Roads Taken

Guest Lisana Gabriel Brown started her career as a graphic designer but felt to constrained by how someone else thought things should look. An astute supervisor saw her technical skills and moved her into the world of IT. Though she had considered the corporate path “too buttoned up” in earlier days, she found that the corporate world—particularly banking—was the right fit and a progression of mor...

Guest Amy Peller , Dartmouth '96, could always be counted on to find the fun in a moment, whether meeting people on the way to the snowboarding lessons or performing magic in the campus pub. Throughout her career in consumer marketing and brand management, she tried to always keep that sense of fun and joy. Some employers, such as Mattel (where she worked on products from water guns to Matchbox ca...

Guest Helene Sisti has always wanted to take in every experience life offers, whether in the classroom, on a field or on stage at an Aerosmith concert. Combining her love of sport with her interest in psychology, she found her way to sports psychology. But while pursuing a masters in kinesiology, an early class in neuroscience during opened her eyes to the world of research. She continued on for a...

Guest Mark Griffin , Dartmouth '96, had two parents in the state department so had been used to lots of moves before boarding school in Austria. The promise of mountains and persuasive literature sealed the deal for Dartmouth. He loved the intellectual freedom the college afforded and he stumbled into philosophy to round out his genetic propensity toward government. Although he knew that public se...

Guest Monica Oberkofler Gorman , Dartmouth '96, had been accepted at Yale Law School and had earned a scholarship to study in Oxford, but her heart lay in public service work in DC so after graduation she took the opportunity of a White House internship—ill-timed, perhaps, given her shared name with another intern at that moment. And although she loved DC, she felt that she needed to see more of h...

Guest Shakari Cameron Byerly , Dartmouth '96, recognized that at her core she is someone who brings communities together, shines a light the diversity within them, and amplifies the voices so all viewpoints are heard. She did that in her youth and in college through student assembly work and with the cultural communities that she was a part. She figured that she would have a future in public inter...

Guest Will Uppington , Dartmouth '96, had a desire to do good in the world, so naturally thought he would follow in his father’s footsteps into medicine. But after a few too many hospital experiences he thought there might be another way to be of service and pursued a double major in economics and government. Worried this might not give him quite enough hard skills, he spent senior year dabbling i...

Guest Shannon Smith-Bernardin , Dartmouth '96, knew she needed to get out of Maine, as the only prospects she saw for herself there were nursing and teaching. With two duffle bags and $400 in her pocket, she landed in Los Angeles and then landed a string of jobs that didn’t feed her soul. In supporting a friend through rehab, she learned more about her own past with alcohol and co-dependent relati...

Guest Shervyn von Hoerl , Dartmouth '96, is Iranian-American and had thought as a child touched by the fallout from foreign policy decisions that he would hitch his wagon to a politician’s star and be Secretary of State one day. Participating as an operative in campaigns during high school seemed to pave the way. But after college, he felt burned out on politics in general and even questioned the...

Guest Gregory Papajohn , Dartmouth '96, had thought that Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service would be the way to live out the service ethos that he’d grown up with. But, even for a kid who lived in the shadow of Manhattan, he realized during a visit to D.C. that urban life didn’t seem to fit his idea of college. Dartmouth’s setting provided him with a groundedness that he still relies on to hel...

Guest Matt Wiltshire , Dartmouth '96, grew up in Nashville in a family that was active in politics and in serving the community around them in a variety of ways. Ever the fiery, argumentative one, Matt went to college to study government and thought law school was in his future. Thinking he’d save a little money before law school, he followed in the shoes of senior year roommate and went into inve...

Guest Matt Little , Dartmouth '96, had a bit of a free-range childhood, allowed as he was to paddle out to his own little island fiefdom near his parent’s lake cabin in Central Minnesota. Finding frogs and other friends and feeling one with that special place, he knew then—as a young child—that he wanted to do all he could to protect special places like this.  With an eye to one day becoming head...

