By Amanda Hudson, News Editor
ROCKFORD—Work experience with the Wisconsin and Illinois Departments of Natural Resources as well as with Nebraska’s Game and Parks Commission does not typically come to mind in the search for a new Church employee.
But Hunter Nikolai, the new diocesan director of Research and Planning, is an exception. Coming with that background, he began his service at the diocesan administration center on March 17.
It’s a bit ironic that his first name is “Hunter.” His professional experience so far, he says, has been mostly in the hunter recruitment, retention, and reactivation area, which looks at long term declines in hunter participation and tries to address, slow down or even reverse those declines. Nikolai’s work included identifying root causes of hunter decline, developing good questions for that research and then using the results to make informed decisions for the future.
Creating standard evaluation processes allows various states and regions to “have the same implementation of evaluation, so you can compare across an organization and start to build up that information over a long term of time,” he says, adding that, with that information, “you can go back and evaluate trends and identify things you might need to make improvements on.”
Data security was also a focus in Nikolai’s work, along with making the information “understandable and easy to interpret, and something that somebody’s going to use,” he says. His background includes training of volunteer instructors and managing them as well. He says he “enjoyed seeing the important work of the many volunteers … It’s important to be able to communicate and work with them, understand their needs and how you can best help them.”
Substitute “Catholic church” for “hunter,” and one can glimpse much of the work of the diocesan Research and Planning Office, which helps the Rockford Diocese make decisions with good information.
Nikolai is an often-typical Catholic of his generation. He was baptized Catholic, but that was the only sacrament he received. His paternal grandparents “always remained steadfast in their faith,” he says, and he went to Mass with them during visits.
He and his wife attend St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Hampshire. They came back to Illinois to be closer to both his Kenosha, Wis. family and her Algonquin family. With his Catholic marriage, Nikolai says he “grew into the faith,” but still wasn’t confirmed.
Nikolai says the birth of their two sons, ages 3 and 1, and “some events that have happened,” including a neighbor who told him about OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation of Adults), led him to take the OCIA class at St. Charles Borromeo. He completed his sacraments of initiation at this year’s Easter Vigil on April 4.
With OCIA classes, he says, “the pace of my faith has just grown exponentially,” and that growth prompted a new direction.
“I think it was at the end of (this past) January … my faith and my work were kind of separate things, and I (had) a desire to kind of cross those things,” he says.
On a whim, Nikolai did a search for “Catholic jobs near me,” and an opening with the Rockford Diocese was “the first or second one” that came up.
“I clicked on it, and I read it, and I’m like, Wow … I didn’t think it’d be this easy to find something that might actually align with what I want to do in the area,” he says. “The fields are entirely different, (but) the skill sets and experiences have been similar. So I thought, well, if I could apply my skills to help the Church and help the mission of God … that would probably be a great fit for me long term.”
“We’re kind of settled down now where we’re at too,” he adds.
Looking ahead, Nikolai expresses enthusiasm for the future, especially the evangelization component of the current capital campaign.
“Every person has their own journey into the Church,” he says, “and I look forward to seeing how I can use my strengths and really lean into my experiences to support the different departments and the clergy and really make an effort to support what the needs of the Church and the people are.
“I look forward to hoping to grow that, and help with that, and support that any way I can.”
