Roads Taken

Welcome to Roads Taken, the show that reminds us that you don’t have to know exactly where you’re going, you just need to be open to the adventure that awaits.

Each Monday we release another episode in which a classmate from Dartmouth’s Class of ’96 sits down with host Leslie Jennings Rowley to share their stories about who they were in college, who they thought they’d be, and how they’ve meandered down various roads to get where they are today. 

We invite you to be open to the many ways you can connect with the people whose stories we feature on the podcast. First, you can of course listen to the episodes wherever you get your podcasts or at RoadsTakenShow.Com and follow along with the posted transcript and the links in the episode notes. While on the website, you can also click the contact us link and send a message to us or a guest and we’ll forward it on. 

And for more opportunities—particularly for the members of Class of ’96—you can find a series of online and in-person events at Dartmouth1996.org.  Coming up Wednesday, March 23 is the event “Tips for Healthy Joints and Bones” – a Q&A with some of our class’s orthopedic experts, who will give us tips on what do to when we start hearing those middle-aged creaks and pops. Then on Thursday, April 21, in “Why is my Teenager Doing That?” we will be joined by classmates who study and work with adolescents and are ready to share some parenting strategies.  Be sure to register for these sessions on the class website. And of course be sure to save the date for our postponed 25th Reunion, happening July 22 through 24 in Hanover. We hope to connect soon about your ROADS TAKEN.

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Audio Engineer Extraordinaire: Clancy Rowley

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at [email protected]

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at [email protected]

Guest Dan Gonzalez left college most concerned with keeping his options open. In the pursuit of breadth, he dabbled in everything from health care consulting and after-school drama programs for kids, and even considered med school.  But then he heeded the oft-proffered advice to "follow your passion," realized music-making had been a source of earlier joy, and enrolled in a song-writing program at Berklee College of Music.

To make ends meet, he had been tutoring at a test prep company and got hooked  into an industry he'd never considered through the power of one uniquely-run company.  It ended up changing the way he thought about passion, purpose, and the value of finding work that feeds you.

In this episode, find out from Dan the difference between "following your passion" and "following your purpose…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley

About This Episode's Guest

Dan Gonzalez is co-founder (with his wife Anne Jones, Dartmouth '97) of District C, a not-for-profit that empowers schools and teachers to teach high school students how to collaborate with diverse peers to solve real-world business problems. Find out more about their process at https://www.districtc.co.

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at [email protected]

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at [email protected]

Guest Shuhei Sekiguchi had moved halfway around the world to attend college in the Northeast U.S., having been raised in Japan. Though he came from a family steeped in the health professions, he took an interest through internships in advertising and found his first job in that field upon graduation. Not fulfilled by having clients inexplicably shooting down ideas, he found work in sales at an educational start-up to be aligned with a field that felt more fulfilling. What he realized, though is that these early jobs centered on two especially domestic pursuits—advertising and education—and was looking for something that provide a global outlook.

Pharmaceuticals and health care seemed to fit the bill and he started working for Johnson & Johnson in the U.S., beginning a career that would span nearly twenty years and nearly as many time zones—first making a fairly blind jump to Australia, then returning to live in Japan for the first time in more than two decades, and jumping back and forth across the globe for more assignments, creating breadth all the while. Along the way, his family grew and the new generation intertwined with the old.

In this episode, find out from Shuhei how seeing intrigue in the unknown and being ready to say yes can lead to a series of adventures…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.

About This Episode's Guest

Shuhei Sekiguchi has spent nearly two decades in various roles at Johnson & Johnson, where his is now President of the Jansen Pharmaceutical Companies of J&J in Tokyo, Japan. He lives there with his wife and two children. 

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at [email protected]

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at [email protected]

Guest Doug Asano had always had a fascination with Wall Street and could envision himself there.  In the middle of sophomore year, the impetus to get a job there became less theoretical and more practical when his father said that Doug would need to pay the rest of his way through college. With an upperclass mentor already working in investment banking, he was able to get internships at prestigious banks and land a job at JP Morgan at the end of the summer before senior year.

That summer, however, was also the time when Sarah Devens, a classmate of his at both Dartmouth and high school, took her life by suicide.  The experience shook him and, without mental health resources to access, he had a hard time processing the happiness of starting a new life and the pain of his loss.

His time on Wall Street was successful in terms of his ability to get the work done, but he realized that it wasn’t fulfilling him. He went home to Boston for a stint in private equity but found that he kept wondering what the companies that he worked with would actually get their products to market. He realized he needed to learn more about the business of business so off to Tuck he went. When he found out what would be fulfilling—jumping into operations—he worked his network to find a role and industry he never would have considered a path to success. When even that road got rocky, he needed to tap into both his internal compass and lean on his friends to get through.

In this episode, find out from Doug how, while fending for yourself is sometimes necessary, reaching out to others can be even more vital …on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.

