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A Conversation With Provost Christine Siegel, PhD, on Fairfield’s New Carnegie Status
by Susan Cipollaro
Fairfield University has moved into the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education’s Doctoral Universities category, as one of 73 new doctoral, professional institutions to be added. Fairfield was formerly classified among regional master’s institutions. The new classification was made official at the end of January 2022.
The Carnegie Classification is the most widely accepted classification system in higher education, and has been the leading framework for classifying all institutions of higher education in the United States for almost 50 years.
“We are excited that this distinction reflects the evolution and innovation of our academic programs, in particular the growth of our graduate and professional programs,” said Mark R. Nemec, PhD, Fairfield University President. “With this recategorization, we are on the road to becoming a University of national prominence and reputation.”
According to Carnegie’s Basic Classification description, the doctoral category includes institutions “that awarded at least 20 research/ scholarship doctoral degrees during the update year and also institutions with below 20 research/scholarship doctoral degrees that awarded at least 30 professional practice doctoral degrees in at least 2 programs.”
The new classification distinguishes Fairfield nationally, and recognizes the efforts of the University — under the leadership of President Nemec and Provost Christine Siegel, PhD — to offer doctoral programs that are preparing students at the highest level for service to others. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Fairfield University Magazine: In reference to the growth of the University, what doctoral programs has Fairfield added over the last few years that contributed to the change in the classification? What was the evolution?
Provost Siegel: Fairfield had always been in the Carnegie grouping that was between a fouryear college and a doctoral university, because we had graduate programs in education, early on. Although we started as a college in the 1940s, we later grew out a business school and an engineering school. We’re a university, we’re comprehensive, and we offer master’s degrees. So that’s where we’ve sat since the Classification began in the ’70s, and as we
Christine Siegel, Provost
grew out our professional schools and master’s degree programs through 2014.
As we looked at the graduate programs we offer — increasingly in the areas of practice such as nursing education — the higher-level degree became not just the master’s, but the practice doctorate. We have a doctorate of nursing practice. We have a doctorate of clinical nutrition. We have a doctorate of education, which is called an EdD. These are doctoral degrees that are focused on practice out in the field and on professional training, not on research.
Around 2014 Carnegie began to recognize, within the classification of doctoral universities, this distinction between research universities and universities that offer doctoral-level professional degrees. As we build these programs out and add more doctoral programs, we now move into this new grouping: doctoral professional.
How are these programs reflective of Fairfield’s values as a Jesuit Catholic university?
We have added doctoral programs that are preparing people at the highest level for service to others. The very first one that we added was the DNP — Doctor of Nursing Practice — and within that we offer a couple of different tracks: for nurse midwives, nurse anesthetists, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners, and family nurse practitioners.
We are training nurses at the highest level to be in service to women — because midwifery is about women’s health — and in service to people who need to have serious medical procedures for which they need to be anaesthetized, and people with mental health concerns. As a Jesuit Catholic university, that’s where we went first in our doctoral programs. To me, that’s aligned with being “men and women for others.”
Another doctoral program that just started this past September is the EdD, offered by the School of Education and Human Development. This program is really focused on school leadership, and right now the target audience is people working in the K-12 school system, who want to become leaders. There’s a strong social justice orientation to this program; it recognizes that education is a work of social justice.
We are also anticipating, in the future, a new EdD track in higher education administration, recognizing that there is a need for really well-prepared leaders in higher education as much as at the K-12 level.
Also, our Dolan School is in conversation about a DBA — Doctor of Business Administration. We’ve done some initial exploratory studies for the DBA and would anticipate that, as with all of our Dolan programs, there would be a focus on social entrepreneurship and ethics in business.
How does this new classification impact college rankings?
To be clear, the Carnegie Classification is not a ranking, it’s just a descriptive category of what we offer as an institution.
Because our descriptor in Carnegie has changed, the group that we’re rated with by U.S. News and World Report also changes, and we move from those institutions that are ranked regionally to a set of institutions that are ranked nationally.
