From the Ground Up

We build our lives on foundations. Some are literal — the base of the structures where we are born and raised, where we learn and grow, where we build our families and careers. Others are intangible — the groundwork upon which we establish our belief systems, our values, our institutions. Ground From the

Foundations support us intellectually, creatively, morally and financially, and help to create protected, just and prosperous communities. Whether made of stone and brick or of people and principles, foundations provide us with safety, security and shelter and help us to build lives of mental, physical and social well-being.

In this issue, we explore the foundations on which eight alums have built their lives.

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Buildings of the Future

by Andrew Wickenden ’09

From a field of nearly 20,000 applications, Matthew Mead ’13 and his business partner, Tommy Gibbons, were selected for Forbes’ 2020 “30 Under 30”list for “creating the products, methods and materials of tomorrow. ”

As he studied architecture and environmental studies at HWS, Matthew Mead ’13 had a growing sense that the relationship between the human-made environment and the natural world was unsustainable.

“The built environment is responsible for nearly 40% of our domestic energy consumption and carbon footprint,” says Mead. “If we don’t change the way we design and operate our built environment, we don’t really have a chance of mitigating the environmental impacts of the built world.”

With Hempitecture, Mead is now at the forefront of a green building revolution. Offering materials like hempcrete and HempWool, the company is reimagining design and construction with sustainable alternatives to common products and practices.

The idea began with Mead’s senior thesis, which analyzed natural building techniques and strategies and revealed that hemp-based products are not only qualitatively comparable but “non-toxic, environmentally friendly and fireproof,” he says.

Seeing the potential for hempcrete in the U.S., Mead developed a business plan and entered the Colleges’ 2013 Pitch Contest for student entrepreneurs. Under the guidance of Pitch mentor Ira Goldschmidt ’77, Mead and Tyler Mauri ’13 took Hempitecture to the finals of that year’s competition.

In the months that followed, however, social stigma and legal strictures around hemp — part of the cannabis genus, which includes marijuana — proved challenging, from sourcing materials to securing financing and banking access to selling the viability of hemp-based Highland Hemp House

building materials. Despite top-three finishes at other entrepreneurial competitions, Mead recalls skepticism of his vision.

Although hemp does not contain appreciable levels of THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana, Mead remembers hearing jokes “about the whole neighborhood wanting the hemp house to burn down so they could catch a buzz. Of course our building material is fireproof, and they clearly missed that part of my presentation.” After graduation, Mead worked in St. John in the Caribbean at an eco-resort, where he had interned as a student and “for the first time … connected with a passion of creating and making in the real world.” He developed carpentry skills and refined his approach to green design and construction, building sustainable, off-grid, solar-powered eco-cottages — until a social media post about his Pitch presentation reached an Idaho project manager who invited Mead to put Hempitecture’s principles into practice. That year, Mead and Mauri moved to Idaho to begin a unique design-build project that ultimately became the country’s first publicuse building made of hempcrete. Today, the building houses Idaho Basecamp, a nonprofit organization connecting adults and young people to nature and one another through adventure education experiences. Mead, who serves on the organization’s board of directors, says that project “may still be one of my proudest moments, as there was so much we had to work through to make it possible.” In 2018, Mead was joined by his former high school classmate Tommy Gibbons to scale Hempitecture into a company capable of impacting every hempcrete project in the U.S. “I liken the journey of Hempitecture to a valuable lesson I learned as an architecture student at HWS: process is everything,” Mead says. “Process gets you from an idea to an end result, and our process is continually evolving.” Now based in Ketchum, Idaho, where Mead serves as a planning and zoning commissioner, Hempitecture offers installation, consulting and design services, as well as building and insulation materials, equipment and training for industry professionals. Collaborating with architects, engineers and developers, the company works to create habitats beneficial both to those who use them and to the environment itself. Reflecting on Hempitecture’s journey, Mead says that HWS faculty and staff — including Associate Professor Kirin Makker, Professor Phillia Yi and Centennial Center Director Amy Forbes — went “above and beyond … because they believed in me and the Hempitecture concept. It has been very rewarding, albeit a little overwhelming, to receive an honor such as Forbes’ ‘30 Under 30,’ but there are so many people who actually made it possible, and this can be traced right back to my time at HWS.”