About This Episode's Guest

Doug Asano, who is currently Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, at Roseburg Forest Products, has spent the last two decades in the engineered wood industry after an early career in investment banking and private equity. After attending Dartmouth for his undergrad degree, he returned to Tuck School of Business for his MBA. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and two daughters. 

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at [email protected]

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at [email protected]

Guest Elizabeth Manheim Ades had known medical school was in her future but decided to take advantage of a liberal arts education and major in history. A senior year course on topics and ethics in assisted reproduction and a related research project solidified that a life in medicine—specifically IVF—would be hers. So when a first attempt at med school admission didn’t work in her favor, she sought out post-bac medical programs that would qualify her. Instead she found herself in a PhD program in microbiology and molecular genetics, with no intention to teach or do research or even see it through a diploma. Nevertheless, she found a great fruit fly lab and mentor to teach her skills that ultimately she would use daily. A few more tries at med school—including a last minute admission—and an ill-fitting post-doc made her realize that she needed to stick on a different path.

To get a foot in the door, she took a desk job at the IVF lab that had first inspired her to get into reproductive medicine. She got the training that she needed and became a full-time embryologist. After years, however, that took its toll and a repetitive use injury ended her dream job. Finding a new path after that loss was preparation she needed for a few more shake-ups in life.

In this episode, find out from Elizabeth how sticking with things and working through the losses can reveal where you're meant to be…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.

About This Episode's Guest

Elizabeth Manheim Ades has had a long and varied career in molecular genetics and reproductive medicine. She has had a research career at Sloan Kettering, Rutgers, and Kean Universities. She also spent nearly a decade as a clinical embryologist and assistant professor of reproductive medicine at Cornell-Weill Medical. She now specializes in creating continuing education courses for medical professionals.

Mentioned in This Episode

The mini-documentary “Auggie’s Story,” produced in association with Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla and intended for use with the case study “Auggie’s Story: A Child with Huntington Disease” by Laura Y. Lorentzen, Kristie Reilly, Connor Baucom, and Elizabeth A. Manheim.

The video was originally filmed and edited (with consent) by the case study authors. The entire case study can be found on the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science website.

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at [email protected]

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at [email protected]

Guest Holly Parker went to college knowing she’d be an English major and a squash player and stumbled upon a passion for the environment and sustainability. She graduated with the thought of being a journalist and tried her hand at it at a boating publication. Though she didn’t want to turn into her mother—a teacher—she did have a small itch to try teaching. What she thought would be a short stint at a private school near her Massachusetts hometown became a 12-year career in which she led the English department. 

But after having spent summers in Maine as a kid and working with boats her whole life, she felt it was spiritual home and one she was destined to return to. When deciding whether to stay in teaching, she decided to buy her first home in Portland and realized she wanted to stay in Maine but not really in teaching. In her mid thirties, she took some time dabble and take on a number of side hustles—including working at a historical schooner company, writing educational curricula, and running a non-profit boat shop that taught life skills to at-risk youth. It wasn’t until she “took another flyer,” as she calls it, in higher education and started asking some questions about how the new appearance of Icelandic ships in the harbor might be good for Maine that she brought all of her interests and experience together.

In this episode, find out from Holly how listening to your gut and taking a few chances can help you find your place …on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.

About This Episode's Guest

Holly Parker, is currently the director of UNE NORTH—the Institute for North Atlantic Studies of the University of New England—where she connects researchers, educators, policy makers and industry leaders from across Maine and the North Atlantic region to implement collaborative approaches to building resilient communities, healthy environments and thriving economies. Find out more at une.edu/UNE-north.

Mentioned in This Episode

A series published in partnership between the Portland Press Herald and The Boston Globe entitled “The Lobster Trap”:  https://apps.bostonglobe.com/metro/2021/12/the-lobster-trap/

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at [email protected]

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at [email protected]

Guest Kishan Putta—who boldly introduced himself to everyone the first week of college as Kishan, like fishin’—always knew a life of public service would suit him. His parents both immigrants from small villages in India, worked for the state of New York, his mother in biology and his father as an engineer in environmental issues. To Kishan it just made sense to want to give back. But he was unsure the type of service that he would want to do and on what scale.

His first step to figuring that out was through graduate school at Harvard’s Kennedy School and, though getting the broad survey he knew would be helpful he took another path to international service. After getting the opportunity to travel abroad to both India and Chile to write travel guidebooks, he turned to political journalism for a number of global publications. Eventually he landed in Washington, DC. When he started covering health care policy, he knew he’d found his niche.

After a number of years working on the outside looking into a policy issue, he decided he wanted to work on the issue itself and took a few routes to do that before working on the policy side. In the meantime, he realized that his life in D.C. also afforded him the opportunity to take part in local service and found himself on local ballots more than once.