The related U.S. News and World Report change means that we can start to imagine ourselves — and start to position ourselves — as an institution of national stature, as opposed to just regional stature. We didn’t begin to do the things we are doing because we were trying to achieve these different descriptors or rankings, but these are measures of recognition of the work that we’re doing to expand our program offerings.
I think that we have to anticipate that our ranking is going to change because “regionally ranked institutions” is a smaller group to be ranked against. We’re going from regional to national; we’re not going to be number-one ranked.
It’s all part of national prominence. We’re excited about it and we’re proud. As chief academic officer — personally and professionally — it’s more about really extending the good work that we do, as we educate and prepare people to go out and do good work themselves. l F
THREE FAIRFIELD ALUMNAE ARE INFLUENCING A GENERATION OF DIGITAL CONSUMERS
Clockwise, from top: Kelly Larkin ’06 in Lincoln Park, Chicago; Nina Poosikian ’17, MA’19 at Edge in New York, New York; Lauren Romano ’14 at home in Connecticut.
379kfollowers & counting
by Nicolette Massaro
Social media was once a simple way of making connections with friends, but it has continued to evolve into a fully integrated component of our daily lives. Career recruitment, breaking news, and e-commerce sales all seem to have found a home on our phones.
And we consume digital material more enthusiastically than ever: On average, Americans spent more than 1,300 hours on social media in 2021. With that kind of attention, it is no wonder that commercial brands have found ways to meet their customers where they are, and are championing social media experts to drive sales and brand awareness.
This has created a new kind of entrepreneur: the social influencer. As masters of consumer behavior, influencers, bloggers, and content creators root themselves in their passions and build online communities of users with like-interests. There’s an influencer for every industry. From $1.7 billion in 2016, influencer marketing growth is estimated to have reached $13.8 billion in 2021 and projected to reach $15 billion by the end of 2022.
Among Fairfield grads working in the space are Nina Poosikian ’17, MA’19 (@whatninaate), Kelly Larkin ’06 (@kellyinthecity), and Lauren Romano ’14 (@simplylaurenrose), who together boast a collective audience of 379,000 followers on Instagram alone.
Their content contains engagement and plugs for brands in a variety of different industries, from food and beverage to fashion and beauty, but with one thing in common — powerful consumer influence in a booming space.
Scrolling through Nina Poosikian’s @whatninaate account on Instagram, you’ll find organic content ranging from favorite menu items from local restaurants, to personally curated recipes like her spicy vodka sauce. Between these organic day-to-day posts are sponsored content pieces paid for by third parties.
In February of 2020, Poosikian answered the call to take part in a product development campaign for one of her all-time favorite snack food brands. “I was able to work with the Cheetos and Frito Lay team and five other influencers to develop the packaging, naming, and overall look of the new Cheetos Mac ‘N Cheese,” she said. “I received packages of possible flavor mixtures and helped develop the final product that is currently on store shelves.”
In an Instagram post from August 2020, Poosikian gushed, “They come in three different varieties — Bold & Cheesy, Flamin’ Hot, and Cheesy Jalapeno… I’ve been a diehard Cheetos fan all my life, they’re truly my favorite chip, and to be part of the process for this new line of products was such an amazing process to be a part of!”
But the Cheetos campaign wasn’t her first taste of success. As a student at Fairfield, Nina founded Spoon Fairfield, a subset of Spoon University — a nationwide collegiate-food blog that combines the talents of journalists, marketers, and event planners. Searchable as @spoonfairfield on Instagram, the account continues to document tasty meals cooked up both on Fairfield’s campus and downtown for an audience of nearly 9,000 followers today.
Poosikian recalled truly finding her voice about a year into running @whatninaate, veering away from what she thought her followers wanted to see and posting more about what felt true to herself: “I started to find my voice and really have a personality behind what I was posting, instead of the popular or trendy food posts I was doing before.” It was when she shifted her focus that brands like Cheetos began to reach out and connect organically for partnerships and sponsored campaign opportunities.
