04.13.2017

April 13, 2017 34st.com

EGO

Emily Schwartz, Penn 10 Editor Orly Greenberg, Editor–in–Chief Dani Blum, Managing Editor Chloe Shakin, Audience Engagement Director Sofie Praestgaard, Design Director Corey Fader, Photo Director Writers: Haley Weiss, Julia Bell, Nick Joyner, Sarah Fortinsky, Giulia Imholte, Colin Lodewick, Mike Coyne, Lily Snider, Genevieve Glatsky, Caroline Simon Zack Greenstein, Design Editor Carissa Zou, Design Editor Teagan Aguirre, Design Editor Autumn Powell, Photo Editor Kyler McVay, Copy Director Paola Ruano, Copy Editor Erin Farrell, Copy Editor Lea Eisenstein, Copy Editor Perren Carillo, Copy Editor Contacting 34th Street Magazine: If you have questions, comments, complaints or letters to the editor, email Orly Greenberg, Editor–in–Chief, at greenberg@ dailypennsylvanian.com. You can also call us at (215) 422-4640. www.34st.com ©2017 34th Street Magazine, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Inc. No part may be reproduced in whole or in part without the express, written consent of the editors (but I bet we will give you the a-okay). All rights reserved.

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One of my clearest memories from my freshman year is an event I went to at the Kelly Writers House in which all the seniors who completed a creative writing thesis presented their pieces. I went alone, naturally showed up late, and was horrified to find that the only seats available when I hurried into the Arts Café were located in the second row. But shortly after I was seated, the event began, each senior approaching the podium to read excerpts from their work followed by hearty applause from their supportive friends and family. I got to listen to one senior read about Philadelphia drag queen culture, another read about making a phone call to a man in prison, and sitting in that seat, I knew that these were the people I wanted to become.

Today, nearly a year later, I am still in awe of the seniors on our campus. This is why I was thrilled when I was given the opportunity to be the editor of Penn 10, the project you’ll find in the pages of this issue. This week, readers will have the chance to read about ten of our school’s best and brightest seniors, or as we explained on our nomination form, “the students that embody innovation and excellence.”

Think of it as Street’s own Forbes 30 Under 30—but younger, hipper, and focused on a lot more than just pay checks. I was lucky to help select and guide our writers through representing some of Penn’s most inspiring engineers, artists, activists, dancers.

At a school like Penn, it’s easy to feel intimidated by or jealous of the ambitious students on our campus who have accomplished so much. Each time I walk down Locust, or scroll through Facebook, or read Ego Of The

Week, I am struck by those promoting their final performances, accepting their grad school offers, advocating for their dearest causes. Yet instead of sparking any cynical thoughts, Penn 10 opened up a window for me to celebrate these students, to let them energize me and to root for their success. In a world where so much is against us, it’s so important that we do this for one another. This is why Penn 10 has come to matter so much to me. As I was editing these stories, I couldn’t wait to call my roommate, an engineer who would be fascinated by a senior developing a drill for NASA. I wanted to reach out to my friends who accompanied me to Hillary’s rallies to share that one of our classmates was tirelessly devoting himself to her campaign.

Throughout working on Penn 10, I got to engage with seniors excelling in things I care about deeply, while being exposed to seniors excelling in things I didn’t think I cared about, but now do. I hope Penn 10 does the same for others.

As this school year comes to a close, I’m looking forward to returning to the Kelly Writers House in a few weeks to hear this year’s group of seniors present their theses to their own friends and family. I hope to be one of the students standing behind that podium one day, my own words resonating with a different shell–shocked freshman sitting alone in the audience. But if I’m not, I know one thing’s for sure—I’ll be cheering on whoever is standing in those shoes.

The Penn10 is sponsored by:

Stay connected with QuakerNet: The Alumni Directory | www.myquakernet.com A P R I L 1 3 , 2 017 3 4 T H S T R E E T M A G A Z I N E

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There's no businessman on Penn's campus quite like Alex Sands.

“H

e’s like a rare Pokémon,” says Jyothi Vallurupalli (W ’18).

“He’s definitely the hidden gem,” says Alex’s girlfriend Taylor Lewis (C ’17).

“You kind of think of him as this secret you guys are so lucky to have,” says Rob Warshaw (W ’18).

Alex Sands (W, E ’17) inspires a wistful devotion. As a senior in M&T studying computer science and management, Alex, or “Sands” to his friends, has created apps and organized hackathons across the country.

He has racked up leadership positions for the Wharton Dean’s Advisory Board (WAB) and Penn’s Model UN Conference (UPMUNC). He's a teaching assistant for two M&T classes (MGMT 237 and MGMT 235) and teaches a class on coding on the weekends, all while finding the time to join a fraternity and a senior society, play intramural soccer and spend time with his girlfriend of two years. He has interned 4

at Google, Comcast and Apple, and most recently turned down Apple’s return offer to work on his own startup.

“I think it’s just like filling my time with when I’m not doing something.” Alex says. necdotes about his meticulous habits abound— he always uses a coaster, always types up his math homework, always responds to every email within minutes. He is the first to fill out any Google Form. He obsessively manages his calendar.

He never watches TV. His friends once got him cleaning supplies as a Secret Santa gift.

Alex’s problem– solving capabilities emerged from the time he was sixteen years old and was frustrated with filling out the driving logs needed to apply for his driver’s license. He created an app that would record his route based on his location, which he would

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then submit as an Excel spreadsheet, an accomplishment that he quickly deflects. “It was nothing legit. I wouldn't say it was very good back then,” he says. “It turned out very basic.”

His over–achieving continued when he and Ben Hsu (W,

E ’17), also in M&T, started a 24–hour hackathon at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology, a high school consistently ranked as one of the best in the country.

The event was so successful that it led them to found Pilot,

tion he spearheaded an initiative to create classes offering instruction on specific skills that interest Wharton students. The classes are not for credit, and have tapped into the desire of hundreds of Wharton students who want to learn for the sake of learning. The first semester, Alex taught the only class—on coding—but the initiative expanded to include six classes on topics like data analytics and Photoshop, and now counts 250 students.

“It’s really, I think, taken Wharton by storm,” Rob said.

Alex joined UPMUNC freshman year and initially didn’t reapply to move up, only changing his mind after a member called him asking him to apply so he could run the website. He obliged, and ran at the end of the year as Director–General.

That was the year he started dating Taylor, who ran the conference as Secretary–General.

His over–involvement earned him the mockery of his friends freshman year when they pranked him with a secret Facebook event called “Say No to Alex Sands Day” agreeing to say no to Alex any time he wanted to hang out that day.

Ajay continued to work on Plasticity, an artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) software which converts natural or “human” language like English into formats for a computer to easily understand. For example, programs like Siri can answer questions like “How fast can a cheetah run?” but Plasticity would help it to answer more useful questions like “When is His sophomore year he be- Penn’s fall break?” came co–chair of WAB, which coordinates with the administration on Wharton academic initiatives. Through his posian organization that hosts hackathons free to students at high schools around the country, offering crash courses in computer science for beginners.

He met fellow M&T senior Ajay Patel (W, E ’17) during New Student Orientation of freshman year when they formed a team for PennApps, Penn’s weekend–long hackathon, working on an app that would replace the clicker used for lectures. They didn’t win, but they entered the next semester along with Ben Hsu and another M&T senior Gagan Gupta (W, E ’17) and took third place with their project GoogolPlex, which integrates third–party apps into Siri so that users can order the voice– controlled navigator to pay a friend through Venmo, play music on Spotify, change the heat through Nest or unlock the car with Tesla.

The app garnered media attention from Time, Forbes and TechCrunch and had 25,000 users—but the success was short–lived due to an issue with their server. But they still get emails from hopeful users wondering how they can download the app.

After the GoogolPlex sensation Alex and the rest of his team were recruited to intern for the summer at Nest Labs, a company owned by Google that manufactures “smart” thermostats and smoke detectors.

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continued --> When he decided to work on it full–time after graduation, he asked Alex to join him.