Pictured above: Hempitecture was brought on board in 2017 at the Highland Hemp House project, the undertaking of a homeowner determined to take advantage of the sustainable and climate-friendly properties of hempcrete in the renovation of her 1969 house in Bellingham, Wash.

The River Keeper

by Bethany Snyder

While it may seem like rivers and streams sweep along of their own accord, they often need help to stay healthy. In a time of rapid environmental change, it is more critical than ever that we protect this foundational element of life. Emily Alcott ’07 has dedicated her career to doing just that.

Emily Alcott ’07 spent her childhood wandering in the woods and splashing through streams in rural upstate New York. “We had a little creek behind our house and I’d spend a lot of time down there building and knocking down dams,” she says. Water has always called to Alcott, from the days in that backyard creek to her time studying water quality for the Appalachian Mountain Club in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, from her graduate studies at Yale University to lazy afternoons rafting with her wife and their two children. “I’ve always found being on the water restorative and calming,” she says.

These days, Alcott is still pulling on her waders and walking out into the water, but now she’s doing so as the principal ecologist and fluvial geomorphologist at Inter-Fluve, an organization dedicated to the design, restoration and conservation of rivers, lakes and wetlands. Essentially, she is an expert in the way water interacts with and changes the landscape it flows across.

“Every river is a puzzle,” she says. “My job is to piece together why it looks the way it does and how I can put it on a more positive trajectory, whether that’s to help people in an urban environment get down to the water to experience it with their kids or to help endangered salmon in the northwest.”

More than 3.5 million miles of rivers and streams in the United States supply drinking water, irrigate crops, offer opportunities for recreation and provide habitats for fish and wildlife. “Rivers connect us all,” Alcott says. “They run through our urban places and feed

our wild areas. They provide us clean drinking water and opportunities for recreation.”

An essential component of Alcott’s work is ensuring that people understand the importance of river restoration, which often means conveying complicated information to a wide range of audiences from large groups at public meetings in Portland or Toronto to ranchers in rural eastern Oregon. She credits her time at William Smith for fostering those critical communication skills.

“There are plenty of great researchers out there who can’t get their ideas across because they don’t know how to talk about them in a way that people can understand,” Alcott says. “At HWS, I learned how to do science well, but more importantly, I learned how to communicate it effectively.” After receiving her bachelor’s in biology, she went on to earn a master’s in water science, policy and management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She joined Inter-Fluve in 2010. Whether she’s working on a small stream or a raging river, the message Alcott shares with her clients and the community is the same: “We all live on this planet and share it together, and we need clean air and clean drinking water to survive. We’re trying to leave this world and the environment better for future generations.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF INTER-FLUVE

More than 3.5 million miles of rivers and streams in the United States supply drinking water, irrigate crops, offer opportunities for recreation and provide habitats for fish and wildlife.

Ensuring the Future of Children’s Literature

by Bethany Snyder

No matter your course of study or career path, perhaps nothing is as foundational to success as literacy. Through The Highlights Foundation, Kent Brown Jr. ’65 carries on his family’s tradition of promoting children’s literacy.

The grandparents of Kent Brown Jr. ’65, Garry Cleveland Myers and Caroline Clark Myers, published the first issue of Highlights for Children in 1946. They sold 20,000 copies in their first year in operation, mostly door to door. You’re likely familiar with its colorful pages and its slogan, “Fun with a Purpose,” whether you flipped through the magazine in a doctor’s office or waited excitedly for a copy to land in your mailbox. By 1995, the magazine — with its familiar features like Goofus and Gallant, Hidden Pictures and The Timbertoes — had nearly three million subscribers. Today, Highlights is an international media brand.

