The Solution Seekers

Using grit to save one starfish at a time

By Mary Dieter

DePauw University’s alumni ranks boast a tremendous number of graduates who are successful in many walks of life.

For some, however, “success” – at least in the traditional sense – may be hard to define. Maybe it’s fleeting or elusive.

Maybe it’s unattainable.

Yet something drives these alumni to take on difficult, even intractable problems, accept seemingly insurmountable challenges and try to make a difference, perhaps to only one person at a time. To summon the courage and the tenacity and the chutzpah to dig deep. To seek solutions.

What made Karen Koning AbuZayd ’63 devote her life to improve the lot of refugees? Why has Betsy Hake ’79 spent 40 years rescuing prostitutes and abused or abandoned children in Honduras?

What caused Sally Smerz Grooms

Cowal ’66 to devote half of her work life to easing foreign relations and half to battling

HIV/AIDS and cancer? What drove

Edward Greene ’71 to buck the notion that men don’t care about child development and pursue a long career in it?

What makes these folks and other solution seekers who have passed through

DePauw tick?

“Many of them don’t necessarily have, particularly in the short term, intrinsic rewards, right? So it’s not like every day you go and do this, you’re going to go, ‘Oh, that was such a great day,’” said Rob West, the Elizabeth P. Allen distinguished university professor and chair of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. “You know, volunteering to help the puppies; every day you get to play with the puppies. It’s great. But what these folks are doing is not.”

It might be what psychologist Angela Duckworth, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, calls “grit,” West said. His research interests lie elsewhere (he is an expert in cognitive control, decision neuroscience and neuro-cognitive aging), but West is familiar with Duckworth’s work because he uses her Grit Scale in his laboratory, where he and students are looking at self-control and brain activity related to gambling.

Duckworth, a 2013 MacArthur fellow, wrote about grit in her 2016 best-selling book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.” She bases her grit measurement on two characteristics: passion and perseverance.

“You can imagine that folks who are doing difficult things over extended periods of time are going to need to have both of those things,” West said. “You’re going to need to care about it over an extended period of time because, when the going gets tough, if you’re not really that passionate about it, (you might say) ‘okay, well, I’ll just move on to the next thing.’”

Aristotle said “man is by nature a social animal,” and a natural part of being human is wanting to solve problems for one another, said Andrew Cullison ’01, director of the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics and an associate philosophy professor.

“It stands to reason that what likely gave our very early ancestors survival advantage was their ability to think critically to solve problems and come together as a community to solve problems for the good of the community,” he said. “That’s what separated us from beasts (they couldn’t bother with that). Early humans who played that game and lived in harmony with their community survived, as did their offspring. I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘what makes them tick’ is that there is a natural inclination to be a problem-solver to help others that is inherent to many of us as a species that got us to where we are today.”

Philosophy professor Erik Wielenberg, chair of the Philosophy Department, harkened to “The Star Thrower” by Loren Eisley, one of his favorite stories.

The gist: A man, upon seeing a boy tossing a beached starfish into the sea, questions why; thousands were stranded in a storm, he says, so it is unlikely the boy can make a difference. As the boy returns one to the ocean, he responds: “It made a difference to that one.”

Said Wielenberg: “In many cases, solving the problem isn’t an all-or-nothing thing but rather a matter of degree. There seem to be lots of large-scale problems that are unlikely to be completely solved. However, they can be reduced – and even a small reduction in a huge problem can make a big difference for someone.”

Karen Koning AbuZayd ’63: Rescuing refugees

By Mary Dieter

DePauw nursing degree in hand, Karen Koning AbuZayd ’63 headed into a career in which she would care for others.

But not in the way that she

planned.

“I intended to” work as a nurse, she said, “but I didn’t stay with it very long.” She worked at a Chicago hospital, but her growing interest in the Middle East and Islamic studies led to a master’s degree at McGill University in Montreal and a career that has taken her around the globe in successively higher-ranking positions with the United Nations.

“I think I shall blame DePauw for … getting me interested in all kinds of things,” she said. DePauw “provided me with the foundation for a life of service,” she said in her 2007 commencement address. “The DePauw environment gave me a thirst for knowledge, along with a penchant to question conventional wisdom with healthy skepticism. It was here on this campus that the universally powerful precept about treating all human beings with genuine respect was confirmed for me.”

AbuZayd started her international career as a lecturer in political science and Islamic studies at Makerere Univerity in Uganda and the University of Juba in South Sudan. Then “I fell into refugee work by accident, but have certainly appreciated it almost from the very beginning and more and more as I stay with it.”

Over her career, she assisted Ugandan, Chadian and Ethiopian refugees fleeing war and famine; worked to repatriate apartheid-era refugees into South Africa; oversaw the U.N.’s settlement of 100,000 Liberian refugees fleeing civil war and seeking shelter in Sierra Leone; and worked as chief of mission in Sarajevo, where she guided efforts to protect and assist 4 million refugees displaced by the Bosnian War.

She retired in 2010 as commissionergeneral of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, where she had attained the rank of undersecretary general and oversaw the education, health and social services for more than 4 million Palestinian refugees. The next year, she was appointed commissioner of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, a volunteer post she still holds.

The multi-sided civil war that has raged in Syria for more than a decade and created 6.5 million refugees prompted her current work. The U.N. Human Rights Council created the three-member commission on which AbuZayd sits to investigate and record violations of international law by the Syrian government. A team of 20 investigators gathers information for the commission, which in turn issues reports – 34 to date – recounting human rights abuses.

The work distresses AbuZayd, who previously admired Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the kind treatment he extended to Palestinian refugees. But the later imprisonment, rape, torture, use of chemical weapons and extermination of numerous dissidents and rebels have caused AbuZayd to reverse her opinion of him.

