Harvard College Class of 2000: The Podcast

Marisa talks to Dara about how her experiences at Harvard solidified her love of acting and launched her acting career. Marisa was part of On Thin Ice (where she met her husband, Paul), Gilbert & Sullivan Players, the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club, and the Signet Society, and she was also a FAP proctor for three years. After earning her MFA at NYU, she did theater in New York City. Marisa an...

Arden talks to Dara about her journey since college. Soon after graduating, she started a home for foster kids, Rediscovery House, which was directly related to her volunteer work at PBHA. Arden’s twists and turns include going to HBS, having (and beating) acute myelogenous cancer in her 20s, and working in the healthcare industry before starting her own company. Intent Clinical is a concierge pro...

Tina talks to Dara about her journey from Harvard to investment banking to HBS to Victoria’s Secret and then tying it all together, running her own investment firm, CXT Investments , which focuses on emerging brands in beauty, personal care, and health and wellness (including investing in a classmate, Patricia Santos’ company!). Tina has her own podcast talking to founders and investors called The...

Lauren talks to Dara about her journey from studying math at Harvard to becoming the math department’s only female professor where she studies algebra and combinatorics. She recently won the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant . Lauren talks pulling all-nighters in college and Helen Vendler’s mathematical way about talking about poetry. Lauren is a runner, which she started doing with her college ro...

Anna talks about her journey from South Korea to Florida, coming with no English at all. Anna is a musician who wrote her thesis on Mahler and met her husband through music. Anna pivoted from music (including teaching) to finance - she now runs her own private wealth firm, Grenadilla Advisory (also on IG ). The episode ends with Anna singing Mahler- a short German Lied (song)- and the second song...

Niki talks to Dara about her journey in the world of higher ed- from studying at Harvard and the University of Cambridge to working at multiple universities, focusing on innovation and education. Niki recently had a big pivot to become the co-founder and CEO of Swaza , a non-invasive nanofluid technology to reverse acute oxygen loss. Niki has been involved in Harvard since her days as the Mather H...

Dara talks to Laela Sturdy about Florida, basketball, and working at Let’s Go and liquor crew at reunion. Laela has gotten multiple degrees after college and now is the head of CapitalG , Google's growth fund- investing in companies you know like Waymo, Stripe, Duolingo, and Cloudflare. Laela lived in Greenough and Eliot and was a Biochemical Sciences concentrator. Laela is from South Florida and...

Ben talks to Dara about data science, visiting breweries all over the U.S., including in every county in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and biking across the U.S. Follow Ben’s adventures via his biking and beer blog and IG . The tv news article about him is here: https://www.kfyrtv.com/content/news/Man-bikes-across-country-visits-breweries-512657991.html Ben lived in Matthews and PfoHo and Quincy...

Matt started his career as a Latin teacher in Wellesley, using that Classics degree. Matt then pivoted to law school and clerked and worked as a lawyer briefly before pivoting again into investment banking. Matt then worked as a blogger with Elie Mystal (episode 9). You can read Matt’s daily articles for Bloomberg called Money Stuff and listen to his podcast- look for it in your podcast player. Wh...

We start the episode with a non-profit ad from classmate Jonathan Wintrode for the Annapolis Immigration Justice Network . Lizzy worked in government intelligence after graduation, including tracking Bin Laden, later switching to consulting and now is an author. Lizzy and her husband took a sabbatical and traveled around the world with a non-profit. Upon her return, she decided to pursue a creativ...

Dara talks to Dmitriy Sagalovskiy about the Harvard tunnels, sailing, and math education. Dmitry is an engineer who has worked at Google, with classmates as a co-founder of Hudson River Trading, a teacher, co-founder of New York Math Circle Dmitry moved to NYC as a child and still lives in New York City. Dmitry lived in Mather.

You know and love Christine from her masterful Puns & Punctuation WA group comments- from angry vaginas to creating our beloved pony images, Christine’s sense of humor shines through from the first second of her interview. Christine talks about her love of Peloton (she has probably gone to the most live classes of anyone in this class) to her globe-trotting, baking lifestyle that we can all as...

