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Passion Project
A Revolution of Thought in West Africa
The Thomas Sankara Center, founded by Inem Richardson ’20, educates residents of Burkina Faso on the country’s anti-colonial origins and more
by Kat Braz
Across the Atlantic Ocean and nearly 5,000 miles from Barnard, in the landlocked West African country of Burkina Faso, a new Pan-African lending library and political education center located in an unassuming house has become a vital learning hub for the local community. Founded by Inem Richardson ’20, the Thomas Sankara Center for African Liberation and Unity opened its doors in the Cissin neighborhood of the capital city, Ouagadougou, in October 2021. Its library houses classic texts on African history, feminism in the Global South, and global anti-colonial struggles, including the works of Sankara, who led the August 1983 coup d’état in the Republic of Upper Volta (and
changed the country’s name to Burkina Faso), and other revolutionary leaders. Many of these books cannot be easily found in stores or are unaffordable for the average family.
In addition to its lending library, the Sankara Center has hosted community events, including film screenings and a celebration for African Liberation Day that showcased local artists, musicians, and traditional storytellers. This spring, the Sankara Center launched an afterschool program for 8- to 12-year-olds to learn about the history of the continent and the African diaspora.
“I’m inspired by the country’s history,” Richardson says. “Burkina Faso has a revolutionary history of people who have resisted colonialism and various forms of domination over the years. Within West Africa, Burkina Faso has a reputation for the way the people have stood up.”
At Barnard, Richardson majored in Africana studies and comparative literature and studied abroad in both Senegal and Ghana. She also participated in a Critical Language Scholarship summer program in Brazil. She came to Barnard speaking
only English and left speaking three languages — English, Portuguese, and French. “I saw the world when I was at Barnard,” Richardson says. “I took advantage of all the international opportunities I could. Both comparative literature and the Department of Africana Studies put a huge emphasis on international education. These really unique experiences transformed my life.”
Richardson also received a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship grant to visit Burkina Faso during her senior year at Barnard. During this trip, she began to develop the idea of establishing the center. The contrast between her educational experience and the lack of access to education for the women and youth of Burkina Faso motivated her to establish the center.
“As an Africana studies student at Barnard, I had an awareness of the canonical texts in the field. You have access to so much, it feels infinite,” says Richardson. “You can’t possibly go through every single academic resource — all of the materials in the library and archival documents — in four years. Even the most basic texts we read in Africana studies are very hard to come by in most of the countries I’ve visited in West Africa.”
A California native, Richardson grew up in San Jose, where she was surrounded by immigrants from Nigeria — her mother is Nigerian — and other African countries. These interactions sparked an early interest in the African continent. Barnard’s pedigree of influential women, particularly poet and activist June Jordan and author and feminist Grace Lee Boggs ’35, led Richardson to move across the country for her education.
“What really stands out to me about June Jordan and Grace Lee Boggs is that their education wasn’t specifically for personal upward mobility, but it really was a tool they used to create larger change, whether in their communities or in the world,” Richardson says. “That’s the reflective spirit of Barnard. I had a really cosmopolitan experience at Barnard. I was very connected to the whole world.”
Richardson compares the mission of the Sankara Center to that of the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW), a nexus of feminist thought, activism, and collaboration for scholars and activists. The Sankara Center’s pursuits are both academic and intellectual, but Richard also hopes to inspire others to embrace advocacy.
“We want to spread Pan-African political education,” Richardson says. “But we also want to empower people to make political changes in their community, their country, and in the world at large. That’s something I got from Barnard as well. I attended many BCRW events. It’s not just for politicians to be politically involved or aware of creating change but everybody in every field.”
Initial funding for the center came from a Davis Projects for Peace grant that Richardson received as an undergraduate. The center is staffed by five other Ouagadougou residents in addition to Richardson. She plans to remain in Burkina Faso to continue to expand the center and has started a new project, funded by a 2020 Fulbright scholarship, in which she conducts oral history interviews about the 1980s revolution in which Sankara emerged as an iconic figure.
