Profile

As a registered nurse at Minnesota Community Care, Mira Miller ’94 provides a range of care to low-income and homeless adults. A critical job during normal times, her work has become even more important during the pandemic. “Homeless patients have no homes in which to shelter in place,” she says.

Miller follows a range of new protocols to help keep her and her patients safe, including working in an outdoor tent that is erected and deconstructed daily — a challenge in Minnesota’s chilly spring temperatures — and limiting work to essential services. Those services include screening and testing for COVID-19.

While Miller says the job has gotten more challenging, she and her team are as committed as ever to their work. “We are a provider of last resort for our patients, pandemic or not,” she says. “We keep showing up to deliver the best care we can to our vulnerable patients.”

How has your work changed as a result of the pandemic? Share your story.

In her search for an interesting research topic related to Asian American history, Sam Nakahira ’19 found her attention snagged by one compelling detail. “The first frost-resistant orange was hybridized by a Chinese American farmer in Florida,” she says. She was instantly intrigued, “because that really isn't part of the narrative of what we think of American agriculture.”

Nakahira discovered that although Asian Americans have made significant contributions to American agriculture, they haven’t really been recognized for their accomplishments. Since most research had been done on the period before World War II, she decided to focus on Japanese American farmers and food retailers in California from the 1970s to the present.

Her research project was the culmination of her Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF). As a second-year student, Nakahira was invited to participate in the MMUF program at Grinnell (see related story, Page 16). A major part of the program is for each fellow to conduct a significant research project under the mentorship of a faculty member. Nakahira, who is fifth-generation Japanese American, chose Sarah Purcell ’92, L.F. Parker Professor of History, as her Mellon adviser (see related story, Page 22).

In addition to being an excellent history student, Nakahira is a skilled illustrator. Turning her research paper into a comic was a natural next step.

She decided to focus on one case study from her research, Bill Fujimoto, a Berkeley food retailer. “He was the first person to source Alice Waters, who is a chef at Chez Panisse,” Nakahira says. “People credit her for sparking California cuisine during the 1970s and through that, impacting local farm to table movements.”

In the comic, Nakahira asks herself and the reader questions about Japanese culture and its influence on Bill Fujimoto. She doesn’t explicitly answer the questions, instead guiding the reader to see her point, “but not forcing it over them,” she says.

Incorporating Japanese culture in her comic, especially the Japanese work ethic, also helped Nakahira see herself differently. “I gained more pride in my heritage and background,” she says. By sharing her own quest for learning, she thinks it adds resonance for her readers and makes them more invested.

“I think that direction was really helpful in creating this story,” Nakahira says. “It was suggested by my adviser, Professor Jeremy Chen.” Chen is a member of the studio art faculty and specializes in printmaking, drawing, and sculpture.

The two worked together throughout the 2018–19 school year (a two-credit independent study in the fall and a Mentored Advanced Project in the spring). During the fall semester, Nakahira created the story, and in the spring, she experimented with different art techniques.

Last fall she began a master of fine arts program at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. See her illustrations at her website. She’s considering going on for a doctorate in American studies. Whatever she does, her hard work at Grinnell has prepared her quite nicely.

When English major Deborah Helsing ’88 initially arrived at Grinnell College, she felt incredibly out of place. “It was a very different culture than what I had grown up in,” she says.

Helsing had come from a pretty homogenous environment, and Grinnell, she says, “was so open to experimentation and had all kinds of people who claimed diverse kinds of identity and difference, that it was shocking to my system.”

Ultimately, Helsing says it was “powerful” attending school with students so open to defying traditional ways of thinking. Even late professor Peter Connelly’s unconventional teaching of Oedipus Rex in her First-Year Tutorial opened her eyes to new literary ideas.

It has been in that “transformative” spirit that she has approached her job as a lecturer at Harvard University Graduate School of Education and as co-director of Minds at Work, where she coaches education, business, finance, and nonprofit leaders to diagnose and overcome their resistance to change.

“Often there is something deeper involved when we find ourselves unable to confront a crisis. Our work helps people identify the underlying barriers and unconscious beliefs that we have about ourselves or the world that keep us from being able to make change or grow,” Helsing says.

