Alumni Profiles
- Jill Starishevsky ’91 has been a prosecutor of child abuse and sex crimes in New York City since 1997. In 2009, she released her first children’s book, My Body Belongs to Me, which guides parents in talking to their young children about the topic of sexual abuse and prevention.
Starishevsky shares some of her experiences as a legal defender of children, writer, and mother.
- Information, incorrectly shared or communicated, can cause misunderstanding and result in incorrect actions. Cell “miscommunications” are the basis for the research and technologies being developed by Dr. Michael J. Comb ’76, founder, president, and CEO of Cell Signaling Techology, Inc., head-quartered in Danvers, MA
- Peter Thomson '85 has helped set the standards for environmental journalism around the world since his graduation from the social thought and political economy program at UMass Amherst. He began his career on campus at WFCR and went on to an award-winning career in writing, reporting, producing and hosting international documentaries and news programs featured on National Public Radio and Public Radio International
- Hina Rabbani Khar '02, a UMass Amherst Hospitality and Tourism Management alumna, is expected to be named Pakistan's new Foreign Minister. She would be the first woman to hold the position in Pakistan's history and will take the reins just ahead of crucial peace talks with India in Delhi.
- For some fifteen years, Daniel (Doc) Coster ’89 MEd, ’91 MBA has lived and worked in Egypt. A project manager specializing in education, economic, and community development, Coster has traveled throughout the country working on projects. Yet, he was just as surprised as the rest of the world when on January 25, 2011 thousands of Egyptians took to the streets in protest against decades of poverty, unemployment, and government corruption.
- As a young pilot heading overseas to fight in World War II, Lt. Colonel Leo R. Gray '50 knew that his squadron was unique. The 332nd Red Tail Pilots had just graduated from the Tuskegee Army Airfield in Tuskegee, Alabama. They were the first black military aviators during a time of racial segregation in the United States. "We knew there were no others like us," said Gray, "but we were just doing our part."
- "No one wants to be forgotten," says Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey '95 MFA of her recently published historical memoir, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf. A native of Gulfport, Mississippi, Trethewey describes life on the coast and explores the devastation on both the region and her family as a result of the natural disaster.
