by Amanda Kae Fronk
When Sharon L. Eubank was a young BYU student, she felt like a small fish in a large pond. “There were times . . . I couldn’t force myself to go into . . . class because there were 30 people and a teacher that was going to be calling on people to talk,” she remembers. “How difficult it was to be on a big campus with 26,000 people and try to overcome that!”
Some 30 years later, Eubank can’t quite believe where she’s ended up. As director of LDS Charities, Eubank oversees worldwide humanitarian operations in hundreds of countries. In 2014 alone, LDS Charities 
provided clean water, immunizations, wheelchairs, medical services, and more to millions of people.
In fall 2014 Eubank received the BYU College of Humanities Alumni Achievement Award. She says her education at BYU has been vital in carving her path from shy college student to international organization leader. Using her English degree, Eubank taught English to Honda CEOs in Japan for a short time before setting her sights on Washington, D.C. There she worked for U.S. Senator Al Simpson. “They wanted to hire an LDS person who was honest,” says Eubank, even though Simpson wasn’t LDS, “and they wanted someone who knew how to write.” Eubank, with her newly earned BYU humanities degree, fit the bill perfectly.
Years later, after the Wyoming senator had retired, Eubank moved from federal-government employee to small-business owner, starting an educational retail store in Utah. Her experience with small business and the Senate led to her job at LDS Charities. “It’s a huge responsibility to be the implementer for the funds that the members of the Church donate,” says Eubank. One of her recent projects involved supplying tetanus vaccines and other sterile medical supplies to Africa. “To see the impact that’s going to have on half a million mothers and their babies, who both contract tetanus—boy, that motivates me,” she says. The impact of the funds reminds her of the widow’s mite that contributes to bettering lives around the world.
Eubank says that seeking inspiration has been vital to her job. As part of her work at LDS Charities, the once-shy Eubank took the stage before the United Nations to present on the Church’s welfare system. Unsure of what to speak on, Eubank scoured the Church’s website looking for something to bring her message home. She found her message in a post–World War II story of Dutch Latter-day Saints sending potatoes to their former enemies in Germany. “The Spirit told me, this is the story you need to start your remarks with,” remembers Eubank. It was the part of her speech everyone wanted to talk about after. “The Lord cares about the everyday things we do,” says Eubank. “He will always infuse the secular of our lives with the sacred.”