United States - Publications - Faculty & Research

Portrait Project

Cordelia Shackleton

“Please come up to the fifteenth floor” said my boss. “OK” I said, and I hung up. I had survived many mornings of lay-offs. But 30 minutes later, I was standing on the street. Unemployed. At first, I felt shame. Shame that I didn’t care that I had lost my job. I didn’t... View Details

Portrait Project

Constanca Oliveira e Sousa

I didn’t have much, but I had a sewing kit and some sheets. Josilane was a girl that lived in the slums in Montes Claros, Brazil. She wanted to marry but couldn't afford a dress. I was a missionary in this foreign country, living in an unfinished house, windows with no... View Details

Portrait Project

Christopher Maloney

I am the 6-foot-5 white guy who constantly feels out of place. My life is one of incessant movement; from the country clubs of Westchester, to the townships around Johannesburg, every step has gotten me closer to figuring out why. Slowly, I have begun to realize that I... View Details

Portrait Project

Clint Lawrence

I peek over the edge. I can no longer see the white sand of the sea bed. Without hesitation, I jump into the deep blue Caribbean water and swim to shore. I am five years old and my dad is standing on Paradise Beach, shocked but proud. His son had finally done it. I... View Details

Portrait Project

Chris LaColla

I was running late for my flight home to Chicago, but I was frozen in front of a small glass case in a museum in Tokyo. There was only one word on the sign using letters I knew– kintsugi. When a piece of pottery breaks, it is repaired with a mixture of gold that... View Details

Portrait Project

Cecily Kovatch

I want to have no regrets. After working for six years after college, I had done some amazing things few people have an opportunity to do. I'd worked on over 300 oil rigs, traveled from Alaska to Hawaii recruiting hundreds of engineers, and negotiated with the toughest... View Details

Portrait Project

Cabin Kim

Sometimes I'm just ordinary. Sometimes, a mere hour after breakfast, my stomach asks: what's for lunch? When is lunch, anyway? Sometimes I worry about my next paycheck: will it cover everything I need? What about everything I want? Sometimes I wonder what others think... View Details

Portrait Project

Chad Hufsey

Playing football for Harvard University should have been my crowning achievement – but I was afraid. I was a senior in high school and had dedicated my life to playing varsity football. I had accomplished all of my goals for the season. My hard work should have... View Details

Profile

Casey Gerald

Casey Gerald prefers not to make a big deal of his football-playing days as a cornerback. “We won a championship, we lost a championship – and I broke a few bones,” he says. But football became a bridge to Yale; an unexpected opportunity for a young man from the Oak... View Details

Alumni WDYDWYD

Carol Fishman Cohen

I want women (and men) who leave the work force to know they can resume their professional lives. Taking a career break used to be considered “career suicide.” But, I survived it. In 2001, I relaunched my career at a prominent investment firm after 11 years out of the... View Details

Portrait Project

CiCi Barrett

Thank you, cancer. You’ve brought love and happiness into my life. I didn’t always feel grateful. I was only 6 when my mom was first diagnosed. Back then, I was too young to understand, but when her cancer returned 7 years later, my toxic relationship with the disease... View Details

Profile

Benjamin Wells

By his junior year of college, Ben Wells knew he was destined to teach. Immediately after graduation, he put his ambitions to the test at Roxbury Preparatory Charter School, "a public school run like a private school," Ben explains. "It's brings a... View Details

Portrait Project

Bianca Tabourn

I want to sometimes fall short of people's Super Woman expectations of me. It will remind everyone I am only human. Convince myself to embrace the nervousness I feel when I have to deliver a presentation. It is this nervous feeling that reminds me I am still alive.... View Details

Portrait Project

Brendan Sullivan

I am a five-year-old boy in Japan, and I stand out in a crowd. Strangers on the street approach me to pat my head. I am most self-conscious about this phenomenon when my sisters and I deliver baked goods to a nursing home for the needy. Shrinkingly, I walk into each... View Details

Profile

Benjamin Story

In Los Angeles, Mickey Mouse casts a long shadow. While majoring in theater at UCLA, Ben Story got a touch of "Disney magic" when a vice president of the firm helmed "one of the best classes I took:" a course in theme entertainment. The course led... View Details

Profile

Brendan Mosher

As part of a family running a vegetable farm in the Hudson River Valley, Brendan Mosher had dreams of going to college, playing football, and eventually running his own business. Then 9/11 struck, and Brendan felt called to serve his country, making a change in plans... View Details

Portrait Project

Brian Elliot

I remember sitting against a tree at summer camp listening intently to a counselor who, with her guitar, taught me a song that I still sing to myself every day. It put a three-line ancient rabbinical teaching to a simple tune: "If I am not for myself, who will be... View Details

Portrait Project

Edrienne Brandon

I want to max out on every moment of every day. Work hard, play hard, and sleep less. I attribute where I am today to the intense love and support I received from my family, my incredible educational experiences, and role models that illustrated to me that more, of... View Details

Portrait Project

Amy Yamner

In 1999, Lourdes sashayed into my eighth grade classroom. She was, in a word, saucy. A self-identified chismosa, she passed notes and talked incessantly, even during my lessons. It was obvious she did not care about U.S. history. At the end of the year, however, she... View Details

Profile

Alex Slusky

As a young undergraduate, Alex Slusky did things a promising professional was not supposed to do. When he was an economics student at Harvard, an ad in The Crimson caught his eye: Microsoft was looking for summer interns – from the Business School. But Alex applied... View Details

Publications