Sankara, the country’s president from 1983 to his assassination in 1987, implemented programs that reduced the infant mortality rate, dramatically increased literacy rates, and vaccinated more than 2 million children against measles, meningitis, and yellow fever. Millions of trees were planted to combat desertification, and practices such as female genital mutilation were outlawed.
The intersection of the oral history project and the work being done through the Sankara Center solidifies Richardson’s goals for her time in West Africa. “With the Fulbright, I’ve been doing more historical research,” she says. “The Sankara Center is very grounded in the present. By learning about the country’s history and analyzing what’s happening in the present, we can then work together to explore what alternatives could be possible for the future.” B
Q&Author
To Hell and Back With Author and Screenwriter Delia Ephron ’66
by Marie DeNoia Aronsohn
At the center of Delia Ephron’s acclaimed memoir Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life is the author’s 2017 stem cell transplant — a brutal treatment, so grueling that it drives this profoundly resilient woman to the very edge of her endurance, challenging her will to live. But with compelling prose and deft narrative technique, Ephron brings readers through it all with her. She weaves a riveting story framed by the loss of her beloved husband Jerry (in the wake of her sister author Nora Ephron’s death) that recounts her painful, perilous, and — finally — wondrous journey. Above all, this story of neardeath and survival is a love story. How does she do it? Ephron’s mastery flows from her decades of writing novels, essays, articles, and screenplays, including You’ve Got Mail, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and Hanging Up (adapted from her novel). But when Ephron attended Barnard College in the mid-’60s, she majored in history and had little interest in becoming a writer.
Here, Ephron reflects on the turning point that led her to write, falling “madly in love” later in life, and the experience of publishing her deepest personal story.
Left on Tenth has garnered so much attention. What do you make of the reaction?
The nicest thing about this has just been how people have sent me emails, telling me [how they] emotionally connected to my story, but also, they’re telling me their stories. Cancer is out there everywhere, especially when you get older. Everyone has had some sort of bout with it or has lost somebody to it.
I felt very lucky to have these amazing connections. Somebody writes me through my website, and it’s [about] their story. And I guess because my story is so personal, people feel they know me, and they do. So it sort of sets the groundwork for an intimate exchange.
After your illness and treatment, what led you back to writing, and what drew you to write about your journey?
[After the trauma of having a stem cell transplant], I thought if I don’t ever write again, it’s okay. I’ll be alright. But then, about a year later, my writer’s heart started beating, and
I looked at the last four years of my life, which started, I guess, with Jerry’s death. [He was] my husband of many, many, many years. And I am a writer and a novelist and a screenwriter. [Those four years have] everything in a story that you could ever want to write about. There’s loss, there’s love, there’s friendship, there are dogs, there’s illness, survival, great love, great medicine. I don’t think I ever wrote anything this really deep about myself.
The story of your career trajectory is often linked to your late sister, Nora, and your work together, including writing the script for the movie You’ve Got Mail. How did you develop your writer’s life?
There was a real moment in my late 20s where I suddenly looked at myself and said, ‘What is this, and who are you?’ And I remember saying to my first husband, ‘I think I want to be a writer.’ And this is kind of crazy. My parents are writers. Nora was so successful already. And my [first] husband said to me, ‘I don’t want you to be a writer.’ And I asked why. And he said, ‘Suppose you become famous. I don’t want you to become famous.’ So I said, ‘I promise I won’t be famous.’ This tells you everything you need to know about who I was. I knew I had to leave him. I mean, if someone wants to crush your dreams, it’s best to get out. [That’s when] I went to New York, to the arms of my girlfriends, and I made serious plans. I knew I had enough money for two years. I knew within two years I had to get published in The New York Times because at that time that was the only thing that could change your life. And I knew that I could not spend my time writing for women’s magazines because I knew that wasn’t going to make any difference in my career. Almost two years later, I was down to like $500. I was eating chocolate pudding my way: I was making a little hole in the skin and scooping the pudding out from underneath. I thought, ‘I’m eating like a child.’ And I wrote 500 words about how children eat food. I sold it to The New York Times, and they ran it on the back page of the [Sunday] magazine, and my phone started ringing off the hook. I was offered a book contract on Monday.