Kelly Larkin has been working with iconic brands like J.Crew, Vineyard Vines, and Barbour for many years, and while you’ll see her stylized product selections on her Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest accounts, they also permanently reside on her blog: kellyinthecity.com.
“Instead of thinking about social media as my business I think of it as a tool that helps me run my business,” she said. She noted her favorite brand partnerships to be those that bring her husband and kids into the mix — venturing around Chicago (and around the country and world) to capture that special shot to act as a marketing piece. “I take photos as I normally would as a mother and photographer; I feel lucky that my job allows me to spend so much time with my family.”
Larkin’s approach has shifted over time, calling for a greater degree of focus. When she started in the early 2010s, she said, “there wasn’t any pressure! I posted whatever I wanted — whether it was a city scene or the shoes on my feet — in the moment, and interacted with the community a couple times per day. Over time, though, there was a shift away from the instant and toward more curated, perfect content.”
“Interestingly enough,” she continued, “we’re beginning to see another shift, this time away from perfection and back toward the instant. People want content that’s real.”
Clockwise, from upper left: Nina Poosikian ’17, MA’19 waterside in Hoboken, New Jersey; Nina’s Instagram campaign with Cheetos Mac ‘n Cheese on display; Nina’s scrumptious Instagram ad for Rave Apples with her apple crisp recipe inspired by her mom’s apple-pie filling.
At right, from top: Kelly Larkin ’06 sporting a look by J.Crew, J.Crew Factory, and Madewell; Kelly with her husband, Mitch, and their two daughters, Lucy and Emma, in Ocean City, New Jersey.
For Lauren Romano too, staying true to her own tastes and values has been the key to success.
“I know my audience trusts me to share things I truly love; they know I wouldn’t steer them wrong with any of my recommendations,” she said. “Whether we have a large following or a smaller following, that relationship with our audience is what’s key.”
Her blog simplylaurenrose.com is a hub for all-things in the fashion and beauty space. Her content is widely relatable and helps readers navigate the ins and outs of their day-to-day lives. Some of her recent posts include “Affordable Workwear Haul,” “New Skincare Finds,” and “Must Have Back to School Tool.”
By day, Lauren is a Kindergarten teacher, and her range of content online and on social act as a guide for followers navigating dualpassion careers and side hustles.
A common thread in both of her jobs is kindness — practicing and encouraging kindness in her classroom and fostering it in the way she builds her online community; a commitment to good-will acts as another example of how Fairfield’s Jesuit-inspired education has prepared graduates to pay it forward.
“I have always worn LOFT,” she said, speaking of the fashion retailer that she champions on Instagram “and it was such a ‘pinch me’ moment when I found out they wanted to work with me.”
LOFT gives back to different organizations like St. Jude’s, Donor’s Choose, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, giving greater purpose to Romano’s work as an influencer.
Consumerism can feel overwhelming, but influencers make purchasing decisions simple. Their job goes far beyond posting a pretty product image with “#ad” in the caption below. They go into great detail, from the product’s composition and how it should be used, to what makes it stand out against competitors; they weigh the pros and cons from product packaging all the way to product value; and even go as far as answering questions personally to further ease their fans’ inquiring minds — all to make a lasting impact and urge followers to become long-term brand loyalists instead of one-off purchasers. l F
Above, from top: Lauren Romano ’14 sharing one of her Valentine’s Day-inspired looks with items from LOFT; Lauren in a cozy ‘Be a Nice Human’ sweatshirt.
Fairfield grads are making an impact in this growing industry. For a glimpse of Larkin’s posts, go to @kellyinthecity; for Poosikian’s posts, visit @whatninaate, and look for Romano’s posts at @simplylaurenrose on Instagram.
