When Celine Yip ’16 arrived at Pacific University, all she knew was that she wanted to positively affect the world.

She didn’t know what she wanted to major in or what her career path might be. And she didn’t receive much direction on what college could look like before coming to Forest Grove in 2012.

“I was self-motivated, but I also had to figure out nearly everything on my own,” said Yip, an alumna of Pacific’s Bachelor of Social Work program. “My mom taught me many things, but she was very upfront that she could not help me with college. I had to figure out the college application process by myself. I had no idea what I was doing.”

What Yip discovered at Pacific was a community that went out of its way to help her. That spirit of community allowed Yip to discover her purpose of helping others in much the same way. 

That passion for helping people has led Yip to midtown Manhattan, where she serves as the director of special initiatives for a nonprofit that provides services to segments of New York’s homeless population.

While many social workers focus on providing counseling, resources and direct services, Yip’s work centers on the numbers behind that work. She describes her role as one-third data analysis, one-third project management and one-third other duties as assigned by the organization’s senior leadership. 

But 100% of the job is critical in helping the growing homeless population in New York. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, over 120,000 people daily slept in the city’s homeless shelters in January 2025, including over 41,000 children.

The seeds of Yip’s social work career were sewn by faculty in Pacific’s Bachelor of Social Work program, who not only encouraged Yip to discover her purpose but also opened her eyes to the wide range of career opportunities that social work provides.

“Social work is a huge umbrella term for all of the different ways that organizations, people and societies help the most oppressed, the most marginalized, the most vulnerable,” Yip said. “Once I understood fully what that was, I decided that I wanted to go into social work.”

Former BSW Program Director Jessica Ritter encouraged Yip to apply to graduate school at Columbia University, where she earned her Master’s in Social Work in 2017. She also provided the life-changing encouragement that an advanced degree was well within her reach.

That encouragement was important for Yip, who was able to attend Pacific thanks to a scholarship program that provides full tuition, room, board and books for one graduate of the Early College High School partnership track between local high schools and Portland Community College.

Yip was the first recipient of the scholarship, back when the partnership was just getting started at Portland’s Jefferson High School, and she admits that without it, she likely would not have attended college at all.

“At that time in my life, I was very much setting limits on my own opportunities. My perspective of the world was pretty narrow,” Yip said. “I assumed that certain opportunities were beyond me, that they were too expensive, or that I wasn’t smart enough to even be eligible for those opportunities. And Jessica was the one who encouraged me to apply and despite my assumption that I wouldn’t get it. I owe so much to her.”

After Columbia, Yip spent a year working in different social work jobs in New York before earning a Fulbright award to research sex education in China. She worked with a nonprofit organization to survey the perspective of sex education of Chinese students. The Fulbright was a full-circle moment for Yip, who claimed China as one of those 20 addresses where she had lived at growing up.

After years of moving around, Yip feels at right home in New York, where the people she supports are not much different than those she grew up around in north Portland. Yip’s upbringing forms the foundation of the “why” of her social work career.

“Having shared some of those experiences, growing up poor and knowing so many people growing up who were really struggling, really poor, living in the foster care system, it reinforced that these are the people I want to help,” Yip said. “It gave me a closer look at what it’s like to be in a more vulnerable population outside of my own perspective.”

Her education at Pacific not only confirmed that perspective and purpose, but opened the doors that are helping her positively affect the world. 

“One thing that I am happy that little Celine did was ask lots of questions,” she said. “I had a lot of professors who were willing to give me time, encouraged me and introduced me to opportunities that I would never have known about.”

And that includes integrating a love for numbers and data into a social work career.

“I enjoy the work that goes into managing a nonprofit, but I still enjoy research,” Yip said. “Whenever someone gives me a research project, I’m like, ‘Yay, I miss creating beautiful, functioning reports in Excel.’ In both ways, I enjoy bettering systems.”