ALUMNI CONNECTION
photo by William DiLillo
Business sense
Alumni, parents share advice on financial field
When Susan Hanna ’72 arrived at UVM in the fall of 1968, women had curfews, were required to wear skirts for dinner, and were escorted to the library by male students. When she graduated four years later and sought to enter the banking field, she found the only jobs available for women were tellers. She knew she wasn’t long for that world after cashing her first check, which left her with three dollars after paying the rent. Many seventy-hour work weeks built Hanna’s rise in the business world to her current post as capital markets managing director at GE Commercial Finance.
Hanna’s retelling of her experience as part of the School of Business Administration’s “Careers in Finance: It’s More than Money” forum, seemed to both inspire and shock students on hand for the Homecoming and Family Weekend event. “It personally provided me with a glimpse into the future … and with role models and inspirations who taught me lessons that I will take through my career in business,” said senior Vanessa Paulen.
Some sixty alumni participated in a dozen panels, including “Women in Finance,” “Private Wealth Management,” and “Venture Capital.” Although some of the advice given by panelists—whose graduation years ranged across four decades—reflected their eras, there were at least three common themes: working hard, being passionate about your job, and making your own breaks.
The finance forum follows last year’s inaugural event, which focused on real estate. The number of alumni panelists more than doubled for this year’s event. Rocki-Lee DeWitt, dean of the School of Business Administration, says career panels offer a unique opportunity for alumni, parents, and students to engage in discussion about their professions and work lives. She also was impressed by the number of connections that existed—and that were made—at the event.
“I was struck by how few degrees of separation there are in the UVM community,” DeWitt says. “Whether it was growing up in the same community, going to the same elementary school, working on a deal together, or playing on the same sports team, my sense is UVM is characterized by two to three degrees of separation. It’s not so close that you’re in each other’s way, but it’s close enough to build a bond of trust. And in a relationship-driven world, UVM grads certainly have an advantage."
—Jon ReidelADVISORS FOR A DAY
Approximately sixty alumni, parents, and friends of the University contributed their time and wisdom to the “Careers in Finance” forum held during Homecoming and Family Weekend in October.
Alumni
Ben Aibel ’55, David Haas ’63, Leonard Darling ’64, George Deming ’64, Ron Hertel ’65, Sam Bain ’68, Timothy Davis ’68, John Packard ’68, Steve Waltien ’70, David Wyand ’70, Susan Hanna ’72, Eugene Peroni ’73, Irwin Goldberg ’74, Michael Lewis ’74, John Snow ’74, Susan Kenneally ’75, Nulsen Smith ’75, Rick Abraham ’77, Robert Honstein ’77, John Rogers ’77, Chris Smith ’77, Paul Sisson ’78, Ken Wormser ’78, Paul Rogers ’79, Philip Daniels ’81, Lawrence Stone ’81, Anne Tangen ’81, John Babyak ’82, Christopher Cole ’82, James Fagan ’82, Kurt Hall ’82, Bruce Hernandez ’82, Fran Rathke ’82, James Atwood ’83, Michael Short ’83, Mark Wetzel ’83, Chris Rhim ’87, Julie Boland ’88, James Raezer ’88, Edward Riley ’88, Carrie Teffner ’88 G’97, David Daigle ’89, Sam Sloane ’89, Robert Cioffi ’90, Eric Jussaume ’90, James Schaefer ’90, Dennis Ladd ’95, David Aronoff ’96, Derrick Wulf ’98, Taylor Watts ’01, Oliver Mathews ’04.
Parents
Joseph Adams, Jr., Douglas Adkins, Anson Beard, Michael Carpenter, Robert Cotter, Kathleen Fisher.
Business School Board of Advisors
Greg Bourgea
Boston beacon
Anuradha Yadav ’96 is a corporate attorney in the Boston office of the international law firm of Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels LLP. Away from work, Yadav devotes a considerable chunk of her time helping to promote and organize UVM alumni and parent events as a member of the Boston Regional Board. VQ recently caught up with her for a quick conversation about the alumni scene in Boston.
Would you say alums in Boston are a pretty cohesive group?
Absolutely. The young alumni group here is very active and supportive of UVM. Overall, there are more than seven thousand alums in the Boston area. The Boston Regional Board organizes community service, career, social, educational, and cultural events and is very active.
I understand you were involved with organizing a recent event at the Museum of Fine Arts. Art is another interest of mine, and I have been involved with a program for young patrons at the MFA. I wanted to organize a UVM event at the museum that promoted diversity, art, and culture. That came together in November when we were able to create an event focused on the “Domains of Wonder: Masterworks of Indian Painting” exhibit. The event was sold out and brought together many alumni, parents, and friends of UVM. It was particularly gratifying that this event attacted people that traditionally have not come to our Boston events.
