TALKING TO PROFESSIONAL COUNSELOR, public speaker, and adjunct professor Margo Tirado M.A. ’90 now, it’s hard to believe that she used to be characterized by shyness and insecurity.“

The voice I revealed to the outside world often did not match the strength, opinions, and independence of my spirit,” she recalls.

Growing up in a small town in northern New Mexico, Margo became acutely aware of the ways in which women have been historically silenced, especially in the church. 

“Even as a young girl I believed women should be as empowered as men, and was often bewildered at the disparity in power between the genders,” she says. 

Her life’s work—helping women find the courage and strength to vocalize their much-needed perspectives—was born from this understanding.

Margo feels blessed by the ways that her own voice was cultivated during her time as a graduate student at Wheaton, where she earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology. She calls Wheaton “incredibly instrumental” in finding her calling. 

“I attended Wheaton to pursue a degree; I walked away with the realization that what I had to say mattered,” she says. “Wheaton is where I found my voice and where I realized I needed to help others, specifically women, find theirs.”

That focus hasn’t changed in the two and a half decades since she left Wheaton, and all her efforts—teaching at Huntington College, counseling through her private practice, leading retreats, co-founding conferences, blogging, writing a book, and even dancing flamenco for fun—further that end. “I am thankful I found my calling early on in life,” Margo says. “It is a sacred, life-changing, never-know-what’s-coming-next kind of a vocation.”