Do you have advice for a Barnard student or really anyone who wants to be a writer?
You always have to lead from your heart. It’s about understanding who you are and what you really want to write about. And that is what will make you a writer who tells your own stories.
A big part of Left on Tenth is the kismet surrounding falling in love with your current husband, Peter, after the loss of your beloved second husband, Jerry. Your connection to Peter stemmed from a series of remarkable coincidences and your sister Nora. Any advice for finding true love later in life?
I absolutely don’t know how one goes about that. Except I do think I must have been open to it. I think it’s about really trying to recognize what you know about yourself now and what you’re wise enough to understand about another person. B
Thank You, FY22 Blue & Bold Society Donors
The 2021-22 academic year was remarkable for the Barnard community. Our Blue & Bold Society donors — alumnae, parents, faculty, staff, and friends of the College who make leadership-level gifts of $2,500 or more to the Barnard Annual Fund — continued to show their dedication to our amazing students and to the education of women leaders.
In fiscal year 2022, Blue & Bold Society donors accounted for 76 percent of all Barnard Annual Fund dollars raised, and they set an inspiring example for us all.
Thank you for your generosity and steadfast commitment to Barnard.
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Scherer ’94* • Miranda S. Schiller, Esq., ’80* • Dina L. Schorr ’03* • Alice D. Schreyer ’68* • Kimberly S. Schroeder & Timothy C. Schroeder P’16 • Dr. Judith Schwartz ’78* • Patricia B. Schwartz, Ed.D ’62* • Helen S. Scott ’70* • Elizabeth Sedran ’16 • Jasmeet K. Seehra & Ankur J. Goel P’22 • Julia B. Segal ’84 • Marcia L. Sells ’81, P’23* • Beth E. Shalev ’96* • Penny A. Shane, Esq., ’85* • Edith T. Shapiro, MD, ’56* • Judith Basch Shapiro ’59, P’83, P’93* • Nina O. Shenker ’78 • Cynthia A. Sherman, MD, ’75 • Pauline P. Sherman, Esq., ’64* • Terry Shu ’73* • Carol K. Silberstein, Esq., ’69* • Rickie Singer Peaslee ’73, P’15* • Sally H. Sloan & Thomas G. Hentoff P’23 • Benjamin T. Sloss P’23 • Betty Booth Smith ’45* • Dian Goldston Smith ’68* • Dr. Judith Terry Smith ’62* • Linda M. Smith ’63 • Marjorie G. Smith ’54* • Dr. Steven L. Solnick & Maeve N. O’Connor • Jayne K. Sosland ’87, P’24* • Dr. C. J. Spencer & Randal W. Spencer P’09 • Sally Sperber ’85* • Karla Spurlock-Evans ’71* • Nancy B. Staples & David M. Staples P’23 • Christina Steck, Esq., ’80 • Jane W. Stein, Esq., ’68, P’98* • Sally Ann Stein ’72* • Ruth Steinberg, MD, ’72* • Betsy Stephens ’59* • Nancy C. Stewart ’59* • Rene Yang Stewart ’04* • Meg K. Storey ’81, P’17* • Wendy Story & Richard C. Story P’22 • Joyce G. Straus ’80* • Jamienne S. Studley ’72* • Randi A. Sultan ’98* • Dr. Nancy Sun ’85 • Nina Sun & Dr. Zhe Sun • Nicole C. Sundell ’15* • Linda Sweet ’63* • Judith R. Tager ’55 • Morvarid Taheripour ’92* • Renee R. Taketomo ’71, P’13* • Dr. Yuhong Tang & Dr. Yongbin Wei P’22 • Sohni M. Tanna & Dipak K. Tanna P’23 • Benay Taub & Steven Taub P’20 • Janet Carlson Taylor ’67* • Kimberly P. Taylor & James E. Taylor, Jr. P’24 • Mary Beth Terry & Christopher