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"Our Alumni"
I hear about alumni and their activities in various ways. There are always the official channels, and then there are the unofficial (email, facebook, etc.). Lately, these media have directed a variety of information my way, and I thought I’d share what I know, partly because it’s such a pleasant hodge-podge.
First, there’s the update on Manjula and Educate Lanka. They won the reader’s choice Millennial Impact competition on the Huffington Post! Well done, Educate Lanka!
On a slightly related note (the connection being alumni who are already working with their own non-profits when they start at Fletcher), there’s Qiam and the Afghan Scholars Initiative. While I don’t have any special news to share at this time, I might as well use the blog to help ASI, as well as your holiday shopping, by pointing blog readers toward Jawan — your source for scarves, with proceeds going to ASI. Qiam is back in Afghanistan right now, but he left a team of scarf salespeople at Fletcher, who have fostered sales by telling the community that wearing a Jawan scarf will definitely increase your hipster cred.
A little PhD alumni news: Maria Stephan, who also has a MALD degree, recently shared the World Order Prize for a study of civil resistance.
And then alumni news from a Fletcher friend. Charles Scott and I got to know each other during my first (pre-Admissions) Fletcher career, when he was a MALD student. After Fletcher, he worked for many years for Intel, but he left the corporate world a while back to pursue endurance athletics full time. Now he has a book, Rising Son, which chronicles the bicycle trip he took across Japan with his son, Sho. (He later biked with both Sho and Saya, his daughter, around Iceland. Book to follow?) While not signing books at some event, Charlie sends me regular updates on his activities (biking solo from New York to DC in 36 hours or less, running the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim, and other crazy stuff). And he writes for the Huffington Post, too. Even if you’re not into endurance feats, you may relate to Charlie’s work on behalf of the environment and related organizations.
Some years ago, a Fletcher tradition emerged from a tragedy. The annual Erica J. Murray Bone Marrow Drive, scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday) was the community’s response to Erica’s death in 2008, as a result of leukemia and the lack of a good match for a bone marrow transplant.
With each passing year, an additional degree of separation is inserted between Erica and current students, but the power of potentially saving a life, starting with a simple cheek swab, links each new Fletcher generation to the one before, and the bone marrow drive results in dozens of new donors for the National Marrow Registry.
Even as an annual event, there are special twists this year. The first is that Mary, a staff member who is also an alum, has taken on the fundraising requirements for the marrow drive, and has done so with gusto! Pre-drive Zumba, led a current student/Zumba-master! Pre-drive pub night (with auction) at PJ Ryan’s (nearby Fletcher hangout)!
And before the pub night, a current PhD student who completed the MALD program narrowed the gap between Erica and current students when he transmitted a message to the community from a MALD alum — a message sure to inspire students to participate in the marrow drive, and also sure to leave few dry eyes. Munish wrote:
You don’t know me, but if we run into each other somewhere, we’ll seem familiar to one another. That’s because, as you’ve no doubt learned, Fletcher is a family and you learn to recognize your own. (If you come to PJ Ryan’s tonight, then we can meet in person!)
Four years ago, the extended Fletcher family lost a bright light in the form of Erica Murray. She was like us, and, at the same time, not. Let me start by saying that I did not know Erica that well — I only met her a few times — but her joie de vivre was apparent. I’m sure you know her story — if not, here is the short film that was made about her.
As her leukemia worsened, Erica shined brighter. She demonstrated to the rest of us how to handle adversity: with honesty, humor, and humility.
During the first bone marrow drive at Fletcher, there was record turnout; the local Bone Marrow Registry coordinator said she had never seen those numbers before. Of course, many Fletcher folks knew Erica then, and were excited to support this direct effort to help a phenomenal classmate. Sadly, our efforts did not result in a match for Erica, but in her memory, we continue the search on behalf of others. It only takes a moment to swab your cheek and you could be saving a life — yes, it’s that easy.
You can imagine the sadness that settled in, just about four years ago, when Fletcher got the news that Erica had passed away. This week, in between classes, finals, papers, and presentations, find friends who you’re going to miss when you leave Fletcher, and give them a hug. Ask them if they want to do the bone marrow registry thing. You’ll be channeling the love with which Erica led her life until the very end.
In memory of Fletcher family,
Munish
It would be entirely frivolous for Admissions staff members to emphasize their role as match-makers. First, making matches is not an appropriate use of our time. Second, once we admit students, we can’t control who meets whom.
And yet…many students meet their spouses while at Fletcher, and I have decided to take credit for the happiness of two 2012 grads. I first met Ho-Ming in 2007, when she visited for an interview before she applied to Fletcher and, later, deferred her enrollment. Then, in the fall of 2009, I interviewed Aaron. Probably, I didn’t have wedded bliss in mind as I spoke to them as applicants. Probably. But just maybe, I knew, in the depths of my subconscious, that here were two prospective students who were meant for each other.
I think it’s fair to say that Ho-Ming and Aaron left campus after graduation in May with a lot of balls in the air, creating some uncertainty in their lives, but one thing was clear — they were going to drive cross-country before embarking on the next phase. So they bought an old van (Volkswagon Vanagon to be precise), adopted a puppy (Bean), and headed west. Along the way, they eloped!