“It just breaks my heart working on it now, having to record and listen to all the awful things that are going on and no sign of stopping,” she said. “It’s a horrible situation.”

Still, AbuZayd can “instill a positive and calming energy around her even when confronting the toughest and most depressing situations,” said Linnea Arvidsson, the head of secretariat for the commission. AbuZayd’s “deep understanding of Syria and the region always helps us in navigating the complexities of this protracted and devastating conflict.

“Her commitment and compassion give her a voice that convinces everyone of the unspeakable suffering of civilians, including refugees and those displaced inside Syria, and that it would be unconscionable to limit the free flow of aid to them.”

Working with refugees, AbuZayd said in the commencement address, provides “deep personal satisfaction. To work with refugees is to help restore human dignity to those

Photo: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré who have endured traumatic disruption in their sense of self and belonging.”

But she allowed in an interview that her work on intractable situations means “we don’t have very many successes. …

“It’s difficult, because you don’t see the world improving the way you’d like to; you see more difficulties for different types of people or groups of people in different parts of the world. So you might clean up one place and get it going back on its feet. And then the couple more have popped up meanwhile. … It is discouraging, because you can spend a long time doing your best and making some efforts and making some progress and then everything falls apart again.”

Nathan Hand ’03: Lending help to worthy causes

By Mary Dieter

He grew up in a service-oriented family, undertook activities required to become an Eagle Scout, won Bonner and Holton scholarships at DePauw for service and coveted a life of helping others.

But Nathan Hand ’03 wasn’t convinced he could make a career in philanthropy, at least not one that would enable him to comfortably raise a family and have the earning potential that his peers pursuing more lucrative fields would enjoy.

He thought about becoming a patent attorney. Or going into biology. He spent time pursuing education studies, then geology. He ultimately landed on a communication major and political science minor, and undertook enough internships, volunteer opportunities and extracurricular experiences to persuade himself that working in nonprofits would bring him joy and a comfortable life, if not necessarily riches.

“I just felt like there was an urgency there to get my career started, but also explore as many different causes as possible to find what I liked,” he said. “I needed to prove to myself that I could make a living doing this, the idea of volunteering and nonprofit service. It’s a big shift to go from a fun side hobby … to want to make a career out of this.”

During his four years at DePauw, Hand had eight or 10 internships at nonprofits, using “every window of time – summers, winter terms, etc. – to try to do as much of that as possible,” he said. Among others, he worked at the Points of Light Foundation in Washington D.C. and the Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation in New Jersey. He spent a winter term in service in Ghana, performing medical triage and building a shelter. Instead of studying abroad, he spent a semester at American University in D.C., learning about community transformation.

He also coached track at Greencastle High School, was a teacher’s aide at Tzouanakis Intermediate School and visited with elderly residents of Asbury Towers. He organized Make a Difference Day and programs on leadership development, peer mentoring and more for DePauw’s Hartman Center for Civic Engagement.

For his activities at DePauw, Hand was awarded the Walker Cup and the Randal L. Wilson Union Board Award.

His service experiences at DePauw, he said, demonstrated that “it was not just okay and not just possible to do a career in this work, but worthy, something I could be proud of, something I can be good at.” In fact, his pursuit of a career in nonprofits has been so unremitting that “my only and last for-profit job was landscaping in high school.”

Photo: Brittney Way

Indeed, Hand has held a series of fundraising jobs, culminating in his position as chief advancement officer at The Oaks Academy, a private, threecampus elementary school in Indianapolis for which he has raised money, primarily for scholarships, since 2013.

“I’ve been extremely impressed by Nathan’s ability to deliver, no matter the challenge in front of him. He always finds a way and remains humble in doing so,” said Brian Millen, chair of the academy’s board. “Nathan is a leader who rolls up his sleeves to do the very difficult work our school community needs. In a word, he’s awesome.”

Hand has dabbled in consulting, was a founding member of an international fundraising think tank and since 2014 has taught at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, from which he obtained a master’s degree. And he is a busy volunteer, though he said he has scaled back since his twin daughters were born four years ago.

He teaches because “there’s absolutely a need for more of the nonprofit sector to be professionally trained in this work.” He passes along the same approach he takes in his job: that fundraising involves “respectful relationship-building, trying to help people understand what their own philanthropic interests are. And then if it aligns with your cause, great; go do some wonderful work together for kids or puppies or trees or whales or whatever. …

“It does a disservice to pester and strong-arm people,” he said. “You might get a donation, but it’s probably the last one. And it’s probably not the size that it could have been if you treated somebody well and just built a relationship and introduced your cause and the challenges you might be facing and how they can make a difference.”

Betsy Hake ’79: Reaching out to outcasts

By Mary Dieter

Inspired by a winter-term mission trip to Guatemala, Betsy Hake ’79 left her job as a nurse and headed to Honduras in 1980 to “go and serve and get it out of my system.”

Forty-one years later – with nearly all of that time spent in the impoverished

Central American country – it’s obvious that Hake did not purge herself of the desire to serve.

“She was always lovely, kind and as beautiful on the inside as she was outside,” said Tim Collins ’78, who has known

Hake since her first year at DePauw. “In retrospect, one should have known that she would spend her life in the service of those that need her the most. She has done truly amazing things at great personal sacrifice. The world is truly better for her service and courage.”

Hake taught at a bilingual school during her first two years in Honduras. She felt called to the ministry, so she attended a seminary outside Pittsburgh before returning to Honduras to run a rural clinic – and use her DePauw nursing degree – for six years. Next she moved to the capital city,

Tegucigalpa, to join a missionary group seeking to establish a church.

There Hake witnessed the change that occurred as day turned to night, and a middle-class neighborhood boasting five nice hotels turned into a red-light district, with prostitutes seeking the high-paying customers lodging there. She felt called to reach out to them.

