Featured Alumni Profiles
Click on an Alumnus/a's name to read their profile or view all our Alumni profiles. Visit us often -- we add new profiles every month.
Suzanne Walsh,'78, Educational Theatre
Ask Suzanne Walsh (Ed Theatre '78) what compels her to go to work everyday at Convent of the Sacred Heart, and she'll say "scholarship." Her passion for art, philanthropy and education has been evident all her life. Beginning at 13, Suzanne volunteered to babysit for friends and neighbors for free; she loved interacting with children and that was reward enough. Later in life, this passion, combined with her newfound commitment to providing arts programming to a diverse group of kids, became her full-time job. It was a dream come true for Suzanne.
Melanie Charlton Fascitelli, '88 - BS Communication Studies
Melanie Charlton Fascitelli has a knack for finding a place for everything. As founder of Clos-ette, a multi-faceted design and organization service, her team undertakes projects in private homes and designer show rooms fusing Holistic Organizational Design with luxury and practicality. Over the last seven years, Melanie has successfully established herself as an entrepreneur to watch, establishing Clos-ette in the spring of 2002, and penning her debut help book "Shop Your Closet: The Ultimate Guide to Organizing Your Closet With Style" in 2008.
Andrea Eschen, '84, M.A. Public Health
Andrea Eschen, MA Public Health '84, grew up in Northern California, but it was a year in New Hampshire that changed her life. After two years of undergraduate studies at the University of California/Davis, Andrea drove east with her brother, a student at Dartmouth. She decided not to return to school that fall, opting instead to spend the remainder of 1977 and the spring of 1978 on a farm in Plainfield, New Hampshire. She lived on an organic farm owned by two professors from Dartmouth, Donella H. Meadows and Dennis L. Meadows, who wrote the book "The Limits to Growth" along with Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. It was a year of study and experience that strongly influenced the direction she wanted to take - in life, in school, and in her career.
Erika Lesser, '01, M.A. -- Slow Food Mavene
Erika Lesser is smart, thoughtful, and passionate. Sitting with her in her open office in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood, Erika, Executive Director of Slow Food USA, is describing her recent visit to Atlanta for a day of meetings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Lesser is careful to emphasize the word prevention in the CDC's title, commenting that the second part of the governmental agency's name is too often left off or forgotten. She explains that the meetings, which featured journalist Michael Pollan as keynote speaker, were two years in the making with Alice Waters' visit in 2007 as a catalyst. The meetings were a sustainable food systems approach to health and wellness.
Edward Green, '03, Music Composition and Performance
A 2003 graduate of the Composition and Performance Program in Steinhardt's Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions, Edward Green spent his childhood and early teenage years on Long Island in a way that would not make you think he'd end up as a musician. He dreamed instead of outer space and rocket ships, and planned to pursue a career as an aerospace engineer.
So how did he become a distinguished composer and music educator? How did he come to have a doctorate in music from NYU, and several CDs to his name?