The coaching that Helsing provides, which grew out of theories of adult development and learning, helps people see more clearly the obstacles in their work and personal lives and why they might struggle to face these challenges. Helsing’s coaching helps to serve as a change-agent for leadership at organizations experiencing pressure to evolve.

Her work can also help people with individual problems, such as trying to lose weight, quitting smoking, or stopping procrastination. But it can also be vital when identifying fundamental cultural beliefs and values related to important and uncomfortable issues like, for example, race in America.

“Our approach helps people begin to explore those core beliefs, where they come from, and how are they impacting their life right now,” she says. “We might ask people to do things like imagine that you find out these beliefs aren’t true. What would your life be like? What could you do? How would you think differently? How did you feel differently? When do you notice that your assumptions are operating?”

It was at Grinnell that Helsing first learned the importance of being able to deeply examine your core beliefs in order to be able to grow and flourish.

“It was fundamentally jarring to have these conversations with people who approached an issue opposite than I did or saw the world completely differently,” she says. “Being able to have a really open conversation with them taught me how considering another perspective can lead to growth.”

“There are more soccer clubs in the world than there are people who have ever played major league baseball,” says Sean Forman ’94. As president of Sports Reference, a collection of online sports data encyclopedias that includes baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and soccer, he ought to know.

Yet Forman’s path to an innovative business in sports analytics was not exactly a straight line. Growing up in Manning, Iowa, where his dad was the football coach, Forman helped compile the summary stats after games and wrote sports stories for his local paper.

At Grinnell he was a serious fantasy baseball player and a math major. Forman figured he could either be a teacher or an engineer, so he pursued a 3-2 engineering program. A semester shy of completing his second bachelor’s degree, he realized it wasn’t the right field for him. With the flexibility and nimbleness typical of Grinnellians, Forman changed course and earned a doctorate in applied math at the University of Iowa.

But baseball was still an important part of his world. “My last year at Iowa I was supposed to be doing my dissertation,” Forman says. “I created a baseball reference instead.”

Forman worked on the baseball website on the side, even after he landed a tenure-track job at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. In the mid-2000s, he realized he wanted to do the website full time. But he didn’t have tenure yet, and taking a leave of absence to work on a baseball website could endanger that. So he waited.

In 2006, after securing tenure, Forman took a leave of absence and dove full time into the world of sports data and analytics. “By that point I was making enough money that it did not seem like a completely insane decision,” he says.

Forman and his 10 employees continued to add features and content. About a year before the 2019 Women’s World Cup, he wanted to create the first comprehensive, online data collection of women’s soccer statistics.

Forman teamed up with Xavier Escandell, associate professor of anthropology and director of the Data Analysis and Social Inquiry Lab (DASIL) at Grinnell. Forman and Escandell, along with DASIL student mentors LaAnna Farnelli ’20, Anshul Tambay ’20, and Daniel Cook ’19, as well as Katherine Walden, digital liberal arts specialist, and Jarren Santos ’17, data scientist, crafted a plan to create a database of Women’s World Cup data since its beginning in 1991.

The students worked with the data “in a real, tangible way,” Forman says, that let them learn useful tools. “I’ve always found actually trying to do something is the best way to learn it.”

When Vivek Venugopal ’01 came to Grinnell, he never anticipated that he would fall in love with everything about the College, the town, and the people. He certainly didn’t anticipate that his sensible computer science degree would lead him down a path that culminated (for now) in a career in improv comedy.

It was the intellectual curiosity that he developed at Grinnell that led Venugopal to the spotlight and performing improv as a part of his job at Speechless, a San Francisco-based company that uses the comedic tool to help train people to become more comfortable with public speaking.

“I just constantly want to learn more,” he says. “That’s what the liberal arts education at Grinnell gave me — this thirst to learn new things. My favorite computer science prof and adviser, Sam Rebelsky, always said I’d learn much more than simply how to code at Grinnell.”

His path to Speechless was not exactly a direct one. In his time at Grinnell he poured himself into everything under the sun — the Student Government Association, Grinnell Singers, Con Brio, KDIC, student affairs, dining hall, intramural sports — everything, it seems, except improv.

Then after graduating, he moved to Chicago and became roommates with fellow Grinnell alum Kumail Nanjiani ’01. “It was right after 9/11 and we were worried we wouldn’t find jobs,” Venugopal says. “We were two brown immigrants, and it was a scary environment to be in.”