Eileen interviews Ana Torres, who was one of our speakers at “ The Paths We’ve Traveled” event at reunion. Today, Ana continues to share insights from her “life of extremely low probability events.” At Harvard, Ana lived in Wigglesworth and Cabot and concentrated in psychology. She also earned her MBA from HBS and worked in the corporate world before “dropping out” in 2020. She and her husband, cl...

Dara talks to Kaitlin about her Grammy and Emmy-winning career with the Alphabet Rockers and we hear more about the JV women’s hockey team that came up in earlier episodes! Follow Kaitlin on her Instagram . Listen to her music on her website and buy their book and watch the music video to the book, You Are Not Alone , here. Here's an unreleased video for Get It Right. Kaitlin lived in Weld and Qui...

Dara talks to Yaoi Shionoiri, who is an art lawyer- a career we have not yet seen on the podcast! Yayoi has worked for a museum, art company, artists’ estates, and is now at Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn (go visit her!). Yayoi reminisced about serving coffee in the Greenhouse Cafe and dining at the Signet. Yayoi lived in Hollis and Winthrop or Throp as she calls it. Yayoi was a Government concentrat...

Eileen talks to linguist Mary Ann (Cockerill) Walter about her love of languages, living and teaching in 10 different countries (she’s currently at the University of the Virgin Islands!) and discovering Arabic and linguistics at Harvard. She also gives us a linguist’s take on the recent Percival Everett novel, James , and offers some additional fiction recommendations. Mary Ann also shares her per...

Dara talks to Jonathan Dawid about his late fiancee Anna Laurent, known as Anna Malsberger in college. Anna worked in graphic design and documentary film after college and studying at Mass College of Art. Anna’s love of running led her to discover the abundance and beauty of plants and seeds in Los Angeles- which she wrote about and later photographed . Anna moved to London where she had many exhi...

Dara talks to Andrea about “life being extraordinary” and “mulling over grand plans for the future.” Andrea discusses moving to the United States to attend Harvard, soon after the end of the cold war. She has always been interested in foreign affairs and dreamed of working at the United Nations (spoiler alert- she did!). After college, she went to the London School of Economics to study Developmen...

Eileen talks to the thoughtful, hilarious Melina McTigue Garland about moving back to her hometown of Worcester, MA, her love of music and of words, and starting a flute ensemble, ringing the bells in Lowell Tower and gazing at the rings of Saturn at Harvard. Melina also shares her experience of being diagnosed with ADHD at age 44, finding magic in the everyday, and her life-affirming experience a...

Cori talks about working at multiple jobs (including Putney Student Travel- which she hooked Dara up with a job in Alaska!) before going to law school and becoming a health lawyer in California. Cori is now the Executive Director of the Western Center on Law & Poverty and an avid surfer. Cori lived in Thayer and Dunster House. She was a History & Literature of Latin America concentrator. S...

Ming Hsu Chen talks about her goal to become the first Asian American Thurgood Marshall, but pivoted to create a career with her main interests: ethnicity, religion and faith, law, civil rights, and immigration. Ming is a Professor at the University of California Law School and runs the Center for Race, Immigration, Citizenship, and Equality (RICE) . Ming also recently co-hosted the Harvard Asian...

Today, Eileen interviews Nathaniel Ekman, one of The Paths We’ve Traveled speakers at reunion. Nathaniel opens up about his mental health struggles while at Harvard, being diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 21, and living an authentic, hope-filled life ever since. He talks about his work with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), reflects on lessons from his “dark days and brighter o...

Kyle talks about pivoting from pre-med to technology, with an interesting role in technology at City Harvest, a food rescue organization in NYC (after a cool stint using ad tech for important issues). He’s a chess aficionado (and played outside of of ABP), a former PTA leader, a black belt in karate, and does crosswords regularly. Kyle lived in Weld and Mather and was a Biochemistry concentrator....

Congrats to Kim on her new book, Mentality Wins, that came out this week! Kim has a couple of irons in the fire- in addition to being an author, she runs a group mental health practice, Unlimited Resilience , for athletes, by athletes AND created Athletes Better Together , a peer mentoring program for teen athletes. You would not be surprised that she herself was an athlete- hockey was a huge part...

Judith talks about how shopping period changed her career trajectory to stay in school forever and become a psychology professor at the University of Louisville. Judith’s research in child development and information sources, with a current focus on technology. Judith went to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School and quickly helped mobilize alumni after the mass shooting there. See Judith in the f...