“It was really a step of faith for me to go out on the streets to try to reach the women, because it was outside my experience and outside of my training,” she said. “But because I felt like the Lord gave me the burden, I convinced a couple of people in my church, and we started to make visits to the women on the streets. We’d just pray for them and share the love of Christ with them.”

Hake knew that, without an alternative way to make money, the women were unlikely to abandon prostitution. So she asked one woman, whose mother also was a prostitute, about her skills. “She thought if she had a sewing machine, she could sew up a storm,” Hake said. “… So I went out and bought two little sewing machines.”

A sewing workshop, which trains not only a skill but also teaches the women how to work in a regular job, was born. One of the original rescued women operates it these days. Some women who have been trained find jobs in nearby companies; others produce goods sold in a store established by Hake’s Jericho Ministries.

Over the years, Hake said, she and her

Submitted photo. team have persuaded about 60 women to abandon prostitution or garbage picking, and donors contributed sufficient funds for the ministries to build a group home on 130 acres outside of Tegucigalpa. They also built a school for the women’s children.

Soon after the home opened, the three women living there departed, one leaving her two daughters behind. Hake and the team took it as a sign that they should shift their focus to help children who have been abused, exploited, threatened by gangs or orphaned. Jericho Villa was transformed to a children’s home, where 35 or so children live, and a second school was built. Hake lives in a cabin on the property with five girls: a 17-year-old who wants to be a doctor and four orphaned sisters, whose mother died in childbirth.

Hake hopes to expand the ministries. A chapel is close to completion; she wants to build more residential cabins and another school and transform the children’s home to a retreat center. She maintains that God provides resources when Jericho Ministries need them.

She also believes God protected her when she was twice robbed at gunpoint in a country known for violent crime and that he cured her of cancer in 2008. She has no plans to retire.

“I’ve already been here 40 years,” she said. “So yeah, my prayer is that God will just let me keep doing it.”

Edward Garnes ’99: Serving sweet tea for the troubled mind

By Mary Dieter

Edward Garnes ’99 learned family history, but also life strategies and coping mechanisms from his grandmother. Sweet tea ethics, he calls them.

With those life lessons enhanced by master’s degrees in psychology and counseling and by training toward a doctorate that he plans to finish over the next year,

Garnes passes along her wisdom through his organization From Afros to Shelltoes, which provides cultural programming advocating practical strategies for social change, personal development and emotional healing. He consults with companies, universities, arts organizations and other clients who wish to empower Black men.

“My programming involves education, history, music and culture,” Garnes said. In

Sweet Tea Ethics, one of the organization’s programs, “I’m not giving a canned speech.

Someone is interviewing me and I am freestyling on topics.”

Another “very successful and highly requested” program is Hip Hop and

Healing, “where I talk about how the principles of hip hop have the same elements of Black psychology, and how

Black men and Black women and people of color have used hip hop to find healing and to find their authentic selves,” he said.

Garnes also customizes Black history, literature and psychology curricula for colleges and universities, based on the needs of the schools. He plans to continue

Photo: Shannon McCollum

operating his organization after earning a doctorate from the University of Tennessee; at the moment, he is a doctoral intern at the University of California, Berkeley.

It’s quite a journey for a man who came to DePauw to take pre-engineering classes but switched to an English writing major with the idea of being a journalist. He wrote for The DePauw student newspaper and got freelance assignments to interview entertainers and write biographies of them.

He also hosted and produced a DePauw television show called “The Underground,” which, among other things, featured commentary on activism, Black psychology and the arts. That was one hint that Garnes someday would emerge as an advocate for Black empowerment; he also co-founded the Student Coalition for Awareness, Revolution and Education, which strove to restructure student government to include representation from and funding for affinity groups such as the Association of African American Students.

But it was not until Garnes had graduated and found work writing for entertainment publications that someone pointed out that “my articles were deeply psychological. Not only was I interviewing people, but I had elements of their psychological development, how they built their self-esteem, how they were able to come back from difficulty.”

That someone was the late Joseph L. White, who was known as the godfather of Black psychology and who happens to be the father of DePauw President Lori S. White. As a DePauw student, Garnes was assigned to escort White around campus when the eminent psychologist visited. With White’s encouragement, Garnes applied to graduate programs in psychology and, though he still dabbles in writing prose and poetry, he headed into a new career.

Garnes, said his mentor Clifton West, “seeks to get up every day and do all that he can do with the gift of another 24 hours to make this world a better place.”

Another mentor, civil rights activist and poet Kevin Powell, put it this way: “I see his life work, especially around mental health, not only advancing Black men and Black boys, but all people, regardless of identity.”

Melissa Martin ’71: Breathing life into small towns

By Mary Dieter

Ahigh school counselor squelched Melissa Martin’s dream of becoming an architect. As a woman, she’d be allowed to design only plumbing and heating systems, never a building, he claimed.

All these years later, that counselor might do a double take if he saw Martin, a 1971 graduate of DePauw, at work.

Not only did she eventually take some architectural drawing classes that helped her flip several houses in the once decrepit and now posh Lockerbie Square neighborhood of Indianapolis, but Martin is assisting small towns interested in reviving their downtowns by restoring architectural gems.

Martin, who majored in studio art at DePauw and still paints, operates Great Towns Inc., a nonprofit she created in 2012 to assist small towns with revitalization. Over the next three years, she wound down her successful career as a public relations and marketing professional and owner of GMG Communications, which opened in 1984, and its principal division, Issues and Advocates, which was established in 1987.

She was inspired by the Orton Family Foundation, a Vermont concern that supports what it calls “community heart and soul development.” Martin said she admires Orton’s “totally different” approach to economic development in which it promotes “an emotional connection,” as opposed to the usual dollars-and-cents calculations made about economic development projects.