Editorial direction of Highlights magazine, which has sold more than a billion copies, was eventually handed over to Brown. An English major at Hobart, he functioned at Highlights for more than 30 years, including as editor-in-chief. In 1990, he cofounded Boyds Mills Press, the trade book publishing division of Highlights. A past president of the United States Board on Books for Young People, he is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English, the American Society of Magazine Editors and the National Press Club. Perhaps Brown’s greatest contribution to children’s literacy, however, is The Highlights Foundation. Established by Brown in 1985, the goal of the foundation is to, according to its mission, “improve the quality of children’s literature by helping authors and illustrators hone their craft.”

“Someone has to create the ‘Fun with a Purpose,’” says Brown. “The foundation targets all those who seek to benefit children by what they read and see.” For more than 25 years, the foundation hosted a once-a-year, week-long Writers Workshop at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York. “It seemed to me that if we could provide opportunities for writers and illustrators to share their ideas, processes and knowledge with each other, then we would be ensuring quality literature for future generations,” Brown says. While the program was successful, Brown and his staff realized they could offer more specialized and individualized workshops throughout the year — and they had the perfect location in which to do so — the same place where the magazine was brought to life, the home and property of Brown’s grandparents. The quiet and secluded property in rural Honesdale, Pa., was the ideal spot for writing retreats and workshops. For the past 20 years, Brown and his staff have welcomed more than a thousand writers and illustrators to the grounds to participate in lectures, one-on-one critiques, creative activities and group workshops. “We want to give authors and illustrators uninterrupted time to hone their craft,” says Brown.

By 2012, the foundation added a conference center; two years later, they completed a new lodge. They now offer more than 40 programs year-round, including “Unworkshops” that

provide a retreat for those who just want to work on a project.

“In the end, it’s the readers — children of all ages, from pre-school to young adult — who are the beneficiaries of the Highlights Foundation,” says Brown. “The task is to help writers and illustrators create inspiring, meaningful, engaging content.”

The future of the foundation is bright. Helmed by Brown’s son George Brown as executive director and niece Alison Green Myers as program director, it continues to focus on diversity and is expanding into podcasts and online courses. Campus and facility upgrades are ongoing.

“It’s impossible to calculate the rippling effect,” Brown says. “An aspiring writer is sitting in a class led by Patti Gauch or Jerry Spinelli; listening to a lecture by Traci Chee; watching Floyd Cooper’s amazing illustrative techniques; learning how Leah Henderson dives into character development. They start to experiment. Something connects. The books they create are read by thousands. They teach others what they’ve learned. New books are created. New readers enjoy the experience. I don’t think it’s possible to quantify the far-reaching effects of authors sharing with other authors their craft, knowledge, successes and failures, the hopes and dreams that drive them to create.”

PHOTO BY JONATHAN WONG/SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

Stephen Wong ’89, chairman of investment banking for Hong Kong at Goldman Sachs, and co-head of the bank’s real estate group for Asia Pacific ex Japan, is one of the world's leading experts on baseball artifacts.

The National Pastime

by Andrew Wickenden ‘09

This summer, on the heels of the Washington Nationals World Series win, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. will present one of the most ambitious exhibitions to date, “Baseball: America’s Home Run.” Stephen Wong ’89, a life-long collector and one of the world’s foremost authorities on baseball history and its artifacts, is an honorary senior advisor and major lender to the exhibition. Wong has generously shared items from his private collection — many of the game’s most historically significant uniforms and other treasured collectibles — for this exhibition, which opens its three-year run on June 27.

Baseball has been a fixture of American life for nearly as long as the country has existed, and yet “Baseball: America’s Home Run” is the “first major baseball exhibition the Smithsonian has ever put on,” says Stephen Wong ’89. The author of Smithsonian Baseball: Inside the World’s Finest Private Collections (2005) and Game Worn: Baseball Treasures from the Game’s Greatest Heroes and Moments (2016),Wong has spent decades studying baseball history,collecting and documenting rare memorabilia and organizing important baseball-themed exhibits around the country. The Smithsonian’s, however, is special — and worth the wait.