You’ve volunteered a lot of time for UVM through the years. What motivates you?
I have a long involvement with UVM, having grown up in Shelburne. My father, Dharam Yadav, has been a professor there since 1971. Both of my siblings (Pramila ’94 MD ’99 and Sanjeev ’05, a former board of trustee member) went to UVM also. I was involved as a student on the board of trustees and with many campus organizations, and it is important for me to continue to be involved with UVM throughout my career. I believe in UVM, its mission to provide a topnotch education to its students, and its commitment to the state of Vermont.
Get fit UVM style
If there were a Bowl Championship Series for fit campuses, UVM would have played in the Sugar Bowl, maybe the Orange. Perhaps not as complex a reasoning process as those BCS rankings, but Men’s Fitness magazine ranked UVM as the fifth fittest campus this year and fourth fittest the year before. Among the reasons—the excellent fitness facilities that UVM students enjoy.
photo by Sabin Gratz '98
Hot talk, hot topic
Inconvenient Truth producer fills Ira Allen
It’s hard to imagine a more receptive audience for global warming activist and film producer Laurie David than the one gathered in UVM’s packed Ira Allen Chapel on the unseasonably warm evening of November 29.
David, whose production credits include An Inconvenient Truth and the HBO documentary Too Hot Not to Handle, ticked off statistic after sobering statistic about the effects global warming will have on all of us, calling it “the most urgent challenge ahead of us…in the opinion of the world’s most respected scientists.” And while international scientists agree that the world community has fewer than ten years to slow it down, David implored the audience not to go “from denial straight to despair” as many people have, but to realize we have the power to make change. “All of the solutions to this problem already exist,” David said. “What’s missing is the will to solve it. We need a serious and immediate shift in attitude. It’s about change, not sacrifice...and about mind-blowing opportunity. We could start a clean, green industrial revolution.”
Afi Ahmadi ’93, a member of the Vermont Regional Alumni Board, which worked with the Office of Alumni and Parent Programs to bring David to UVM, noted that broad community outreach is a key goal for the board. “When the opportunity arose to invite Laurie David, one of this country’s leading environmentalists, to UVM, one of this country’s leading institutions for environmental education, it seemed to be the perfect fit,” Ahmadi said.
—Caroline Gilley
Catherine and Josh Fenollosa, Class of 1994, with son Henry
First birthday celebration
On the website for National Public Radio’s popular “Car Talk” program, Catherine Ray Fenollosa ’94, a former associate producer on the show, reveals a good deal about her life and does it with a hard-edged humor worthy of a Click and Clack colleague. We learn that working with Tom and Ray means learning to deal with little practical jokes like Saran Wrap on the toilet seat; we learn that Fenollosa’s shoe wardrobe earned her the nickname “Imelda” from the guys; and finally we learn this, delivered with the same bluntness that the Tappet brothers drop the news of a cracked engine block: “For any of you out there who have dealt with cancer, I don’t need to tell you that cancer sucks. Big time.”
Catherine and her husband, Josh Fenollosa ’94, a Boston-area architect, celebrated their son Henry’s first birthday over the summer. That’s a milestone for any family, but for the Fenollosas, after a year of immersion in the truth that “cancer sucks big time,” Henry’s first birthday had special meaning.
Spring 2005, Catherine was seven-and-a-half months pregnant in what had been a normal pregnancy when she noticed that the baby didn’t seem to be kicking as vigorously. She mentioned it to her doctor and an ultrasound revealed a spot just below the kidney. A follow-up MRI indicated neuroblastoma, a cancerous tumor that had invaded Henry’s spine. Within a sweep of 24 hours, the Fenollosas went from a casual concern to a very rare in- utero cancer diagnosis to inducing labor and finally to grappling with the stunning fact that their newborn would immediately undergo surgery followed by chemotherapy.
“We were able to digest about one-tenth of it,” Catherine Fenollosa says. As she talks through the story a year later, the emotion in her voice is strong as she notes the fortunate circumstances in this harrowing chapter in her family’s life—they lived in Boston, where their doctors at Children’s Hospital, Brigham & Women’s, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute were among the best in the world. Catherine calls Henry’s pediatric oncologist, Dr. Sam Blackman, “the superman of doctors,” and Blackman calls Henry “the miracle that every physician, nurse, and heath care practitioner strives for in their work.”
Henry celebrated his first birthday cancer-free.
