In this Donor Spotlight, we’re pleased to introduce you to Jacob Perez, vice president of PSR’s Alumnx Council, Youth Education Coordinator of First Christian Church in Concord, CA, and founder of the boutique digital advertising and marketing agency, VOLUME Branding.
Tell us about your connection to PSR. What led you to PSR?
My journey to PSR was truly one of yearning, of searching for something that spoke to and reflected my values. Values and convictions that I couldn’t quite summarize or articulate all that well or confidently, but values that I knew in my soul, nonetheless. The church of my upbringing produced a very different environment than the atmosphere we cultivate at PSR. For instance, the church was anti-LGBTQ+, steeped in patriarchy, Zionist to an oddly antisemitic degree, Islamophobic, and quite frankly just a mean place for folks who thought, spoke, looked, or acted differently.
What makes PSR distinctive? How has PSR made an impact in your life or in the world?
While I left my former church pretty early on in adulthood, I confess that I was still a part of it, or that it was still a part of me. It still, in very subtle ways, defined my character, my ethics, my outlook. We talk casually about decolonizing our faith or practice. I very much needed something like that or something like redemption. Repentance. Renewal. Revival.
And that’s what I found at PSR. Even as the world was crumbling at the start of the pandemic, even as various struggles were being lifted up by students around campus and GTU, even as I tried to do the balancing act of career and education that we all know, the moments at PSR allowed me to do something I hadn’t been afforded a chance yet: not just wrestle with ideas, or theologies, or praxis, but to look inward at my own identity, and wrestle with the things beneath the surface.
How did PSR prepare you for your work and ministry?
Even though I’m not in a full ministerial vocation now, the work I did at PSR and the work that PSR enabled me to do inwardly, has a value that goes beyond my degree. It has a value that goes beyond my career path. It allowed me to learn how to take inventory of my breathing, my body, myself, and define how I am going to be present in this world. To be frank, that type of confidence and comfort in the discomfort, the vulnerability, all of that contributed to early successes in my career since graduating in 2021 and allowed me to be a better person for my family.
Why do you give to PSR? What inspires you about giving?
Because of everything I said above. That’s why I wanted to be on the Alumnx Council, and that’s why I give. I was recently in a development meeting and was so moved by the exciting things that are around the corner for PSR and the innovative ways David and the leadership team are moving the school forward. Unafraid. I literally went online during the meeting and made a contribution. My contribution was $1000, and I don’t share that to be flashy or compel anyone to do the same (although that would be great 
), I share that because I hope in this moment we can all reflect on not just the academic caliber of PSR, but also the personal and spiritual and emotional and communal moments of grace and growth that this school provided and will continue to provide in the future. It’s not just an institution—it’s a body. It’s a movement. It’s all of us. And with all of our help, we can continue to wake future generations of students to action through the work of PSR.