Emily Schattler loves helping people.

Whether it’s assisting a graduate student with paperwork for a grant or working to improve lives on a mission trip, her goal is to make things better.

“I just really love being a small part of making a difference in the world around me,” she said. “Just helping effect positive change in people’s lives and just seeing faces after we’ve been able to meet a need really fulfills something in me.”

In her current position as a business manager III, she’s able to do just that for the students, staff and faculty in the Odum School of Ecology. In addition to being the school’s human resources liaison and processing payroll, she helps manage the school’s finances, including grants. She’s also part of the Business Services Advisory Group, which plays a role in some policy and business process changes at UGA. Changes have included the implementation of improved and updated UGA forms, the creation of electronic journal vouchers and other systems, the streamlining of UGA vendor negotiations, new petty cash procedures and processes for tracking hours for temporary employees. Schattler also serves as a grants team member on the OneSource PeopleSoft implementation project where she is helping identify UGA business needs for grant accounting and tracking and effort reporting.

Her ability to help things run a little more efficiently and effectively has made an impact. She received the Purple Heart Award, which is given by the school’s graduate students to the person who’s gone above and beyond for their benefit, and was named Employee of the Year a couple of years ago.

That passion to help people extends beyond campus. In May 2014, Schattler went on a mission trip to Peru through her church and fell in love with the country and its people. After returning home, she was still determined to help them.

“There are lots of children there who have been abandoned,” she said. “When I came home, it was on my heart, and I talked to my husband. We’d talked about adopting in the past but didn’t think we could afford it, so we’d resigned ourselves to the fact that we weren’t going to be parents, other than to our furry kids. But we just looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s do this.’ ”

It’s been a grueling process that’s lasted nearly two years so far, Schattler said, but they’re hoping to finalize the adoption of three siblings in the next few months.

“I thought that we were going down there to help people and change lives, and it was my life that was changed completely,” she said.

Even with her growing family, Schattler enjoys spending as much time outdoors as possible, riding horses and taking care of her animals.

“I grew up in the kind of house where we’d show up, and there’d be a box of puppies on the doorstep, and everybody knew we’d take care of them,” she said.

They’ve had horses, chickens, cats and dogs—including her dog, Bailey, a border collie, who has been with her for 16 years. They own a small farm outside of Commerce, and for a time lived in the 19th-century farmhouse while restoring it.

When she’s not enjoying the outdoors, she’s finding ways to express herself creatively.

“Everybody in my family sings and plays instruments,” she said. “My parents are both gone now, but they instilled that love of creativity in us.”

Schattler plays four instruments­—the piano is her favorite—and plays and sings at church and in a couple of Christian rock bands.

In all that she does, Schattler exudes that same passion for improving the things around her.