Bearing a few titles, Tama Crisovan doesn’t identify with just one thing. Her reach is felt throughout the community. It comes through her work as a senior lactation specialist at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, as well as her presidency at Granger Sunrise Rotary. The discovery of her PopiCon!, a type of gaming convention, reveals her love for family and non-digital games.
Indiana isn’t Crisovan’s direct home. She comes from a little town south of Ann Arbor, Michigan, just outside Detroit’s metro area. It shares a name with one of Italy’s most recognizable cities, Milan. Being so close to the University of Michigan, she got to experience the best perks of living near a college town growing up. This helped contribute to her understanding of the world.
“I come from working-class folks, and am from a small hometown that not a lot of people know about. Thank goodness for Ann Arbor, because I was able to enjoy it growing up. I got to see many different things that way,” Crisovan said.
Crisovan attended Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. She didn’t receive a degree there, but it’s where she met her husband. Both wound up transferring to the University of Toledo, where she studied evolutionary anthropology.
When they finished school, Crisovan and her husband traveled for over two years in a little Toyota pickup. They would work seasonally all over the country, camping to channel their inner explorers. They worked up at Alaska’s Denali National Park, beside Lake Powell on the border between Arizona and Utah, and in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Eventually, the couple decided to settle down. Her husband was offered a job in South Bend. It had an unexpected small-town feel at first, but it has since become their home. The two began having children, and the process of establishing a lifestyle in an unfamiliar place happened naturally. Their relocation led to Crisovan’s desire to return to school for something other than what she was after originally.
“After moving to South Bend, I ended up having twins, and we started making friends. I got involved in a volunteer organization, and I just fell in love with that—helping mamas and babies through it. I went back to school and got my lactation certification, and it’s the best job I’ve ever had,” she said.
In her work at St. Joseph, Crisovan strives to keep mothers and babies happy. She arranges weekly support groups, opening chances for mothers to talk with one another about the ways to nurture their newborn children. Having a baby can be stressful, but she provides space for women to connect and talk through difficulties that come with breastfeeding and other issues.
There’s much Crisovan enjoys about her vocation. She gets opportunities to mentor and teach the younger professionals in her field. Most importantly, she makes a commitment to keeping her ears open, no matter if she’s working with babies, mothers, or colleagues.
“For me to just sit and listen to people, their fears, their expectations, and what kind of parent they want to be, then help them meet their own goals, it’s a blessing,” she said. “I feel very honored that people let me be part of such a very important part of their life. The stakes are high, and they let me participate in that. It’s beautiful.”
The education Crisovan received has benefitted her. She would’ve laughed if one were to go back to the past and tell her she’d end up working where she does. Her studies of history and cultures have informed her for the modern-day. Now she brings the lessons of the classrooms that she once was in straight into her everyday life.
“All of a sudden, I had three little babies, and I fell in love with how they developed and how they saw the world. Everything was brand-new to them, and so you got to experience that over and over again, which is super cool,” she said. “I thought I’d try it full-time.”
In her free time, Crisovan stays busy. Beyond her hobbies of cooking and taking meditation classes, her devotion to bettering the region shines through in her role as a Rotarian. She uses this role to elevate her community, not to form business connections. She formerly didn’t expect to be involved in such a way.
“We’re at Granger Sunrise Rotary to roll up our sleeves and make our community better little by little. We help at Granger Community Church for Christmas every year to give out presents. If you had met me in my 20s and told me I was going to be where I am, I would have laughed because I didn’t see the value, and now I do,” she said.
With PopiCon!, Crisovan gives the lovers of board games, card games, and role-playing games a local convention that highlights and celebrates their favorite pastimes. Her father, whom everyone called Popi, was larger than life when it came to gaming. She sought to keep his legacy alive through recognizing the memories of gaming she made with him.
Following her father’s death and subsequent memorial service, Crisovan invited loved ones to come together over pizza and games. Visitors had so much fun that they encouraged her to make something similar for the public to enjoy. For three years now, Popicon! has been thriving, getting more and more popular every year.
Crisovan’s involvement has shown her what she finds to be the best part of Michiana as a whole. Through her dedication and active participation in her community, she has come to see what sets it apart from others.
“This area is small enough that if you show up to something, you can make a difference. If you’re in a big metro area, it is hard to move the needle on anything. It’s small enough here that if you want to roll up your sleeves and head for something, it is pretty easy to do. That’s amazing,” Crisovan said.