But though he was lucky to find a job through Grinnell alumni as a software developer in Chicago, Venugopal says he decided to take his career in a different direction and went into nonprofit fundraising because he wanted a job that had true social impact. That career moved him to San Francisco where he eventually jumped back into tech, into a startup acquired by LinkedIn in 2014.

Now he works as Speechless’ director of revenue, masterminding the company’s sales and marketing strategy. “It’s a tremendously impactful job,” Venugopal says. “We do a lot of work with women, minorities, and underrepresented, marginalized people. We give them the tools to amplify their authentic voices in spaces where they aren’t always listened to.”

Venugopal was initially attracted to the company after attending some of its open-mic sessions, which featured comedians delivering improvised talks based on slides they had never seen. That led to a love of all things improv and that passion led to him working with the company and creating his own musical improv show, American Immigrants.

“I’ve always felt that my superpower is my ability to give a coherent talk about any topic, to any group of people,” he says.

“Now I get paid to use that superpower to help people. I am incredibly lucky.”

Chris Jones, special collections librarian and archivist of the College, stumbled into archival work while working in the rare books collection as a student at the University of Illinois, but he has since found a home in the basement of Burling Library, where he oversees a collection of more than 10,000 volumes. Within the collection lies the meaningful history of the College, as seen through institutional documents, photographs, letters, and other artifacts. But those items are just the tip of the iceberg for Jones, as he works to preserve the stories from Grinnell’s past and ensure their longevity for future generations.

Ben Binversie ’17 ventured down into the Burling Library basement to talk with Jones about his work.

BB: How do you collect the current happenings and publications at the College?

CJ: We use what’s referred to as a sampling plan. So, we don’t try to necessarily collect every single document that has ever been printed on a College printer, but we do try to collect enough about each event or lecture held on campus to give a future researcher an idea of why it might have been important. We try to capture as many of the student-led activities as possible and hope that it’s good enough.

Do you have any favorite moments in Grinnell’s history that you’ve learned about through the archives?

The [1971] takeover of Burling Library by the Concerned Black Students (CBS) was a big deal. Very few people understand that at the time that that happened, the College administrative offices were located in Burling basement. They chained themselves inside the building that housed the administrative offices so that the administrators had to listen to them.

How do you interact with alumni through the archives?

During Reunion, Allison Haack, library assistant, and I have set up a table for alumni to look through photos and help identify the people, places, and events depicted. It’s been great for us, and the alumni enjoy seeing the old photos and contributing to our work. Digital Grinnell and The Scarlet & Black online archive are great resources for alumni to view pictures or information from their time on campus.

What are some of your favorite highlights of the collection?

Our two oldest printed books were both printed in 1477. One of them weighs in at a solid 9.5 pounds, and the front and back covers are both made out of wood. That one will be around for a long time. I also really like the Salvador Dali-illustrated Alice in Wonderland. That’s pretty trippy.

Are there any new projects on the horizon?

The College recently negotiated with Salisbury House in Des Moines to purchase approximately 3,000 volumes and 2,500 documents from that collection, including a couple of books printed between 1400 and 1500, medieval manuscripts, and first editions of Sinclair Lewis, among other treasures [See Page 6]. In anticipation of acquiring the collection, we installed compact shelving in the vaults so we could have space to house all of it. Previously, our collection included around 10,000 volumes in the archives, and the new shelving created space for the additional volumes from the Salisbury House library collection.

If you have questions with which the archives might be able to assist, Jones encourages you to contact him. He is happy to take phone calls, 641-269-3364, or emails joneschr[at]grinnell[dot]edu, but the archivist in him really appreciates a good old-fashioned handwritten letter, so that’s an option, too.

To hear the full interview with Jones, see Season 2 of the podcast All Things Grinnell at grinnell.edu/podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The Grinnell College Alumni Council has selected 14 exceptional graduates to receive the 2019 Alumni Awards.

The Alumni Award recognizes individuals who embody Grinnell College’s mission of lifetime learning and service and contribute to the common good. Nominated by their classmates and peers, recipients have distinguished themselves by their service to their careers, their community, and/or the College.

