Amanda Anderson, 2004

Upon graduating from Duke in 2004, Amanda Anderson moved back to her native city of Washington, DC and decided to dive into the world of Democratic politics. Since taking her first job with College Democrats and the 2004 National Democratic Convention in Boston, she has worked in a variety of Democratic political organizations. Some highlights have included working as a field organizer in Pennsylvania for the Kerry/Edwards campaign, taking a job with the Vice Chairs of the Democratic National Committee, and recently spending the last 6 months of the 2006 campaign cycle in the political department of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Amanda currently works as the Director of Special Projects in the Democratic Caucus of the US House of Representatives. Outside of work, she still participates in service projects when she can. Recent favorites have included raising money for and participating in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and participating in Capitol Women Build, a group of women that raises money for and constructs homes through the DC Habitat for Humanity program.

Lissett Babaian, 2007

Lissett Babaian was introduced to service-learning through the Forging Social Ideals FOCUS program. As a freshman, she also became part of LEAPS. She acted as the co-coordinator of LEAPS during her sophomore and junior years. She also co-founded SEE! (serve, educate, and engage) the World, a year-long program that aims to educate and engage Duke students as global citizens through international and local service-learning. During her senior year, Lissett studied abroad in the northeast of Brazil where she conducted research on the influence of Paulo Freire in the School for the Formation of Social Educators. This research will be integrated into her RSL Capstone project. This May she will be graduating as a Duke Civic Scholar. Service-learning and the mentors and friends she has met through her engagement with service-learning and LEAPS has been the very best part of her Duke education. Lissett hopes to travel the world and pursue a career in education.

Brendan Ballard

After graduating from Duke, Brendan spent a year working as a college counselor in a low income school in Washington, D.C., as part of the Public Allies program. She then attended law school at Washington University in St. Louis. During her second year, Brendan interned for the Missouri State Public Defender and the domestic violence division of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. During her last semester of law school, she worked full-time as a legal fellow in the Washington D.C. office of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, where she focused on judicial nominations, immigration reform, and voting rights. She is currently clerking for the Honorable Susan G. Braden on the United States Court of Federal Claims, in Washington D.C. She will join the firm of Sutherland, Asbill, and Brennan LLP as an associate next September.

Robin Cherry, 1998

After graduating from Duke, Robin moved back to San Francisco to work for The Lewin Group, a health and human services consulting firm. At Lewin, her work focused mostly on helping government agencies, foundations, and other nonprofits to set their strategic direction and measure their progress toward these goals. She found this work exciting because it combined my interest in policy with new skills in business and organizational development. After a few years of consulting, she decided she was ready to get her hands dirty and went to work for a start-up nonprofit that researches the future of technology in healthcare, HealthTech. While at HealthTech, she became excited about the opportunities for innovation to improve our struggling healthcare system and developed a passion for entrepreneurship. After a few years at HealthTech, she decided it was time to continue my academic pursuits. Again, she looked for the chance to combine my policy and business interests and chose a joint-degree program with the Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Business School. She is now in her final semester at Harvard and can happily say that the program has exceeded her high expectations. She is looking forward to a career in healthcare that will begin in the private sector and hopefully migrate toward policy as she gets more experience in the real world. LEAPS has influenced her path in a variety of ways. First of all, Robin cultivated my commitment to working toward social change through her participation in LEAPS, and this has been an important guidepost throughout her career so far. Secondly, the focus on experiential learning that LEAPS promotes has empowered her to take professional risks and also to approach her academic endeavors with a mind toward combining theory with real-world exposure. Lastly, LEAPS inspired her to nurture a focus on community service that has been both fulfilling and educational. Robin says “Many thanks to Betsy and all the other LEAPers for the wonderful lessons you taught me! “

Sarah Gordon, 2008

Sarah has been a member of LEAPS since the first semester she arrived at Duke. As a student she has been involved in several service-learning courses, including "Women as Leaders", "Rebuilding from Ruins", and "Border Crossing: Leadership, Values Conflicts, and Public Life". She has facilitated "Women as Leaders" for Dr. Betsy Alden, once in the fall of 2005 and once in the fall of 2006. Service-learning and LEAPS have been the most influential co-curricular activities of her Duke experience, and both have forced her to rethink the purpose and meaning of higher education. Sarah hopes to do public policy or advocacy work - an aspiration that is a direct result of her experiences in LEAPS and service-learning - in some capacity after graduation.

