Kathi Joy Wiley: A Servant’s Heart

Grant Wiley was a Marine with a heart for people. He was also a father. His daughter Kathi recalls frequent family visits to the Blanchet House in Portland, where she and her siblings would help Dad serve meals.

Grant grew up in the Great Depression. Kathi believes that God gave him determination and the opportunities that gave his family a better life than he’d had. He was passionate about helping others who also faced obstacles to success. He started a sporting equipment distribution business, and as it grew, he made a point to hire people who were facing barriers to employment.

“He had a heart for the underdog like Jesus did,” Kathi said. “It was like a ministry. It was amazing.”

Grant died suddenly in 1996, but his life inspired Kathi so much that she began thinking about her own. She confronted her own mortality and considered how she could honor her father’s legacy.

“I chose to—or I felt compelled to, would be the best way to put it—evaluate my life. I asked myself ‘What am I doing, and is it going to make a difference?’”

Around the same time, Kathi’s dear friend Deanna Green started working with I Have a Dream of Southwest Washington. The nonprofit was part of a national program that encouraged academic achievement in underserved elementary schools by adopting entire classes of students, or “Dreamers” as they came to be known. Each cohort, or Project, received extensive enrichment programs, mentorship and guaranteed financial support for their post-secondary dreams.

Deanna persuaded Kathi to join her, and Kathi began volunteering as a mentor for Project 1. She brought her father’s passion with her, volunteering time with other students so she could learn how to serve her own class better, and eventually becoming a sponsor for Project 4 along with Dr. Candace Young, Leslie Durst, Susan Gilbert and others.

I Have a Dream became more than mentorship and support for Kathi. She created authentic, caring relationships with Dreamers and stays in touch with some of them to this day. As Kathi became familiar with her students’ strengths and struggles, her compassion for them and others in similar situations grew.

“I didn't have much exposure to people from other backgrounds. I only knew this certain way of being in the world, and even though I was in my 40s, my experience was relatively limited,” Kathi said."I Have a Dream knocked the sides out of that box in a big way, and I realized that people didn't necessarily fit into the stereotypes I had in my mind."

I Have a Dream fulfilled its promise to local students in 2017, and the remaining funds were channeled into the I Have a Dream Scholarship in Honor of Mary and Dick Granger. This fund carries on the legacy of the program and its founders by providing scholarships for Dreamers, their children and students who have experienced foster care.

Kathi's dedication to young people and their futures has also continued. She has served on the scholarship’s decision-making committee since its inception, and recently found another way to live out her father’s values. In 2024, she established a scholarship to reach more of the students she’s become so passionate about.

The Kathi Joy Wiley Scholarship considers students from historically disadvantaged groups who are pursuing any pathway to post-secondary education. She specifically aims to reach:

• single parents and widows
• foster youth and young adults who have aged out of the foster care system (formal or informal)
• people who have been incarcerated or whose parents are or have been incarcerated
• immigrants and refugees or second-generation immigrants or refugees
• people living in poverty
• people who have experienced instability in housing and/or being unhoused
• people living with a disability (developmental, intellectual neurodivergent, physical) or with behavioral issues
• people recovering from or affected by addiction
• LGBTQ2S+
• survivors of domestic violence, gender violence and/or child abuse

Kathi thoughtfully considered the criteria for her scholarship, intentionally calling in students who may have felt unseen by traditional scholarships. She also extended her criteria to include diverse post-secondary pathways that aren’t typically supported.

“I had an inheritance, and I wanted to honor my father by doing something that would help those that didn't have some of the privileges that I'd had,” Kathi said, “and also to honor God and introduce people to His love, because that's what's behind it. The Bible tells us to love the poor, the needy, the widows, the orphans, the sojourners – immigrants and refugees. That’s who my father cared for, and that’s where I started with the criteria for my scholarship.”

Kathi’s dedication to serving others offers us a chance to ask ourselves, “How can I, too, use my experiences and passions to lift up others?” Whether through mentorship, volunteering, or simply offering a helping hand, we all have the power to create lasting change.