People News, February 2023

Wood engravings by Barry Moser, Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor of Art, are featured in an exhibition, Surré Alice.Illustr’ Alice, on view through Feb. 26 at the Tomi Ungerer Museum–International Illustration Centre in Strasbourg, France. The exhibition, which explores the world of Alice-in-Wonderland-themed motifs in children’s books and other illustrations, features an entire room dedicated to Moser’s prints.

Photographs by Bea Oyster ’23 have been published recently in The New York Times. Oyster is majoring in art at Smith.

Winners of this year’s Elevator Pitch Contest sponsored by the Jill Ker Conway Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center were: Top Pitches ($500 each): Shastia Azulay ’23 for Food Recovery Network; Fhrynee Lambert ’24 for Haitian Women’s Reproductive Autonomy. Big Pitches ($300 each): Eugenia Rogers ’25 for Empowerment Workshop for Teen Girls; Glory Divine Yougang Tahon ’26 for Glorious Farms. Judges were Susannah Howe, director of Smith’s Design Clinic; Denise Wingate Materre ’74, vice president for alumnae relations; Deb Wijnhoven, director of employer engagement.

Lucy Brownstein ’24 and Hana Hieshima ’23 have been named 2023 Beckman Scholars by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, which supports undergraduate researchers in chemistry and the life sciences by supporting the development of student relationships with faculty mentors. Brownstein is working in Associate Professor Niveen Ismail’s lab, and Heishima is doing research in Associate Professor Nathan Derr’s lab.

Smith’s new Neilson Library won an honorable mention in The Architect’s Newspaper’s 2022 Best of Design Awards.

Giovanna Bellesia, professor emerita of Italian studies, and Victoria Poletto, senior lecturer emerita in Italian language and literature, are translators of My Language is a Jealous Lover, a new book by Adrián Bravi about his experiences and his writing as an Argentinian-Italian.

H. Allen Curran, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of Geology, published “Coral Gardens Reef, Belize: An Acropora spp. Refugium under threat in a warming world,” in PLOS ONE, an open access scientific research platform. The paper explores potential threats to live coral reefs.

A scholarly work co-edited by Hélène Visentin, associate dean of the faculty and dean for academic development and professor of French studies, is a finalist for the Association of American Publishers’ 2023 PROSE Awards. La Princesse de Clèves by Lafayette: A New Translation and Bilingual Pedagogical Edition for the Digital Age, published by Lever Press, is a finalist in the Best eProducts awards category.

Marty Bongfeldt MFA ’21 is the new donor services associate for the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. An Ada Comstock Scholar, Bongfeldt earned her undergraduate degree at Smith in English language and literature and a master of arts degree in theatre.

Sarah Tucker ’13 has been selected as a 2023 Knauss Fellow by the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant College Program. The prestigious fellowship appointment will support Tucker’s work in Washington, D.C. in the marine policy arena. She will complete her fellowship year in the Arctic Research Program in NOAA's Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program. Tucker earned her Smith degree in biological sciences and was a Coral EdVentures program student/teacher in Belize.

Nolvia Delgado ’11 has been named to Crain’s New York Business “40 Under 40 List” in recognition of her work as executive director of the Kaplan Educational Foundation. Delgado’s foundation seeks to eliminate barriers to education for students from underserved communities. Delgado earned her Smith degree in government.

China Sajadian ’08, now a postdoctoral fellow in the college’s anthropology department, is the recipient of the Society for Economic Anthropology’s Harold K. Schneider Student Paper Prize, in economic anthropology, and the Association for Feminist Anthropology’s Sylvia Forman Student Paper Prize for “The Binds of Bridewealth: Battlegrounds of Debt in a Syrian Farmworker Refugee Camp.” Sajadian earned her Smith degree in government.

Angelia Washington MSW ’03 has been reappointed to the board of the National League of Cities. Washington, who serves as a councilwoman in her hometown of Jacksonville, North Carolina, earned a PhD at North Carolina A&T.

Alexa Griffith ’90 is co-curator of A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes, which will open in July at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. Griffith, who earned her Smith degree in art history, is a design historian working on the exhibition—the first monographic exhibition on Liebes since the designer and weaver’s final show at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in 1970.

Sushma Raman ’89 is the new president and CEO of the Heising-Simons Foundation. Rahman, who previously served as executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, earned her Smith degree in economics. She received a master of arts degree from UCLA and a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Journalist Kate O’Brian ’80 was named president of E.W. Scripps News in a recent restructuring. O’Brian, who majored in English language and literature at Smith, has had a four-decade career in news and formerly served as president of Al Jazeera America.

Pine Tree Legal Assistance in western Maine has created a fellowship in honor of the late Nan Heald ’77. The Nan Heald Black Fly Fellowship will begin as a paid fellowship for a summer law student to work at Pine Tree Legal Assistance on housing, family law and victim’s rights. Heald, who majored in government at Smith and earned a law degree at George Washington University, served as executive director of the legal assistance organization for more than three decades.

Susan Lindenauer ’61 is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Bar Foundation for her “commitment to the legal profession’s highest ideals.” Lindenauer, who served for 38 years until her retirement as counsel for The Legal Aid Society, earned her Smith degree in history and a law degree from Columbia University.