Bruce Pauley ’59

Recognized as a top scholar of Austrian history, Bruce Pauley has taught history since 1961 and served as a professor at the University of Central Florida for 35 years. His books on Austrian socialism and anti-Semitism contributed substantially to Austria coming to terms with its own past. In 2010, Austria’s ambassador to the United States presented Pauley with the Austrian government’s highest award for scholarship and art.

L.R. “Bud” Roegge ’59

After majoring in chemistry at Grinnell, Bud Roegge decided to put his test tubes away and go to law school. Both subjects would go on to shape his career. As an attorney and longtime president of Smith Haughey Rice & Roegge in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Roegge litigated numerous environmental cases, such as representing Michigan Chemical Co. in statewide contamination that affected the dairy industry. 

Janice Williams Resseger ’69

Janice Williams Resseger has been a tireless advocate for public education as a teacher, parent, community organizer, and staff member for a national religious social service political action group. In short, Resseger stands up for what she believes in. Working at the United Church of Christ, she developed programming around justice in public school policy for UCC churches around the country. She now authors a well-regarded public education policy blog.

Henry Wingate ’69

Henry Wingate has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the values of social justice and social service throughout his life and career. Wingate was the first black federal judge for the Southern District of Mississippi, appointed in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan. He also served as a Grinnell College trustee for 18 years and was deeply involved in recruitment and support of Grinnell’s black students and faculty. His numerous community service initiatives include providing educational opportunities for juveniles interested in careers in law and law enforcement.

Dr. Moses Lee ’79

As a physician, Moses Lee displays the utmost kindness and consideration for the patients and his fellow medical colleagues. Lee was an attending physician in the emergency departments of Cook County Hospital and John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital in Chicago for 28 years. He continues to volunteer in emergency medicine. In June 2018, he received the lifetime achievement award from the Illinois Department of Public Health for founding the Illinois Medical Emergency Response Team.

Dr. Jeffrey Greenberg ’80

Jeffrey Greenberg has served his community, his profession, and Grinnell College for the past four decades. A surgeon and staff physician at Indiana Hand to Shoulder Center, Greenberg is known as a compassionate caregiver, brilliant researcher, and first-rate teacher. Since graduation, he has served as a class agent. Additionally, he has served on the Alumni Council, including two years as president. In recent years, he has participated in several medical missions, providing hand surgery care to underserved populations around the world.

Susan Henken-Thielen ’80

A highly effective marketing executive, Susan Henken-Thielen has a passion for growing entrepreneurial organizations that help people. As director of product management for Collegis Education, she is leading the effort to develop new higher education strategic data analytics. Previously as a director for Pearson VUE, Henken-Thielen established the global UExcel education program, where domestic and international students earn college credits by taking and passing online exams. For her alma mater, she served on the Alumni Council for seven years and helped recruit Minneapolis area students to Grinnell as a GRASP (Grinnell Regional Admission Support Program) volunteer.

Paula Nixon ’84

Paula Nixon’s enthusiasm can be contagious. It’s especially evident during Reunion Weekend, which Nixon has attended for the past 10 years as a pioneering force behind GRA/EY (Grinnell Reunion Any/Every Year). Rather than wait for their respective reunion years, Nixon encourages alumni to attend whatever year possible, adding another fun dynamic to the weekend. Her enthusiasm also shines through in the Grinnell social media sphere, where her notes of encouragement are widely appreciated. 

Noel Green ’94

As an educator, Noel Green has brought with him the same spirit of inclusion, community building, and acute awareness of individual needs that he brought to Grinnell College as a student 25 years ago. Green is the principal of Burlington High School in Vermont, where his kind, caring, and approachable nature has made him ideal to work with students who come from all over the world. An advocate of restorative justice, the school district now puts emphasis on the relationships and people who have been harmed rather than doling out traditional punishments.

Dorje Gurung ’94

After being imprisoned under false accusations while teaching science in Qatar, Dorje Gurung met several Nepalese people who were working there as migrant workers. Those interactions helped persuade him to return to his native Nepal to educate the next generation of Nepalese students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. He established Social Business for Education, which sets up income-generating projects that benefit the community by providing jobs and training. For his vast commitment to education and humanity, Gurung received an honorary doctor of science degree at Grinnell’s 2014 Commencement. Gurung was denied a visa to attend Reunion; his friend, Michael Hanna ’94, accepted on his behalf.