Alex then had to make the decision between taking Ajay up on his offer or returning to Apple. He recalls the difficulty sending his former manager the email declining the offer, with no place to live and no source of income.

He says the greatest challenge he’s faced is “maintaining the mindset that you should really do what you want to do and not be drawn by what people around you...are trying to do.”

Now Alex is trying to convince his younger friends to do the same, giving them “that extra push” to pursue their passions after graduation over more traditional paths.

“They realize it very shortly after,” Alex says of friends he sees getting “sucked in” by the pressure to conform. “There’s this mindset that you do something for 2 years and then switch. It’s like why bother?”

Ultimately, the decision was consistent with what his friends say about him.

“If he doesn’t think what he’s doing makes sense or has meaning or if he doesn’t know why he’s doing it, then he won’t do it,” Jyothi says.

The project has already acquired funding from DormRoomFund—an investment fund run by students that invests in student–run businesses—and they are in the process of applying to other accelerators. If the project is successful, they will try to offer it as a paid service to companies like Siri, Google and Amazon Alexa. Taylor recalls on a recent trip to Israel that after Alex talked about the company for 20 minutes, friends were throwing around connections to venture capitalists.

His pace has not slowed, even as a second–semester senior.

He recently served as COO for Penn’s Ivy League Model

UN Conference (ILMUNC) hosted for high school students in Delhi, India. For WAB he helped develop Huntsman Hacks, a business hackathon that replaces coding with case studies in an attempt to mitigate the “sophomore slump” seen in Wharton undergraduates who struggle to see how their core requirements fit together in real–world problems.

The event was sponsored by Alibaba, the billion–dollar Chinese e–commerce company.

As someone who Taylor describes as a “silent and stealthy worker,” Alex does any work that’s put in front of him, often taking on extra side projects and always going above and beyond. He regularly gets 4 hours of sleep or less (he once joked that he actually felt sick after getting a full night’s sleep), never making excuses or turning in late work.

“Even simple PowerPoints end up being these beautiful works of art,” Taylor explains.

“He’s not a real human being,” Jyothi says. “It’s like he was built to be incredible.”

But Alex’s accomplishments fly under the radar, due mainly to his reluctance to discuss them. His achievements inspire loyalty rather than jealousy.

“Sands is not a humble bragger.

He’s just humble. And he has a lot to brag about,” Taylor says.

In the absence of any inclination to brag, or to speak ill of others, he has a flock of devoted friends who are all too eager to tout his virtues for him. They even created a website for his 21st birthday: welovealexsands. com, with contributions from 33 of his friends.

“I have a good ability to, when I am stressed, take time and put that aside and live more in the moment and be happy when there’s reason to be,” Alex says. “I think being positive and happy and joking around is a huge strength and something I think I appreciate in myself.”

Did you know one of the most decorated football players of the Ivy League goes to Penn? You didn't? Read here about Alek Torgersen.

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y the window of Capogiro, there’s a guy with light hair looking out at the sidewalk, no coffee in hand. With his simple gray t–shirt and athletic shorts, there's npthing too remarkable about his appearance—no flashing signs advertising “Quarterback!!!”, no gear adorned with number tens and no football in hand. But as soon as he gets up from his table and steadily crosses to the counter, the details start to show.

Alek Torgersen stands at 6 feet and 3 inches tall, weighs in at 230 pounds and is Penn’s all– time leader in passing touchdowns, completion percentage and total offense. Though you might be able to guess the first two statistics just by looking at him, you might never know the last facts unless you pressed them out of him for hours. It is true that Alek will graduate as one of the most decorated football players to pass through the Ivy League. It is true that he has worked hard enough to earn himself the attention that could potentially get him drafted to the NFL. It is true that he's a gifted athlete and puts in hours upon hours of training all year to achieve that proficiency. But, above all else, what is true about Alek Torgersen is that he is deeply humble, and one of the most well– rounded and appreciative members of the Penn community.

“[Penn is] kind of like that, ‘We’re all just gonna work really hard’ kind of school,” Alek says of the university. “I think that fit me, as opposed to those other schools where it’s kind of more elitist and stuff like that. Penn’s very down to earth and people here really understand each other…Everyone’s kind of here for the same purpose, and I think that’s something that drew me to the school.”

Alek is no exception to the down to earth, hard–worker mentality that he admires. A typical day for Alek could include a drive to New Jersey, two intensive two–hour training sessions, a drive to get back right in time for class and hours of studying film. For the past few months, he’s been doing this for four days a week, almost every week.

"It’s kind of stressful,” he finally admits, only after finishing an exhaustive list of time commitments. “I have to meet with a quarterback coach as well. So I have a strength and conditioning coach, and then I have a quarterback coach, and we throw.

This dedication didn’t just suddenly ignite when Alek got attention for his college performance. Since the fourth grade, he’s had a private quarterback coach, private trainers and played for several teams.

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I throw with receivers and work on that aspect, and the mental aspect of football too.”

This dedication didn’t just suddenly ignite when Alek got attention for his college performance.

Since the fourth grade, he’s had a private quarterback coach, private trainers and played for several teams.

“My mom taught me how to throw…because my dad can’t throw a ball to save his life," he says.

“My entire life, I’ve played quarterback. Quarterback is a great position too. You get to touch the ball on every play. You’re the guy that people look to in times of desperation, kind of that calm, steady hand that guides the team, and that’s kind of how I feel I am as a person…this position fit my personality,” Alek says. He knows himself well. Very few things rattle Alek Torgersen. When a cappuccino spills across his table, he doesn't flinch. His facial expression doesn't change. Instead, he sits still in his seat and helps blot up the liquid with napkins. “Don’t worry,” he repeated, with a smile the whole time. “I don’t really get too high or too low,” he noted later. “I’m kind of always in the middle.”

Though Alek must know that most people on campus are dying to know about the NFL draft process, he doesn’t bring it up until he's explicitly asked.

“It’s kind of insane because not a lot of people from Penn really have this opportunity.” In fact, only six people have. Ever.

Earlier this year, Alek traveled down to Florida to play in the East–West shrine game (which can be classified as a collegiate All–Star game), and had his pro day in early March.

Now, he’s just waiting to hear back from teams. Depending on who he hears back from, he’ll begin visiting different teams in their different locations. His schedule is not getting any lighter any time soon. He doesn’t seem to mind.

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“Coming in I didn’t think this was gonna be a thing. When I was gonna be graduating my senior year I was just gonna…get a job and go into the workforce right after. But I was fortunate enough to, you know, perform here, and if you’re good enough, they’ll find you. These past three or four months have just been a whirlwind for me.”

Alek admits that although he wasn’t necessarily surprised by the attention, he wasn’t expecting it when he began his college career.

“It’s something that you dream about as a kid, but you really know that there’s a very slim chance that it’ll happen…I just enjoy every minute of it. I’m all about the journey. So, I’m just having fun right now. If it works out, it’s meant to be.”

Alek says he didn’t get here all alone, though. He knows football is an intricate process that wouldn’t be possible without those behind the scenes. “I’ve had great teammates…I was fortunate enough to play four years with a great coaching staff and like a great surrounding cast…They got me ready for games, coaches and all them got me prepared for every situation, so that kind of led into it.”

And not all of these things are visible to the public eye. Alek constantly maintains a healthy, hy-

drated diet, hence his lack of coffee. He has a family of 110 people in the football program who keep him on his toes and who would fight anyone for him, as he would for them. “It’s the stuff that people don’t see that makes it so that what you do see on Saturday [games] is successful. You know, those numbers, they don’t mean anything to me. I’d rather have those bonds

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than do anything with the ball.”

In addition to the time spent pursuing his football career, he’s dedicated to his studies as a Politics, Philosophy and Economics major in the College. Alek still somehow maintains balance in his life.

“It’s something that I think my parents instilled in me when I was younger,” he shares, adding, “Thanks, mom,” with a laugh.

