Senior Project Manager, Lehigh Valley Health Network
As a New Englander who attended college in upstate New York and lived in Indiana for a short time, Jonathan Davidson has called many places home. One of those places was Lehigh Valley, where he moved after college and then returned to after living in Midwest for a few years. Jonathan is now a Senior Project Manager at Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) and is happy to be settled in Lehigh Valley with his family.
After living here previously, his then fiancé was going through a grad program at Purdue University in Indiana. They came back to get married here in the Valley but lived in the Midwest and had left the region with no strong expectation to ever return. Yet when the time came, his wife Allison was looking for a professorship and found an opportunity at Muhlenberg College, and Jonathan was recruited to come back to LVHN where he had previously worked.
“What I like most about my job is the ability to empower others to care for the people of our community…There’s the opportunity to grow and to develop and to find new ways to gain personal and professional satisfaction. The culture at LVHN is one that focuses on having a passion for the work that we do, and that we’re helping heal, comfort, and care for the people of our community.”
In those three and a half years being away, he noticed that everything was familiar but different at the same time. Years ago, there were fewer options downtown in terms of restaurants or entertainment. Now he and his colleagues have an abundance of choices, from new restaurants at the Downtown Allentown Market with some handmade ice cream for dessert, events and games at the PPL Center, or witnessing a city block transformed to make way for nearly a thousand ADP employees to begin working downtown.
The Davidson family plans to call Lehigh Valley home for many years to come. They were able to find a great house that is close to where they work, they’ve built a strong network and have both found fulfilling careers, and their children are looking forward to entering the Salisbury Township School District.
Jonathan considers himself to be wonderfully blessed through the work that he’s done, through volunteering, and all the different touch points throughout life in the Lehigh Valley. It’s given him a greater sense of “being home” in the region.
“My biggest advice for someone new to the region is finding those opportunities to connect. If you’re coming in new to an area where you don’t know anyone, finding the opportunities to meet others is so important. For me, as someone who was a Christian with a strong faith, it’s through my church that I made a lot of my relationships. For some, it may be a sport or other areas of interest. But finding an opportunity to connect and build relationships really helps make a place feel more like home.”
Live like a local:
Lehigh Valley’s best kept secret: The Trout Nursery on Fish Hatchery Road in Allentown. The ability to just get out into nature, to suddenly not hear the highway, to not see a lot of buildings, and to just enjoy that natural experience is really relaxing.
Favorite dinner spot in Lehigh Valley: Union & Finch, and I say that because I’m a part of the Lehigh Valley Burger Quest, which is a group on a quest to find the best burger in the Lehigh Valley. Each month (for the past four years) we typically try a new place, and while we do have another place that numerically got slightly higher than Union & Finch, Union & Finch still has a special place in my heart. I still feel they have the best burger.
Favorite outdoor activity: Spending the day at Dorney Park with the family and riding the roller coasters.