Acropolis The Reborn
Art History’s Dr. Katherine Schwab is working with a team to create a virtual Parthenon.
by Alan Bisbort
One of the most significant historical treasures in the world, the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, stands on a flattish rock that rises above the city. It is dominated by its most storied structure, the Parthenon, on which construction began in 447 B.C. Over time, many scholars have contributed to our understanding of the Acropolis, which represents a critical milestone in the cultural history of the Western world.
One scholar making a significant contribution to this ongoing study is Katherine Schwab, PhD, professor of art history in Fairfield’s Department of Visual and Performing Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences.
— Katherine Schwab, PhD, Art History Professor
Currently, Dr. Schwab is a major contributor to a project called “Athens Reborn: Acropolis,” a virtual reality tour that, when launched in April 2022, will bring one of the greatest ancient cultural heritage sites in the world back to its prime.
“Athens Reborn: Acropolis” is the brainchild of Indiana-based Flyover Zone, a world leader in virtual tourism that was founded in 2016 by Bernard Frischer, whose company has successfully produced the virtual tours “Rome Reborn” and “Egypt Reborn,” among others. Frischer enlisted Dr. Schwab’s expertise to help with “recreating” the Acropolis as an interactive and immersive experience, presenting the site as it was at its peak, in the fifth century B.C. Among the structures to be “reborn” are the Propylaea (gateway to the Acropolis); the Erechtheion, a temple honoring Athenian king Erechtheus and the deities Poseidon and Athena; the Temple of Athena Nike; and the Parthenon, dedicated to the goddess Athena.
It is with the Parthenon, in particular, that Dr. Frischer sought Dr. Schwab’s help. The Fairfield professor is a leading expert on the Parthenon’s metopes (pronounce ‘mehtuh-pees’), 92 once-painted Pentelic marble blocks that formerly rimmed the temple’s peristyle above its columns. Each metope is 4.5 feet square and is usually comprised of at least two deeply sculpted images against a background. A big challenge for Dr. Schwab and the Flyover team was to recreate the original colors for the figures, their clothing, the horses, and the metallic additions, whether harnessing or weaponry.
“I discussed these pigments with a chemical engineer who works on the Acropolis,” said Dr. Schwab. “People forget that these buildings on the Acropolis were painted and very colorful in their time. They weren’t just the color of the marble.”
An even greater challenge for Dr. Schwab is that many of the original 92 metopes are missing. Some were intentionally damaged in the sixth century A.D. when the building was converted to a Christian temple and antipagan zealots mutilated them with hammers.
“We can’t forget that, for a thousand years, the Parthenon was a temple dedicated to Athena,” said Dr. Schwab. “These were Olympian gods and, thus, pagan symbols. One Byzantine scholar told me that the level of violence that was used to desecrate these metopes was an indication of the dire threat the images presented.”
Some of the other metopes were seriously damaged or destroyed by an explosion in 1687, when Venetian forces fired on the Parthenon, hitting a powder magazine housed there. Fifteen of the best preserved metopes, part of the “Acropolis Marbles” were removed and eventually sold to London’s British Museum by Thomas Bruce, 7th Lord Elgin, in 1816. Another metope was removed to the Louvre in Paris. In all, approximately 60 metopes survive today, whole or in part.
“Only a few west metopes remain today on the building itself,” said Dr. Schwab. “We don’t
previous page: View of the Parthenon from the southwest, Athenian Acropolis. above: View of the Caryatid Porch, Erechtheion, Original Caryatids are on view in the Acropolis Museum and the British Museum. These cement copies by late sculptor Stelios Triantis were installed during the 1970s.
know why they weren’t damaged. Possibly it was because they depicted good versus evil and the early Christians who converted the Parthenon into a church left them alone.”
Every year, Dr. Schwab spends three to four weeks on the Acropolis. “I look at the metopes at various times of the day and in different light, draw them, photograph them,” she said. “It is endlessly rewarding if one is patient. I make graphite drawings of the metopes, documenting everything. I began doing this as a means to understand what was there.”