In this episode, find out from Kishan how putting yourself out there and figuring out what your neighbors need is at the core of being useful…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.

About This Episode's Guest

Kishan Putta has worked for over a decade in healthcare policy in Washington D.C., where he also has served in elected office, representing two different neighborhood wards as commissioner. He currently lives in the Burleith/Georgetown neighborhood of D.C. with his wife and young son. You can find him on Twitter @KishanForDC. (319)

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at [email protected]

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at [email protected]

Guest Christy Hansel Lohof grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York, attendant with all the feed and milking duties. Her parents were sure to leave time for other activities such as competitive sports, which Christy continued in college. With a biology major and geology minor, she left college without a clear picture of what was to come next, assuming that she would go to veterinary school. After a year of living at home and working for a veterinarian, she realized she wasn’t committed to that work. So she headed west, where she had visited during a break trip with the geology department in college.

She initially worked at a dude ranch, leading groups of leisure travelers on the ranch, before moving into the world of wilderness trip leading. Though given the opportunity to take over that business, she wasn’t sure how many more years she could stand sleeping on the ground. Instead, she moved with her cowboy boyfriend, marrying into a fourth-generation ranch family in southeastern Montana. She raised her growing family and raised her cattle and, in going back to school for a masters in kinesiology, that the type of ranching their family did was actual more healthful than the typical commercial meat business so developed a direct-to-consumer business for the ranch. Successes were balanced, however, by hardship, all put in perspective by the agricultural lifestyle.

In this episode, find out from Christy how stewarding and being grounded by the land can help you see the continuum of life…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.

About This Episode's Guest

Christy Hansel Lohof is now part of the fifth-generation family that runs LOHOF All Natural Grass-Finished Beef with cows that are bred, born, and slow grown on her family's Montana range-land for over 2 years. If you're near Billings, Montana, Sheridan, Wyoming or even Denver, Colorado and you want a cow share, or if you have three months to spend on a ranch internship, you are in luck. Find out more at LohofGrassFinishedBeef.com.

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at [email protected]

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at [email protected]

Guest Jorge Motoshige felt as though college surrounded him with an interesting, diverse group of people that helped him land in a number of different places with some comfort, because he didn't have any concerns about being able to get out there and meeting new people of all kinds of different backgrounds. Get out there, he did, becoming employee number 113 at Yahoo upon graduation. After a number of years in producing there, he timed his departure right before the first dotcom bust and left the company in 2000. Figuring out where to go and who to be next proved more difficult and so he took the opportunity to travel. Frequent visits to New York made him realize that this California boy could spend two or three years there. Before he knew it, he’d been there for at least 15.

Though he joked in college that he doubt he’d live past 40, fate proved otherwise, though his bachelor days were numbered. Through mutual friends, he met Elisabeth, an opera singer from Greece, and ended up married in 2019. The couple lives an international lifestyle with Elisabeth basing her career out of Berlin and Jorge doing likewise from New York.

In this episode, find out from Jorge how never staying still lets you consistently amass new experiences …on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.

About This Episode's Guest//Jorge Motoshige, international man of mystery, splits his time between New York and Berlin and the many destinations of his professional and personal travels. Who knows where he will turn up next? 

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at [email protected]

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at [email protected]

Guest Jennie Tranter decided to try on a new persona in college and be more outgoing and social than she’d been previously. Academically, having desired to be a doctor, she loaded on the science classes. She took a religion course to fill a distributive requirement and was completely taken by the idea that, unlike in science, there may not be just one right answer and she may have to become more comfortable with uncertainty. She became a religion major and, after a study abroad program in Europe, doubled down on her German studies with her eye on getting back to Europe after graduation. Despite a heap of uncertainty, she ultimately found a way to do that, but kept coming back to the U.S. and trying new things.

Eventually, she leaned into the international lifestyle and worked at the intersection of finance and international relations—where she thought she’d be happy. While elements of her life were fulfilling, she sought something different and ultimately worked with a coach to bring more clarity to things. She uncovered that the values that she prized were beauty—particularly being out and about in nature—and excellence. When she took some time to figure out what that meant, she took on a volunteer opportunity that made her remember her early desires to help people. Combining the elements she knew were vital to her transformation, she began coaching others in liminal circumstances and pursued a career in psychotherapy.

In this episode, find out from Jennie how uncovering the many elements of who you are and grounding decisions in values can lead you to where you need to be…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.

About This Episode's Guest

Jennie Tranter has an established private practice, supporting individuals’ journeys of transition and transformation after having navigated many of her own. She is a registered associate marriage and family therapist,  a registered associate professional clinical counselor in the state of California, and an accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy therapist, as well as an internationally certified Integral coach. You can find out more at jennietranter.com. 

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Email the show at [email protected]

Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com

Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley

Music: Brian Burrows

Email the show at [email protected]