Guest Jennifer Wullf , Dartmouth '96, never thought she was college bound, let alone Ivy League material. But with encouragement that she was a strong writer who had the goods, she entered Dartmouth as a transfer student at the age of 23, making her time at college seem somewhat out of sync. Perhaps that is one reason the memoir she tried to write during her last year’s fellowship—though packed wi...

Guest Darryl Knudsen , Dartmouth '96, was technically a comparative literature major in college, but one could be forgiven for thinking he was a paddling major given the amount of time he spent on the water. Unsuprisingly, he began adult life as a river guide. But when he stood on the banks at one point and realized he didn’t have the tools needed to make the impact he wanted, he took a different...

Guest Suzie Brown Sax , Dartmouth '96, was part of lots of communities in college, from sports to Greek life. But she found her “people” for the first time, senior year, when she joined the female a cappella group the Rockapellas. While the group provided the creative outlet she didn’t know she needed, it also made her question her long-standing dreams to join her science skills with her interest...

Guest Rebecca Oettinger Feder , Dartmouth '96, knew enough about business after leaving college to know that she didn’t know enough. After a rotational program and an executive MBA, she realized she was drawn most to Human Resources, which she came to regard as more than just an enabling function to the businesses of which she was a part. Her roles supporting senior managers across the entirety of...

Guest Marc McDonald , Dartmouth '96 and self-proclaimed film lover, had been combining his love of media and communications and sports through writing and broadcasting during college. After sticking around campus for a year after graduation as an assistant track coach, he also took advantage of the opportunity to run the Dartmouth Film Society and a chance to connect with the Telluride Film Festiv...

Guest Scott Anthony , Dartmouth '96, was never really thinking about a life in journalism. But he found the time spent working on America’s oldest college newspaper, The Dartmouth , enjoyable because of his ability to pose questions and do research and tell a story. Years later, those skills would come back together in the work he does as an author on business innovation topics. Though he credits...

Guest Chesley Homan Flotten , Dartmouth '96, entered college thinking she would be an advocate in the legal sense—one who is professionally qualified to plead the cause of another in a court of law. But a love of history soon blossomed and she found herself in graduate school with the idea of researching and teaching. Ultimately, that path didn’t resonate with her either and, as a new mother, she...

Guest  Jonathon “Stew” Stewart , Dartmouth '96, set off to Hollywood immediately after graduation to become a writer and director in Hollywood. Without ready-made connections or a pre-determined path, he had to stumbled around in the beginning until a few observations of the sublime and the ridiculous within his own family made him take stock anew and recommit to the path he’d chosen. Embarking on...

Recently , ROADS TAKEN sat down to talk with Justin Boyd about his journey through being a student-athlete in college, managing his time well enough to get into dental school, and emerging as the fourth generation of his family to practice dentistry. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, he had to help his family shut down the practice and then use the time to rethink dental care in this modern age....

Guest  Justin Boyd , Dartmouth '96, may have been destined to practice dentistry with three generations of dentists on his father’s side preceding him. But as captain of the men’s lacrosse team, Justin realized his first job was to learn to juggle his role as a student-athlete (and fraternity member) with his pre-med studies. Knowing dentistry wasn’t the only game in town, he found himself seeking...

Guest  Michelle Erickson Waters , Dartmouth '96, had originally thought she’d be a lawyer, but after she spent a fellowship term with a legal aid organization at the border doing more grant-writing and bureaucratic stuff and less helping people, she listened more carefully to the call to the ministry. A path to divinity school took a slightly different turn than expected when she chose to attend t...

Guest  Joey Hood , Dartmouth '96, had originally thought he’d spend a life in government service or maybe in politics, but after he realized government majors were mostly really passionate, argumentative lawyers in training, he concentrated in his beloved French. Taking opportunities that presented themselves and ones he concocted on his own, he did every foreign study program in France available,...

"My main objective of starting the ROADS TAKEN podcast was to highlight the stories of my classmates as we travel the road this year to our 25th college reunion – to reflect on who we were when we graduated, who we thought we’d be, and how we’ve traveled down various roads to get where we are today. I wanted to hit home the idea that, regardless of the paths we’ve taken, we’ve still lived into the...