Glenn Gutterman, LEAPS Co-founder

It is impossible to separate the LEAPS experience from Glenn’s professional choices. The abiding lessons of integrating thought, passion and action, of making time for critical reflection and seeking and cultivating a community of support have shaped my path. Glenn has lived in far flung places and worked odd jobs, but always seem to come back to service learning. After graduating, he served as a Jane Addams-Andrew Carnegie fellow at the Center on Philanthropy alongside LEAPS co-founder Dan Kessler. As with LEAPS they were part of a small group integrating service and community organizing into our academic experience and trying to live an examined life. Afterwards, he taught English at a Montessori School in the Galapagos Islands and later worked as a human rights observer in Chiapas, Mexico.

While pursuing a Master's degree in international and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School Glenn continued to draw on LEAPS lessons and pursue experiential education with deep ethical roots. Since then, he has coordinated American Jewish World Service's Volunteer Summer program and led service learning trips to rural areas throughout the developing world. At present, Glenn is the Director of Programs and Operations for StreetWise Partners – an organization that builds mentoring relationships between low income job seekers and volunteer business professionals to develop workplace skills and employment networks as the bridge to a successful career. Glenn says: “It's a very LEAPSy gig.”

Katherine Haley, 2000

Katherine now serves as the Legislative Assistant on Social Policy for U.S. Representative Pete Hoekstra of Michigan. She advises the Congressman on issues including health, education, welfare, labor, housing and other related issues, as well as drafts legislation, talking points and policy briefs relating to these issues. Her primary focus is on health care and improving patient access to health care services. She previously worked in the offices of U.S. Senators Tim Hutchinson, Don Nickels and Kay Bailey Hutchison, as well as for the Subcommittee on Health within the House Committee on Ways and Means. Katherine conducted clinical cancer research at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University and was awarded a research fellowship at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School to further examine faith and medicine. Duke was a place where she could take advantage of a wide range of opportunities including the classroom, medical center, campus life and making friends from all over the country and world.

Kim Hammersmith, 2003

After graduation in May 2003, Kim spent the summer in Berlin taking an intensive German language course. After traveling for another month through Europe, I returned to Bavaria to start my one-year assistant English teaching position at the Landheim-Schondorf boarding school. In the summer of 2004, she came home to get ready for dental school. Kim is currently a 3rd year DDS student at the UNC School of Dentistry and will graduate in May 2008. Between 2008 and 2009, she will finish coursework for a Masters in Public Health Degree and work part-time as a dentist. Her professional goals are to become a public health dentist and work with law- and policy-makers to revamp public oral health initiatives. Her current research concerns access-to-dental-care. LEAPS-wise, she is very involved with our dental school’s volunteer organization which provides dental screenings and dental care at mobile free clinics locally and around the state. Her efforts on “Make a Difference Day” in October 2005 were rewarded with a $10,000 national prize and a photo on the cover of USA Weekend Magazine (http://www.usaweekend.com/diffday/honorees/2006/060423ok-ga-nc.html#burlington). This year, Kim has an Albert Schweitzer Fellowship to teach Head Start children in Chapel Hill and Carrboro about oral hygiene and nutrition. In 2005, she founded a pre-dental organization at Duke and since then, she has worked with and helped many undergraduates gain valuable dental experience. Although she practically lives and breathes fillings, dentures, and crowns, she still has found many opportunities to travel internationally while in dental school. My most recent trips were to Costa Rica and Mexico’s Yucatan, and she also spent three weeks this past summer with a few dental students doing dental mission work in Guatemala and Honduras.

Alison Johnston Provan, 2001

Since graduating from Duke Alison earned my Master's in Reading Education and elementary teaching license from the Peabody College of education and human development at Vanderbilt University. From there she moved to Chicago where she taught Kindergarten in a public school for gifted children for two years. She loved teaching and found it extremely rewarding to work with the children and their families. In the summer of 2005 she relocated to Ithaca, NY where my husband is pursuing a PhD in Operations Research at Cornell University. Even though he is an avid Tarheel fan they were married in the Duke Gardens this past summer! Unable to land a teaching job, she has been working as an Admissions Counselor for Cornell's School of Hotel Administration. It has been a big transition to go from 5 year olds to high school seniors, but she has enjoyed assisting families through the stressful application process and learning about higher education from the administration's point of view. She plans to stay involved in the education world in one way or another, if not in the classroom directly, then in some capacity where se can continue to make a positive impact on educators and students.

