Eileen interviews Ana Torres, who was one of our speakers at “The Paths We’ve Traveled” event at reunion. Today, Ana continues to share insights from her “life of extremely low probability events.” At Harvard, Ana lived in Wigglesworth and Cabot and concentrated in psychology. She also earned her MBA from HBS and worked in the corporate world before “dropping out” in 2020. She and her husband, classmate Mike Lin, are raising four kids in Colorado. Her youngest son, Jacob, is the child of our classmate Zoe Wydroug (who you might have known as Zoya Vydrug-Vlasenko) who passed away in December 2022. Jacob was born, and welcomed into Ana and Mike’s family, in July 2023.

The “Emotions Wheel” Ana describes in her interview.

Dara talks to Kaitlin about her Grammy and Emmy-winning career with the Alphabet Rockers and we hear more about the JV women’s hockey team that came up in earlier episodes! Follow Kaitlin on her Instagram. Listen to her music on her website and buy their book and watch the music video to the book, You Are Not Alone, here. Here's an unreleased video for Get It Right.

Kaitlin lived in Weld and Quincy. She concentrated in Afro-American Studies. Kaitlin is from Belmont, MA and lives in Oakland, but is moving back to Belmont.

Dara talks to Yaoi Shionoiri, who is an art lawyer- a career we have not yet seen on the podcast! Yayoi has worked for a museum, art company, artists’ estates, and is now at Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn (go visit her!). Yayoi reminisced about serving coffee in the Greenhouse Cafe and dining at the Signet. Yayoi lived in Hollis and Winthrop or Throp as she calls it. Yayoi was a Government concentrator. She is from Toronto and now lives in New York City. Follow Yayoi and her creative and law endeavors on Instagram or her website.

Eileen talks to linguist Mary Ann (Cockerill) Walter about her love of languages, living and teaching in 10 different countries (she’s currently at the University of the Virgin Islands!) and discovering Arabic and linguistics at Harvard. She also gives us a linguist’s take on the recent Percival Everett novel, James, and offers some additional fiction recommendations. Mary Ann also shares her personal connection to the nonprofit ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence, founded in response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary, the school she attended in her hometown of Uvalde, Texas. The organization teaches highschoolers all over the U.S. to write and stage their own plays about this urgent national issue. At Harvard, Mary Ann lived in Thayer and Eliot for one year before moving off campus. She concentrated in Linguistics and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

Links: ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence https://www.enoughplays.com/

Mary Ann’s website, full of fun content about language: https://sites.google.com/view/maryannwalter/home

Mary Ann’s article about James by Percival Everett https://drive.google.com/file/d/15CwkOqlY0rvAzlxkX4PTr-goTN-TD5QS/view

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/mars-house-9781639732333/

Author KJ Charles, writer of queer historical romance and fantasy https://kjcharleswriter.com

Dara talks to Jonathan Dawid about his late fiancee Anna Laurent, known as Anna Malsberger in college. Anna worked in graphic design and documentary film after college and studying at Mass College of Art. Anna’s love of running led her to discover the abundance and beauty of plants and seeds in Los Angeles- which she wrote about and later photographed. Anna moved to London where she had many exhibits and has won multiple awards. Anna’s work, discussed in the podcast, at a Kensington hotel entitled Solastalgia Flora: Exploration to Extinction is featured here. You can see Anna’s multiple works and her book on her gorgeous website: https://www.annalaurent.com/. Learn more about Anna through this Crimson article.

Anna lived in Leverett and concentrated in History and Literature. Anna is originally from Boston and was living in England and France. Anna died of cancer on February 1, 2024 in France.

Dara talks to Andrea about “life being extraordinary” and “mulling over grand plans for the future.” Andrea discusses moving to the United States to attend Harvard, soon after the end of the cold war. She has always been interested in foreign affairs and dreamed of working at the United Nations (spoiler alert- she did!). After college, she went to the London School of Economics to study Development and then returned to Prague for her dream job at an NGO. An ad in The Economist changed her life- sending her into a career at the UN where she’s been for the past 20 years on and off, at both UN headquarters and many countries in Africa. Writing for Let’s Go was life-changing for Andrea, allowing her to see what war does to a country. Andrea also opens up about her health challenges related to a congenital heart issue.

Andrea lived in Mather House and concentrated in Psychology. She is originally from Prague and now lives in Western Sahara.

Eileen talks to the thoughtful, hilarious Melina McTigue Garland about moving back to her hometown of Worcester, MA, her love of music and of words, and starting a flute ensemble, ringing the bells in Lowell Tower and gazing at the rings of Saturn at Harvard. Melina also shares her experience of being diagnosed with ADHD at age 44, finding magic in the everyday, and her life-affirming experience at our 25th reunion. Melina works as an attorney, lived in Matthews and Leverett, and concentrated in English…“but really majored in Band and minored in vodka.”

Cori talks about working at multiple jobs (including Putney Student Travel- which she hooked Dara up with a job in Alaska!) before going to law school and becoming a health lawyer in California. Cori is now the Executive Director of the Western Center on Law & Poverty and an avid surfer.

Cori lived in Thayer and Dunster House. She was a History & Literature of Latin America concentrator. She is from Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.

Ming Hsu Chen talks about her goal to become the first Asian American Thurgood Marshall, but pivoted to create a career with her main interests: ethnicity, religion and faith, law, civil rights, and immigration. Ming is a Professor at the University of California Law School and runs the Center for Race, Immigration, Citizenship, and Equality (RICE). Ming also recently co-hosted the Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance's (H4A) first west coast summit last October.

Check out Ming’s books and her TEDx talk:

1. Sacred Places, Civic Purposes: Should Government Help Faith-Based Charity?
2. Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era
3. TEDx Talk

Ming lived in Holworthy and Lowell House. She was a joint social studies and religion concentrator. She is originally from Boston and Southern California and lives in the SF Bay Area.

Today, Eileen interviews Nathaniel Ekman, one of The Paths We’ve Traveled speakers at reunion. Nathaniel opens up about his mental health struggles while at Harvard, being diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 21, and living an authentic, hope-filled life ever since. He talks about his work with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), reflects on lessons from his “dark days and brighter ones,” including the gift of empathy, and speaks about how mental health care in the U.S. has changed since we were in college—and how it can still improve. He also shares his advice for discovering, as he did, “the beauty in the beast” we might meet along life’s way.

At Harvard, Nathaniel lived in Weld Hall and Lowell House, and did a special concentration in Urban Studies.