Formative: Conversations on Who We Became

The path to a successful broadcast journalism career doesn’t usually start in law school. But that’s where Roshini Rajkumar, Boston College class of 1993, started hers. Rajkumar combined a genetic penchant for the cinematic arts with a passion for justice and sticking up for the little guy on her way through big city TV markets of the Midwest. And, then, twenty years ago this month, she turned ent...

When Mark Lamping, Rockhurst University class of 1980, was camping out for World Series tickets in the 4th grade, he wouldn’t have dared to dream of running the team one day. Ironically lucky for him, a 1994 strike and cancelled season found those same St. Louis Cardinals in need of the longtime Anheuser-Busch marketing executive. The national pastime – our summer storyline that unspools slowly an...

Kathleen Hall Jamieson has an enlightenment faith in “eloquentia perfecta” – faith in reason, faith in facts, faith in public debate and civil discourse. Sometimes – and especially these days – that faith might feel in short supply. But that faith took Jamieson from Marquette University, class of 1967, to the heights of political communication scholarship – authoring a library shelf of pioneering...

When Harry Thomas, College of the Holy Cross class of 1978, first took the foreign service exam, the kid from Queens couldn’t speak another language and had never been outside the country. Over three decades later, he’d served as ambassador to Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Zimbabwe, along with a portfolio of distinguished State Department postings across the arc of a fraught geopolitical era. I...

It was a newborn infant sleeping in a homeless shelter in a government office building that changed Darcy Olsen’s life. The Georgetown University class of 1993 alum had thought she knew her purpose, both personally and professionally, serving as CEO of the Goldwater Institute think tank and advocating for public policy reforms like terminally ill patients’ right to try cutting-edge medications. Bu...

You don’t have to tell Erika Polmar, St. Louis University, class of 1989, that “we are what we eat.” Her reverence for local food systems has been lifelong. It inspired her Oregon-based farm-dinner series, Plate + Pitchfork, to educate eaters about the people and places that their sustenance originates. And when the pandemic closures devastated restaurants nationwide, she co-founded the Independen...

When it comes to the faith and health of the American judiciary, no one would likely describe this as “the best of times.” Judges faces personal threats; courts are seen as politicized; and public opinion slumps, in tandem with civic education. But that’s the challenge that faces the last line of democracy, as Benes Aldana, frames it. The idealistic Seattle University, class of 1991, alum is presi...

If the job of journalism is to speak truth to power, newspaper cartoonists do it with a paintbrush in hand and a tongue-in-cheek. This puts them in the crosshairs of thin-skinned dictators abroad and on “the front lines of the first amendment” at home, as Adam Zyglis, Canisius University, class of 2004, phrases it. Since graduating from the school paper to The Buffalo News as its youngest staffer,...

103 million people. That’s the United Nations’ best estimate of how many have been forcibly displaced worldwide – some of the highest recorded waves of migration since World War 2. And for decades now, Father Michael Gallagher of the Society of Jesus and Spring Hill College class of 1973, has been on the front lines of those borders and those crises. From providing direct legal representation in E...

When Danielle Slaton, class of 2002 at Santa Clara University, was selected as the #1 overall draft-pick in the WUSA, both she and top-level women’s soccer were riding high: Slaton captaining the Broncos to a collegiate national championship and, later, West Coast Conference Hall of Fame entry; the US Women’s National Team etching a now-legendary 1999 World Cup victory into the collective memory o...

In a nation today that’s beset by deep, structural inequalities, the ladder of socioeconomic advancement leans heavily on public city colleges like CUNY’s Lehman in the Bronx. And for a quarter-century, Ricardo Fernandez, class of 1962 at Marquette University, steered that ship. The sea was not always calm: under-resourced institutions survive on threadbare margins; a state budget shortfall begets...

When Tom Murphy, class of 1967 at John Carroll University, won the Pittsburgh mayor’s office in the early 1990s, cities in general – and the Steel City in particular – were in rough shape. Pittsburgh had seen its population sawed in half, the byproduct of industrial decline and economic blight. The son of a mill worker, Murphy knew this working-class legacy well, even as he battled to implement a...

A two-thousand-year-old institution, ensconced in pageantry, and shrouded in secrecy – that’s what Delia Gallagher, class of 1991 at the University of San Francisco, has covered for decades as CNN’s chief Vaticanologist. With a front row seat in the Rome-based press corps, she’s chronicled both the sacred and the profane and navigated contrasting papal styles: from the terse, professorial Benedict...

Public opinion polling is a powerful practice: It legitimizes sentiment, crystallizes reality. It’s irresistible to political journalists. And, for several decades now, John Zogby, class of 1970 at Le Moyne College, has been one of its highest profile practitioners – featured in The New Yorker, a repeat guest on The Daily Show, and namechecked on The West Wing and House of Cards. From his near-per...

You can judge a civilization by how it treats its most destitute – those who, in the words of Matthew 25, represent the least fortunate of God’s people. For five decades on the streets of Philadelphia, Sister Mary Scullion, class of 1976 at St. Joseph’s University, has served as a woman for and with others. Through her Project HOME organization, she’s helped shepherd thousands out of the cycle of...

Division 1 college sports demands a herculean focus and discipline – to say nothing of trying to make the pros. Sean Guthrie, class of 2001 at Boston College, has that just that drive. It took the former defensive end captain of the Eagles to the grueling crucible of the NFL. And it’s vaulted him onward to work in a setting some might think is just as tough and punishing: middle school. But it’s t...