M. Turner P’24 • Sarah D. Thieneman ’15* • Lynn Thommen • Amelia M. Thompson ’19 • Margaret A. Thompson • Cerie R. Tisch ’17 • Dr. Merryl H. Tisch ’77* • Mariana Titorov ’59* • Catherine A. Tolbert & Dr. Ethan W. Tolbert P’24 • Polly E. Trottenberg ’86* • Soching Tsai ’70* • Sophia E. Valiotis ’01* • Cherith Bailey Velez ’97* • Nicole Lowen Vianna ’81* • Jessica G. Viner & Dr. Daniel D. Viner P’24 • Jan L. Vinokour ’72* • Olivia I. Viveros & Guillermo Viveros • Joan M. Vormbaum ’64* • Eleanor Wagner ’71* • Roselin S. Wagner, PhD, ’50* • Hannah Waldman ’68* • Kimberly A. Walsh & Mark J. Lamarre P’23 • Mary C. WalshGorski & Steven T. Gorski P’22 • Liping Wang & Xiaobin Feng P’24 • Qingwei Wang & Fengwei Miao P’24 • Hilary H. Ward & Joseph F. Murphy P’22 • Megan L. Watkins ’97* • Elizabeth K. Weiner ’95* • Gail G. Weinmann, MD, ’72* • Doris Wells, PhD, ’55* • Dr. Kathleen M. Welsh & Dr. Bill Plautz P’19 • Marion MacKenzie Whalen ’61* • Darin E. White ’98 • Lucinda Whiteley & Michael Watts P’22 • Sandra E. Will ’01 • Constance H. Williams ’66 • Dr. Debora Williams-Herman & Dr. Gary Herman P’21 • Marlys H. Witte, MD, ’55* • Joyce Guior Wolf, MD, ’64* • Lisa J. Wolfe ’82* • Laura E. Wolf-Slovin & Karl Slovin P’23 • Eddi Wolk ’79* • Janet L. Armuth Wolkoff ’75, P’14* • Ellen Wong, MD, ’74 • Elly Karp Wong ’97* • Nancy Kung Wong ’62* • Ashley R. Woodruff ’01* • Dr. Amanda L. Woodward & Dr. Andrew J. Campbell P’22 • B. Elizabeth Wright ’61* • Madeline C. Wu ’19* • Emily Yang ’94* • Lan Yang & Bruno Z. Wu P’23 • Simmone K. Yang P’22 • Margaret Yanney ’87* • Lareina A. Yee ’95 • Peggy B. Yeo & Chun Cheng Yeo P’23 • Mae D. Yih ’51* • Chu Lam Yiu • Basha Yonis ’71* • Dr. Xiaohong Yu & Dr. Min Wang P’23 • Lori Zabar ’75 • Elisabeth R. Zahm & Steve C. Zahm P’20 • Janet Levitt Zalkin ’66* • Alexandra G. Zen Ruffinen ’18 • Jingmin Zhang ’12 • Daniel R. Zimmermann P’22 • Felice R. Zwas, MD, ’76* This list reflects gifts of $2,500** or more made to the Barnard Annual Fund in fiscal year 2021 (July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021). Every effort is made to ensure its accuracy and completeness. Kindly notify the Office of Development and Alumnae Relations of any errors or omissions at annualgiving@barnard.edu or 212.923.2023. *Denotes alumnae who are also members of the Hilltop Society, Barnard’s consecutive giving society that acknowledges donors who made gifts to the Barnard Annual Fund for three or more consecutive fiscal years, including fiscal year 2021. **Criteria are different for the 10 most recent graduating classes. Learn more at giving.barnard.edu/blue-and-bold.
Obituaries
A Fearless Leader, A Dedicated Alumna
Longtime trustee Nancy A. Garvey ’71, who rose to top leadership positions at General Motors and AlliedSignal, blazed a trail for female executives
by Nicole Anderson ’12JRN
When Nancy A. Garvey ’71 accepted her Joan Rivers ’54 Trailblazer Award in 2018, she had some insightful words to share with students. “The advice I give to today’s Barnard student is ‘go for it’ in every sense of the word. Try what you want to do. It doesn’t matter if you fail. You have lots of time, lots of chances, and if you don’t succeed the first time, try, try again.”
