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Mary Broach has been changing her community by organizing women to support organizations that make a difference.  Starting with a simple concept -- let's get 100 women to donate $1,000 each -- Mary and her colleagues have had a profound impact on the greater Philadelphia area.  Each year, they band together and make a difference.  Listen in as Mary explains what she has done and how her efforts have evolved over time.  Truly inspirational.

David Kramer shares his thoughts about real estate, the future of New York City and making sustainable housing in the wide-ranging discussion.

David is a native New Yorker who loves developing housing as part of his commitment to help build a better city. David joined Hudson back in the stone age of 1995 and has played a role in many of Hudson’s most exciting achievements of the past 3 decades including the world’s largest Passive House building, the House at Cornell Tech, the development of the Riverwalk neighborhood on Roosevelt Island, and the redevelopment of the Brooklyn Heights library, One Clinton. David has a Bachelor Degree from Yale University and graduated from the Coro Foundation’s Fellows Program in Public Affairs. He’s served on the boards of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, the Coro Foundation, New York City School Support Services, the Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable and the Collegiate School Alumni Council. David has seen most Broadway musicals and plays a lot of KenKen.  

Sam Chang is an accomplished writer who has just come out with a novel, The Family Chao.  The story of a family of immigrants and first generation children who struggle with life in a midwestern town.  In this episode, we discuss the book, its themes of belonging, assimilation, alienation and ethnicity.  

For more about Sam and her new book, please visit her website: https://lansamanthachang.com/

Here is what some are saying:

One of Literary Hub's and The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2022

The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last.

Before long, brash, charismatic, and tyrannical patriarch Leo is found dead―presumed murdered―and his sons find they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town. The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three brothers: Dagou, the restaurant’s reckless head chef; Ming, financially successful but personally tortured; and the youngest, gentle but lost college student James. As the spotlight on the brothers tightens―and the family dog meets an unexpected fate―Dagou, Ming, and James must reckon with the legacy of their father’s outsized appetites and their own future survival.

Brimming with heartbreak, comedy, and suspense, The Family Chao offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town.

Lorraine Wang enjoyed success as a journalist, becoming a senior editor of the LA Times.  With journalism changing and becoming less of a stable career, Lorraine pivoted, earning a second bachelor's degree and ultimately going to law school.  She is now starting again as a junior lawyer.  In this episode, she shares her journey of reinvention.

Sonya Baker is an accomplished singer and gifted educator who shared her journey so eloquently.  Please listen through the end, where you will hear from Sonya about what it meant to her to sing "Ride the Chariot" as part of her time in the Glee Club.  Thanks to the Yale Glee Club we have a a recording of Sonya singing her powerful solo of that spiritual, which is a real treat.

Here is a bit more about Sonya:

Dr. Sonya Gabrielle Baker, soprano, made her Carnegie Hall debut with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, singing music of Aaron Copland. Noted for her performances of American music, Baker has been heard in concert both nationally and internationally, including performances in Havana, Cuba with the Yale Alumni Chorus and at the World Equestrian Games opening ceremonies with the American Spiritual Ensemble. Baker has toured regularly as a soloist with the American Spiritual Ensemble, a professional ensemble whose mission is to keep the American Spiritual alive. She appears on their recording entitled The Spirituals and in the PBS documentary by the same name. Baker’s debut solo recording, SHE SAYS, featuring art songs of American Women composers, was released in 2004, a year after she appeared as soloist on the Yale Alumni Chorus tour to Moscow singing at the Kremlin. Baker’s scholarly agenda is focused on crossing boundaries and disciplines, perhaps best exemplified by her solo recording and her lecture recital on Marian Anderson’s 1939 Easter Concert. Baker has presented this lecture recital nationwide and is currently working on a second recording in tribute to Marian Anderson featuring Lieder and spiritual arrangements. Highlights of Baker’s operatic roles include Elisabetta in Verdi’s Don Carlo, Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Monisha in Joplin’s Treemonisha, and the title role in the U.S. premiere of Mascagni’s Pinotta.

A former fellow with the American Council on Education, Baker has held leadership positions in higher education, serving as Associate Dean at JMU and Murray State University, and with various professional organizations: as board member for the Kentucky Arts Council, Kentucky Governor for the National Association of Teachers of Singing and currently a board member for the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru) and the Yale Alumni Chorus. A graduate of Leadership Kentucky, LEAD Virginia and the Society for College and University Planning Institute, Baker is fully committed to advocating for diverse communities and environments that embrace multiple peoples and perspectives. To this end, she has served on multiple university committees and has been a mentor both formally and informally throughout her career. Baker holds degrees from Yale, Indiana and Florida State Universities.

Please join the conversation with Sharon Buccino, who has worked at the Natural Resources Defense Council for decades.  Having devoted her life to the defense of the wild and environmental advocacy, Sharon's perspective is both informed and insightful.  You can read more about her work here: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sharon-buccino.

Our classmate Paul La Monica offers his reflections on parenting special needs children and coping with the death of one of his children.  Paul brings grace and wisdom to these serious topics.  I laughed and I cried during this conversation.  I will let Paul speak for himself.

Listen to Kristin talk about her perspectives as a professor of history who has considered America's Heartland -- what it is and what it means.  She also shares her perspective on teaching in the pandemic.

Kristin is a Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (Yale, 1998) and Consumers’ Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865-1920 (University of North Carolina, 2007). Her recent Journal of American History article, “Meat in the Middle: Converging Borderlands in the U.S. Midwest, 1865-1900,” won the Ray Allen Billington prize offered by the Western Historical Association for the best article in Western History and the Wayne D. Rasmussen Prize offered by the Agricultural History Society.. She has received ACLS support for her current research, which considers the making of the heartland myth – and its implications for how we think about security and empire -- in light of the long history of circulation through this region. She is also working on a document collection on American empire around 1898 for Bedford Press. Hoganson has served on the editorial boards of Diplomatic History, the Journal of American History, and the Journal for the History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. She has co-chaired the SHAFR program committee and served on SHAFR’s Bernath Book Prize committee. In the spring of 2011 she taught at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich as a visiting Fulbright professor. At Illinois, she teaches introductory U.S. foreign relations classes and upper-level courses on American empire, the United States in the world, and food in global history.

Our classmate Catharine Slusar has built a life as an educator and an actor.  Listen in as she discusses representation on stage, teaching undergraduates and learning along the way.  Catharine also discusses how acting fits into a liberal arts education.  Here is a bit more about Catharine: https://www.brynmawr.edu/people/catharine-slusar