Profile

Sally Campbell Galman ’96

A professor of child and family studies at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, Campbell Galman is a scholar and activist committed to improving the lives of children and their caregivers. She combines art and social science to capture a nuanced understanding of children’s diverse gendered lives across school, home, family, and community contexts and uses visual research as a vehicle for outreach and advocacy. She is the principal investigator of the Gender Moxie Project, a research group studying gender diversity in childhood.

Sabrina Eagan ’96

Eagan has made remarkable contributions to public health through her work on HIV and tuberculosis projects around the globe. In her 18 years as a public health nurse, she has helped develop health networks in 15 countries. As a senior technical adviser at the JSI Research and Training Institute, she works to improve service delivery and patient management.

Rev. Jake Joseph ’11

A minister at First Congregational Church of Guilford, Connecticut, Joseph is creating change through a focus on equity. A specialist in leadership, fundraising, teaching, and community organizing, he helped write a national framework for inclusion of people with disabilities in affordable housing, advocated for Habitat for Humanity initiatives, and helped plan one of the largest LGBTQ conferences in the world. His Grinnell volunteerism includes serving as co-chair of Grinnell-on-the-Front Range and co-founding the Grinnell-in-South­ern New England regional network.

View the 2021 Alumni Assembly ceremony.

During his years at Grinnell, Ron Stanford ’71 was one of the students in charge of booking concerts for the College. He helped bring Jackson Browne, Steve Miller, John Prine, Bill Monroe, and other marquee name acts to campus.

But it was another band that ended up being the most influential to Stanford and his wife, Fay Hazelcorn Stanford ’72. The Balfa Brothers, a Cajun family that hailed from Basile, Louisiana, told Stanford that if he ever wanted to visit, he was welcome in Basile.

After graduation, the Stanfords received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant; for the next two years, they documented music and culture in and around Basile, taking hundreds of black-and-white photos. The couple also produced a Cajun and zydeco album, J’étais au Bal (I Went to the Dance), complete with a 30-page liner notes booklet. The groundbreaking recording showcased Black and white musicians together at a time when races in southwest Louisiana rarely mixed.

In 2016, Ron rediscovered a huge box of photos from the Basile days. He assembled a batch for an art exhibit in Philadelphia and then compiled 100 of the best shots for a book titled Big French Dance: Cajun & Zydeco Music, 1972–74.

“Before people were aware of how distinct Cajun culture was, they were just living their lives,” Fay says. “Music was part of their lives, family gatherings, and festivals, and they let us go along with it.”

As an aquarium biologist, Amanda Hodo ’14 makes sure the animals at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida, are getting everything they need to have healthy and fulfilling lives.

Hodo has wholeheartedly embraced roles that educate and inform aquarium visitors about marine life. The latest example came in April when she was featured on CBS’s Mission Unstoppable.

“I was really excited with the way that they highlighted the shark training, because that’s something that our guests really enjoy; and people who haven’t been to Mote may not have realized sharks can be trained in such a way,” Hodo says. “I also was excited to be shown in such a magnificent setting on TV in scuba gear because of the visibility implications.

“Visibility and trying to represent minority women in a career that normally doesn’t have very many of them is a really amazing thing to be a part of,” Hodo adds. “It can also be really stressful. I put a lot of pressure on myself sometimes, but it is ultimately a really great opportunity to showcase marine science and hopefully inspire the next generation to consider this as a career.”

Mansir Petrie ’99, right, pictured with Peace Corps colleagues in Panama in February 2020.

When Mansir Petrie '99 studied abroad in Kenya as a Grinnell College student, the experience sparked his lifelong desire to travel the world.

For the past two decades, Petrie’s work in international development has taken him to Bhutan, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Kenya, Mozambique, Russia, and, most recently, Panama. No matter how far away he was from Grinnell, Petrie remained attached to his alma mater.

“It’s hard to imagine anything about my life without Grinnell,” he says.

Petrie and Graham Gelling ’99, class co-agents, crafted a class letter during the early stages of the pandemic that combined alumni updates with ideas for future Grinnell encounters as well as quarantine media recommendations (the TV show Scrubs led the list).

“It was a communication that emphasized we are all in this together,” Petrie says. “We want to have a sense of community. With our busy adult lives and now COVID, I know our class is not at the same level of communication as we used to be, but the letter is something to join us together.”

When Mala Adiga ’93 was a law student at the University of Chicago, she was taught by Barack Obama.

It would not be the last time Adiga crossed paths with a future president of the United States. In November Adiga was appointed by then President-elect Joe Biden to be policy director for Jill Biden. Adiga previously served as a senior adviser to Jill Biden and was a senior policy adviser for Biden’s 2020 campaign.