After completing a set of drawings, Dr. Schwab works with Flyover Zone Art Director Mohamed Abdelaziz, who is in Egypt, for the 3D restoration. Meeting regularly on Zoom, they examine Dr. Schwab’s reconstruction drawings. Abdelaziz incorporates the changes into a set of plaster casts of the Parthenon metopes. After his initial “Sketchfab image” is created, Dr. Schwab offers edits, suggestions, or changes as needed.
Dr. Schwab’s familiarity with the extant metopes and her efforts to reimagine what those missing must have looked like are renowned. Her drawings, based on years of study of the existing metopes, have been exhibited at the Greek Consulate General in New York, the Greek Embassy in Washington, D.C., the University of Georgia, Creighton University, Willamette University, the Timken Museum of Art, Franklin & Marshall College, and the Parthenon in Nashville. Grayscale scans of Dr. Schwab’s drawings are on permanent display in the Acropolis Museum in Athens.
She is currently working on a script for a virtual “walking tour” of the metopes for Flyover Zone. “The goal is for my narration to make comments for each preserved metope, minimally explaining the action and, if we know, who is featured in the composition,” she said. “My narration will discuss interpretations for some of the metopes where we have numerous proposals but lack complete consensus.”
The thread that ties Schwab to the distant Greek past began in childhood. “I was an avid reader in elementary school and got interested in Greek mythology, along with Egyptian mummies, but I gravitated to ancient Greece and Rome,” she said.
Schwab majored in ancient Greek civilization at Scripps College in Claremont, California. “I spent my entire junior year studying in Athens, including on-site classes on the Acropolis,” she recalled. “It was a lifechanging experience.”
She received her master’s degree from Southern Methodist University and her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Dr. Schwab is curator of Fairfield University’s Plaster Cast Collection, which began in 1991 with a long-term renewable loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and has grown to more than 100 objects. These facsimile casts of historic artifacts have been augmented with gifts from the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Yale University Art Gallery, Slater Museum, and individual collectors.
Further ties between ancient Greece and Fairfield were made in 2009 when Dr. Schwab organized the Caryatid Hairstyling Project, inspired by the coifs of female sculptures found on the Acropolis — specifically, the six marble Caryatids or maidens (korai) which stand in place of columns on the South Porch of the Erechtheion. In ancient Athens, hairstyles worn by women at public gatherings denoted their social rank and affluence. The project was an attempt to determine whether the sculptors invented an artistic convention or used real hairstyles of the day for these marble Caryatids.
Six Fairfield students volunteered for the project, allowing professional hairstylists to shape their hair to emulate the statues, with the result that the sculptors’ work was proven to have been modeled on real Athenian women of their day. Later, in 2015, Dr. Schwab also cocurated an exhibition, Hair in the Classical World, at the Fairfield University Art Museum.
The hairstyling project and exhibition are not unlike what Dr. Schwab and Flyover Zone are now, on a much larger scale, attempting to do with “Athens Reborn: Acropolis,” using present-day scholarship to revisit and recreate the ancient past. l F For more information on “Athens Reborn: Acropolis,” go to flyoverzone.com
above, from top: Parthenon East Metope 14: Helios ascending above Okeanos. Graphite drawing of proposed reconstruction by K.A. Schwab; 3D modeling by Mohamed Abdelaziz. Parthenon East Metope 7: Hera driving a chariot. Graphite drawing of proposed Reconstruction by K.A. Schwab; 3D modeling by Mohamed Abdelaziz.
DESTINATION
BACKCOUNTRY
ADVENTURE GUIDE DAVID DICERBO ’97 BELIEVES IN THE RESTORATIVE POWER OF THE WILDERNESS.
by Tess (Brown) Long ’07, MFA’11
David DiCerbo ’97, a licensed wilderness guide, led a small group on a hiking and canoeing trip deep into an old growth forest in the Adirondacks. The night sky was so heavy with stars that it looked “like you could reach out and touch them.”
