Sister Judith entered the Daughters of Charity in 2002. She grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana and after receiving an undergraduate degree in Math and French, came to Pennsylvania for graduate school. The following tells the story of how she discovered her real vocation:

"I had a plan. I was going to complete graduate school in five years and go on to do research and teach French at the university level. However, as time went on, I knew something was missing. Tracing the literary and social implications of pronouns in twentieth-century novels and teaching the privileged students at an Ivy League school was too disconnected from the life with God I experienced in prayer.

I took a year to reflect when my research took me to France, and that time away brought me back to the Daughters I had known in my parish growing up. It also brought me to the very roots of the community in the streets of Paris and to the Motherhouse. I was brought to the poor in Paris as well, in the form of an elderly but relatively healthy woman whose friends and relatives had all died but loved that an "exotic" young American woman would spend time with her and let her show off her favorite spots in Paris. Since then I have met many more people, young and old, of varied ethnic and language backgrounds, in schools, soup kitchens, day care centers and hospitals who have helped me connect to Christ as I offered them assistance.

I completed my novitiate in March of 2005. I was sent on mission to St. John the Baptist Parish in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where I now teach students preparing for the GED exam. Of course I loved my French students, worked hard to teach them, and prayed for them, but I love these students on a deeper level, for they are struggling against the odds and I know so clearly that I serve Christ in them. I did earn my doctorate (yes, even "on time" according to my plan), and when I think it might help someone, I’ll put Ph.D. behind my name, but the initials I cherish most are D.C."