The $500 Gift That Helped DU Alum Cloe Miller Launch a Global Mission for Refugee Students
The 2023 International Studies cum laude graduate parlayed a commencement gift from Pat Hamill and her Korbel degree into a nonprofit supporting education for displaced youth in Thailand.
A Global Mindset Begins Early
For Cloe Miller, the pull toward international work started long before she ever set foot on the University of Denver’s campus. When she was nine years old, her family moved to Mexico for a year. Her parents wanted their kids to experience a different culture and language firsthand, so Cloe went to school there fully immersed in Spanish.
That year did more than teach her a new language. It gave her the confidence to imagine a life lived across borders — and it deepened a love of languages she’d carried since childhood, back when she used to invent her own. “That experience showed me early on that I could build a life anywhere,” she recalls.
The next turning point came in sixth grade when her a Peace Corps volunteer visited her world history class. Something clicked. From that day forward, joining the Peace Corps after college became a goal Cloe held onto — not a passing daydream, but a destination she started building toward years in advance.
That long-term goal is exactly why she spent her junior year of high school living in Brazil through the Rotary Youth Exchange. The year abroad wasn’t just an adventure but also a deliberate step. Cloe knew that international experience would make her a stronger Peace Corps candidate down the road, and she chose it with that future in mind. Immersed in a culture completely different from her own, she says, the experience “changed how I looked at the world” and set the foundation for everything that came next.
Purpose Found Direction at DU
At DU’s Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, Cloe’s early instincts found their intellectual footing. Her international studies degree gave her the tools to think seriously about development, but it was her sustainability minor that reshaped how she understood impact. She learned to weigh economic, social, environmental, and cultural factors together, an approach that would later guide how she built and ran her own nonprofit.
After graduating from DU in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in international studies, Cloe turned her knowledge into action by volunteer teaching at a school on the Thai-Myanmar border, followed by two years of teaching English with the Peace Corps in Kosovo. In fall 2026, it will serve her once again as she pursues a master’s in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School to deepen her expertise in international development and project management.
Investing in What Matters
It was at her June 2023 commencement that she received a special and unexpected gift from speaker Patrick “Pat” Hamill, a Daniels College of Business alum and then-CEO of Oakwood Homes. He surprised the Class of 2023 with $500 each, challenging them to use it for something that mattered.
Cloe didn’t have to look far for a place to start. Since late 2022, her family had been volunteering at a migrant learning center, an established school near Mae Sot, Thailand, that serves displaced young people fleeing civil war and persecution in Myanmar. She used Hamill’s gift to formally launch Refugee Education Fund (REF), a nonprofit built to support the school through fundraising, project management, and volunteer recruitment. In the years since, REF has helped channel more than 600 hours of volunteer teaching and raise over $16,000 toward new classrooms.
Since graduating from DU, Cloe has returned to Love & Care twice to teach civics, social studies, and English to its growing student population.
“What moves me most about Love & Care is the unifying culture,” says Cloe. “No matter what their backgrounds, these students dream of going home someday to restore and rebuild their country. I wanted to support that dream in a lasting way. REF was about creating consistent, structural support so the school could keep doing what it does long after any of us leave.”
Her Best Advice: Follow the Connections
Ask Cloe what she’d tell current students hoping to work internationally, and her answer is refreshingly simple: “Talk to everyone you can… just follow the threads of connection.” Nearly every opportunity in her path — from Brazil to Kosovo to the Love & Care Learning Center in Thailand — grew out of a conversation, a contact, or a relationship she was willing to pursue. Her advice is to keep chasing those threads, because you rarely know which one leads somewhere that changes your life.
From a DU classroom to a refugee school on the Thai-Myanmar border, through the Peace Corps in Kosovo, and on to the halls of Harvard, Cloe’s path reflects what DU’s 4D Experience can set in motion. Designed to develop the whole person, the 4D Experience integrates deepening intellect, discovering character, developing well-being, and designing careers and lives of purpose into the curriculum. For Cloe, it became a launchpad, preparing her to turn knowledge into action and carry that purpose wherever she goes. Whatever comes next, she brings the same instinct that has guided her all along: the drive to be part of something larger than herself and to leave every place she touches better than she found it.
If you’re a 2023 graduate, we’d love to hear how you used your $500 gift from Pat Hamill. Whether it helped you take the next step in your journey or pay it forward to another person or cause, we’d love to know the difference it made for you personally. Share your story.