For Garvey, who served on Barnard’s Board of Trustees for over a decade, this advice came from lived experience. Garvey, who died on July 4, 2022, following a courageous six-year battle with cancer, was a groundbreaking executive. Throughout her career, she did indeed “go for it,” rising through the ranks to leadership roles at several major corporations at a time when few women did. A dedicated alumna, Garvey joined the Board of Trustees in 2008 and began serving as chair of the Budget and Finance committee in 2013. Garvey earned her doctorate in economics at Columbia University in 1980, where she later taught. She long devoted her time and energy to giving back and advancing women’s progress by serving on a number of boards, including the New School, Pace University, and the Bronx Preparatory Charter School. Garvey went on to an impressive career at General Motors and AlliedSignal (now Honeywell), where she served as the Staff Vice President, Investor Relations, and Vice President and Treasurer, and ended her tenure there as Vice President and Controller. At the company, she broke the glass ceiling as one of the top 13 people among 14,000 corporate employees and one of only two women among the senior leadership. In June 2022, Barnard named a prominent corridor on campus the “Nancy A. Garvey ’71 Walk” and established a science endowment fund in her honor to support future science facilities expenses at the College. In attendance at the dedication ceremony were Barnard faculty, staff, alumnae, trustees of the board, and Garvey and her two children, Katie and Zach [in photo above]. Ellen V. Futter ’71, Barnard’s fifth president and a close friend of Garvey’s since their College days, fondly recalled the many afternoons spent together on the campus green — officially named “Futter Field” in 2019, a designation that Garvey initiated and helped to establish, along with the Ellen V. Futter ’71 Leadership Fund. “Standing here now on this very spot evokes a flood of happy memories of Nancy and me,” said Futter. “And now this walk at the very heart of the campus and College — sandwiched between the glorious Milstein Center and this field — my cup runneth over, that we shall be side by side.”
The walkway, which Futter described as “the byway of Barnard,” is an apt tribute to Garvey, who demonstrated leadership in the public and private spheres, as a corporate executive, a philanthropist, and a trustee of the College, guiding and showing women, by her own example, the path forward. “How appropriate, how right, how utterly perfect,” said Futter, “to have the Nancy A. Garvey walkway.” B
A Role Model for All
Azita Raji ’83, a former trustee and the first Iranian-born U.S. ambassador, “led with kindness”
by Michele Lynn ’82
In a tribute video, Jim Townsend, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy, aptly described Azita Raji ’83, who was being honored with the Joan Rivers ’54 Trailblazer Award in 2020, as “a force to be reckoned with.” For friends, family, and co-workers, these words rang true: She was a force not only in her diverse and successful career as a banker, investor, philanthropist, and diplomat but also as a friend, mother, and wife. Raji died on February 6, 2022, at the age of 60, of metastatic breast cancer.
Raji grew up in Iran and then moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, for high school, where she competed nationally in skiing and chess. Upon graduating, she attended Barnard, majoring in architecture and French. She went on to earn a Master of Business Administration from Columbia in 1991, three years after she became a U.S. citizen.
She excelled throughout her career as an international investment banker, with senior positions at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Salomon Brothers, and JPMorgan. She was a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, which supports international finance institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Raji volunteered as a fundraiser for Democratic candidates, including former President Barack Obama. She raised nearly $8 million for Obama, becoming one of his top donor-fundraisers, and served as national finance vice chair and chair of the Swing State Victory Fund for his campaign. Friend and fellow Barnard trustee Maryam
Banikarim ’89, P’21, remembers Raji’s passion for civic engagement and commitment to a broad swath of issues, including human rights. “When Azita committed to something, she just went all in,” says
Banikarim. “She was that way as a friend too; she brought people into her orbit and was there for them, without expecting anything in return.” Raji gave both her time and energy to a wide range of organizations, including Barnard, where she served as a trustee as well as founding co-chair of the Athena Center for Leadership. She also served on the economic advisory council of the Center for American Progress, as director of the National
Partnership for Women & Families, and and as a commissioner for the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery.