Rabbi Jason M. Kimelman-Block ’94

As director of Bend the Arc Jewish Action, Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Brock has traveled the country seeking to promote nonviolent activism on behalf of those at risk. He also serves as director of national government affairs and rabbi-in-residence at A Jewish Partnership for Justice. He directed the first leadership cohort focused on training Jewish leaders of color and is a frequent speaker on social justice in the interfaith activist movement. Particularly notable is his ability to support and relate to people who have had very different life experiences from his own.

Kent Messer ’94

Kent Messer has an exceptional record of scholarship, teaching, and service as a natural resource and environmental economist. Messer teaches at the University of Delaware as the S. Hallock DuPont Professor. He is also the director of the Center for Experimental and Applied Economics and co-director of the Center for Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental Research. He has written two textbooks on how to apply economics to better protect environmental areas. His expertise was valuable recently as a member of the Grinnell College Fossil Fuels and Climate Task Force Advisory Board.

Lu “Maggie” Bian ’09

Maggie Bian made a lasting impact on the future of many Chinese students even before she received her Grinnell degree. As a senior at Grinnell, she founded the China Liberal Arts Tour, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bridging the gap between liberal arts colleges and prospective students in China. Now in its 10th year, the tour invites liberal arts colleges to travel throughout China and interact with Chinese students. Bian oversees the tour’s development while working in Hong Kong as executive director for Hillhouse Capital Management, a global financial services company.

Latona Giwa ’09

Combining her passion for social justice, a dedication to community organizing, an intense focus on helping mothers and newborns, and an entrepreneurial spirit, Latona Giwa co-founded the Birthmark Doulas Collective in 2011. The New Orleans organization provides informational, emotional, and physical support to pregnant women and their families before, during, and after birth. Grinnell recognized Giwa’s work by presenting her with the Joseph P. Wall ’41 Service Award in 2013. 

To hear Arrel Gray ’00 talk about the need for identifying and supporting quality child care, it’s no wonder that his business has been so successful. He recalls how difficult it was when he and his wife, who also works full time, first searched for care for their now 4-year-old son.

“That search was just excruciating, like it is for most parents in any urban area,” says Gray, co-founder of Wonderschool, a San Francisco-based company that works with educators and child care providers to help them start their own child cares or preschools out of their homes. 

“One, it’s just hard to find out what’s even out there; it’s kind of fragmented and confusing. And then when you go visit it, you don’t know what to look for. And it seems like all the top-tier places are ridiculously expensive and have too long a waiting list, anyway.” 

Wonderschool, which works with 100 programs mostly in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City areas, gives people tools to launch their own home-based child care programs. In exchange for a 10% cut of each enrolled child’s tuition, the startup, which was founded in 2016, helps new caregivers design their teaching philosophies, get licensed, build a website, and market their services. It has attracted more than $2 million in seed funding. And Inc. magazine says Wonderschool is creating a platform that will remake child care in big cities.

In a nutshell, Gray — a math major at Grinnell — says his business helps teachers and child care providers focus on children.

“Running a child care is actually two jobs — one is being a preschool teacher and the other is being a small-business owner and entrepreneur,” Gray says. “And [on] the Venn diagram of people who are good at both of those things, there is very little overlap. Teachers often tend to be so focused on human interactions and nurturing kids, and they’re really not interested in, or good at, marketing, finances, recruiting, and hiring teachers, and so we want to help with all of that. 

“And not only is it two separate skill sets, but it’s two exhausting jobs. Eight hours a day, you’re taking care of chasing after 3-year-olds, which is exhausting. Then you finish your day, and now you have a bunch of paperwork to do and emails to respond to and QuickBooks to manage and taxes to pay, and all these other things you have to do outside of the classroom. So, doing all of that takes a superhuman effort — and we want to make it just a human effort.”

Gray and his Wonderschool co-founder, Chris Bennett, previously launched Soldsie, an e-commerce company that enables businesses to sell products through their social media profiles. Gray says Grinnell was pivotal in taking him to where he is now.

“Grinnell just teaches you the basic critical thinking,” he says, “and because it’s so small and the classes are so small, you really learn about collaboration. That’s been incredibly valuable.”