine Company was implementing its master plan, which envisioned individual villages made up of residential areas, retail parks, and schools — a contrasting idea to the sprawling communities elsewhere in Southern California. “My goal was to work with residents and special interest groups so that by the time the company’s development projects came before the city council for approval, these groups felt that their issues had been resolved, and we could move forward together,” Carol says. “It was extremely exciting, because we were starting something from scratch and building homes for families and schools for children — the places where people make their connections and long-lasting friendships.”

“We worked with residents, made changes in road alignments, put in buffers between homes and future development, and preserved some of the iconic rows of eucalyptus trees in the communities,” she says. “There were a lot of little details that we negotiated up front that made the project better and smoothed the process as we went forward.”Her job, she says, entailed a great deal of listening and problem-solving. “It’s a learned skill, because there are different personalities and you need to adjust and see how each side can have their needs met so everybody feels like they’ve left the table successfully.”

Carol has a life-long history with St. John’s Lutheran Church in Orange, having been baptized and confirmed there, graduated from its day school, and married there, to her husband Darryl. Darryl had a similar history at Trinity Lutheran Church in Whittier, until schooling and career took him elsewhere, but he joined St. John’s when he married Carol — “Carol is a life member of St. John’s,” he says, “but I married into it.”

Darryl graduated from Claremont McKenna College and obtained his law degree from Stanford University. After law school, he worked for a time as an assistant to the speaker of the California Assembly, writing speeches and working with other members and their staffs. After a few years, he left the Capitol to start a lengthy career practicing law, primarily in the field of political law, involving election procedures, campaign finance regulation, conflicts of interest, and nonprofit organizations.

In the late 1990s, Darryl received an unexpected phone call from a congress- man he had worked with, asking if he would be interested in an appointment to the Federal Election Commission, the agency that interprets and enforces the federal law governing campaign finance for federal candidates and PACs. He agreed and spent nearly four years on the Commission in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, Carol had risen to a vice president position at The Irvine Company — and in her free time was helping shape Concordia’s future. In the 1980s, at the request of LaVeda Carter, Carol and others, including Susan Odle and Ruth Denault, helped transform the college’s annual fundraising event into something more substantial. Today known as The Gala of Stars, the special event has grown significantly and draws hundreds each year to an evening of entertainment, dinner, silent and live auctions, and other features including celebrity guests and the presentation of lifetime achievement awards to distinguished persons.

When Concordia reached its tenth year, President Ray Halm asked Carol to chair the anniversary celebration to recognize that milestone. That event was particularly pivotal for the college, Carol says, because “it was one of the first times we had really reached into the Irvine community. We had been pretty isolated on top of the hill, but that was a big event, and we reached out to the media and community. After that, we started bringing well known people on campus and gaining attention from the community.”

President Halm then asked Carol to serve on the Board of Trustees and encouraged her to serve as chair of the board when it had never had a woman chair before — nor one so young. “Ray was a tremendous mentor to me and put me in leadership roles that I never could have imagined for myself,” she says. “He did me a tremendous service by doing that. My volunteerism at the campus translated into my professional career, because it helped me build skills that I probably wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise.”

Over the years, Carol also served on the national board of the Concordia University System, chaired the Concordia women’s brunch, and received Concordia’s Cristus Mundo award and its Trustee of the Year award. She is now a lifetime member of the Board of Trustees.

After her career at The Irvine Company, Carol was recruited by another community developer, FivePoint, which had purchased the former Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro and was converting it into its own master-planned community.

Her hand was in the planning of a number of residential areas and schools, a community called Great Park Neighborhoods, adjacent to what is now the Orange County Great Park, which at 1,300 acres, is nearly double the size of New York’s Central Park and includes playgrounds, a landmark sports facility, and open space.

More than anything, Carol says, she is proud to have treated everyone she worked with respectfully. That was recognized at her retirement celebration when colleagues and friends lauded her trustworthiness. Carol credits her Christian upbringing and her close association with Concordia for strengthening those principles in her heart. “Those are values you learn from a Christian education,” she says.

Darryl describes his involvement at Concordia as being Carol’s most important supporter. Most of his activity in the church has involved using his legal background, although he is now retired, to help St. John’s with governance issues, and the same for Crean Lutheran High School and for Orange Lutheran High School, along with other projects for St. John’s.

Jaeger reports that the Wolds have donated to Concordia every year for 39 years, beginning before they were married. They recently joined the Great Commission Society by making Concordia part of their estate plans.The Great Commission Society includes all donors who leave the University a planned gift, a gift out of their will or living trust, or designate the University as a beneficiary or partial beneficiary of a life insurance policy, IRA, mutual fund, or other gift.

Carol and Darryl emphasize their intention to continue their support for Concordia, financially and with their time. “I’ve always referred to Concordia as an oasis,” says Carol. “The minute you come on that campus you feel like you’re someplace special. We want to continue to continue to be a part of that.”

Outside of their volunteer activity, Carol and Darryl pursue their other interests. Darryl continues his love for the outdoors, including hiking and climbing in the Sierras, which ties into his interest in geology. He also enjoys landscaping their spacious yard, “a work in progress,” he says. Carol continues to provide public affairs consulting, even though retired from a full-time career, and to mentor other women in their careers. She also takes time to mentor her large vegetable garden. Both Carol and Darryl enjoy entertaining and opening their home to entertain friends, with Carol exercising her considerable culinary skills and Darryl selecting — and talking about — the wines they serve.