“There hasn’t been an exhibition of this magnitude ever,” explains Wong, who has been working for two years with the museum’s curator and administrators to craft the exhibit’s themes and script. “This is the biggest and most important project of my lifelong journey of baseball collecting. Writing the books was a huge privilege and something I’ll cherish my entire life, but to put together a museum project of this magnitude, to work with the Smithsonian and the special people there, and lend items from my collection — this is the absolute pinnacle for me.”

As chairman of investment banking for Hong Kong at Goldman Sachs, and co-head of the bank’s real estate group for Asia Pacific ex Japan, Wong says “it’s important to have passion and hobbies in life outside of work and family life. You raise a family, have your day job, it’s a mad scramble to be successful, but it’s really important to have that balance and that’s what baseball and this journey has done for me.” Wong has always been a die-hard baseball fan. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, he collected baseball cards as a kid and went to Giants games at Candlestick Park. When a friend showed him a 1959 Topps baseball card of Roger Maris, issued before Maris’s longstanding singleseason homerun record with the Yankees in 1961, Wong had an important early glimpse of the magic of rare memorabilia, “the aesthetics and nostalgia” aspect of collecting. Later, while researching a high school history paper, he happened upon Franklin Pierce Adams’ poem, “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” bemoaning a double play by the early 20th century Chicago Cubs (Adams was a rabid New York Giants fan). Tracing the origins of that poem, which Wong can now recite from memory, led him to Lawrence Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times, revered as one of the pivotal works of baseball historiography. Ritter’s book was not only “the genesis of my foray into learning about baseball history,” Wong says, but the template for his own first book. In the early 1960s, Ritter traveled the country interviewing the aging great ball players of the first two decades of the 20th century. In the same spirit, Wong traveled to 21 of the most renowned private collections in the world, compiling stories and photographs of baseball’s rarest artifacts. “No one had showcased these beautiful pieces of Americana for the public to appreciate,” Wong says. “I felt strongly and passionately about the artifacts that commemorate baseball and its heritage, and wanted to share that with the country.”

Since then, he has written a follow-up, Game Worn, which studies and features the hobby’s most coveted game-worn uniforms and the stories of the players who wore them. But like his books, the Smithsonian exhibit isn’t just about the artifacts and “it goes well beyond commemorating a sport — it goes to the notion of commemorating the soul of America and baseball’s pivotal role in that,” says Wong, who has lent upwards of 60 pieces from his own collection that commemorate the history of the game and the nation. The exhibit features the Brooklyn Dodgers road uniform Jackie Robinson wore throughout his second season with the Dodgers (1948); the New York Yankees team jacket Lou Gehrig wore at Briggs Stadium in Detroit on May 2, 1939, when he took himself out of the lineup after playing 2,130 consecutive games (a major league record that stood until Cal Ripken broke it in 1995); and the bat Babe Ruth used during the 1920 season, when he “singlehandedly saved baseball,” Wong says, after the tragic 1919 World Series Black Sox scandal drove fans from the stadiums and nearly ruined the game. French-American historian Jacque Barzun once wrote, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.” From baseball’s early beginnings in the 19 th century to the Civil Rights movement and beyond, Wong says “when you go to this exhibition, you not only will appreciate the artifacts commemorating America’s most sacred sport, but also a kaleidoscope of American life.” The Smithsonian's blockbuster exhibition on baseball at the National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. explores America’s national pastime. Featuring artifacts and stamps commemorating great players and historic moments, such as the Babe Ruth stamp shown above, and drawing on original artwork and archival material from around the globe, the exhibition approaches the story from a unique, worldwide perspective. The display of stamps and mail will be complemented by rare artifacts loaned by other Smithsonian Institution museums, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, law enforcement agencies and private collectors, including Stephen Wong.

postalmuseum.si.edu/ upcoming-exhibitions

Changing the Conversation about Mental Illness

by Bethany Snyder

Mental well-being is a foundational component of living a healthy, balanced life. While one in four people will experience a mental illness at some point in their life, many find it difficult to engage in necessary and life-saving conversations on the subject. Pamela Harrington ’89 works to combat the stigma and discrimination.