Her achievements were widely recognized with awards such as the 2016 Carnegie Corporation of
New York Great Immigrants award and the 2017 Ellis
Island Medal of Honor. When President Obama named Raji as ambassador to Sweden, she became the first female U.S. ambassador to that country as well as the first Iranianborn American to serve as a U.S. ambassador. During her ambassadorship, she was nominated for the Sue M. Cobb Prize for Exemplary Diplomatic Service, the State Department’s highest award for a noncareer ambassador. “She was the best ambassador we ever had to Sweden. She showed the world how it’s done,” said Townsend. “She served her country well.”
Raji’s love of country is reflected in a 2017 op-ed she penned for Newsweek: “I want everyone who saw the U.S. as a country where justice, accountability, and respect for human dignity were honored at every level of government and society to continue to see us that way.”
Her two daughters remember a mother who was loving and inspired. “My mom’s impact on the world is endless, from her contributions to helping women at Barnard, to helping Iranian women as a role model and Swedish women as a leader,” says her older daughter, Gabriella Syman. “She had something she called soft power, which she described as being able to lead with kindness, not force.”
Elena Syman ’18 adds, “She broke barriers and showed that you can be powerful and whip-smart while also being inquisitive, humble, and down-toearth. She infused love and warmth into every day she was with our family.”
In addition to her daughters, Raji is survived by her husband, Gary A. Syman; a brother, Reza Raji; three stepdaughters, Kimberly Syman, Stefanie Syman, and Hillary Syman; and seven grandchildren. B
Last Word
Why Paid Parental Leave Benefits Everyone
by Emily Winograd BC/JTS ’12
In a room strewn with colorful sticky notes, 80 people clustered around whiteboards and monitors, listening to presentations of the day’s work. Scientists and doctors, UX designers and strategists, had gathered for Memorial Sloan Kettering’s second annual Design Jam, a collaborative brainstorming activity for creative thinking. Their goal: to generate ideas that could be used to engage more people in research studies, leading to breakthroughs in the world’s understanding of cancer.
But my knowledge of this is all secondhand. I wasn’t present at the event; I was on paid maternity leave. And I believe that’s the best thing that could have happened for the event, the organizers, and the institution.
The United States is one of only seven countries that do not federally mandate paid maternity leave, according to data from the World Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. (The other countries are the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga.) Nationwide, only about 19% of Americans have access to this benefit. I am among the fortunate few whose employer provides 12 weeks of fully paid leave, and as a resident of New York State, I had the option to take an additional six weeks at two-thirds of my pay. I was also lucky to have supportive colleagues who stewarded my projects and contacted me only to ask for baby pictures.
As it turned out, the Design Jam was a case study in the counterintuitive way that maternity leave can improve workplace dynamics and outcomes. The
inaugural event was the brainchild of myself and a colleague, and we led the effort from conceiving the idea to designing the program. But the following year, when I knew that my due date would conflict with the second event, I started laying the groundwork for a transition. After my baby was born, our team introduced new elements and, as a result, delivered an event that exceeded expectations.
I believe that their success was not despite my absence but because of it. Too often, critical information lives solely in someone’s brain, inaccessible to others. This transition was a chance to share and document knowledge with more people. Because of this, the Jam has become a more enduring part of our organizational culture. Changing leadership also provided an opportunity for my colleagues to review this project with a fresh, critical eye. My absence fostered creativity, which thrives when people are building with a strong foundation but without the limiting beliefs that an original project leader might hold.
The conventional wisdom about maternity leave is that it’s a benefit for the birthing parent, to allow time to bond with a new baby and to physically heal from childbearing. When I returned to work this August, refreshed and grateful, I noticed that my organization had also benefited. Granted, the type of job I hold, doing creative work in an office, may make this truer in my workplace than in others. Nevertheless, I believe that everyone — regardless of their occupation or their choice to have children — should be able to take significant, paid time away from the office. Workplaces should offer this not only because it’s the right thing to do but also to reap the rewards of increased creativity and resilience.
Since my return, I’ve been delighted to see how some projects have flourished, and others have been transformed entirely, in the hands of my colleagues. It fills me with motivation to continue my work, now with an added title: Mom. B
Emily Winograd is a senior design strategist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She received a dual degree from Barnard College and List College of the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2012.
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