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Living Georgetown
Living Georgetown shares a collection of alumni profiles and testimonials that exemplify the lives and work of Georgetown alumni. The stories reflect the cycle of Georgetown’s influence – how alumni have been inspired by Georgetown and how they, in turn, have perpetuated in their own lives the university’s commitment to service, dialogue and spiritual and intellectual curiosity.
As President DeGioia has said, "These stories illustrate the influence that the Georgetown experience has on our graduates…our university’s enduring heritage of faith, scholarship, and service... and the impact that members of our community continue to make as women and men for others."
We invite you to read these stories and celebrate the many ways in which the Georgetown experience extends through the lives of alumni.
We welcome suggestions of other alumni to profile. Please e-mail their name and class year as well as a description of their story or why you recommend them to Benay Brotman, alumni communications manager, at brb25@georgetown.edu.
Born and raised in San Rafael, California, Shannon Beitchman (C'03) was “hell-bent” on going to the East Coast for college, she says, because she wanted to experience different views and beliefs and explore who she was away from what she’d always known. At Georgetown, she says, “Being exposed to such a diversity of views really boosted my confidence because I was challenged to think about things in a new way.” Now she, in turn, helps other young people open their minds and expand their knowledge by teaching them how to make healthy choices.
Ken Okoth grew up in Kibera, a huge, overpopulated slum in Nairobi, Kenya, lacking sufficient housing, running water and connection to the municipal sewage system or electric grid. He lived with his mother, Angeline, five siblings and other family members in a 12-by-12-foot, one-room house, before earning scholarships to boarding school, college and, ultimately, Georgetown’s graduate school. For more than five years as a Washington-area teacher and chairman of a foundation that uplifts Kenyan youth, he has helped expand, through education, the horizons of students who “work hard, don’t give up and show that they deserve a chance to make a difference in their lives.”
Rachel Bennett has exercised her gift for spanning distances and bridging gaps, literally and figuratively, since arriving at Georgetown from Anchorage, Alaska, in 1999. She grew up attending a strong public school – the norm, she says, in the Anchorage School District. Only after arriving at Georgetown, making friends who had attended private high schools and tutoring a first-grade class in an underprivileged Anacostia public school, did she begin to witness disparities in education – and opportunities for solutions.
California native Melody Rollins came to Georgetown so focused on becoming a diplomat that she passed up a full ride to Berkeley, plus a stipend, to attend the School of Foreign Service. Yet, one dream morphed into others as she explored the SFS curriculum and Georgetown’s campus. As she discovered international economics and the After School Kids program, she began to build the foundations for her success in the financial world and her leadership in the Harlem community.
Kit Cooper has a passion for people and a talent for turning ideas into action. At Georgetown, those assets converged when he and a classmate built a class project into a full-fledged company and launched Kit’s career as an entrepreneur.
Since the beginning of high school, Robert Kelly followed the fast track towards a career in medicine. When he applied to Georgetown College intent on the early admission program to Georgetown’s School of Medicine, registered as a pre-med student and declared a biology major and chemistry minor, he prepared himself for the career of his dreams. Yet beyond the practical steps to success, Robert found meaningful lessons in unplanned experiences – writing his thesis, meeting stellar professors and learning from Jesuit values – that now regularly influence his work as a physician, professor and mentor.
When Alan Cohen arrived at Georgetown in 1971, he says, “it was a very foreign world to me. I was a Jewish, New York public school kid in a world of Catholic prepsters – I’d never seen a Top-Sider before!” Motivated by his classmates and the liberal arts curriculum, however, the seeming outsider found his element as a student and physician and discovered one particular, incredible gift that inspired a lifetime of learning and generosity.
When Aaron Shneyer (C’05) approaches conflict he looks through a musician’s lens, viewing opportunities for collaboration, harmony and learning through sound. In young people he finds voices; in instruments, the tools for dialogue; and in his Fulbright-mtvU Fellowship, access to Jerusalem – his stage for communicating conflict resolution. Motivated by his successful fellowship and limitless ambition, Shneyer fosters peace among Israeli and Palestinian music students one ensemble at a time.
As a journalist, Erika Niedowski (C'95) has shadowed political campaigns, investigated tragic medical errors, explored the lingering debilitation of the Chernobyl explosion and lived in a crater of a dormant volcano. It may not be a comfortable career, but it's the perfect fit for Niedowski. The proof lies in every word of her captivating articles – and her nomination as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
When Vicky Whyte (C’74) came to Georgetown from her native Brazil, she left her “very cushioned life” and began to see the world from a new perspective. “Georgetown expanded my awareness,” she says. “It opened my eyes to the social differences and inequalities that exist.” Years later, after achieving the highest position in her field as women’s chair of the International Golf Federation from 2000 to 2006, she has used her prestige to address the inequalities she first witnessed as an undergraduate. “Since everybody knows me now,” she says, local and multinational corporations support her mission to help nourish, educate and inspire impoverished Brazilian children through the game of golf.
When Jeff Mirel (B’00) took drum lessons as an adolescent “from an ethnomusicologist – a hip, crazy, avant-garde guy who played in a heavy metal jazz band,” he began to develop his deep interest in and affection for music and the concept of producing and sharing art with a group. Fifteen years later, Mirel blends his obvious passion, steadfast ambition and business savvy to invigorate his community and aid others around the nation and the world.
As the co-chief of the Washington Post's London bureau, Mary Jordan (C'83) has recently interviewed luminaries like Paul McCartney, Vice President Al Gore and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair; reported from Cambodia and Nigeria; and dog sledded through the Arctic Circle. She co-authored a book, Prison Angel, with her husband and co-bureau chief, Kevin Sullivan. And in 2003, while reporting for the Post from Mexico City, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the chaos of the Mexican criminal justice system.
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