In 2010, award-winning actress Glenn Close was looking for someone to lead her new nonprofit, Bring Change to Mind (BC2M), an organization dedicated to encouraging dialogue about mental health. She turned to Pamela Harrington ’89. “I was in the right place at the right time with the right skills,” Harrington says. Those skills included extensive experience in the nonprofit startup space. She helped launch The Jed Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting emotional health and preventing suicides of teens and young adults. “My niche specialty is taking an organization from a concept and bringing it to life, building a board and finding funding streams,” she explains.

Close was inspired to start Bring Change to Mind (BC2M) by her sister, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and her nephew, diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Harrington’s life has been touched by mental illness, too — she has lost high school and college friends to suicide. At the time, she says, “I had no comprehension of why someone would do that. No one was talking about mental health in the ‘80s and ‘90s. No one was raising awareness of how to help yourself or others when they were struggling.” As one of the first employees of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Harrington was fundamental in shaping the national conversation about breast cancer — which in turn led to increased awareness, education, funding and research. She is now doing the same with mental health through BC2M. “You can’t have overall health without a sound mind,” she says. “Mental health is a baseline we all have, and our work is reaching those at the further end of the spectrum. We’re guiding people to either get back to health or to learn to thrive where they are.”

Giving young people the skills and vocabulary they need to talk about mental illness is one of the key initiatives at BC2M. “Stigma is a learned behavior,” Harrington says. “We mimic the attitudes and language of our elders and pass our beliefs on to the next generation.” The Bring Change to Mind High School program is designed to stop the cycle of silence and shame by encouraging conversations and providing more than

10,000 students across the country with the tools they need to manage their mental health.

While Harrington finds her work rewarding, it’s often difficult. “For every beautiful story of health and resilience, there are stories about families losing loved ones and kids who’ve lost friends,” Harrington says. “It’s incredibly fulfilling and heartbreaking and inspiring, and there’s rarely a day when I don’t have a tearful moment.”

She finds continued strength and hope in the children in the Bring Change to Mind High School program. “The kids are really inspiring,” Harrington says. “They’re showing more empathy and compassion. They’re changing the language they use to talk about mental health. They’re standing up against bullying. They’re changing lives.”

PHOTO BY DREW ALTIZER

Disrupting the Cycle of Violence, Poverty and Incarceration

by Bethany Snyder

Children who grow up in communities mired in poverty and violence often find themselves trapped in a cycle of incarceration and recidivism. Youth development provides a foundation of education, opportunity and access that can help break that cycle. Hasan Stephens ’00 uses personal experience to make a difference in the lives of at-risk youth.

Hasan Stephens ’00 grew up in The Edenwald Projects, the largest and arguably one of the most notorious housing projects in the Bronx, home to more than 5,000 residents. Stephens recalls the “daily atrocities” he saw, “walking by drug addicts in the hallway and watching people die regularly from gunshots.” Education was the tool Stephens used to escape. A scholarship program for academically high-achieving youth from low-income families named Prep For Prep led him to Horace Mann School, a private college prep school in the Bronx, and from there to Hobart and William Smith, where he completed an independent major in film and music. Working at WEOS put him on the path to a career as a disc jockey, which eventually brought him to his adopted hometown of Syracuse, N.Y., where he earned top ratings at iHeart Radio stations. He later pursued graduate studies in business at LeMoyne College. Stephens has served as an adjunct professor of political science and Africana studies at the State University of New York at Cortland for 10 years. “Because of my experiences growing up, I value at-risk youth more so than I believe the world does,” he says. “They deserve a chance, just like I was given a chance.” To give that chance to others, in 2009 Stephens established the Good Life Youth Foundation, an organization that uses hip-hop culture to help marginalized youth understand financial literacy and entrepreneurship and, ultimately, live better lives. The board of directors includes fellow Hobart graduates Henry Culbreath ’99 and Winfield Prass ’99 as well as Syracuse mayor Ben Walsh. “We work with kids the world has thrown away and turned their backs on,” Stephens says. “We’re teaching them how to be innovative, how to be creative, how to take their natural talent and use it to add value to the community.” A key initiative of Good Life is the R.E.A.L. program (Ready to Enter and Accept Life), which focuses on life skills, asset building and financial education, entrepreneurship, career readiness and health and wellness. Participants are paired with a life coach and engage in group mentoring, experiential learning activities and cultural development projects.