And so she has approached a few communities, offering her consultancy for free, thanks to some small grants that provide a tiny salary and cover

printing costs. Her work generally starts with an essay contest for local teens, “If These Walls Could Talk,” to teach them architecture and “instill a sense of pride and hope in their community.” Participants write an essay about a historic building in their town, including its history and architectural style, and can win a smartphone and a $500 scholarship.

She ran such a contest in Sheridan, a town of 3,000 people 40 miles north of Indianapolis, which generated an idea that she hopes results in a board-game pop-up store before Christmas. It also generated interest from a local business owner who wants to create a façade loan and grant program to help neighbors spruce up their storefronts.

Martin launched the first essay contest in Ferdinand, a town of 2,065 in Southwestern Indiana.

“Melissa led our community in the restoration and redevelopment of the 1886 New Farmers’ Store at 1245 Main St. in Ferdinand starting many years ago with her ‘If These Walls Could Talk’ program,” said Keith Fritz, a custom furniture maker whose creations are owned by, among others, presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Fritz, who owns another Ferdinand storefront that serves as his furniture-making shop, bought the Farmers’ Store and is rehabilitating it. So far, he has opened a two-bedroom suite for overnight stays, and Martin is working with him to write a grant application to renovate the façade and the rest of the 13,000-square-foot building.

“I could not have done this restoration and redevelopment without her,” he said. “She has guided me and encouraged me every step of the way.”

Martin has worked with several other communities, though the COVID-19 pandemic stalled her for more than a year. Sometimes local government officials contact her; other times, it’s a citizens’ group seeking help.

She does it, she said, because “I grew up in small towns in Indiana, Columbus and Greensburg. And I’m a ninth-generation Hoosier on both sides. So going back, my peeps were here before Indiana was even a state. And so I think it’s in my DNA to care about these communities. …

“I’m a behind-the-scenes person. I want to effect change. I get great satisfaction out of making things better.”

Photo: Brittney Way

Scott Moon ’83: Staging the stars

By Mary Dieter

He looked around at other options – being an accountant, or maybe following his father into the ministry. But ultimately Scott Moon ’83 came back to the work he has loved since high school.

“I started stage-managing in high school, and did it through college at DePauw,” he said. “I ended up stage-managing operas and musicals at DePauw because I was a technician who could read music.”

After graduation, he headed to Ohio

University to study lighting design. He was assigned to stage-manage a production of

“King Lear,” enjoyed it and earned kudos from the director. Maybe, Moon thought, stage management was where he belonged after all. He switched his program, igniting an upward trajectory that has taken him to the pinnacle of his profession: the Metropolitan

Opera in New York City, where he has been a stage manager for 30 years.

He paid his dues, to be sure. After graduating from DePauw, he worked briefly at the Red Barn Theatre in Frankfort,

Indiana. Later, he was a jack-of-all-trades at the Dry Gulch Dinner Theater in suburban

Chicago, where he made the set list – who would sing what – every day, operated the lights and the sound, ran rehearsal, carded patrons who might be underage and changed out the beer and wine kegs.

He spent time at the Lyric Opera in

Chicago; the Chautauqua Opera in New

York; and the Greater Miami Opera before landing at the Met, which puts on more than 200 performances in a non-

COVID year, with 800,000 people in

Submitted photo.

Moon and Gabriel, who appears in“La Boheme” and other productions.

attendance. Moon is one of seven stage managers, who rotate four sets of duties that are performed for each show.

“It’s nice that way, keeps it fresh, and you’re not doing the same thing all the time,” he said. He expects he will work on 16 to 18 of the 26 operas the Met will perform this season, which opened in late September and will run until mid-June.

Moon is proudest, he said, of the times when he has helped the production recover when something goes awry, like when the scenery turntable won’t budge. Or the time near the end of “Rigoletto,” when a restless audience alerted him that a projector was on the fritz, sending a burning odor – but no real danger – throughout the hall.

“There’s a line from an opera called ‘The Death of Klinghoffer,’” he said. “You remember Klinghoffer and the Achille Lauro? There’s a line from the captain that says ‘calmness at all costs.’ That is the motto. Calmness at all costs. The place is burning down? Be calm, you know? That’s the thing. Nobody wants a stage manager who’s freaking out.”

Photo: American University in Cairo

Barbara Lethem Ibrahim ’71: Seeking justice in the Mideast

By Mary Dieter

Queen Rania of Jordan (left) with Ibrahim at American University in Cairo, the queen’s alma mater.

Her parents were active Methodists, and they wanted their daughter, Barbara Lethem Ibrahim ’71, to attend a Methodist-affiliated college. She chose DePauw University.

“My parents, I am sure, thought ‘she’ll go to this nice Methodist school; she’ll meet a nice Methodist boy, pre-law or premed; and she’ll have a nice life close by,’” she said. “And then the ’60s hit, and they hit hard at DePauw … Everything changed.”

In a Zoom interview from Cairo,

Ibrahim chuckled at the irony of any expectation that hers would be a quiet life, lived as a well-educated housewife in some Midwestern suburb. She has lived in the tumultuous Middle East virtually all of the five decades since her graduation; carved out a significant international career for herself; and has been married 50 years to a human rights and democracy activist.

She doesn’t remember if she shared her parents’ expectations back then. “I was pretty busy, rebelling and objecting and being impatient with my parents’ generation, certainly with DePauw at the time,” she said. “It was a very conservative place.”

But she knows, without a doubt, that her activism precipitated her lifelong pursuits. “DePauw was a very safe place to rebel,” she said. “We could fight dean (Robert) Farber about women’s hours and hone our skills. If I’d been at Berkeley or a place where everybody was radical, it would have just been fitting in; it wouldn’t have been blazing a new personal path.”

She and Saad Ibrahim, who taught sociology at DePauw while he completed his dissertation, “kept bumping into each other at Black power rallies and anti-war demos,” she said. “He was young and progressive and he was going to go back to Egypt and change the world. He made that very clear when we first met that, if we were going to be serious, I needed to think about whether I could go and live in a place like Egypt.”