An educator by profession, Jill Biden has said that as first lady, she intends to prioritize education and military families. Adiga previously worked for the Biden Foundation as director for higher education and military families.

Adiga, whose family emigrated from India’s state of Karnataka, graduated from Grinnell College with a degree in Spanish language and literature. She later worked for a Chicago law firm and clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Philip Simon before joining Obama’s campaign in 2008. She went on to hold several positions in the Obama administration, including deputy assistant secretary of state for academic programs in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and chief of staff and senior adviser to the ambassador-at-large in the State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues.

Over his 35-year information technology career, Dave Dale ’78 has seen campus technology grow from the mid-1980s era, when students had access to a handful of computer terminals near huge mainframes, to today’s wireless campus, where students, faculty, and staff can go nearly anywhere in the world with a laptop to work.

Dale originally wanted to be a guidance counselor, but after taking Introduction to Computing with Professor Gene Herman his senior year, plans changed.

In 1985, Dale started his Grinnell College career as manager of operations in Information Technology Services (ITS), doing everything from managing hardware systems to installing and repairing personal computers. The job evolved into project management for infrastructure. He retired from the College this summer to focus on a farm that’s been in his family for five generations.

“The consistent thing was that I enjoyed helping people,” Dale said. “You can provide the campus with a service that helps students learn, faculty teach, and staff do their jobs. It was never boring.”

As a global public health student, Carson Peters ’20 cherishes the importance of working with community. In June, she launched Essential Cards Campaign, a card-writing campaign to thank essential workers in College Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

“Their contributions are integral to our lives and their efforts shouldn’t go unnoticed,” she says. “They put their health and safety at risk.”

Peters collects handwritten notes from the community and she writes her own notes, then packages them in an Essential Cards envelope and ribbon. She’s hand-delivered them to workers at restaurants, gas stations, banks, and grocery stores, and to postal workers and public works employees.

At Grinnell, she served as a class ambassador for four years, a tour guide, and a mentor at local schools. She’s currently a class agent and working as a contact tracer for the Maryland Department of Health. Peters has completed her master’s of public health degree and is applying to Ph.D. programs.

“At Grinnell, I learned the importance of service and the impact of sharing positivity with communities,” she says.

In his more than 20 years as a journalist, Christopher Maag ’95 has covered everything from the waning days of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to the devastating floods that overran Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It’s why, at age 46, he remains committed to journalism, despite its tribulations.

Maag has alternated between columnist and investigative reporter, but his goal has always been to report the news with the heart of a poet.

“At age 28 I discovered Tom Wolfe and found what writing could be,” he says. “I read The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and thought, ‘This is amazing. I’m feeling things.’ I had never read anything where art was the point.”

For the past seven years, he’s been at the northern New Jersey-based Record, covering New Jersey and New York City and topics ranging from cranberries to a local serial killer. “I never let an idea go, and the quirkier the better,” he says.

When Karen Smith Hirshon ’73 takes the stage, the possibilities abound. The versatile Grinnell alumna plays more than a half-dozen stringed instruments: fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, bass, and hammered dulcimer.

Prior to the pandemic, Hirshon (pictured above right) and her Simple Gifts bandmate, Linda Littleton (above left), entertained audiences at colleges, churches, libraries, schools, and senior centers. The duo also teach elementary school students to play the ukulele, help high school students arrange compositions, and do musical work with the elderly and people with severe disabilities.

During her first year at Grinnell, Hirshon befriended guitarist Celia Millington-Wyckoff ’72, now a bluegrass bass player in North Carolina, and Michael Drayton ’72, an old-time fiddler and violinist in California. While most students at the time were into pop music like the Beatles, Hirshon and friends gravitated to country music and prison songs.

“Grinnell really did expose us to the whole concept of just following your curiosities,” Hirshon says.

When Jonathan Rebelsky ’20 and Sage Kapland-Goland ’20 learned about an effort to support local hospitals by using 3D printers to create face shields, they sprang into action. They found an open-source face shield plan, connected with Erik Sanning ’89, technical director in the Department of Theatre and Dance, and got to work.

Using a pair of 3D printers, including one typically used to build props, they honed a process for the delicate, time-consuming tasks and have completed dozens of shields. (A single shield, which consists of two distinct pieces, takes more than five hours to print.)

“I am lucky to have both the tools and skills to print the parts,” says Sanning. “I’m pleased that, in at least some small way, I’m able to contribute to the safety of those who are really doing the hard, dangerous work.”

Rebelsky agrees. “I’m glad that I can do something to help make the situation better,” he says.

Have you used your skills to help others during the pandemic? Tell us about it.