Good Life also created three companies: fullservice promotional print and embroidery company GL Imprinting, vending machine company Good Eats and lawn care company Good Lawns. “These social ventures, as we call them, allow our youth to generate personal income while also providing sustainability for the organization,” says Stephens. And it’s working. Good Life recently purchased a 37,000-square foot building that will become The Hip-Hop Center for Youth Entrepreneurship. Along with providing headquarters for the organization’s social ventures, the space will include a café to support culinary interests and a gallery for the display and sale of original artwork. Stephens is working on developing corporate and collegiate partnerships to help “establish this building as a creative central hub for the youth of Syracuse to learn how to be entrepreneurs,” he says. In addition to an ongoing capital campaign, partial funding for the building project has been secured from local foundations and state grants. Stephens notes that Syracuse is among the nation’s top locations for concentrated poverty among African Americans and Latinos and is one of the most segregated cities in the United States. But where some see only hardship and trauma, Stephens sees hope, opportunity — and a proof of concept. “If we can affect change here, then we can do it somewhere else,” he says. “We’re building a replicable model that can be used everywhere.” Find out more about The Good Life Youth Foundation at gly.foundation.

PHOTO BY ABC CREATIVE

To Protect and Serve

by Natalia St. Lawrence ‘16

Public safety is a fundamental element of a functioning society. Every day, Sasha Borenstein ’14 agrees to assist, comfort, step in and step up to help others as a patrol officer with the Los Angeles Police Department.

On any given night, Sasha Borenstein ’14 may arrive on the scene of 20 different radio calls throughout greater Los Angeles. And in her work as a patrol officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, she’s called on to wear just as many hats. “Being a police officer is being someone’s friend, someone’s mentor or a confidant for those who need someone to trust and talk to,” says Borenstein.

Though she often sees people in their worst moments — a domestic dispute, a robbery or a traffic accident — providing a helping hand through loss and trauma is a critical component of creating safe spaces in homes and neighborhoods throughout the city. Sworn to protect the public, Borenstein has learned that the interactions that take place between radio calls are fundamental to building community trust. In fact, the former Heron uses one of her abilities and passions — her love for basketball — to develop meaningful connections with community members. A four-year member of the William Smith basketball team, Borenstein continues to play for the LAPD women’s basketball team, where she participates in a departmentsponsored youth program that keeps the lights on so kids can play in the park after dark.

Having the opportunity to shoot hoops in a neighborhood park offers Borenstein the chance to establish positive relationships with local kids. “Getting to see their faces light up when I grab a ball and ask them to play — that’s the stuff that really makes me love what I do,” she says. Borenstein’s commitment to a philosophy of community policing, in which she develops meaningful connections to the people in her division, has evolved through her training on the ground at the LAPD and her education at the Colleges. A psychology major with minors in sociology and social justice, Borenstein has always applied a critical understanding of people’s behaviors to her work. Her earliest experience in law enforcement, as an intern for the City of Geneva Police Department, was completed in conjunction with an independent study with Associate Professor of Sociology James Sutton, a national expert on interpersonal violence, vulnerable populations and deviance.