Dan Kessler, LEAPS Co-founder

Dan is currently a second-year MBA student at The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania. After graduating from Duke, Dan completed the Jane Addams Fellowship at The Indiana University Center on Philanthropy with my good buddy Glenn. After spending a year as a Research Associate for Robert L. Payton, the founding Executive Director of the Center (and visiting Betsy Alden’s hometown), Dan left Indiana for the west coast. Dan spent the next five years working with Action Without Borders/Idealist.org, first in Seattle, Washington, then back in my hometown of Philadelphia. My work with Idealist focused on helping college students explore nonprofit and socially responsible career options. After business school, Dan will be a Consultant in the Boston office of The Boston Consulting Group, where he hopes to (pay off my student loans and) build a foundation of knowledge to work at the intersection of business and social responsibility. Dan's wife Teri is completing a Master’s Degree in Advanced Practice Women’s Health Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. She has also supported him during business school by working as a Labor and Delivery Nurse at The Hospital at The University of Pennsylvania. They just celebrated their 2-year wedding anniversary on New Year’s Eve.

Dan says:
"LEAPS was by far the most formative experience of my four years at Duke. Helping to build this organization instilled in me an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for social change. Service-Learning provides a vehicle to enhance the learning environment at Duke, and LEAPS should be the student-powered engine leading this charge."

Tara Kumar, 1998

Participating in LEAPS and related service-learning activities at Duke allowed Tara to ground my academic interests in real-life communities and apply the principles she was learning to the challenges facing these grassroots communities. This connection to communities, which she really began to value while at Duke, is a priority that has remained with her throughout her academic studies and into her professional career in community development. As the capstone to her Program II experience, her honors thesis incorporated community-based research designed to produce tangible benefits for the Eagle Village Community Development Corporation (CDC), then worked for a couple of years as a consultant in grass-roots organizing, before beginning her graduate education in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Through their Center for Reflective Community Practice, she combined her graduate studies with a part-time job managing a community development partnership between the university and a low-income Puerto Rican community in Springfield, MA. She is currently working as a grantwriter for a settlement house in the South End neighborhood of Boston, United South End Settlements (USES). She was married this past summer to Ryan Allen (Trinity, 1998), who she met at MIT (!) and will be moving with him to Minneapolis this summer.

Laura McDaniel, 2002

Upon graduation in May 2002, Laura moved to Washington, D.C., to work as a research assistant at AcademyHealth, a non-profit organization that, among other things, serves as a the professional association for health services researchers. In the summer of 2004, Laura returned to the triangle area to pursue her masters in social work at UNC-Chapel Hill as a stepping stone to working with adults with severe mental illness in the public health care sector. Laura graduated with her masters in May 2006 and currently works as a Community Support Coordinator at Caring Family Network in Chatham County. She specializes in the treatment of psychotic disorders. Laura still visits Janice McLean, the woman she met during her LEAPs course on Aging with Dr. Gold her sophomore year at Duke.

Hilary McKean-Pereza, 2005

After graduating in May 2005, Hilary worked for an Investment House for a short period of time in New York. She did not find what she needed in that position and moved to the south again. In December 2005 she began teaching preschool at a non-profit school in the Research Triangle Park and still teaches there today. Hilary teaches 14 2-3 year olds and have found the work very fulfilling. In January 2006, she got engaged to her soon to be husband, Justin Lee (Pratt Class of 2006). They will be married this September (2007) in the Duke Chapel.

Colin Mutchler, 1997

After graduating in 1999, Colin taught media literacy at a public school in East Harlem, then taught himself web design and was an independent consultant to social entrepreneurs and small businesses in NYC. From 2001 - 2005, he was a Web Producer with Learning Matters, Inc., which produces The Merrow Report and the Listen Up! Youth Media Network. During that time, he also conceived and performed in a multimedia "Free Culture" show promoting Creative Commons copyright licenses to more than 1,500 people at major conferences and universities such as SXSW Interactive and Temple University (and at the Coffee House at Duke!). In 2006 he completed his MBA at Insead in France and Singapore, and has recently joined the digital advertising agency R/GA as a Producer, and will be moving to the London office later this year. After a few years at R/GA, he plans to join or start an agency that offers similar services to social enterprises and green businesses. (See http://www.colinmutchler.com for his "Music for a Free Culture.")