Here they are, with Bean and the van:
And here they are, in Chicago, looking all married:
And now they’re in Indonesia, where Aaron has a job and Ho-Ming (last I heard) seemed well on her way to landing one of her own.
After I emailed Ho-Ming to ask if I could write about her and Aaron in the blog, she gave me the o.k. and noted that she had recently seen a photo of Fletcher alumni in Washington, DC and that there were four Fletcher couples from her year alone. “Definitely something about Fletcher,” she wrote. But most of those couples, I’ll guess, didn’t elope and then travel halfway around the world.
If, like me, you have a soft spot for happy endings, you can read more about the elopement here. And I should note that I borrowed the photos from that website, which credits them to “I Luv Photo.”
I’m always drawn to stories about the average Fletcher graduate. Yes, we can (and do) point to plenty of ambassadors or prime ministers whose great accomplishments shine a favorable light on their Fletcher education. We’re all proud that Thomas Pickering and Bill Richardson are Fletcher alums, but what about students who aren’t destined to represent the U.S. at the United Nations? The reality is that most of our alumni lead lives of quieter accomplishment. In my view, their success is the best indicator of what an incoming student’s post-Fletcher life might resemble.
In that spirit, here’s a nice story from The Boston Globe about a graduate of the PhD program. (Apologies for all the ads on the Globe page.) I didn’t work in Admissions at the point when Banafsheh sent the letter she describes, but Fletcher is fortunate that previous staffers acted upon it.
This is a Fletcher story: Of the community that connects us, and about one person’s achievement in uniting the community while improving the world.
The guy on the left in the photo above is Ben Sklaver. Ben graduated from Fletcher in 2003 and, having volunteered for the Army Reserve, was commissioned when he graduated. While on active duty in the Horn of Africa, Ben spent considerable time in northern Uganda, where his work often focused on improving access to safe drinking water. Upon his return to the U.S. in 2007, he founded a non-profit, ClearWater Initiative, to continue that work. ClearWater says that, in its first two years, Ben’s efforts helped provide clean water to several thousand Ugandans, prompting many in the region to refer to him as “Moses Ben.”
In 2009, Ben was redeployed, this time to Afghanistan, where he worked in a civil affairs unit performing work similar to what he had done in Uganda. On October 2, 2009, at age 32, he was killed by a suicide bomber while on foot patrol in in Kandahar province.
The loss of its visionary leader didn’t stop ClearWater. The organization says that:
Since Ben’s death, we have worked to fulfill his vision of compassion and hope for those whose lives are challenged by strife and uncertainty. Our goal has remained the same: to bring water and, ultimately, health and opportunity to those far less fortunate than we are, and in doing this, we have facilitated access to clean water for nearly 7,000 people. ClearWater Initiative is now a full-time operation with staff in the U.S. and Uganda. For our fifth anniversary year, we will implement 20 projects in hard-to-reach areas of northern Uganda. We are proud of all we have accomplished and know that Ben would be amazed to see how far ClearWater has come.
People who have been around Fletcher for a while haven’t forgotten Ben or his story, but he and ClearWater were brought back to my attention recently via a letter from ClearWater’s (volunteer) CEO (and Ben’s classmate), David Abraham ’03. About Ben, David wrote:
I admired him for his integrity, his respect for others and his decency that sprung from deep within. He was younger than me, but still would act as an older brother. He had a wisdom and also a vision of how he could make the world a better place, but never grandiose visions of curing the world of all its ills — just the part he touched. He searched for creative yet simple solutions to solve complex and seemingly intractable problems in remote parts of the globe. Inaction was anathema to Ben. While others talked, he acted.
Along the way, Ben’s Fletcher peers have stepped forward to support, many in a highly active way, his vision. David’s letter mentions classmates who volunteer as trustees, fundraisers, technical advisors, and overall enthusiastic supporters. The most recent newsletter highlights a Fletcher alum volunteering in Uganda. Finally, David goes on to say, “ClearWater is the embodiment of the Fletcher ethos, that through compassion, understanding and dialogue, we can make the world that much better. ClearWater is a piece of us all. And I hope you will continue to support us, and help forward Ben’s legacy.”
You can read more about ClearWater’s recent work in its 2010 annual report. General information is, of course, available on ClearWater’s website.
With Egypt back in the news, We are Egypt, a documentary film by 2008 Fletcher graduate Lillie Paquette is very timely. She describes the film as the back-story to the Egyptian revolution, and she has offered screenings throughout the U.S., even as she’s raising funds for post-production and distribution expenses. Check it out.
For those who may not have been able to keep up with Fletcher alumni intrepid travelers profiled in the blog here and here, I’m ready to provide an update. First, the latest on our team in Iceland, Charlie Scott and family. I caught up with Charlie when I was in New York last weekend and heard more about the trip than I had read on his blog. It sounds like a great adventure, and I was relieved to hear that, though his blog photos don’t show it, they did indeed see both the hay bales and rainbows that were a constant on my own trip to Iceland a few years ago. Planning has begun for next summer’s adventure. If (as Charlie is currently thinking) it includes the Alps, I’ll certainly let you know via the blog.
Still on the road are Alex and Colin, aka TeamFletch. Looks like they’re close to the Mongolian border, despite a fuel shortage that they describe in their blog, and a need for duct tape that they describe in their twitter feed.
Should you find yourself with spare funds, consider a donation to TeamFletch’s charities.