The whole group was struck “by how pristine the wilderness was,” he recalled. All except one woman, Janice, who just wasn’t quite feeling the spirituality of it all.
So, DiCerbo led the group out into the middle of a lake in their canoes to stargaze. He pointed out the Milky Way, a hovering, cloudy orb above them.
That seemed to change things for Janice, Dicerbo said. Lying on her back in her canoe, Janice went quiet, then wept at the beauty.
For DiCerbo, life is all about finding that moment of illumination that the wilderness can give us, and sharing it with others. Nature, he said, has “a way of centering things.”
left: A canoeist heads out to stargaze in the Adirondacks. above: David DiCerbo ’97 holds a splake trout during an Adirondacks wilderness adventure.
DiCerbo founded Destination Backcountry Adventures (DBA) a decade ago on the “conviction that everyone should be able to experience the restorative power of authentic wilderness.”
His firm is now the largest guided adventure company in New York state. DBA was featured on The Today Show — DiCerbo took Megyn Kelly and her family on an overnight campout in New York’s Harriman State Park — and has also been written up in The Wall Street Journal and Men’s Health, among other outlets.
His company offers guided adventures: hiking, backpacking, canoeing and kayaking, and yoga trips, as well as classes that teach map, compass, and survival skills. He also leads corporate training, marathon and Spartan race training, and more.
DiCerbo co-owns and runs the company with his wife and business partner Jessica Tackett. Last June, the couple welcomed their first child, daughter Camila, who hit the trails with her parents when she was just a month old. The couple manages a team of licensed guides
and offers about 50 different adventures in New York’s Hudson Valley, Catskills, and Adirondacks, as well as out-of-state in Utah.
“Perspective is very easy to get in touch with, in the outdoors, because it exists all around you,” DiCerbo told Fairfield University Magazine on a recent Zoom call. “It’s so amazing to see how something can open someone’s mind and completely change their perspective on everything. It’s a really rewarding job.”
But it’s been a long journey and the road to entrepreneurship wasn’t always easy or clear. There have been “bumps in the road,” and both figurative and literal storms.
Once, out on the trail, he heard a scream, and then a commotion. A seasoned adventurer, DiCerbo put his “cold steel face on” because he knew he would have to deal with some blood.
One of DiCerbo’s fellow guides was holding his own head in his hands, blood “pumping from between them.” Was it just a nasty scrape, bleeding pretty badly? Or was this man’s skull fractured? DiCerbo calmly weighed the situation. At the time, they were four miles from the nearest road, and 40 road miles from the nearest highway. They were out there. Way out there. There was no way DiCerbo could treat him.
Luckily, DiCerbo — like the other guides that he trains and leads — has wilderness firstaid training and knew how to stabilize and evaluate the injury. He calmed things down and cleaned the laceration enough to be able to part the “jagged, horrible-looking five-inch split” with his thumbs.
There was good news and bad news. DiCerbo had to tell his guide-in-training that he’d have to be evacuated. The good news? “I told him, ‘your skull doesn’t appear to be fractured, so we don’t have to worry about
far left: A Catskills winter expedition on Panther Mountain with (l-r): Brad Winer, Angie Alexander, and DBA co-owners, Tackett and DiCerbo. left: Participants in a corporate hiking trip at Minnewaska State Park in Ulster County, N.Y.
your brains falling out,’” DiCerbo said, seeking, at the time, to balance things with levity. They both had laughed, the wound was treated safely, all ended well. They lived to tell the story and are stronger for it.
Born in Danbury, Conn., and raised in an Irish-Italian American Catholic family who “always extolled the virtues of Jesuit education,” DiCerbo’s college search was almost exclusively for Jesuit schools.