They were married and, with Saad expelled from Egypt, they lived in Beirut while Barbara earned a master’s degree in sociology from the American University of Beirut. They were allowed to move to Cairo in 1975, and Barbara earned a doctorate in sociology from Indiana University in 1980.

She got a job as a program officer with the Ford Foundation’s field office for the Arab region, where for 10 years she developed programs in Egypt, Palestine, Jordan and Yemen about women’s employment, poverty and gender roles.

“I had a chance to use my academic training to help organizations – whether universities, nonprofits or, in some cases, labor unions – to do programming that would open opportunities for women in the labor force,” she said. “… I couldn’t have landed a better job.”

But she eschewed her bosses’ wish for her to move into administration, and went to work as regional director for the Population Council, overseeing programs from Morocco to Pakistan for 14 years.

“I was very interested in women’s health – always had been – and I thought maybe there would be room for an adolescent girls’ program because they were taking a lot of interest in gender inequities,” she said. “I was also interested in the whole problem of population growth and how it was holding back Arab countries, and you can’t get women to adopt family planning if you’re not offering them a high quality of health care services.”

Her team conducted the first adolescent research at a national level in Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan and participated when the United Nations held an international conference in Cairo in 1994. “It was a real heady time,” she said.

It also was personally turbulent, as Saad Ibrahim was sent to prison several times for his political activity. “One of the things I noticed that made him and others very vulnerable was that they had to seek funding for their work externally,” she said. “There were not Arab foundations or institutions, or even individuals, that did grant-making for development or social change. …

“I decided that I should look at grantmaking and philanthropy … and see whether there was room to grow a new institution that would promote strategic Arab philanthropy.” She pitched the idea to the American University in Cairo, which hired her in 2006 to create and direct the John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement, named for a former university president who, coincidentally, had hired Ibrahim at the Ford Foundation.

Under Ibrahim, the center created 40 experiential-learning courses for students; conducted research; and did advocacy work. Using data, it proved that female genital mutilation was not dying out, as the Egyptian government mistakenly thought, leading to laws that criminalized the practice and imposed prison terms on doctors who performed it.

“I’m not a flamboyant, in-your-face advocate,” she said, but rather someone who uses “reasoning, finding champions, testing the ground, but then having the courage of your convictions if you’re challenged. And having your data, marshalling it well. …

“My staff wanted to talk about the ‘draconian measures’ of the ministry and the ‘despicable role’ of (some) groups. You take out ‘despicable,’ and you take out ‘draconian.’ Just give facts and let those do the work for you. I think there’s a temperament, perhaps, that I brought from my solid, Midwestern background that was helpful because, when people get passionate about a subject, as many of my young staff members were, they need a little bit of experienced guidance about what’s effective. Yes, have your passion, but then think about how you’re going to effectively make a difference. And that was a good role for someone a little bit older to play.”

DePauw senior Edward Greene ’71 was student-teaching in Philadelphia, and some unanswered questions nagged him.

“I was in an upper-grade, middle-school setting and trying to answer the question of how do children learn,” said Greene, a clarinetist who planned to teach music. “You do student teaching, you take methods courses, they have you demonstrate that you can do a lesson plan, but you’re never asked the question: Do you know anything about the individuals with whom you are working as human beings, who are learners?

“How do children acquire and use knowledge? How do children come to understand the world? It was something that was in my head.”

He voiced his concern to the woman from whom he rented a room. She happened to be an administrator and trainer at Head Start, then a new federal program that provides early childhood education to low-income families, and she introduced Greene to the program, which had been created in 1965.

Head Start excited him so much that he wrote his semester paper about it. And though he spent a year teaching school in

Detroit after he graduated from DePauw, he soon headed west, with plans to study for a master’s degree in child and human development at Pacific Oaks College and work with 4- and 5-year-olds in its children’s school. In the summer before classes started, he worked in an infant and toddler program, getting hands-on experience with little ones.

“That’s how I grounded myself in terms of really understanding what it means to be with an infant,” he said.

Yet Greene faced a major obstacle:

He was a man in what was primarily a woman’s profession.

He found that “men don’t talk about child development,” and thus he had to “figure out how to make my way in that field.”

He started by obtaining the master’s degree and sufficiently impressing Pacific Oaks that it appointed him to its faculty to work on teacher training and child development. He also found the support of mentors who were prominent in the field. An instructor introduced him to Barbara Bowman, a pioneer in early childhood education who cofounded the groundbreaking Erikson Institute, a Chicago graduate school, and who became Greene’s most cherished mentor.

Said Bowman: “I was impressed with his genuine enthusiasm for the work on behalf of children and families. In addition, his commitment to the early childhood field was evident through his thoughtful examination of issues and

Photo: Saed Hindash Photography

willingness to work hard. I was particularly taken by his warmth and willingness to engage with advocates of all ages, races and backgrounds. I am proud to be listed as a mentor, since I learned as much from him as I gave.”

He moved from Pacific Oaks on to other jobs, including the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the Coalition for Children and Youth and the Michigan State Senate,

Edward Greene ’71: Exploring how children learn

By Mary Dieter

where he supported the Education Committee chair.

Mentors urged him to seek more education, so Greene earned a doctorate degree in elementary and early childhood education from Indiana State University. Others in the field saw his potential and began to enlist him to appear on panels or write a book chapter. He was asked to do photography on a project, which “gave me visibility as someone who looked at environments through a lens of what are the ways in which environments are set up for young children.”

His former landlady, Helen Basham, hired him for his first consulting job, setting off a varied career in which Greene has worked both as employee of and consultant to numerous governmental agencies, private organizations, foundations and educational institutions across the country. He became an expert in children’s digital media environments; worked three years as the global outreach director for Sesame Workshop and nine years for the Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network; and consulted with the Discovery Channel, PBS Ready to Learn and Children’s Television Workshop.