“You gotta focus. Grades come first, sports come second. That’s something that I’ve held close to my heart for a while.”

So the decision to come to a school like Penn wasn’t solely about football. It was about much more. “Coming here, I got to come to a school where I could push myself academically and athletically, and that was my goal coming out of high school. It was to go somewhere where I could be the best both on the field and off the field.”

Although he is a clear leader, both in online statistics and in real–life actions, he is shy to admit it. He shifts in the too–small cafe chair.

“I hate…I’ve always had to answer that question,” he laughs and shakes his head. “I like to consider myself a leader. I’m not like, the most vocal person, but I always try to do the right thing, and kind of lead by example. I was always…doing my job better than other people were doing theirs, so that’s how I’d consider myself a leader.”

Of this university, he can’t say enough.

“I’m always gonna hold Penn close to my heart. Whenever I try to do something, I’m trying to not just make my family and myself proud but I’m trying to make this program proud, and help them out in the future.”

“I go out there, and every time I represent Penn. When you walk on the field, even if no one is watching, you’re still representing Penn.”

Gautam Nagaraj thinks we can colonize the moon. Read more about one of Penn's biggest aerospace enthusiasts.

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autam Nagaraj is currently developing a drill to help NASA drill for ice on Mars, is graduating with two Penn degrees and is about to start work on an aerospace project that’s so confidential that he can’t talk about it.

He’s a senior in VIPER, studying earth sciences in the College and mechanical engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

He originally started out as a chemistry major, but decided to switch over to geology after a program advisor suggested it to him. “They wanted a hard science. What’s harder than rocks?” he quips.

VIPER stands for Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research, and is the newest of the dual–degree programs at Penn. His class will be the second–ever to graduate this upcoming May. “I’m pretty sure they had the word 'viper' and were like, ‘That sounds cool!’ and came to that,” he adds jokingly, as his excitement breaks through background murmur.

Gautam's roughly a Philadelphia local, hailing from the King of Prussia area. He went to William Penn Charter School, but was forced to explore most of his now long-

standing interest in aerospace outside of high school. “My high school didn’t have much of anything science related,” he explained.

His participation in the NASA INSPIRE online learning program, an online educational virtual environment for STEM students to collaborate on projects and learn about career options, was an early foray into the field. Gautam was lucky to experience this unique program during its existence, as it no longer exists due to recent NASA budget cuts.

He continued to participate in NASA programs in high school.

“We did a competition to redesign the James Webb space telescope. It’s supposed to be a successor to Hubble,” Gautam adds. His team came second in a national competition to help optimize the new telescope’s mirror assembly.

With this substantial experience under his belt, he came to Penn because of the unique value of the VIPER Program.

Snior year of high school, he thought to himself, “I can get two degrees for the price of one?” The rest was history.

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VIPER has allowed him to combine studies in a hard science with an engineering background, all the while positioning him for a career in energy. Matriculants into VIPER are required to do research, and have to take specialized writing classes in order to communicate their lab findings.

The summer after his sophomore year, he worked in a physics lab attempting to sequence DNA using graphene nanotechnology. He enjoyed this requisite research, as it was a different take on energy. “Not the typical, 'Let’s build a fuel cell,'” he jokes.

As a senior at Penn now, Gautam says he’s winding down his involvement in clubs—understandably so, as his involvement in school mirrors his impressive achievements outside of it.

He served as aircraft director of Penn Aerospace Club, which a friend of his founded in 2014.

“I helped that really get off the ground—no pun intended,” he offered. It started as an interest group to bring speakers to campus, but Gautam nudged it into a more substantive direction.

The club has since taken on many facets, including rocketry, high–altitude balloons and participation in Design/Build/Fly competitions. This is where Gautam comes in as aircraft director, working with a team to build a remote–control airplane from scratch that meets competitive guidelines. There’s always some sort of challenge for them to fol-

low, just to make things interesting.

“This year it’s like, ‘Fit as many hockey pucks as you can inside your plane and then fly it!’” he elaborates. “It’s always a trade–off, especially in aerospace.

Weight is a thing.”

Penn’s urban campus is a hindrance to the group’s functioning, however, and they’ve been forced to go to Fairmount Park if they want to test their planes and rockets.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to leave West Philadelphia for his other extracurricular pursuits.

He served as co–president of PRISM, Penn’s umbrella interfaith organization. He worked to help get faith communities more involved with each other at Penn, and helped start a “Sharing our Scriptures” group that brings together individuals from different campus faiths biweekly to discuss religious passages together.

He was also co–chair of Penn’s Faith Fund, helping to disburse funds to faith groups planning events on campus who are not eligible to receive funding from the Student Activities Council.

“I think the budget now for that is like $20,000. When I started it was $10,000,” he adds.

Now that he’s wound down his involvement in these groups, Gautam can focus more fully on his collaborative senior design project: helping build a drill for NASA. Last year, NASA put out an open application for a project

for delivering nutrients to plants in space. Several Penngineers and him were interested in the opportunity, wrote up an application and found a professor who was interested in their project.

“We didn’t get it. We got rejected,” Gautam says.

Most people would have been pretty disappointed about this.

Gautam’s response was simple: “Aw, that’s a bummer!”

But there would be more opportunities for him to collaborate with NASA. In the fall, their professor alerted them to another project that NASA was soliciting applications for help developing technologies for drilling for ice on Mars. “We actually designed the drill from scratch, the whole system, with the criteria they gave us.”

NASA had provided them with parameters for the volume of the drill, energy efficiency, weight and length of use. They chose the top eight teams’ designs from across the country and gave them $10,000 to develop this drill. “Luckily, our team was one of the eight teams they selected to build this drill,” he says.

They found out this past semester, and have been working tirelessly to complete the project for Penn’s Senior Design Day on April 3rd. This deadline has forced them to get a first prototype of their project finished far ahead of the NASA competition in June.

“We have the whole frame put

together. We’re finishing up the drill and most of the subsystems are ready,” Gautam continues.

After they finish optimizing it, the team of Penngineers will go down to NASA’s facilities in Langley, Virginia, and do live testing for them there. After two days of testing, NASA will give their inputs and critiques and likely develop their own prototype based on the designs they saw.

After he graduates, Gautam will be returning to work at an aerospace company (which can’t be named due to the sensitive nature of his projects). He’s worked there for the past two summers, working in manufacturing support one year and in developing simulations the year after. “I can talk generally about what I did there,” he offers lightly. “But it’s classified,” he ultimately concedes.

He’s enjoyed his time at this company and hopes to work there for at least a few years in order to orient himself in the field. But he has a more independent interest in aerospace for the long–term: “Hopefully, at my own point I can start my own aerospace company for doing some deep space exploration.”

“There are a lot of untapped markets,” he explains. Most companies like SpaceX are interested in going to Mars. But Gautam’s eyes are cast elsewhere. “In terms of resources,

getting to a moon of Jupiter is like, the best place you can be,” he muses. You can get fresh water from Europa, and, “The potential for life is there.”

He’s interested in a long–term approach for sustainable exploration, and thinks that developing a colony on the moon would set a good precedent for infrastructure development in Mars and other planetary destinations. “If everyone focuses on going to Mars, we will not have settlements in space in our lifetime. If you build that colony on the moon, space development doesn’t seem that far away,” he adds.

Though many programs, like those focused on our own planet in terms of climate change and deep sea exploration, are suffering cuts, he’s not so frightened of the prospects for securing funding for future space ventures.

“Space exploration is cool, it’s glamorous,” he adds with a grin.

Above all, Gautam has enjoyed his time at Penn and experiences learning about energy in VIPER, and hopes above all that future Quakers will continue to invest the same effort into these same pursuits.

“I think aerospace at Penn is growing, and people should get involved if they’re interested,” Gautam adds. “There are a lot of opportunities out there,” he concludes. The sky isn’t even the limit, in aerospace or in his aspirations.

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Chaz Smith is Penn's resident Vine star.

SARAH FORTINSKY

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t happened on prom night, as many monumental events often do.

