PARIS — Norway resident and Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School Class of 1992 graduate Jessica Carver Truman has been named Alumna of the Year.

A longstanding tradition, each year the award recipient is honored during Homecoming Weekend.

“Jessica is a proud Viking,” Principal Paul Bickford said in an email statement. “Having been active in athletics in high school and in college, she values athletics and the lessons it teaches.

“She has supported local youth athletic teams from elementary school to high school by volunteering her time to help with fundraising, organizing community events and cheering on the athletes.”

As an Oxford Hills student, Truman played on the field hockey and lacrosse teams and participated in band. She credits the experience of being immersed in team environments as a youth as key to her personal growth, influences that continue today.

“I am not sure I was a natural athlete, but I worked hard at it,” she said. “I learned that practice does pay off. I learned that I can do hard things. I learned the value of teamwork and cultivating relationships. I learned to win and to lose.

“All those skills are things that I use today. Personally and professionally.”

As a parent of three boys, she and her husband Mark remain committed to Oxford Hills athletics, he as coach and she as a booster. “I have always loved being a Viking. I believe that being involved in extracurricular activities was really valuable.”

After graduating from Wheelock College in 1996, she began her career as a child life specialist at MaineHealth Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital where the lessons of teamwork and perseverance were of critical importance. Her role was to establish programs for care teams providing treatments to hospitalized children, to make the process as easy as possible for patients and their families.

“My job there was to assess where the child was developmentally and then create strategies that helped them understand what was going on medically,” she explained. “By addressing their illness or accident from a developmental approach the goal was to make the hospitalization less traumatic for the child and the family.

“We know that when a child has a chronic illness or an accident it effects the whole family. [It was my role] to always check in with the family and make sure their emotional needs were being met, to work with the medical teams to make sure the whole child’s medical, emotional and development was being treated.”

The couple settled in southern Maine and started their family but quickly realized there is no place like home. With demanding jobs and commutes, they found it difficult to connect with their new community as deeply as they desired.

The best way to achieve the work/life balance they valued was to return to their hometown, where their children could be close with their grandparents.

After moving to Norway, Truman started a similar job with a services agency in the area but still found it difficult to balance work responsibilities with her family’s needs.

“I was feeling pulled between being a parent and having a career,” she said. “I wanted a career that I could use my skills to help others. But I also wanted to be involved in what was happening with our boys. I wanted to volunteer in their classrooms and be present for activities they wanted to participate in.”

She eventually found the solution: start an independent case management agency that allowed the flexibility to fulfill her career without it overshadowing her family and home life. She partnered with Karri White, another young mother, to open Bridge to Success, an agency that provides services to children with disabilities.

“Our goal was to create a quality agency that supported the work life balance”, Truman said. “We pay our staff on a per diem basis. So they are paid by how much they work. If they want to work full time they have a full case load, if they want to work part time they have a part time case load. This allows our staff to meet the needs of the clients that they are supporting, and the needs of their family.

Truman and White launched Bridge to Success in 2010. Since then, it has grown from the two proprietors to an agency providing support to about 400 clients of all ages, with 15 case managers and two office staff. Their service area extends from Oxford into Androscoggin, Franklin and Cumberland counties.

“I really love the work that we do here at BTS,” she said. “Our job is to support individuals/families. We problem solve, we research, we advocate for the needs of our clients. We promote inclusion. We want to remove barriers so that the clients we work with have the same opportunities as their typically developing peers.

“Every client has different strengths and challenges. Every client/family has different goals. Our job is to support those goals. We encourage our clients to be themselves. To see their value. That’s probably the best part. Individuals with developmental disabilities are all unique. We want them to be involved in activities that are important to each client, not what we as society think they should do. When our clients are living their best life, we feel good too.”

Living in Oxford Hills and running an agency focused on improving the quality of others’ lives has given Truman the life she envisioned as well as the opportunity to lead by example for her kids. With Dad as coach and Mom as fundraiser, it is not just family but the community that looks out for their and other kids.

“I hope that our boys have seen the value in community,” she said. “I think they have. I think they see how much enjoyment their dad and I get from giving back to the community.

“They have been on the receiving end of a lot of community support. From coaches that have invested time into teaching them to be better athletes and teammates.

“They have seen the value in the financial side of community support. They understand that not everyone can afford the same things, and it also takes financial support to create a more equal playing field. They have played in front of large crowds cheering them on. People who they may not know but want for them to be successful, anyway.”