He delved into creation and advocacy for good public policy, such as better pay for child caregivers and recognition that child care is not merely babysitting. He has served on numerous national and statewide boards, including serving as the first chair of the men’s caucus of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. And he has won a number of awards that have celebrated, among other things, his vision, innovation and leadership in child development.

Greene recognizes that he has enjoyed a serendipitous career, sometimes being “in the right place at the right time. And people saw something in me and I was too silly to say ‘no.’”

But he has put the work in too. “I was learning so much about how the world actually does work,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of having a cookie-cutter approach to life or education. You have to put things together and you have to take them apart and look at them and put them back together with what you’ve learned.”

Sally Smerz Grooms Cowal ’66: Healing countries and people around the globe

By Mary Dieter

Running the picturesque Muse Vineyards situated in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley could make for an idyllic life.

And, to be sure, Sally Smerz

Grooms Cowal ’66 appreciates her

“absolutely gorgeous” surroundings 100 miles west of Washington D.C. and the chance to “stay in one place and learn the joys of the seasonality of the place.”

But a traditional retirement? Not for her.

For one thing, Cowal misses “the interaction with people of very different backgrounds and cultures than my own …

“It’s a huge change in my life because, for a variety of reasons, ever since I left

DePauw 55 years ago, I have been what you’d call a global citizen – you know, someone who traveled extensively and spent most of her existence, both personal and professional, thinking about and living in other countries around the world and dealing with their problems.”

For another, she sees similarities in her life then and now.

“I’m the vice chairman now of Friends of the North Fork of the Shenandoah

River, and we worry about conservation issues and education of young people in the valley about the value of their river and how we need to protect it,” she said.

“And the Shenandoah River eventually flows into the Chesapeake Bay. So it is connected to the world. …

“I’m discovering that a lot of the problems are actually more similar than I knew. We have communities of disadvantaged people here. We have communities of poverty here. We have pockets of poor health here. We have high drug abuse here, a pretty high suicide rate. We’ve had a pretty severe COVID epidemic. So all these things that, for 50 years, I thought I had to go somewhere else – Africa, Latin America, Asia – to find, I find similar challenges and a similar ability to be involved.”

As a DePauw history major, Cowal recognized that she had to venture outside the expectations of women of her generation to find the challenges she sought. “I thought that my options were nursing or teaching,” she said. “I found those not broad enough to encompass what I was interested in. And also, let’s look at it more pragmatically: The pay of nurses and teachers was extremely poor.”

She spent a semester in Washington, where she learned she could pursue a career path to her liking and make more money by working for the government. She spent much of her senior year preparing for the federal service exam and did well, winning a spot high on the list from which agencies would invite job candidates to interview.

She landed a job with the U.S. Information Agency, which promoted American values in other countries. While she was able to get her master’s degree from the George Washington University, Cowal was dissatisfied that she had been assigned to work stateside.

“If I’m in the bucket brigade, I’d rather be the one throwing the water on the fire, not the one filling up the buckets,” she said. So she took more exams that led to her assignment successively to India as a public affairs trainee; Colombia as head of a center where high school and university students were taught about America and American values; and Israel, as cultural attaché. The latter assignment provided “these enormously important and rewarding chances to participate in a world that was far beyond my wildest dreams growing up on the south side of Chicago.”

Cowal had been in Israel four years when Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, asked her to serve as political counselor. “That was my breakthrough to becoming a State Department person with higher aspirations, and certainly a broader pool of things that I might choose to do for the rest of my career,” Cowal said. “… I played that out, and I was able to do everything I wanted to do.”

That included serving as ministercounselor at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and U.S. ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

She retired in 1992 from the foreign service, figuring additional service “would be a little bit of a repeat of what I had been doing all along.” What’s more, “by the time I reached my early 50s, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist, the Berlin Wall had

Photo: David E. Guggenheim fallen. “It no longer seemed to me to be a debate or a fight or war between these two countries, or even these two systems, but rather, the problems to me seemed to be the problems that we face in common, and I would define those as poverty and poor health and underdevelopment and lack of education.

“And so the next 25 years or so of my life, I spent in the United Nations and in various nongovernmental organizations, … trying to see what I might do to make a contribution to alleviating those problems.”

That included working on HIV/AIDS for the Joint United Nations Programme and for Population Services International and on international cancer-prevention programs at the American Cancer Society. With contributions down during the COVID-19 pandemic, the cancer society curbed its international work, and Cowal retired in August 2020.

Well, sort of. She and her husband, Robert Muse, planted their 50-acre vineyard 15 years ago and produce award-winning wines. Though he practices international law in D.C., Muse nurtures the vines and produces the wine. Cowal handles public and community relations and runs a tasting room, a restaurant and a guest house.

“Part of the reason my husband and I established this vineyard and business 15 years ago was from a sense that we didn’t see ourselves sitting on a beach somewhere, doing very little,” she said. “We wanted to be active.”

Jan Risi ’81: Transforming a mom-and-pop into a competitor

By Mary Dieter

Franchisees of Subway® restaurants had a problem, and they looked to Jan Risi ’81 for help.

Would Risi use her considerable experience in the food business to help them purchase food, packaging, equipment and services for the lowest possible prices? The brand had been functioning in that role, but the 6,000 franchisees that existed at the time, 1996, thought there may be a better way.

“I realized quickly that, although the name ‘Subway’ was known, … it was a momand-pop organization. And it was a very unique opportunity because, although they had been successful in establishing the brand, which was always the toughest thing to do, they didn’t act like a big brand. So there was opportunity to solve business problems in a more traditional manner. And it was implementing processes and controls and being involved in agribusiness and things that they weren’t involved in, to really help make them a long-term, competitive player.”