He had thought about doing it for months at that point, but decided that prom would be the “special moment” he had been waiting for. That night, College senior Chaz Smith posted his first six–second video to Vine and never looked back.

Until the next day, when he deleted it.

But Chaz kept at it, and a month and a half later when he uploaded the Vine “Watermelon inside Watermelon,” his social media career instantly took off.

The Vine went viral and soon people started recognizing him on the street. Once during his sophomore year of college, Chaz recalls a freshman showing up at his dorm with a watermelon, asking Chaz to sign it for him.

For the most part, though, Chaz feels like a normal kid at Penn.

“I just go to school and go back to my room and make videos and there’s this whole other audience of people waiting for me to post them,” Chaz says. “But when I’m on campus, I feel like any other student.”

In contrast with the impression his over–the–top, exuberant videos might give off, Chaz prefers maintaining a low profile. Standing in line at Beefsteak, however, he seems to be doing the exact opposite.

“Chaz is getting something different today,” the Beefsteak manager shouts back to the kitchen.

“They know me here,” Chaz says, almost apologizing for the attention he’s getting. “I don’t even have to say what I want anymore.

They already know, like, “‘All 8

CHAZ SMITH

right, Chaz wants the number three with extra potatoes.’” *** Chaz is no stranger to the spotlight.

Growing up with a father who was in the NBA, Charles Smith, Chaz and his dad would constantly be recognized on the street. Strangers would approach them and tell Chaz’s father that he was their favorite player and that they’d love to watch him play. Chaz’s father retired when Chaz was only three years old, but Chaz grew up feeling pressured to follow in his father’s footsteps.

“I’d get pressure from other people like ‘Oh are you going to be tall like your dad? Are you going to play basketball like your dad?’ And I was always like, ‘I don’t know. I’m 11.’”

Though, at 6’3—he never did quite match his dad at 6’10— Chaz continued to play basketball throughout high school.

“He didn’t want me to stop playing,” Chaz says. “Internally I didn’t want to [play basketball], but I didn’t realize that, so I got confused between wanting to please him and wanting to do what I wanted so I took that as, like, wanting to play basketball.”

Chaz knows his dad always wanted what was best for him.

He just didn't realize it was possible to have a career online or in entertainment.

That changed one day when Chaz's father was walking down the street. People whispered and pointed at him, but not because they recognized him from his NBA career. They were saying,

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"Look, look, look! It’s Grandpa Chaz, the topic of sexual violence Watermelon!” is one that he feels is extremely important but also one that needs to *** be approached very carefully. As a Everything Chaz has done has religious Christian who does not been to make people smile. In his drink, smoke or have sex, Chaz silly videos, Chaz hopes to be able says this issue is a great “burden to brighten people’s days. But he on my heart.”

At Penn, Chaz is able to practice his religion through a variety of groups on campus. He is involved in Men Against Rape & Sexual assault (MARS), Penn Anti–Violence Educators (PAVE) and Penn for Jesus.

Sophomore year, Chaz published a video for One Student—a nonprofit that sometimes sees himself as portray- aims to provide tools and resourcing two different characters. Now es to combat sexual assault on predominantly on Youtube, his campus—and it received mixed content ranges from more comical feedback. Chaz says some people videos of him pronouncing things felt that he was attacking all men, incorrectly to more serious videos which was certainly not his intenon sexual assault. tion.

Chaz began to recognize in “I was trying to say that in our middle school that many of his society, rape culture and all the peers faced challenges in their dai- different things that contribute ly lives and the potential he had to to the desensitization of sexual asmake a difference. sault—like the movies we watch, “It was around that time that I the language that we use, the decided that I want to make peo- music that we listen to—all these ple smile,” Chaz says, “whether it’s things make the experience and through laughter or helping them instances of sexual assault less imwith their problems. I see the dif- portant in the public eye.” ferent types of videos I make as Chaz was hurt from the negadoing both, separately and simul- tive feedback, though he felt it was taneously.” constructive. Whereas some might In his more recent videos, Chaz have felt annoyed or angered by has produced more content that being misunderstood, Chaz took has a greater message and he plans a step back and reevaluated how to continue to make videos on he approached the video. “When topics he really cares about. For you’re trying to speak to people

For the most part, though, Chaz feels like a normal kid at Penn.

and persuade them into believing something or share a lesson you’ve learned, you want to do it in a way that appeals to them while still keeping it true,” Chaz says.

Because of this, he sees the way people engage in racial or political discourse on social media to be completely unproductive. “I don’t know anybody that has ever been persuaded to agree with an opinion by being talked down upon,” he says. “And so yeah, looking back at the video, I can see that people might have felt that.”

But that hasn’t stopped Chaz.

There are many serious topics about which Chaz cares very deeply, but he wasn’t exactly sure how to approach them after making the One Student video. This falls in line with Chaz’s feeling that he wears two different hats for two different roles—one for the goofy side that prompted Chaz’s initial success online and one for the serious side who is a devout Christian and cares about issues of social justice.

His friend and College senior Kassandra Britt has helped Chaz realize he doesn’t have to pick one over the other in his videos—just as he doesn’t in real life. Chaz and Kassandra met on a Christian retreat freshman year and have remained close friends ever since.

One day last year, Kassandra remembers telling Chaz that she thought he needed to go deeper in what he was posting in his videos.

Chaz was hesitant at first, Kassandra recalls, because he didn’t want to be put in a religious box. But

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Kassandra has helped him draft and ultimately publish material that strikes a balance between his goofy and serious sides and doesn’t force him to give up any part of himself—because that’s just who he is.

“And as we were having the conversation,” Kassandra laughs, “his eyes were going everywhere,

he was just tapping his hands, and he’ll say random things.”

After Chaz graduates this year, finishing up his degree in Cinema and Media Studies in the College, he’s going to continue making films. But he wants his films to leave some sort of impact on the audience.

To Chaz, there are two kinds

Penn 10:

Hannah Cutler H

annah Cutler sits comfortably in a sleek metal chair in Capogiro, her black, puffy coat only partially unzipped for a two hour interview. At first, one might have taken her keeping her coat on as a sign she was in a rush, but the more you talk to Hannah, the more you get a sense that it might very well just be a product of her voracious curiosity— there are simply more interesting things to her than worrying about that. One gets the sense that there’s always something that could pop into her head if you mention the right keyword.

It’s not that she isn’t present— she very much is—but she has a mind for constantly learning and sharing. She’ll unexpectedly whip out her phone to show you a speech Mark Zuckerberg was giving in North Carolina that she was listening to while making dinner, or tell you about what a great show Mind of a Chef is or explain the historical relevance of restaurateur Alice Waters.

That curiosity is perhaps the key to understanding Hannah.

“I think the world is a really interesting place. There are so many challenges and I think I’m

one of those people that wakes up and [says] ‘I feel very lucky today, let’s do something,’” says Hannah, relating her approach to life earnestly with an air of optimism. This isn’t just some ideal for Hannah. She’s done quite a lot. Running through a list of what she’s accomplished in four years is impressive: she was part of the second cohort of Penn Social Impact House, worked at GovLab and one of Microsoft’s Civic Tech teams, launched her own startup, locked down a post–grad job and just landed a summer internship at IDEO. She might cringe at the above list. “I’m not one of those people who’s like, ‘Look at me!

Look at all the great things I’m doing,’” she says, and it’s true.

Hannah laughs at herself often and is more interested in talking about what she’s fascinated by than she is in talking about herself. In fact, her charming self–awareness often turns into her openly admitting to her perceived flaws. As a computer science major in the School of Engineering, Hannah says that she doesn’t think of herself as the most technically brilliant and, as she puts it, is “not some-

of movies: movies like bubblegum and movies like tattoos.

Bubblegum movies taste good, but like bubblegum, after you chew it, you spit it out and look for the next piece. Tattoo movies stay with you for the rest of your life. Chaz wants to make tattoo movies. But that certainly doesn’t mean he’s going to give up making

silly videos.

