A Baker, a Classical Dancer and an Actor/Director! Meet Our Latest Hidden Talents!
Welcome to the latest edition of Frontline’s “Hidden Talents”—featuring profiles of VNS Health team members with special skills you may not have known about!
Do you have a hidden talent that you’d like to share in Frontline, or do you know someone else at VNS Health who does? We’d love to hear about it! Just send us a message by clicking here.
To go directly to a Hidden Talent, click on the name here below or just scroll down.
Li Chen, Classical Chinese Dancer
Charity Schubert, Actor and Director
Cakes Made with Love: Blessing Ogaga-Hijnen, Expert Baker
At VNS Health, Blessing Ogaga-Hijnen provides essential support as a Clinical Care Manager for the Advanced Illness Management (AIM) program, working with her clients to help establish their care goals. When the workday ends, Blessing continues to care for people, but in a completely different way—by baking delicious treats and creations for her friends and family.
Growing up in Nigeria, her family’s household was always filled with music and freshly cooked food, with her mother making dinner every night. While her mom tried to get Blessing to join her in the kitchen, Blessing was never interested, despite loving the food her mother prepared. It wasn’t until years later when she moved to the United States and was living on her own that her perspective began to change.
“I’ve always liked food, and I realized if I’m going to eat, then I definitely have to cook! So, I chose to dive into the kitchen,” says Blessing.
One thing that always stayed the same from childhood onwards was Blessing’s love for cake. “As a child I never felt like I could get enough cake,” she recalls. “At birthday parties I always wanted more cake—that was the thing everyone knew me for.”
Blessing moved to the United States at age 16. She went on to attend college and eventually began work as a nurse, joining VNS Health in 2008. She also got married and had kids along the way. When her young family moved to the Netherlands, she stopped working but knew she needed something more to do. “My children had lots of play dates and they wanted to eat snacks,” she says. “So I started to dabble a bit in baking. I began with little chocolate cookies. Everybody liked them, and I kept getting more confident!”
Blessing advanced from cookies to cakes, baking for family and friends as she worked out the kinks of decorating. While baking brought her joy, however, she never took it too seriously. It wasn’t until 2023, when she returned to the U.S. and rejoined VNS Health, that she decided to invest more fully in her hobby. Her first step was to hold a successful bake sale in her front yard with her two little girls by her side. At the sale, someone requested a birthday cake. It was the first cake she was paid to make, and it sparked the idea to create a business.
Blessing’s skills spread quickly by word-of-mouth, with requests pouring in. As the number of happy customers grew, so did her skills. “The more requests that came in, the more I went on the internet, looking at ways to make my frosting better and tips on designing cake. My passion just kept growing.”
Blessing hopes one day to have a full-scale bakery, but for now she handcrafts each cake, tailoring it to the unique customer. “For me, cake is love,” she says. “When I make you a cake, that means I love you a lot.”
To contact or order a cake with Blessing, you can direct message her through Instagram at @blessings_deliciouscakes or send an email to [email protected].
Connecting Across Time and Culture: Classical Chinese Dancer Li Chen
Li Chen has been working at VNS Health for almost 16 years as a Care Coordinator for our Health Plans, but she’s carried a love for dance even longer. Although she began dancing at 17, it wasn’t until moving to New York in 2005 that Li began to throw herself into becoming a classical Chinese dancer.
Classical Chinese dance is known for being refined and expressive, which Li is especially drawn to, “I’m a sentimental person, so I enjoy expressing myself and my personality by my dancing,” she says. “That’s the part I really love,”.
Li also sees dance as a way to provide joy to others. She has been part of a dance company called Colors of the Wind Dancers, and prior to the pandemic they performed for free at assisted and senior living spaces across the tri-state area as an act of community and connection. As a nurse, Li says she understands how people in these homes can get lonely and need entertainment. By performing with the company, she brought comfort to those she knows need it the most. Today, the company no longer performs, as the instructor is over 80 and decided to retire. Li has continued her passion, however, and is following a new instructor now.
Classical Chinese dance, which is rooted in China’s five-millennium-long history of China, also helps Li connect to her roots. “Chinese Classical dance is like ballet: You need technical skill, form, and bearing,” Li explains. “‘Bearing’ in Chinese, is called ‘Yun,’ meaning your inner feelings behind a moment.”
This unique tradition has been passed down for generations, with each time period utilizing a different style. The dancers wear ornate and colorful make-up and dress, just as dancers wore centuries ago, to help them fully embrace the moment in time they are recreating through their movement.
This journey through time and across cultures is Li’s favorite part of dancing. By embracing her culture and emotions, while also giving back to the community, she says, “I’m solidifying a connection between my body, history, and mind.”
Returning “Home” to the Theater: Actor and Director Charity Schubert
At VNS Health, Charity Schubert has juggled many different roles: Office Manager for the Information Technology Department, Executive Assistant to Executive VP of Science and Technology Tim Peng, provider of support for the leadership team, and now Staff Director of Science & Technology. Off the clock, Charity still finds herself in the spotlight, only this time as an actor and director.
Charity was bitten by the acting bug in eighth grade. She went on to attend an arts high school and then earned a bachelor’s degree in theater in college. She continued to pursue a career as an actor, appearing in movies such as Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, before moving to New York for an internship at Women’s Project, an off-Broadway theater company.
In 2012, she started working at VNS Health. As she became busier with her new responsibilities, her focus on acting began to lessen. In the past couple of years, however, Charity has been finding her way back to the theater, pursuing both acting and directing in her spare time. She recently starred in an off-Broadway play, Dead Brains, a psychosexual thriller about a couple that employs fantasies to escape their dark past and ends up inviting a new player into their game. Originally written in the 1990s, this revival was the first iteration directed by the original playwright, Eric Champney. He and Charity have known each other since college, and they were excited to collaborate on a piece of art together.
The show went on to receive great reviews with an extended performance because of its popularity. The proudest moment for Charity was seeing how much the play connected with the audience. “We had a sold-out house, purely through word of mouth,” she says.
Charity describes theater as her “home,” where she feeds off the unique and empowering experience of performing in front of a live audience. Audience likability of a role isn’t a priority for her. Rather, she looks for strong female characters she can embody with a feminist gaze, regardless of what the public perception could be.
This passion and commitment to personal empowerment is something Charity carries to her work at VNS Health as well. “Theater is the ultimate example of working on a deadline,” she says. She thrives working as part of a team but also values her ability to work independently, with her roles in theater and at VNS Health fueling each other. Through acting, she has improved her public speaking and problem-solving skills, she notes, while at VNS Health she’s gained abilities in management and organization, which have helped her as a director.
Next, Charity is traveling to Louisiana to perform in a political farce called POTUS, and finish post-production on a short film written and directed by her boyfriend. Despite the time it takes to balance her passions, Charity does so with grace and professionalism, constantly staying in communication with her team and remaining flexible. As she says, “I’m doing what I love.”
—By Orly Berke, VNS Health Communications Intern, Summer 2024