When he set foot on campus he was “blown away” by the University. DiCerbo graduated with majors in history and politics from Fairfield, and a minor in Russian, Eastern European, and Central Asian Studies.
“I wouldn’t have changed my academic experience at Fairfield for anything in the world,” said DiCerbo, who also played rugby.
“We were taught to think, as opposed to being taught what to think,” DiCerbo continued. “I really feel that my time at
DiCerbo and Tackett enjoy a family hike with daughter Camila.
Fairfield prepared me very well for all my careers, culminating in this one.”
After graduation from Fairfield in the late nineties, he hit the nine-to-five grind, commuting and staring down traffic every day. Then he moved south, to the Florida Keys, went into education, and that’s “where the adventure bug really bit.” He lived near the water and was able to regularly fish and kayak.
He then found his way into educational publishing where he moved up the ladder at Houghton Mifflin (HM). DiCerbo was achieving all the traditional markers of success: promotion, financial stability, and respect. But it all felt “hollow” to him, so in 2008 when HM changed hands, he took a severance and shifted his path to find new meaning in his work.
“I think that’s very Jesuit,” DiCerbo said excitedly, raking his fingers through his hair, “that your work should have a higher meaning. That you should have a higher purpose than your own gratification.”
For about five-and-a-half months after that, he did nothing but hike in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Oregon. He realized that his time in the woods kept him centered.
“It kept me sane. It made me feel like a complete human being. And I thought, there must be hundreds of thousands of people in the greater New York City area who could also benefit.”
So, in 2011, DiCerbo — then based in Brooklyn, N.Y. — built DBA from the ground up. He went through the New York State licensing and certification process to officially become a guide and started his company based on a simple philosophy: time outdoors makes for better people, better people make for a better society.
“What we’re doing is trying to improve our society as a whole,” DiCerbo said. “For guides who can get along with that, it resonates very deeply.”
Within the first year, DiCerbo realized that DBA was having a “pretty outsized impact.” He saw people who had never left their neighborhoods in Brooklyn climb mountains for the first time, and he taught a gaggle of city kids how to safely climb boulders. Mostly, it was the looks on their faces that convinced DiCerbo he could make an impact “on a real level.”
above: DiCerbo and a backpacking group at the summit of Slide Mountain, the tallest in the Catskills. right: DiCerbo and Tackett canoe with a client in the Adirondack wilderness; (lower) Jessica Tackett mediates at Zion National Park, Utah.
As a result, another focus for DBA in the last few years has been on representation and access. “The number of times someone has said to me, ‘Oh my God, this is so beautiful out here. I thought the outdoors was really just for rich people,’” DiCerbo said with a laugh.
“It’s really quite the opposite,” he affirmed. “In fact, New York State has two million acres of forest preserve that is free to access.”
In addition, DBA has partnered with Outdoor Afro and Latino Outdoors — both national non-profits aimed at increasing Black and Latinx representation respectively in conservation, outdoor recreation, and environmental education spaces — to assist in the effort to diversify the outdoor leadership community as a whole.
In 2015, DBA started offering school and corporate adventures — everyone from Wall Street bankers, to programmers at LinkedIn, to eight-year-old rock climbers have been on treks with them — and those outings have grown in popularity during the pandemic.
“At the end of the day, I know I’ve emptied my tank and it was all for a really good cause,” DiCerbo said. “That’s my goal. I want to know that all that energy went toward something that is going to leave this place better than we found it. I feel incredibly blessed and fortunate to be in a position where we can do this.” l F
Learn more at destinationbackcountryadventures.com “PERSPECTIVE IS VERY EASY TO GET IN TOUCH WITH, IN THE OUTDOORS, BECAUSE IT EXISTS ALL AROUND YOU. IT’S SO AMAZING TO SEE HOW SOMETHING CAN OPEN SOMEONE’S MIND AND COMPLETELY CHANGE THEIR PERSPECTIVE ON EVERYTHING.”
— David DiCerbo ’97