Chaz has been reached out to on multiple occasions by fans.

But one time in particular, Chaz remembers someone reached out to him saying that she had had suicidal thoughts but watching his videos really turned things around for her.

“I was like, ‘How?’ You know?

Just being able to shine light in somebody’s life,” Chaz says, “if I’m able to do that, then yeah, I’m going to continue doing it.”

Still, going into the interview process for Penn Social Impact House, Hannah knew she had an interest in working at GovLab, a research institute at NYU headed by Beth Noveck, the first Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative. GovLab works to leverage technology to make government more efficient and democratic, a mission that has always captivated Hannah. Yet it wasn’t until her sophomore year that this aspiration began to take shape.

Always looking for opportunities that others might overlook, Hannah came across an event where Reed Hundt, former FCC chairman, was holding office hours. While many other students were asking about his time in government,

Hannah talked to him about her interests. When she mentioned Beth Noveck and GovLab, Hundt told her to shoot Noveck an email with him copied, which she did, a choice which led to Hannah spending her sophomore summer at GovLab. While at GovLab, Hannah, as you might expect, was still looking for ways to fill her time, so she attended a panel event where she got a chance to hear from Matt Stempeck, Microsoft’s Director of Civic Tech.

After initially applying for a job at Microsoft through OCR in her junior year, Hannah decided that the Microsoft Civic Tech team was where she really wanted to be and that’s where she ended up; she spent the summer creating a graph of the civic tech space so people could

Street talks to Hannah Cutler, one of Penn's most ambitious engineers.

Mike Coyne

body who has never failed.”

Still, Hannah does take a great deal of pride in one particular trait: her resourcefulness. She feels that, perhaps above all else, Penn has taught her how to be resourceful.

“Whether that’s finding the right people you should be talking to, or when you learn something how do you figure out the nuggets you can take away from it to make an impact on other people,” she explains. The combination of this resourcefulness and her aforementioned curiosity has taken her along her self– admittedly nontraditional path, a path which has led her to the intersection of social good and technology where she finds herself today.

Hannah’s path began when scrolling through Facebook one day as a freshman where she came across the opportunity to apply for the Penn–Columbia Social Impact House, a social entrepreneurship incubator.

As a fellow in the Penn Social Impact House after her freshman year, Hannah spent two weeks completing a two–week curriculum covering everything from design–thinking workshops to impact investing.

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visualize the somewhat nebulous concept. She also worked on a project piloting the use of Microsoft Translator in schools and immigration offices in New York City.

Hannah says it best when she admits, “My narrative is non–linear, which is pursuing opportunities and meeting people. I think people are at the core of it, our experiences are our experiences, but people, we can learn so much from other people.” That’s not just a thought about her personal journey, but the heart of her passion project, her startup called Aspire.

Of herself, Hannah says that she’s not just the type to color outside the lines, but to draw a

whole new picture. That’s exactly what she hopes to help others do with Aspire as a “modified version of mentorship.”

As Hannah explains it, “I see many of my peers struggling to figure out how they should position themselves, surrounded by courses and jobs and online content and all kinds of things, figuring out what you should be doing. It’s often unclear what opportunities we should be pursuing.” Hannah thinks the best way to figure it out is by connecting with others. Using Aspire, one can sign up as either an “expert” or an “explorer,” where the algorithm Hannah wrote will match you with either an expert or an explorer that’s relevant to your interests.

Breaking the trite stereotype of the socially inept engineer, Hannah is incredibly thoughtful about how she’s formulated Aspire. For Hannah, Aspire isn’t a platform to replace any other service. Instead, it’s something that doesn’t really exist yet: a place for students to learn about the “inflection points” in their peers’ lives that have shaped their paths. As Hannah points out, there’s so much out there, but it’s difficult to know where to start. Hannah is humorously exasperated when noting that renowned psychologist Angela Duckworth’s Character Lab posts their jobs on Craigslist—a job which she applied to, not because she was interested in the work, but just

to talk to them—and just as dismayed when noting that Williams Hall still has all of their information on physical bulletin boards. “There must be a better way,” Hannah laments.

The endgame for Aspire is “making people feel like they’re supported and building a culture where people feel included and can go pursue the things that they aspire to do,” says Hannah.

Because, at the end of the day, beyond curiosity and resourcefulness it seems Hannah just really loves helping people—whether that’s making dinner for her family, helping you find a mentor or building a community gar-

den at her high school (her first big foray into social impact).

While she’s off to LinkedIn full–time for their Associate Product Manager program after her IDEO internship this summer, she hopes to keep building Aspire. As for Hannah’s own aspirations, “If you came into my bedroom, okay, that sounds weird, but on my walls I have a map of the world, a map of the United States, and then all these crazy drawings related to this project because it’s very much indicative of my personality, just thinking about ‘Well how can I connect, how do I connect the world?’”

people. She is most comfortable shooting portraits.

“For me, understanding a human being starts with, ‘How do I get them to pull out what I know I can see in them, but maybe other people can’t—how do I pull that out?’” Araba explained. “So I have a conversation.”

Even though she is masterful at spinning other people’s narratives now, Araba has not always felt that she had a cohesive narrative about herself. As a child of immigrant parents, who moved from Ghana to Virginia in 1992, she has had to reconcile the many disparate communities to which she be-

longs.

“I used to think I was untethered,” Araba recalled, “because of my identity as a black woman growing up in the United States whose parents came straight from Ghana, who was raised as a Ghanaian but doesn’t speak the language, raised in an all– white K through high school. I used to think I didn’t have an identity, but my identity is my ability to jump around.”

Self–discovery is a theme that is also recurrent in her photography, which especially examines black identity. For instance, her project “Locs” is a documentation of dreadlocks and a celebration of natural

black hair.

“I pride myself on my adaptability, on my ability to be a chameleon in a lot of different spaces,” Araba said. “My skin is almost like the container for who I am—it never changes.”

Moving between various spaces has not changed her identity, but honed it. From Ghanaian and American spaces, black and white spaces, on the stage as a dancer and director in Strictly Funk or off–stage as a performing arts photographer, the constant is herself: Araba.

“I can be me in so many different spaces,” she said.

However, the story of Araba

Meet Araba Ankuma—Strictly Funk dancer and director, esteemed photographer, GQ Magazine intern, trendsetter.

raba entered the room scooter–first. It was electric blue, and she was wheeling it beside her. It leaned against a banister while she talked. She had just gotten off the phone with her boss at GQ Magazine.

“My friends—my two best friends and I—started the scooter trend,” she said. “In our sophomore year. No offense to anybody else, but we really did.”

Other trends Araba may start: wearing two watches (one on either side of her wrist) and having her own interns (two).

But then again, Araba needs two watches, interns and a scooter because she has to be

efficient. The College senior balances working part–time at GQ as a Production Assistant, photographing Penn performing arts shows and a handful of other extracurriculars with her Visual Studies course load.

At the center of Araba’s photographs is empathy. She uses the visual composition of her images to tease out unspoken stories. For Araba, good photography is more than a technically artistic image. It requires the savvy to uncover previously untold perspectives and the vision to tell those stories. Leave cityscapes, animals and nature shots to other photographers— her medium of storytelling is

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is not the one she documents with her camera. She enables other people to express themselves by giving them a space to be vulnerable. She must create this space with each subject for the shot. Araba is good at this because she is a natural extrovert and she—in her own words—loves people. For instance, this past summer Araba shot a portrait series in Chicago of black men and boys. She stopped passersby on the street and asked each subject the question, “What is your biggest fear?”

Most people couldn’t unflinchingly ask strangers probing questions. But the result of her boldness and their candor is the series called “Chi Boys.”

In the project description on Araba’s website, she says that the project explores “what the black man is running from,” so that “we may better understand what they are running towards.”

Araba runs towards vulnerability, even if it means making her subjects step outside of their comfort zones. For her senior thesis, her subjects strip off their clothes and then she

asks them four questions: what is the part of your body that you value the most? What’s the first thing that people say they notice about you? Has that part of your body ever influenced the opportunities you’ve been afforded? And finally: do you believe that humans, as they were physically constructed, were done so equally?

