G e n e r a l I n t e r e s t GS A l u m n a S p o t l i g h t
By Alexander Huls
SARAH WALKER ’95 THE WORLD IS HER STAGE Sarah Walker ’95 was born into a family of people who help others. Her mother was a nursery school teacher, and her father was a neurosurgeon. Her sister is a medical researcher, and her brother is an environmental scientist. Walker, a clinical social worker specializing in helping children, suspects it was fated that she too would follow in their footsteps. “There was just not really another option,” she says. That is not to say there was not a major detour first. Attending the all-girls Garrison Forest High School in Baltimore, where she grew up, Walker was interested not only in helping children, but also in acting. When she moved to New York to attend Sarah Lawrence College, she pursued both academically: theater and early childhood development. That is, until one day, while working in a gourmet food store, she was scouted to become a fashion model. Putting
After a successful career in modeling and acting, the now social worker keeps connected to the arts through philanthropy. 38
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GENERAL STUDIES
a pause on her education, she embarked on a 15-year modeling career, acting in commercials and participating in shoots all over the world. Eventually, however, modeling began to feel unavailing. Maybe it was the family genes asserting themselves, but she came to feel it was too much about promoting herself, not others. She decided to return to her interest in child psychology and matriculated at Columbia University School of General Studies to study psychology. There, Walker loved how GS embraced her non-linear path, providing guidance based on a consideration of her accumulated life experience. Advisors suggested classes she never would have considered and set her on a path to help the children of New York. After graduating in 1995, she worked in a variety of places: the AHRC New York City, The Bronxville School, New Alternatives for Children, and the Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center at Montefiore Hospital. She assisted in everything from fostering to mental health. Currently she provides psychotherapy to young adults between the ages of 15 and 26 at The Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, that is, when she is not raising her own twin sons—now 21 years old— who she says “are hands down, the thing I’m most proud of.”
Walker has not lost touch with her artistic side, however. She invests in Broadway shows, including an upcoming Princess Diana musical written by the Tony Awardwinning team behind Memphis and produced by Barbara Whitman ’05SOA. She serves on the development board of WFUV, promoting independent, emerging musicians, and she is also on The Lincoln Fund board where she helps give grants to small art and education programs. Those are not the only boards she has joined. At a General Studies Alumni Association mixer four years ago, she talked to several board members and became interested in joining the Awards Committee, the working group that recognizes exceptional alumni, nominating them for prestigious awards and honors, both from GS and across the University. “Looking back, GS was a great experience and I wanted to be able to give back,” Walker says. Walker’s side commitments—Broadway and boards—are a nice break from a career that is important and challenging. “My job is very clinical. I’m dealing with kids who have a lot of trauma. This is a happy thing,” she says. Besides, it’s in keeping with a family tradition Walker has made entirely her own. “The natural way to live is to give back. I’m not particularly religious, but I always think, ‘Are we not our brother’s keeper?’”
