Ahn Lee Horn ’91 believes in serendipity. She regularly runs into an old friend from her Whitman College days in random airports around the world. “We call it the ‘Whitman Thing,’ an interconnectedness between Whitties that you can’t predict but is always there when you need it most.” That “Whitman Thing” is just one example in a lifetime full of experiences, lessons and friendships that have made being an alum a foundational part of Ahn Lee’s life.

“Agriculture is in my blood,” Ben Moore (MBA ‘20) said. After work, he drives his tractor around his family’s farm fields in central California to unwind. When his six-month-old son takes his first steps, it will be barefoot in that same soil. “All I’ve ever wanted to do is get back to farming,” Moore said from his processing plant at The Ugly Company in Farmersville, California. His business upcycles millions of pounds of bruised or funny-looking fruit discarded by farmers and turns it into cle...

At one hundred years old, Franco Vitiello, '68, is the oldest living BAC alumnus. "I'm very proud of being an Italian and I'm very proud of being an American," he often says. At the College's 2025 Commencement, Franco Vitiello received Doctor of Design Leadership Honoris Causa for his contribution to the field of design.

Kate Levant, BFA '06,  is sitting on the second floor of KAJE, the experimental arts not-for-profit that she and fellow SMFA alum Jacques Vidal, BFA ‘04, founded in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood. "What I'm working on is growing this organization," she says, gesturing to the open gallery space below her where exhibition designer Grace Caiazza is about to install a modular display system for a group exhibition titled "Arachnophobia."

Growing up in Colombia as the oldest child of two chemical engineers, Gonzalo Fuenmayor's, MFA '04, parents demanded academic rigor and a successful career from their son. He attended business school for three years to appease them, but he felt miserable.  "This can't be my life. I can't do this," he said to himself over and over. "Then I rebelled."

How six NBSS alumni carved their own unique careers as carpenters, piano technicians, bookbinders, locksmiths, and furniture makers—from Mansfield, Massachusetts to Bogota, Colombia.

There’s a popular meme splattered all over the internet these days: “EAT. SLEEP. SPORTS. REPEAT.” Those words pretty much sum up Mark Lepage’s childhood growing up in Avon, Conn., too. Playing and watching sports took centerstage, and the real-life superheroes he looked up to were all players from the Red Sox, Celtics, and the Patriots.

“There is no treatment available for your son. We can’t do anything to help him.” When Fernando Goldsztein, SF ’03, heard those words, something inside him snapped.“I refused to accept what the doctors were saying. I transformed my fear into my greatest strength and started fighting.”Goldsztein’s 12-year-old son Frederico was diagnosed with relapsing medulloblastoma, a life-threatening pediatric brain tumor. His life—and career plan—changed in an instant. He had to learn to become a different kind of leader altogether.

When Rachel Pearson ’08 logged onto Zoom from her computer in Los Angeles, she’d just returned home from working as lead video editor for ESPN at the 2024 NCAA Women’s Final Four in Cleveland, Ohio. Pulling 17-hour shifts in the basement of the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse—home of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers—editing footage as quickly as possible wasn’t glamorous courtside work. Yet the job resonated with every cell of Pearson’s identity as a human, athlete, a member of the media, and a queer woman.

When Jim Steck L'07, and his high school sweetheart, Michelle, started a family, they moved back to their hometown of Torrington, Connecticut."Litchfield County needs more lawyers and professionals in general, and it was clear to us that we needed to go back home," Steck said. Steck cares deeply about his town but never pictured himself running for office.

As a kid, Matt Beane, SM ‘14, PhD ‘17, followed his dad, a general contractor, around job sites, learning by watching as tradespeople passed master-level skills and tools down to talented apprentices.Beane never lost his fascination with how knowledge and learning are transmitted in the workplace. In fact, he’s made a career out of examining how humans work with machines...

Poetry isn’t exactly a genre known for breaking news—though its call can be urgent. When mass shootings became even more disturbingly frequent across the United States in 2016, Elle Newton ’12 said she felt like it was so painful to take in that it was literally breaking America...

An experimental partnership between student journalists and local media is helping to serve an industry in distress—and Gulls are thriving.

As a rising senior in high school, Kahina Haynes ’11 scored admission to a summer intensive with a prestigious dance company, an on-ramp program for aspiring ballerinas to leap into professional careers. Just as top high school athletes are scouted and recruited, summer intensives are opportunities to be discovered. She remembers, “I was the only Black dancer.”

Working in 30 countries and across the United States, Frontlines teams collaborate with local partners to imagine solutions for some of the world’s most challenging problems. To achieve this, Frontlines advisors donate approximately 400 hours of their time over any given semester. Acting as mentors and coaches, advisors provide solid business expertise and institutional memory about a project’s history and stakeholders, and emotional support to the team along the way.

Adjusting to the BFA program with its expansive structure was overwhelming at first—but turned out to be what Hotamisligil needed to thrive. He said, “At SMFA, you have the freedom to explore, but it comes with responsibilities. It pushes you to be independent and creative in a powerful way. At the end of the semester, you have to be able to talk about what you’ve accomplished in a room with faculty and your peers.”

What you might not realize is that back before she made it big as an author, Moreno-Garcia was first a Gull, majoring in communications, working her way through college as a Resident Assistant at Endicott’s very own haunted house, Winthrop Hall, which legend says is stalked by the ghost of the Pink Lady. “There’s a door in the stairwell that goes nowhere, but I can confidently say that while patrolling the halls at night as an RA, I never saw anything other than students trying to trick each other into believing they’d seen a ghost,” said the 2003 graduate from the Vancouver, British-Columbia, townhouse she shares with her family. Is it possible that the idea of the Pink Lady subconsciously came up in her latest book, Silver Nitrate, in which a vision of a main character’s dead, mangled girlfriend visits him in a claustrophobic hallway after midnight? Perhaps, but Moreno-Garcia said bluntly, “I don’t believe in the supernatural—and I especially don’t believe in the supernatural in that dorm.”

Art won’t last forever. Heather Cox. MFA '98, would argue that artists often make their art intending for it to die one day. In fact, it’s Cox’s job as Executive Coordinator of the Conservation Department of the Whitney Museum of American Art to interpret artists’ wishes when it comes to the care and feeding of their greatest works...

Milind Agtey (MBA ’79) learned early on in his career that making the right gut decisions can save lives. As an officer and, later, a captain of a ship in the Indian Merchant Navy, he was stationed aboard cargo ships and oil tankers 24-hours a day, seven days a week, circling the globe three times each year — sometimes through dangerously rough waters. From the instant a sailor falls overboard in freezing water, he explained, you have just 10 seconds to rescue them before hypothermia sets in...

“A few weeks ago, everything was in pieces, and nothing was complete,” Yu-Wen Wu says from the artist co-op where she lives and works in Boston’s Fort Point Channel neighborhood. Work in progress hung from the ceiling, covered every table, and lay in disarray on the floor. “But now everything has come together.”