Then she photographs them nude.

The project, called “Send Nudes,” explores the perception and privilege of physicality.

When she finishes her thesis, Araba will graduate and begin working full–time at GQ in New York as an Editorial Assistant, handling both administrative and creative tasks on the GQ website.

The position is a step up from her current job at GQ, as a Production Assistant for the photographs on their website. This is the next step on her path, which she is always paving, as she prefers to do far in advance.

Araba is always looking towards

the next thing. She likes to plan things out. She likes order, and prefers to be at Inbox (0).

Further down the line, her plan is to be a documentary and editorial photographer, shooting in different environments and for brands, respectively.

Ideally, she’ll realize half of this

dream at GQ: advancing up the ladder to product shoots. Araba already has experience with commissioned photography for brands like RushCard VISA. Her plans don’t always chart their expected courses. Araba expected to become a doctor; she was pre–med for almost two years at Penn while fulfilling her Visual Studies major. In

the middle of her second semester of her sophomore year, she realized she was more passionate about art, and subsequently dropped the pre–med track.

Araba identifies this time—this deviation from her then–current plan—as her most difficult time at Penn.

“I had had this whole idea of what my life was going to look like and suddenly it wasn’t there anymore,” she said.

“It was black. It was like walking into midnight.”

From the darkness, Araba sketched a new plan for herself, one in the artistic world.

This switch represents not only a change in her course of study, but the affirmation of a life ethos. Nothing worth doing should be done halfway. When GQ told her that she couldn’t take time off to work on other documentary projects, she doubled down at GQ. When she wasn’t happy with the students who were assigned to photograph for her when she worked at Penn Stu-

dent Agencies—she branched out by herself and took her own interns.

Currently, Araba has two interns, students she mentors in photography so they can fill her role as a performing arts photographer when she graduates in May. They work for her eponymous photography business, taking jobs that Araba can’t fit into her schedule, and learning under her guidance.

“I realized that all the work I was doing junior year—that was when I was most busy— and doing almost everything for Penn, I realized that when I leave there would be a giant vacuum,” Araba explained. “A lot of people would not have a photographer.”

There aren’t many photographers at Penn who can photograph performing arts groups.

There also aren’t many students at Penn who leave a vacuum behind them when they graduate. But this is characteristic of Araba, what she does in places.

She carves out a space for herself, so even when she leaves, you notice the absence.

Penn's soon–to–be POTUS, Max Levy, shares his life with Street. ax Levy has more authenticity in his smile than most politicians have in their pinky fingers. It’s the kind of smile you don’t see too often, overflowing with goodwill and charisma. It widens more when he talks about others than it does when he talks about himself.

“I’m a walking cliché,” jokes

the former president of Penn Democrats, running a hand through his neat brown hair.

That's obviously false. Max, who is finishing up his communications degree with a concentration in public service this spring, is an accomplished, driven political powerhouse.

Since coming to college, he’s interned at the Center for Ameri-

can Progress, at the White House and with the 2016 Democratic National Convention. He even took a semester off this past fall to work on the Hillary campaign.

Though part of his passion lies in his genuine desire to help

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people, Max traces the inspiration driving him into politics back to the 1960s.

After they met as undergraduates at Penn, Max’s Philadelphia–born grandparents eventually landed in Montgomery, Alabama. His grandmother worked as a teacher, but his grandfather became heavily invested in civil rights work.

“My grandpa’s a rabbi,” explains Max. “He worked to integrate the clerical societies in Montgomery. Then my mom

was born, and they just went ahead and raised a Jewish family in Montgomery in the 60s.”

His family has remained in

the South ever since. Max, who grew up in Atlanta, looks to his grandfather as his biggest role model. “My grandpa is one of my heroes,” says Max. “The way

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he looks at life, the work he’s done and the way he’s always dedicated himself to doing such good…His optimism and faith in people really inspires me.”

In Max’s freshman fall, he took an introductory communications class and was sold. He speaks highly of the classes he’s taken in the department, and considers himself lucky that the major and political concentration he’s taken on have been so well matched with his interests. “When I got to Penn, I thought I was going to be PPE,” adds Max. “But I took a philosophy class my very first semester and I hated it.”

Although he’d entertained with the idea of becoming a writer, he explains, he found that he was more interested in “the political process, the world of Democratic politics and that as a way to make change.”

The credit for his political fervor, however, is only partially owed to the intellectual hub of Annenberg. Outside of the classroom, the pinnacle of Max’s time in Philadelphia has unequivocally been his involvement with Penn Democrats, or Penn Dems for short.

“Max followed Penn Dems

on Twitter even before getting into Penn,” says Jana Korn (C‘18), Max’s good friend and Penn Dems presidential successor. “There was never really any doubt that he would end up making Dems his life.”

Max agrees, though his involvement on campus spreads far and wide. He has been the Executive Vice President of Class Board 2017 since his freshman year, spent two years on the Executive Board of Phi Psi and, in whatever free time he can scrounge, does graphic

design for The Punchbowl, Penn’s semesterly satirical magazine that dates back to 1899.

Penn Dems, however, has remained his constant priority in his college career. He made a beeline for Dems at the Fall Activities Fair his freshman year and joined their deputy board

soon after. “We immediately started working on things,” recalls Max. “We did some canvassing out in West Philly for Obamacare enrollment, and it was that kind of solid action that really sold me on Dems so quickly. I knew that this was the group that really cared about progressive politics.”

When his second semester at Penn approached, Max became the Communications Director for Penn Dems. As he assisted with significant organizational changes within the club over the next two years, he slowly moved up the ranks.

After a year as Vice President, Max took over Penn Dems as President at the end of the Fall 2015 semester. He jokes about his term, cut short by his work on Hillary Clinton’s campaign, referring to last spring as his “one semester of fame.” His first mission was to encourage

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as many Penn students as possible to vote in the presidential primaries.

Former Penn Dems Outreach Director Hannah Fagin (C’17) counts Max’s presidency as the highlight of her time with Penn Dems. Of all of the Penn Dems boards she’s seen, she says, “Our board was the closest. Max made a huge effort to bring us closer together.” *** As the presidential election ramped up, so did Max’s involvement in it. He spent last summer in Philadelphia working for the Democratic National Convention. “The days of the DNC, I worked the longest hours I’ve ever worked,” says Max. “But I loved every minute of it.”

Toward the start of the summer, Max had applied for and accepted a fall position as a Campus Organizer with the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, at the encouragement of a fellow former White House intern. Though he’d initially brushed the idea of taking a leave of absence aside, he gradually became more open to the idea. When he got the good news that he was being offered the opportunity to work with Hillary Clinton’s campaign full–time, Max was faced with a tough decision.

Working on the campaign would mean missing the first half of his senior year, and the second half of his Dems presidency. It would mean passing up the opportunity to write the senior thesis required for his major, the idea for which he’d come up with years earlier. Most upsetting for Max, however, was that it would mean missing the opportunity to engage as intimately during the election season with Penn’s campus, where his political involvement had always meant the most to him.

Professor David Eisenhower,

who runs the political communications program at Penn and has been Max’s advisor since his sophomore year, recalls talking with Max as he grappled with the decision to take time off. “I said, ‘Absolutely do this, this is service, it will connect you to national affairs, to political affairs, to whatever you do professionally in this area in a way that three years at Penn could never do,’” recalls Eisenhower.

From August 8th to November 8th, Max spent 92 days straight working on Hillary Clinton’s campaign—no days off, no weekends, and, according to Hannah, longer hours than Max’s humility will allow him to admit.

“I was worried that, mentally, it wouldn’t be that healthy for me to be working for that long,” recalls Max. “But to know now that there physically were not more hours in the day that we could have given—to know that there weren’t any hours I spent doing anything other than making sure that Hillary could be our next president— was really good for me during the election.”