Dr. Blackman credits Catherine and Josh for their “remarkable grace, poise, and calm” through Henry’s difficult first year. Catherine says they had no choice but to learn to adapt quickly. Blood transfusions that once reduced them to tears became matter of fact. Paralysis in one foot has slowed Henry’s physical development, but Catherine has come to deflect passing comments with a quick, “Oh, he’s on his own pace, he’ll get there.”
Connection with community has been essential to helping them cope. Those ties include the Car Talk brotherhood, which happens to be interwoven with UVM’s extended family. Tom Magliozzi’s daughter, Anna ’08, is a current student, and Anna’s mother, Joanne Czachor Magliozzi ’71, is an alumna. When Dr. Blackman rode in a bikeathon last summer to raise funds for childhood cancer research, the Car Talk guys leant their support and helped get the word out. (Gifts in support of Blackman’s Pan Mass Challenge ride next summer can made at www.rideforthem.com)
As she looks back on her son’s first year, Catherine Fenollosa says it’s been a major comfort to talk with individuals who have the candor to use a phrase like, say, “cancer sucks big time.” The C word, understandably, strikes fear and many choose to avoid it all together. “People will say Henry’s ‘condition’ or ‘situation’ or ‘illness,’ Fenollosa says. “It’s always a relief when someone can talk to you honestly.”
—Thomas Weaver
Anne Doran '04
Promise in a promised land
Brazilian food, music, and art filled Annie Doran’s childhood home—not your typical cultural experience growing up in Westport, Massachusetts. Beyond the rhythm of a samba or the aroma of black beans and pork stew on the stove, Doran was shaped and intrigued by the stories her parents told of people they knew during their days as Peace Corps workers in Brazil during the 1970s.
So began Doran’s fascination with Brazil and her determination to one day visit the country. Showing characteristic resourcefulness, she started preparation for her travels at a young age by sticking Portuguese words on household appliances to learn Brazil’s native tongue.
While Doran dreamed of that future journey, a group of young women were leading 250 Brazilian families—impoverished yet resolute—to a strip of coastline in Fortaleza. There they established “Terra Prometida,” or “Promised Land,” a community aimed at a better life for themselves and their children.
Call it destiny, coincidence, good fortune. Sixteen years after sticking Portuguese vocabulary practice on appliances, 25-year-old Doran has made Terra Prometida her second home, and created “Fairloom,” a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening the community’s cultural, economic, and educational health.
Doran first made it to Brazil during her junior year at UVM. Through the School of International Training in Brattleboro, she spent the fall of ’02 in Fortaleza and Terra Prometida; drawing on her early childhood education studies, she developed art programs “to give the children their voices, and tell parents your kids have something they want you to hear.
“I just cried and cried the day I left. It had been the greatest experience. I learned what a real community was. They simply embrace people, no matter who you are, and you become part of their lives,” says Doran. “I knew I’d be back someday,” with a plan to help Terra Prometida thrive.
She returned to Brazil two years later, observed the centuries-old art of bobbin lace making or renda, and knew she had that plan: work on more efficient, marketable designs for the distinctive wares woven from renda, market the pieces, and funnel the profits to Terra Prometida for better schools, improved facilities, and a stronger economy.
“When I discussed it with the community, it was always with the idea that I would help them find a way to develop resources, not tell them,” explains Doran. She incorporated Fairloom in November 2004 with several small donations. Today, with products sold mainly at fairs and bazaars, or on the Fairloom website, sales have reached close to $7,000— this in just a year, during the organization’s fledgling stage when some of the women were still learning their art.
Twelve formerly unemployed women have learned, or are currently learning, to produce the bobbin-lace from two rendeiras, or lacemakers, who are also their neighbors. Another four are learning how to weave and embroider. The newfound income means not only more buying power but also a greater self-confidence and optimism.
Fairloom has evolved into a multi-dimensional effort, with a mission beyond raising Brazil’s income, employment, and education levels. Doran sees it as a vehicle to nurture children's knowledge of, and appreciation for, other cultures. In the “Building Connections” program, Terra Prometida’s school children have been writing to their counterparts in schools in Providence, Rhode Island, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as each group learns about the other’s culture.
Doran’s belief in the power of open, strong communities is what initially led her to enroll at UVM, and she deepened that commitment by taking enduring lessons from her studies. “The early childhood program emphasized helping people—not just children—develop in the healthiest way possible. I am applying what I learned at school in a lot of aspects of my life, not solely as a teacher or professional,” Doran says. “What they teach is what I believe: when you work with people, you don’t get in the front seat and just drive. You take a back seat approach, where you really listen, then help people create an environment that helps them find their own path.”
—Diane H. Hartnett
More information: www.fairloom.org
(for UVM staff)