Julie Norman, 2002

After graduating from Duke in 2002, Julie received a Lewis Hine Fellowship from Duke's Center for Documentary Studies to work on media projects with a childhood development NGO in Cairo, Egypt for one year. She then returned to Duke for a year to finalize her Cairo projects, while also teaching a course on Israel-Palestine and working as a Program Assistant for Service-Learning at Kenan! Currently a Ph.D candidate in international relations at American University's School of International Service, Julie has continued studying and working on Middle East issues, spending her summers in Jerusalem working on various human rights, development, and youth programs. Most recently, she founded the Contrast Project, an initiative that works with youth groups in the West Bank to use photography as tool for creative expression, empowerment, and advocacy. Julie will be returning to Jerusalem this spring to continue the Contrast Project and conduct dissertation research on youth participation in nonviolent actvism in Palestine. Julie's experience with service-learning at Duke has been influential in guiding her towards a service-oriented fellowship and graduate program, a dissertation topic that reflects a research service-learning approach, and a continued interest in grassroots activism and social justice issues.

Sally Ong, 2007

Sally is a senior undergraduate student at Duke University. She is from Johor, Malaysia and is majoring in Biology. Sally plans to pursue a career in medicine.As a freshman, Sally enrolled in the Humanitarian Challenges at Home and Abroad FOCUS program. FOCUS quickly changed her perception of the world. Challenged by her professors, she became more conscious of the disparities and oppression that millions in the world face. Since then, Sally has been very active in human rights and health care advocacy. Sally also participated in the Service-Learning House Course and is a trained LEAPS facilitator.

Sally co-founded SEE! the World, a student organization that promotes international service learning opportunities for study abroad students. Sally serves as the Director of International Outreach for Unite for Sight, a 501(c)3 organization that works to eliminate preventable blindness worldwide. The past co-President of Unite for Sight at Duke University, Sally has interned for Unite for Sight in Tanzania during summer 2004, China during winter 2004-2005 and Ghana during summer 2005. She conducted vision screenings, implemented eye health education programs in schools and a refugee camp and conducted a research project on the risk factors of glaucoma. Sally has won several travel grants for her trips. Sally also served as President for International Association in 2005-2006 and as a member on the Education sub-committee of the University Global Health Steering Committee in 2005.

Sally’s life and career choice in the future will likely be shaped by the experiences she has had in Tanzania, China and Ghana. Her trips abroad have been her transformative experience and she strongly believes that every undergraduate student should have the opportunity to have their values and priorities challenged by engaging in service learning abroad. She appreciates the value of service learning abroad in teaching her about global citizenship and is very excited to be working on SEE! the World with Lissett Babaian, whose brilliant idea is becoming a reality.

Chris Paul, 2005

Chris Paul became involved with LEAPS because during his first semester at Duke his original service-learning placement didn't work out and he had to meet with then community-partnerships coordinator Aly Satterlund. In the process, Chris realized LEAPS was a very cool organization with a powerful theoretical underpinning matching his own values. Chris worked with Caroline Breidenthal, Kim Hammersmith, and Julie Norman, to help LEAPS rearticulate its structure and design in 2002. He co-taught the Service-Learning House Course twice and facilitated a number of classes.

After graduation, Chris worked briefly as a naturalist in the mountains of North Carolina before coming back to Duke to work at a research and outreach group called the Children's Environmental Health Initiative. In addition to also taking classes for fun, Chris, and his wife Anna Bauer (Trinity '05) helped design and facilitate the engineering course "Rebuilding from Ruins" in spring 2006, leading over 100 students in reflection around a trip to the New Orleans area working with Habitat for Humanity. Anna and Chris plan to start the Peace Corps this spring. Chris hopes to integrate service and civic-engagement into any career he takes in the future.

Susan Patrick, 2007

African and African-American Studies & Political Science Major Susan first heard of LEAPS during her first semester at Duke when she took a service-learning course as part of the Humanitarian Challenges FOCUS. Ever since, she’s been involved with service-learning and has worked as a facilitator with a Latin American politics course and the Global Americas FOCUS. Her involvement with service-learning, her fellow LEAPers, and the service-learning faculty has shaped my Duke career. Leading reflection sessions and conducting community-based research sharpened her leadership skills and gave her an opportunity to learn from her fellow students and community partners in the Durham community. Her facilitation experiences and service in the Durham Public Schools encouraged her to pursue a career working in education. She will be teaching middle school Social Studies next year and hopes to incorporate service-learning into her classroom.

Aly Satterlund, Community Partnerships Coordinator, 2000-2003

Since leaving (in body but not spirit) her post as Community Partnerships Coordinator for KIE in 2003, Aly graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with her doctorate in Communication Studies in 2004, moved her family to San Francisco, joined the administrative staff at City College of San Francisco (CCSF) as Dean and Special Assistant to the Chancellor, and welcomed a healthy baby boy in 2005, Quinn Olsen. Quinn joins Jackson Delmar, who was gestating when Betsy hired her in 2000 and his father, Travis, who has taken up surfing and law school since returning to the Golden State.