After taking ridealongs with GPD officers and observing court cases at the Geneva City Court, Borenstein would compare her experiences to the writings of experts on socially deviant behaviors. She also debriefed with Sutton, who continues to be one of her mentors.

Borenstein’s path to law enforcement was aided by a connection she made when she was considering attending William Smith. Dr. Lowell J. Levine ’59, a board-certified forensic ondontologist and the director of operations for the New York State Police Medicolegal Investigations Unit, was a member of the teams that identified Nicholas II of Russia and investigated the death of President Kennedy. Through Levine, Borenstein has been able to attend homicide seminars and connect with people and opportunities that eventually led her to the LAPD. “Lowell showed me how a liberal arts education was the right path for me, how it could give me endless opportunity,” she explains. Borenstein’s long-term career plan is to work in the robbery homicide division of the LAPD, taking her expertise in community policing to a new level and furthering the safety of the people she has sworn to protect. “Getting to see their faces light up when I grab a ball and ask them to play — that’s the stuff that really makes me love what I do.”

Making Community Connections

by Bethany Snyder

Community development is a foundational component of a resilient, diverse and vibrant society. Strategic solutions for enhancing communities happen when the right people and resources come together. D-L Casson ’70 has dedicated her life to making those connections happen.

In her sophomore year, Diane-Louise “D-L” Kenney Casson ’70 realized she was one of just a few black women at William Smith. “I wanted to figure out what to do about it,” says Casson. So she went straight to the top. A conversation with then-President Albert Holland led Casson to volunteer in Admissions, first as a campus tour guide and then, during her senior year, traveling with staff to outreach programs and college fairs in New York City. Her conversation with Holland was the beginning of a life spent identifying problems, finding solutions and connecting community resources.

Casson spent much of her career working in higher education, holding administrative posts at Stanford University, Mary Washington College, Fisk University and Atlanta University. It was a relocation to Pennsylvania — where she worked for many years at the University of Pennsylvania — that eventually led to one of the most rewarding experiences of her career.

In 2009, the nonprofit Public Health Management Corporation received a grant from the Kellogg Foundation to fund the Philadelphia Urban Food & Fitness Alliance, designed to increase access to healthy food and safe places for physical fitness for young people. Casson was brought on as project director. “One of our goals was to teach high school students how to advocate for improved food in their schools,” she says. Many of the communities with the greatest need exist in food deserts with no access to fresh fruits and vegetables or food that isn’t highly processed. “We wanted to not only improve health outcomes for young people, but give them the skills they needed to make positive change for themselves.” Approximately 60 students from African-American and Cambodian communities took part in the program.

Along with nutrition and food preparation skills, the students learned how food was brought into their schools, primarily through commodities from the government. Some schools didn’t even have full kitchens. Casson and her team connected the students with nutritionists and provided tastings. The students then presented the information they’d gathered back to the schools, teaching the kitchen staff how to prepare food so that kids would eat it and not waste it. “One of their mottos was, ‘if you roast it, we’ll eat it,’” Casson says. “I mean, who wants to eat a soggy vegetable?”

Throughout the project — which culminated in a capstone Chopped competition, in the style of the popular Food Network show — Casson was particularly struck by the rapport being built between students. “I knew something good had happened when I saw an African-American girl teaching Vietnamese and Cambodian youth how to make egg rolls,” she says. The African-American girl lived down the street from the grandmothers of the other students, and while those kids weren’t interested in hanging out with their grandmothers, the African-American girl was. The older women taught her the art of making

PHOTO BY DANNY SCHWEERS

egg rolls, and she in turn taught her peers. “I’ll never forget that night,” says Casson. “It was a slam dunk: we won.”

Creating connections that foster change is what inspires Casson every day. In her retirement, she works as the parish administrator at the Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew in Wilmington, Del., connecting parishioners and community members with services they need, from a cup of coffee to a dollar to get their prescription filled. For Casson, it’s all part of building strong, supportive communities. “Without community development, things fall apart,” she says. “It’s the connective tissue of our society.”