Risi formed the Independent

Purchasing Cooperative Inc. and has grown the franchisee-owned cooperative to where it now services 42,000 stores around the globe. She is the president and chief executive officer, overseeing services for the 25,000 stores, with about 10,000 franchisees, in North America in what is a $5 billion business.

“Over time what happened is we were so successful that the brand wanted us to do

more things outside of the normal things that go into the supply-chain responsibilities for restaurants,” she said. “So we started taking over technology and we set up a payments platform and a gift card loyalty program. We built bread plants and we got into construction and a whole host of other things that I think helps you attain success.

“I did not have the vision for any of those things. I worked hard, we were successful, and they came, but (when people say) ‘you had this vision,’ … that’s not really true. I wish I could claim that, but that’s not really true. … It’s the timing and being at the right place at the right time. And surrounding yourself with the right people is really important.”

Many of her leadership team have worked with her for the cooperative’s entire 25-year history. “This is not ‘the Jan Risi Show;’” she said. “I hired people a lot smarter than me – which, by the way, is the true key to success. So a lot of things came together to make the model successful.”

Gary Lemon, the J. Stanford Smith chair in economics and management, taught Risi and now counts her as a friend. “She’s one of the most generous people I have ever met,” he said. “… She truly cares about people. In terms of her business, it shows through. … I mean, Subway has had some rough financial times during the pandemic, and she truly cared about her employees and what it meant for them during this particularly trying time.”

Risi, an English composition major at DePauw, hadn’t planned a career in business. She obtained her teaching certificate and expected to teach. But after an interview during her senior year, Ralston Purina hired her as a trainee in commodities. “There were very few women in commodities at that time,” she said, and “I certainly wasn’t qualified.” Maybe Ralston Purina, she surmises, “had some vision.”

The work involved buying grain that would be used to feed livestock. “They sent me to Texas, and I was working in a big, old, dirty feed mill, and I loved it,” she said. “I loved this idea of seed in the field to product, and watching all the steps in between, and the manufacturing, and then the business step of it going out to dealers, and then the dealer selling it to consumers. I thought it was fascinating, an eye opener for me of what it took behind the scenes to get things done. …

“I’ve never looked back; I’ve just loved being in this field.”

Subsequent jobs – all in food – enabled her to learn about manufacturing, operations, sourcing, distribution, marketing and logistics. And prepared her for the monumental task of creating a cooperative from scratch.

Risi is successful because of her ability to communicate, Lemon said. He recalled that, as a student, Risi came to him, worried that she didn’t understand financial accounting. Indeed, he gave her a “C,” though he teases her that she probably deserved a “D.”

But her less-than-stellar performance with accounting concepts didn’t faze him, he told her then. And her career has proven him right.

“I said, ‘Jan, someday you’re going to be very successful. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to hire some dumb schmo like me to do accounting.’ … You do not need to know the nitty gritty to be successful. And Jan, obviously, is very successful.”

Randy Dwenger ’80: Finding hope for troubled youths

By Sarah McAdams

For more than 30 years, Randy Dwenger ’80 has treated all sorts of people struggling with mental illness or substance abuse, but “I have a passion for working with adolescents and young adults.

“This is a population that I particularly like because there’s so much hope,” said Dwenger, a medical doctor board-certified in psychiatry and addiction medicine. “I don’t really see that there’s a ceiling that they can only go so far. The sky is really the limit. If we can address the addiction, then there’s so much hope and possibility for every person.”

He maintains a private practice in Connecticut and is chief medical officer at Mountainside, a substance abuse treatment center. Over his career, he has run an adolescent rehab facility, developed a detox program and overseen a homeless veterans’

treatment program. His private practice focuses mostly on psychiatric evaluations, managing medications and some psychotherapy. While he works with clients who are in various stages of recovery from addiction, Dwenger also treats a lot of clients suffering from anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder and other mental disorders. He also consults on treatments for students at local boarding schools, some of whom exhibit attention deficit disorder, “but there is also a lot of depression, anxiety, substance use and overall angst among young people today.”

The pandemic has affected young people in a significant way as they have missed out on important milestones such as graduations, senior spring events and college campus tours. “It’s been harder to connect with teenagers through Zoom and harder for them to feel connected,” he said.

“And I also think – perhaps because of the political climate, or possibly due to legitimate concerns about the planet and their futures – it has been easier for young people to lose sight of their path and often struggle to find their personal trajectory.”

Dwenger believes it is important to expand access to mental health treatment and decrease the stigma attached to seeking it.

“Addiction is a disease of the brain,” he said, “and involves brain circuitry and reward, memory and motivation. Just like diabetes is a disease, just like hypertension is a disease, it’s treatable. And there doesn’t need to be that judgment that you’re a bad person. Rather, you’ve got a sickness. Let’s see if we can help you get better.”

The stigma can be decreased through education, he said. “And it’s through knowing that there’s someone whom you love who could be helped by getting treatment, rather than shaming or shunning them.”

Dwenger also strives to reduce stigma in his work training medical students. “The one goal I have for them is to finish the rotation with the understanding that people suffering from addictions are human beings with an illness and deserving of our compassion and attention and caring,” he said.

“Teaching new doctors and society overall this simple point goes a long way to reducing stigma and can help people seek treatment and recovery rather than feel shame and avoid accessing treatment that works and can help save their lives.”

He acknowledges that the battle against mental illness and addiction can be daunting. “If I’m going to look at the situation from a drone, high above, the landscape doesn’t look that good,” he said. “But when I look at it from a microscope, I can get really hopeful and excited that I can help this person.”

Submitted photo.