Max’s friends on campus were thrilled and proud to see the long hours he put in at the campaign, and not at all surprised that he barely stopped for breath. “I think he worked at least 12 hour days,” says Hannah. “His drive is incredible.” Jana, who was president of Penn Dems during the election, notes that despite Max’s dedication to his work, “He never abandoned Penn Democrats…never failing to act as a support system. Ever since I’ve known him, he has put aside his personal stress and anxiety to be a support system for the people around him.”

Max’s tireless drive and good– willed motivation, praised by his friends and professors alike, paid off most concretely during his time as a Campus Organizer for Penn. On Election Day, polling locations on campus saw a 20% increase in

voter turnout from their 2012 numbers. Despite the result of the election, Max counts this uptick as a sign that he did all that he could do—and for now, he’s willing to make peace with that. *** Since arriving back to campus as a student, Max has never once regretted his semester off. What has surprised Professor Eisen-

hower has been the dedication with which Max has continued to approach his academics. With Professor Eisenhower, Max is now working on a semester–long analysis of President Obama’s speeches. The project will serve as a stand–in for the senior thesis Max was unable to write. “Max has been unusual in the sense that he seems to really value the program here,” boasts Eisenhower. “He’s entirely focused on completing Penn and getting

the maximum out of the spring semester, despite the large movements he’s just spent so much time working on...I don’t think there’s much that Max can’t do.”

Those who know Max predict that his kindness, care and humility will be his biggest assets in his future. Jana is the least humble when it comes to her friend. “I am certain,” she states, “that someday, there will be Penn Dems knocking on doors for his campaign.”

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PENN 10

TUNMISE PENN10: FAWOLE

Tunmise Fawole on "living her best life"

Giulia Imholte

Multi year winner for best Buffalo Wings & Pizza Tunmise Fawole (C ’17) is someone you remember meeting—if not for her infectious smile, or the fact that she’s half your size but has twice your personality, then because you can be sure she’s going to say something you remember, and she won’t leave her seat at the table until she’s seen you take action.

After she makes her first impression, there’s a chance you won’t run into her again for awhile. Over the course of her time at Penn, Tunmise has been involved as Political Chair and then co–Chair of UMOJA (a minority–representation umbrella organization serving Penn students of the African Diaspora); as an associate member, a College Representative and the Social Justice Committee Director for the Undergraduate Assembly; as a College Peer Adviser; and as the former Rush Chair and then VP of External Affairs for her sorority, Alpha Kappa Delta Phi. She served as Treasurer of the Penn African Students’ Association until her sophomore year. Now, she is a regular member of Grace Covenant Church, Sphinx senior society and serves as the Academic Excellence Chair of Onyx senior society.

On top of all of her extracurriculars, she’s also juggled her HSOC studies, being a pre–med student (she took her MCATs in September), doing clinical research at CHOP, and applying for and now pursuing a sub–matriculation program for her Masters in Public Health, after which she will apply to medical school.

“Penn almost beat the pre–med out of me,” Tunmise said, admitting she considered law school for a bit before discovering the Masters of Public Health program. “I’m really interested in health policy, so the MPH and the MD made a lot of sense together...the MD is really, you know, individualized, how to treat the body, but an MPH is more population level health and policy.”

While her individual accomplishments (and schedule) are impressive, it’s the impact she’s had on this campus, specifically the black community, that is, perhaps, most notable. Her position on and inherent influence in the UA, combined with her roles in UMOJA, placed her in a unique position to confront the frequent challenges hurled at the black community and carve out a more recognizable and accessible place on campus for black students.

UMOJA, which means “unity” in Swahili, specifically caters to “[uniting] students and student groups of the African Diaspora... through effective collaboration, increased political representation, and the dissemination of information,” according to their website.

UMOJA serves as the umbrella for 30 different student groups, ranging from Greek organizations to the African American Arts Alliance (4A).

The peers she worked alongside when co–chair of UMOJA as well as her successors attest to her lasting impact. “She’s definitely

“I think was really, really important and taking steps to make constituents feel more engaged and like they’re more supported.”

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played a role in making UMOJA more politically active, in terms of making it a space, an organization people feel comfortable going to,” said Temi Ransome–Kuti (W ’17), former chair of Undergraduate Minorities Council (UMC). “I don’t remember it being like that my freshman and sophomore year, honestly.”

Tunmise’s impact stretches beyond the bounds of the UA and UMOJA. She has been equally influential within the rest of the 5B, the name for the five different umbrella organizations which house minority groups on campus—UMC, UMOJA, Asian Pacific Student Coalition, LatinX Coalition and Lambda Alliance.

Tunmise’s former leadership of UMOJA continues to reverberate through the work of the organization’s current leadership. “She’s definitely expanded [UMOJA’s position], especially when it comes to different minority groups other than the 5B,” Calvary Rogers (C’19), current co–chair of UMOJA, said. “She initiated a project with the 5B to award faculty that have contributed to diversity at Penn. Things like that really expand UMOJA’s role to me...within the community and out of the community.”

Some of the initiatives Tunmise orchestrated or assisted on in her time as co–Chair include establishing the Faculty Diversity awards, helping to expand minority student access to mental health resources like CAPS, instituting PAVE trainings for constituent groups (which have now been formally required in UMOJA’s Constitution under the new co– Chairs), and beginning the tradition of UMOJA town hall meetings that cater to the entire black student community at Penn.

These projects all contributed to Tunmise’s overarching goal of better defining UMOJA’s role in Penn’s campus community. “What was really important for me was re–defining and re–establishing what UMOJA’s role in the black community was supposed to be.

Just because I felt before my term, or before I became co–Chair, not necessarily that it wasn’t relevant but that people were very unclear as to what UMOJA’s role within the community was supposed to be,” she said.

She has also helped improve existing relationships with the office of Vice Provost for University Life and the Department of Public Safety, largely because of the intensive hours she put into tackling the GroupMe incident that occurred in November 2016.

“She was driving the whole response to [the GroupMe incident] and it was kind of just seeing her in her element,” Temi said. “It’s not an easy job.

I think that kind of shows the dedication and also the responsibility that comes with being a student leader in communities, especially in the black community, where people are really looking for some direction, some organization when these things occur and she steps up consistently.”

“I think the most important thing for me was just providing a space for freshmen. I remember being a first semester freshman and...I think that made it all the more sinister for me and just really difficult to process,” Tunmise said.

But for all of her seriousness that might be on display when handling crises or confronting administrators, it doesn’t take long for Tunmise’s silly side to emerge.

“Tunmise makes a lot of really bad jokes,” Temi said. “It’s always funny that I think she has a silliness to her that disappears when she’s in a professional environment and she’s not trying to joke around.”

But whether she’s laughing with you, at you, or at herself, underneath it all, Tunmise’s time at Penn has been shaped by her formidable experiences as a leader, advocate and activist. “It’s crazy and I think it’s weird, because I’ve learned a lot but I’ve learned way more outside the classroom than I’ve learned inside the classroom,” Tunmise says of her Penn experience. “I’ve been living my best life.”

She speaks in “we’s,” not “I’s.”

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PENN 10

Jane PENN10: Chuprin Caroline Simon

A cancer researcher, a ballerina, an editor–in–chief: get to know Jane Chuprin.

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The Harvard freshmen in Dr. David Hubel’s biology class were a bit surprised when their teaching assistant first showed up to lab.

The young girl wasn't a graduate student, or even an undergraduate. She was a local high–schooler named Jane Chuprin who’d gotten an internship with Hubel, a renowned Nobel Laureate, by accident. He overheard her interviewing for a different position she turned out to be too young for, and offered her a spot in his own lab.

Part of her job was helping out with his biology class.

“I was terrified because they were all so much older than me,” says Jane, now a College senior, budding cancer researcher and editor– in–chief of the Penn Science Undergraduate Research Journal. “I was surprised how much I learned.”

