NCBC Personal Consultations Fellows & Interns

Sarah Denny Lorio, PhD, MA, FCP, Personal Consultations Fellow, August 2023 - present

Activity area(s): fielding consults, content curation, personal engagement

Dr. Sarah Denny Lorio holds a PhD in Bioethics from the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome and an MA in Theology from Notre Dame Seminary and Graduate School in New Orleans, LA. An avid speaker, her doctoral research focused on the differing philosophies that affect the practice of women’s health in the United States of America and argued for a "third way" of sex education that teaches young people fertility awareness-based methods both as preventive medicine and as proximate vocation preparation. Throughout the last 12 years, Sarah has taught at both the university and high school levels: working as an ethics professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, teaching and coaching young women at Archbishop Chapelle High School, and speaking and leading international trips for college students as a campus minister at Louisiana State University. Trained in two methods of fertility awareness—Creighton Model FertilityCare System (2013) and FEMM (2024)—her passion is to empower women through a deeper knowledge of the great gift and beauty of their bodies and sexuality. In her work, she consistently seeks to integrate the demands of medicine with the dignity of womanhood and highlights the essential role of human freedom in the education of young women. She is in the process of developing a high school curriculum focusing on these issues as well as creating similar resources for parents. She currently lives in New Orleans, LA.

Benjamin McCullough, MA, Personal Consultations Fellow, August 2023 - present

Activity area(s): fielding consults, content curation, personal engagement

Benjamin McCullough graduated from Wyoming Catholic College in 2020 with a BA in Liberal Arts and encountered God in His “first book,” nature itself. After climbing mountains in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and Utah, spending hours looking for the right elk to hunt or right fish to catch, panning for gold on his family's gold claim (and finding enough to make his wife’s ring!), building his Expedition Style Jeep from the ground up, and engaging with some of the brightest minds in the West, he sought to further his education in theology in preparation for engaging his deepest interest, bioethics. He set off for the International Theological Institute (ITI) in Austria with his wife and graduated in 2023 with an MA in Sacred Theology. During his time at ITI, he completed a one-year Personal Consultations Internship with The National Catholic Bioethics Center, fielding scores of consults while researching and writing about previable induction of labor. He currently teaches high school theology at St. Ambrose Academy in Madison, WI, and is pursuing a PhD in Bioethics at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome.  

Veronica Mason, Personal Consultations Fellow, August 2023 - present

Activity area(s): operations

Veronica Mason attended Thomas Aquinas College and then George Mason University where she majored in neuroscience. She completed the National Catholic Certification Program in Health Care Ethics in 2019. She works as a consultant in healthcare operations, helping everyone from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies streamline their business processes. Outside of work, Veronica is part of the Discipleship and Evangelization team at Sacred Heart of Jesus in Winchester, VA. She also enjoys baking, hiking, and working on her homestead, which mostly involves keeping the pigs and the goats out of the garden.

Cody F. Feikles, MA, MTS, HEC-C, Personal Consultations Intern, October 2023 - present

Activity area(s): fielding consults

Cody Feikles is the Director of Ethics for Christus Spohn Health System, a Catholic Healthcare System in Corpus Christi, Texas. He is also the Managing Editor for the academic journal, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. Cody is currently a PhD student in Bioethics with the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum. Cody is very interested in academic debates within Catholic moral theology and bioethics as well as practical issues within Catholic clinical ethics.

Courtney Taylor, JD, MS, Personal Consultations Intern, October 2023 - present

Activity area(s): fielding consults, operations

Courtney Taylor received her undergraduate degree from Thomas Aquinas College and earned her juris doctorate magna cum laude from Texas Tech University School of Law with a certificate in Health Law. After completing the NCBC’s National Catholic Certification Program in Health Care Ethics, she pursued a master's in bioethics from the University of Mary. She currently works for Tarrant County, Texas, serving as one of the attorneys for the county hospital district. Courtney is the founding president of St. Thomas More Society Fort Worth, a professional association for Catholic attorneys in the Diocese of Fort Worth. She has served in various capacities in the community including as a board member for Chesterton Academy of Fort Worth, Chairman of the Board for Young Catholic Professionals Fort Worth, President of St. Patrick Cathedral Young Adults, and a member of the Executive Committee for the Bishop’s Guild, an organization of lay leaders who support the growth of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Fort Worth. She lives in Arlington, Texas with her husband, stepdaughter, three dogs, two cats, and nine chickens. 

Sophia Bringman, Personal Consultations Intern, September 2023 - present

Activity area(s): content curation, operations

Sophie Bringman is currently in her junior year at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, PA. She is pursuing a double major in Philosophy and Politics with a minor in Economics and will graduate in May 2025. After graduation, she plans on pursuing a joint JD/PhD in bioethics. She aims to work in clinical ethics and research. Outside of academics, she plays rugby for Saint Vincent and is an avid equestrian. 

Phil Tran, MS, Personal Consultations Intern, February 2023 - present

Activity area(s): fielding consults, content curation, personal engagement

Phil Tran is a PhD candidate in Bioethics at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome and an alum of the NCBC's National Catholic Certification Program in Health Care Ethics. He earned his MS in Bioethics from the University of Mary in 2023 and his BA in Philosophy and Theology from Saint Vincent College in 2020. During the summer of 2018, he did his first internship with the NCBC, which solidified his desire to work in Catholic bioethics. He is employed full-time at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame where he helps form students in the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition and contributes to the Center's culture of life initiatives. His pastimes include barbering, road tripping, and sampling beer and bourbon.

Alex Fleming, MS, Personal Consultations Intern, October 2022 - present

Activity area(s): content curation, operations, personal engagement

Alex Fleming earned his MS in Bioethics from the University of Mary in 2017 after completing the National Catholic Certification Program in Health Care Ethics through the NCBC in 2015. He has worked as a nurse assistant, a transplant coordinator at an organ procurement organization, and a clinical trial assistant at a clinical research organization. He currently performs regulatory and document review for a cancer research institute based in Nashville, TN. Alex is passionate about bioethics, history, beekeeping, foreign languages, and the violin. He currently lives in Winchester, VA.

Would you like to help fund a fellow?

Donors who are willing to contribute $2500 or more in one year can direct these funds to a specific NCBC Personal Consultations Fellow. Benefactors will receive periodic updates from the Fellow they have sponsored and from the Personal Consultations Director.

Click the button to request more information or contact Dr. John A. Di Camillo, Personal Consultations Director, at 215-871-2001 (direct office line) or jdicamillo@ncbcenter.org.

Past Personal Consultations Fellows

Past Personal Consultations Interns