Jennifer Pope Baker ’89: Making noise about quiet problems

By Mary Dieter

For 23 years, Jennifer Pope Baker ’89 has done the serious work of lifting women out of poverty and intimate violence. So every once in a while, she ventures off-script, and dives into a volunteer gig in sports.

“My heart is really in the work I’m doing with women and equity,” she said,

“but I love sports. And so that feeds my soul and gives me something else to do.”

As president of the Women’s Fund of

Central Indiana, she oversees its grantmaking to organizations and projects that support women involved in caregiving of children or the elderly; experiencing intimate violence; or struggling with economic security. In the last several years, the fund – which is part of the Central

Indiana Community Foundation – also has supported work to enhance mental health and emotional well-being and has been more intentional about ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion in its work, she said.

Baker didn’t plan to go into women’s advocacy or philanthropy. At DePauw, she was a communication major involved with

WGRE student radio and occasionally the student newspaper.

“I thought that maybe I would do something like that, but I didn’t have a concrete plan,” she said. Her parents urged her to find meaningful work during school breaks, and United Way in Cleveland provided a position throughout her college years and upon graduation.

She later participated in a training program that enabled her to interview with United Way agencies around the country. A position opened in Indianapolis, “and I thought, ‘oh, my friends from college are there.’” She moved and worked three years at United Way

Photo: Brittney Way there, made a couple other stops and then, in 1998, was hired as the only staff member of the two-year-old women’s fund, which was in the “interesting notion phase,” trying to raise money and home in on the work it ultimately would do.

“We were very careful to say that we were going to do things other people were not paying attention to,” Baker said. Leaders “wanted to look at the quiet problems, the ones you don’t say out loud, the ones that happen to ‘those people,’ other people.”

More than two decades on, she still enjoys the work. “I still have new challenges,” she said. “There are still new things to do. And I think that as long as there are new things and I’m challenged, it’s the right fit for me.”

Brian Payne, CICF’s president and chief executive officer, said Baker “is a great connector of people and ideas. She generously opens up her network of smart, committed and charitable people that will get you the expertise or advice you need to go from plateau to breakthrough.”

Baker finds respite from her day job in volunteering for sports events, such as serving as vice chair of the Indiana Sports Corp and as NFL team liaison for the 2012 Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis. When the NCAA announced in January that its entire March Madness basketball tournament, not just the Final Four, would be played in a controlled environment in Central Indiana, Baker took a leave of absence from the Women’s Fund to chair the local organization and coordinate the massive logistics of hosting 68 teams playing 67 games.

“Jennifer,” said Rick Fuson, the sports corp chair and the president and chief operating officer of the Indiana Pacers, “is a pragmatic problem-solver, someone who truly lives the principle that anything is possible when we do not worry who gets the credit.”

Ashley English ’01: Exhibiting empathy born of experience

By Sarah McAdams

Little did Ashley English ’01 know that hitting bottom can set you up to bounce back up.

It was in 2004 – June 26 specifically, because she remembers it well – that she decided that her lifestyle

“wasn’t in line with the way I was raised, what I was taught and certainly not in line with God … I said, ‘I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m morally bankrupt. I am spiritually broken. I do not feel good about things that I’m doing, where I’m progressing in my life.’ And it was at that moment that I said, ‘tomorrow will be a new day.’”

For 17 years now, every tomorrow has been a new day. Not only did she permanently set aside the alcohol and marijuana she had regularly used, as well as “other drugs (that) were not unknown to me,” but she passes along her example and expertise as a licensed addictions counselor to other substance abusers who find their way to her and The Willow

Center, her addiction treatment center in

Brownsburg, Indiana.

Clients are referred by physicians, employers, schools or the courts, with their enrollment precipitated by threats of divorce or loss of job or some other inciting incident.

English declines to describe the incident that prompted her turnabout or the specific substances she abused, lest other substance abusers use their differences as an excuse to avoid treatment. They may say, “I didn’t use that or she didn’t use what I use and therefore I can’t find hope,” she said. “People like to find reasons why they can’t identify with you.”

And yet, English and the members of her staff who likewise are in recovery most assuredly identify with them. “I want people to know that there isn’t anything that they’re going through that somebody else isn’t,” she said. “They need to know that they will get through it and their story is valued. There’s a purpose for that. Do not give up before the miracle happens. It will happen. But you have to reach out.”

English said she used substances while a student at DePauw, though “it was after DePauw that I totally crossed the line of moderation.” When she arrived in Greencastle, she was considering majoring in psychology, but a few days of a statistics class changed her mind. She considered communication, but eventually switched to education studies and student taught, though it didn’t feel like the right choice for her.

As graduation approached, her sorority sisters were landing jobs, and that “just added to the panic that I wasn’t good enough or worthy enough.” After graduation, she taught as a substitute

Photo: Brittney Way and took temp jobs. Three years later, her reckoning came, followed by a new job at a methadone clinic and, six months after that, a position at what is now Community Fairbanks Recovery Center in Indianapolis.

She stayed eight years, during which she became a certified life coach with a specialty working with substance abusers, then got licensed as an addictions counselor.

Then, in August 2012, the owner of a counseling center who was shutting down his operation asked if she wanted to buy his assets and take over his client list. With another counselor and an administrative assistant, she opened The Willow Center.

Nine years later, she still sees some individual clients and runs a men’s group but spends most of her time overseeing a staff of 15-20 who provide customized individual and group counseling to about 400 clients a month. She hopes to eventually open more centers.

Last year, as she watched a softball game played by former clients – part of the center’s after-care programming – she noticed some joyous children in the bleachers. Their father was on the field.

At that moment, she said, she realized that “this is success, when your kids are smiling, your wife is here, they’re cheering you on where they’re supposed to be cheering you on. It was in that moment I said ‘this is why we do what we do. We’re reunifying families and communities and we’re giving people their dad back, their mom back, their son back. And to me, that is success when you can look over and the kids are smiling again.”