Jane, fascinated by her high school biology class, had applied for dozens of lab internships, qualifying herself as a sophomore (wisely declining to specify whether she was a sophomore in high school or college). Rejection after rejection didn’t faze her—an innate curiosity about the world and determination to learn more about it kept her going.

Hubel was Jane’s first mentor, the first to show her how to view the world scientifically. One day in lab, Hubel cut his finger, and Jane rushed off to get paper towels.

When she got back, he stood there staring at his cut, and asked Jane if she’d ever seen blood under a microscope before.

She hadn’t. He told her she really should.

“That moment I realized that what I saw as a nuisance, he saw as really inspiring and he really went beyond the surface of it,” Jane said.

“And I think I realized, in that moment, there’s so much going on that I didn’t realize.”

Jane, whose father is a mechanical engineer and mother is a dermatologist, knew she wanted to pursue science in college. She transferred to Penn after her freshman year at Boston University, planning to study visual processing. But something else caught her attention when she got to Penn: cancer.

She began working in a cancer lab during her sophomore year and has been there ever since.

“It’s so interesting to me,” she said. “It’s a really complicated problem that I think is really worth solving and also could do a lot of good.”

Her lab specializes in Car T–Cell therapy—a procedure for destroying cancer cells. When someone has cancer, their immune system might not recognize cancerous cells because they originated in the body. Car T–Cell therapy takes out T–Cells—the cells involved in the immune system—and gives them

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immune system—and gives them a certain receptor so they can identify and destroy the cancer cells.

Jane’s enthusiasm bubbles through when she explains the process and helps others understand how important it is. It’s personal

for her, too—her mom is a breast cancer survivor, and her childhood friend Caitlynne McGaff survived cancer as well.

“I appreciate the work that she does, and I appreciate that she’s so passionate about it,” Caitlynne said. “Because, coming from a per-

sonal standpoint, I know what a difference she’s making.”

For Jane, a molecular biology major, lab work involves long hours of experimenting and testing, strings of disappointments before a breakthrough.

“It’s frustrating...that happens in

science. In research, especially, you don’t know what’s going to happen, so you brush it off and continue moving forward,” she said.

“It’s not worth being upset about something. It sucks, and you take a few moments to beå like, ‘damn,’ but then you keep moving forward.”

Jane’s willingness to fail and keep trying drives her life outside the lab, too. When she got to Penn, she decided to try ballet, even though she hadn’t danced since she

ground me in the chaos at Penn,” Jo–Ana said.

Caitlynne, who has known Jane since high school, described her mischievous side. When the two were roommates at Boston University, Jane played an April Fool’s Day prank on Caitlynne: she changed the timezone on Caitlynne’s phone so her alarm would go off at 5:00 a.m., instead of 8:00 a.m.

But underneath the jokes, she’s approachable and deeply loyal.

“She is very loyal to her friends and to people she loves, just in the sense that she is so willing to drop everything the second you say you need something,” said Caitlynne.

Although Jane says Penn’s busy, competitive atmosphere appealed to her, her choices and attitudes often set her apart from the stereotypical Penn culture. She’ll keep trying, even if she isn’t good at something, until she succeeds. She stays positive and genuinely loves her work, even when it’s frustrating.

“Especially at Penn, you can get wrapped around everyone complaining all the time and being stressed out, and even though she’s stressed out, she’ll be like, ‘Okay, I did spend 15 hours in lab today and it was terrible and I’m exhausted, but I did get to do this really cool thing,’” Jo–Ana described.

“She’s very positive in that way and you can see that she actually cares.”

Jane’s next move? An MD– PhD—a demanding eight–year program where physician–scientists can earn two degrees. Jane plans to return to her hometown of Boston for the program. And despite the grueling years of work and research ahead, Jane isn’t likely to lose her interest in science anytime soon.

“I’ve always had a passion for science,” she laughed. “I’ll be the one at Fling who gets drunk and says, ‘This is how science works.’”

“It’s not worth being upset about something. It sucks, and you take a few moments to be like, ‘damn,’ but then you keep moving forward.” vagabondboutique.com 37 N. 3rd St. Philadelphia, PA

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was a little girl. It took three semesters before she finally got into Penn Ballet—yet she wouldn’t let herself get discouraged.

“I realized I like doing ballet a lot, so I just did it for me,” she said. “You have to stop caring what other people think, which is really hard. In the back of your head, you’re like, ‘I’m probably getting judged, but do I care?’”

But to Jane’s friends, she’s more than just a determined scientist.

She’s a kind, easygoing friend who doesn’t take herself too seriously and invests herself in other people’s lives, no matter how busy or stressed she is.

“Even if she’s really busy and I don’t see her for three days, eventually, when we’re both at home at the same time, she’ll come and sit on my bed and we’ll just talk,” said Jo–Ana Smith, who has lived with Jane for three years.

Jo–Ana met Jane when they were assigned to live together randomly during Jane’s sophomore year. Jane always worked in the living room and made food for her roommates, making the apartment homey and welcoming.

“I think it’s kind of helped

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Get to know Camara Brown, Penn's resident spoken word poet.

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“I didn’t get here by myself!”

Camara Brown half yells and half laughs. “I’m not here by myself,” she affirms. Camara is a poet, an Excelano. She’s juggling multiple graduate school acceptances.

She's undeniably impressive, but still humble, aware of how she’s arrived where she is and who’s helped her get here.

And her poetic journey has been a long one. “The first poem I remember writing was in middle school—it was an assignment for a preposition poem,” she recalls.

It’s a difficult task to make a seventh grader care about poetry, about the alignment of words on a page and their resonances and sounds and the narratives they can form. “And I remember everyone hating it, and I was like, ‘This is so much fun,’” she says. She continued writing and eventually went on to join her high school’s poetry club, through which she would go on to attend Louder Than a Bomb, the largest youth poetry slam in the world. “We wrote our own poems—two to three minute poems about our lives—and

we notoriously got second place every time,” she says. She exalts the excitement of performing, of having an audience listen to something personal to oneself.

“I got hooked there—I got hooked on the community, I got hooked on the friends I made from sharing, reading, editing, working through poems with people,” she says.

Whether or not to become involved with poetry at Penn was never a question for Camara, who performed at the Kelly Writers House Speakeasy during NSO her freshman year. For all four years at Penn, she has been a general member of the Excelano Project, the only spoken word group on campus. She notes, a little sardonically, how centrally the culture at Penn values leadership and executive roles in extracurricular organizations. Excelano, according to Camara, is different.

Though there is a president and director, because the group is so small “everyone takes on something,” she notes, “and we all just care a lot about it, about the fam-

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PENN 10 FILM FILM FILM

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ily, about the work, about the poems, about the show.”

Camara recalls how when she first began performing with Excelano she would have incredulous friends come up and ask her if the stories she told through her poems were true. They were and still are (albeit with some natural exaggerations); her poetry is fundamentally about herself and her experiences. She cites among her inspirations her family, people around her, other Excelano poets, other poets on campus more generally and the poets Tracie Morris and Terrance Hayes.

“I think a lot of my inspiration comes from my academic work,” she muses. She’s an Urban Studies major in the College, but sees herself as “a mixture of an Africana Studies major and a History major and an English major and Political Science major.” She sums up her academic work: “Poetry, African American poetry, critical theory, race theory, black feminist critique, less so queer theory because I’m just learning that stuff, and policy and politics and body politics and the relationship between marginalized people and the state.”

Her focus has come to revolve around memorials and memorialization—around questions of public memory with a focus on memorials of African–American history. Her studies are very much cross–disciplinary, and she cites a class she took last semester, “Black Feminist Approaches to History and Memory” taught

by Grace Sanders Johnson: “My final paper was on a poem that I was introduced to by a PoemTalk at the Kelly Writers House called “Slave Sho to Video aka Black but Beautiful’ by Tracie Morris.” In the essay, she argues that the poem functions as a place of history and memory that “we should look at as an archive.” Memory, Camara believes, “runs through us all the time.”

This fact is what interests her so much and what has led her to seek a career in academia. She is currently supported by the Mel-

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