For Saagar Gupta, SPA/BA ’18, MA ’19, and Shea Lamanna, SPA/MA ’20, American University has always been more than an alma mater. It is where they found a community, discovered a shared commitment to service, built careers, and, ultimately, found each other. 

On July 18, surrounded by family and close friends at AU’s Airlie, the couple added another chapter to that story: they got engaged. 

Their journey together began in 2018, when both were graduate assistants in what was then the Center for Community Engagement and Service (now the Center for Leadership & Community Engagement). At the time, they were colleagues working on different programs. Shea, however, quickly noticed something about Saagar. 

He was the coordinator for Eagle Endowment, a student-run program that gives grants to students working with community partners. Shea watched as he welcomed students, faculty, and community partners into the office. 

“Regardless of who came through the door, he always got up from his desk at the back of the office, met them at the front of the suite and shook their hand. He offered them coffee and water and thanked them for coming in and for taking the time to meet with him,” Shea recalls. “They were really treated like a colleague.” 

Shea admired the intentionality behind his approach and saw someone she could learn from. Their first meaningful conversation came when Shea was preparing to share her research during a roundtable at Princeton and was feeling a bout of imposter syndrome. 

Saagar, ever the resource for a good deal, helped her find an affordable hotel. But it was something else he said that stayed with her. 

“He was like, ‘Don’t feel like you don’t have a place there. You deserve to be there as much as anybody else. Don’t be intimidated. It’s okay to take up space,’” Shea says. “It was just the nicest, most genuine advice. It was what I needed to hear at that moment.” 

A few months later, Shea asked Saagar to get coffee off campus. They ended up walking around the National Cathedral, where their first date took an unexpected turn. 

After passing the same bracelet several times, they finally picked it up. The little friendship bracelet - with its black and white beads, had four beads spelling out “love” in gold letters. 

“I can’t believe I’ve kept it all these years,” Shea says. “I almost didn’t pick it up. I didn’t know what would happen with Saagar and I, so I was holding onto it without a reason, really. Since then, I’ve moved four times so the fact that I have kept it is pretty remarkable.” 

Their relationship deepened after COVID, but their shared commitment to service had already begun laying the foundation. Both worked with the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, and they volunteered together at an ashram in Bethesda, preparing meals for people experiencing homelessness on Sunday mornings. 

“Waking up at 6 a.m. is hard,” Saagar says. “But doing it with somebody who you care about, and seeing that impact, and then finishing that service and having the whole rest of the day open, I felt like that really bonded us.” 

That shared purpose also helped bring Saagar back to AU. 

After spending time at a leadership recruitment and coaching firm, he was unsure about returning to the university. Shea encouraged him to apply. 

“I was definitely uncertain,” Saagar says. “And she was like, ‘It would be so full circle to go back and now lead a team yourself.’” 

He took the job in 2022 and quickly rediscovered the community that had meant so much to him as a student. Shea followed in 2023, returning to AU after working in nonprofit development. 

For Shea, the decision was about more than returning to a familiar campus. It was about returning to a place where she had felt supported and empowered. 

“I knew the happiest I had been as an adult had been when I was at AU,” she says. “I just needed a safe landing spot, and that’s really what AU was.” 

Today, their professional lives continue to echo the experiences that first brought them together. Saagar supervises the graduate assistant position Shea once held. He creates opportunities for students to connect their education with service, while Shea has helped develop the Earth Scholars program in the School of International Service, connecting students’ global studies with local community engagement. 

“For me, the Earth Scholars program is my greatest professional accomplishment,” Shea says. “I am so proud of helping create this program that has service-learning at its core—something that’s been a through-line of my career.” 

The couple’s lives at AU have also created a community of friends, mentors, colleagues, and former students who have watched their relationship evolve. Some of those relationships were there for the engagement itself. 

Airlie, the university’s historic property in Warrenton, Virginia, had already become a special place for Saagar and Shea. They had visited together several times, brought their parents to the property, and attended the annual Fauquier County Wine Fest. They had built years of memories there without knowing that one day, Airlie would become the setting for their engagement. 

Saagar began planning the proposal in February. On July 18, with help from AU colleagues including Mike Scher, Michael Lizo, and Digital Content Coordinator Julia Gibson, he surprised Shea on the Spanish Steps, surrounded by family and friends. 

Among them were AU alumni Maxwell Miller-Golub, CAS/BA ’18, SPA/MS ’25, and Laura Zartarian, CAS/BA ’18. Saagar and Max had lived on the same floor in Hughes Hall as freshmen and became roommates in their twenties. Saagar officiated Max and Laura’s wedding in 2024 and the couple stood by Saagar’s side to help him orchestrate his proposal. 

“After the proposal, I coordinated a private dinner in Airlie’s Garden Room—homage to the past three years we visited Airlie for the Fauquier County Wine Fest Dinner,” Saagar says. “The meal was perfect, as we got to play a playlist of songs that reminded us of the years together and have a peanut butter bar that the entire party agreed was one of the best desserts they’ve ever had.” 

For Saagar, proposing at Airlie felt like the perfect culmination of everything the university had given them. 

“AU has become kind of the thing that we do during the day and then get to reflect upon at night,” he says. “It’s really nice to have this sort of shared experience, and to know how much the institution as a whole and the people there mean to us.” 

For Shea, that connection is equally enduring. 

“I think that for better and worse, despite tough times and the transitions we might find ourselves in as an institution, there’s so much opportunity at AU,” she says. “I really appreciate all of the effort AU makes to make us feel connected.” 

And perhaps that is the thread running through Saagar and Shea’s story: connection. A university connected them to meaningful work, to a community that continues to shape them, and, eight years ago, to each other.