Tod Hynes
Director of Alternative Energy
Citizens Energy Corporation,
Boston, MA

Wind energy in particular and alternative energy in general became Tod’s focus. Technical, scientific knowledge is crucial, but not sufficient, to what he does. He needs skills in analysis, relationship building and negotiation, along with flexibility, creativity, and—he will tell you—strong, clear communication.

Tod directs business initiatives in alternative energy at the Citizens Energy Corporation. Citizens Energy (founded by Milton alumnus Joseph Kennedy ’71 in 1979) uses market opportunities to help the poor and needy acquire life’s basic necessities, such as heat and medicine. Citizens uses revenue from innovative commercial enterprises to finance millions of dollars into Citizens’ charitable programs in the United States and abroad.
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Sarah McGinty
Director of Special Projects
Project HEALTH

Describing Sarah as a utility infielder for Project HEALTH isn’t far from the truth. A young organization that addresses systemic needs, Project HEALTH has seen rapid growth; wearing more than one hat is normal for staffers. 

Project HEALTH uses the doctor’s office as a point of intervention to connect urban families with critical resources, such as food, housing and childcare. It taps and mobilizes college students to help families who face “double jeopardy.” “Double jeopardy is the dynamic combination of poverty and poor health. Poor children face two sets of obstacles: First, they are more frequently exposed to risks such as medical illness, family stress, insufficient social support, poor housing conditions and parental depression; and second, when these risks are realized, these children face more serious consequences to their health than counterparts of higher socioeconomic status.”
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Alex Reiser
Production Manager
Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars

For Alex Reiser, Class of 1999, opportunity came in the form of nine musically gifted West African refugees visiting the United States. Alex’s friend Banker White had recently completed a documentary film about Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, a group of musicians forced from their homes during a brutal civil war. Alex was both familiar with and interested in the plight of African refugees; his mother works with Friends of the Sudanese, an organization that assists Sudanese refugees with housing and education, helping them navigate their new lives in the United States. These young, male refugees, known as the Lost Boys, were the focus of a short documentary that Alex had just completed. The filming took place in the refugees’ home village in Sudan, which many of them were returning to for the first time in 20 years.
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Elizabeth Forwand
Luce Scholar, 2007-2008
Master of Environmental Management and Master of Forestry
Duke University, May 2007

Liz Forwand is deep in the Indonesian forests. She is one of 15 Luce Scholars living and working in Asia this year. The Henry Luce Foundation of New York City established the program in 1974 to increase awareness of Asia among future leaders in American society.

“There will always be a demand for exotic wood products, and with that demand goes the destruction of tropical forest,” Liz points out. “The trick is to figure out an incentive for conservation that works within that market, so that demand can actually preserve forest, rather than only destroy it. That is what forest certification is all about.” Liz is working with the Indonesian Ecolabeling Institute (LEI), an Indonesian nonprofit that creates sustainable forest management standards for forest certification. Forest certification is a market-based tool to promote forest conservation: Independent organizations develop standards for sustainable forestry while independent auditors assess forestry operations and issue certifications verifying that those standards have been met. “Certification is about giving consumers a choice,” Liz says. “The certification label on a wood product, like a chair or a table coming out of Indonesia, lets consumers know that the forest the wood came from is well managed, according to ecological, economic and social standards. In this way you can use your buying power to promote sustainable forestry.”
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Cyrus Dugger
Law Clerk to the Honorable Victoria A. Roberts,
United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan

“Last August I started clerking for Judge Roberts, a federal judge presiding in Detroit,” says Cyrus. “A clerkship lasts a single year, and during that time, along with a couple of other people, we act as the judge’s right hand, helping think through the issues. So many cases come before her court; no judge could get through them all alone. Depending on the week, I may write a draft opinion, or research a specific legal issue for the judge. What I do affects a decision, whether it’s a monetary award for damages, a disposition in a civil rights case, or a criminal sentence. That decision has implications for the future. We are leaving a trail, or a map, that other judges may approach or consider. I can say about my job that I did ‘this’ and it matters in this way—it’s concrete.”
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Caroline Aiello
Law Student
University of Michigan School of Law

While she hasn’t always known where things were leading, Caroline never shied away from the next adventure. “You need to keep learning,” she said to herself, while figuring out each next step. Learning and working were often combined, whether in the Czech Republic, Poland, Japan, Thailand, Laos or in Russia, Georgia and Armenia.

Several themes converged during Caroline’s journey from Milton and college back to law school: the drawing power of international diplomacy; the need for critical self-reflection that comes from immersion in the world’s cultures; and the discovery of unforeseen roles to play, particularly ways to be a resource for others. “I left Milton knowing only that whatever I did would need to be something that would help people,” she says. “Milton breeds that.”
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Ian Cheney
Documentary Filmmaker and Activist
Recent film: King Corn
New project: The Greening of Southie

As an undergraduate, Ian Cheney was of two minds when he walked into Yale’s dining hall: grateful to be able to choose anything he wanted to eat, and encumbered by lack of awareness about how that food arrived at his fingertips. This tension came to preoccupy Ian throughout his college years. “In the context of global warming and the footprint we’re leaving on the planet,” Ian says, “I realized that my daily decisions are affecting the world, but I had no understanding of how. Food is perhaps the most direct way that we have an everyday effect on the planet. For me, finding out where my food came from was the first step to becoming a more responsible consumer and a more tuned-in citizen.”

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Tze Chun
Filmmaker; wrote and directed Sundance-nominated film, Windowbreaker

Studying film history at Columbia, Tze Chun went from being “one person at Milton who was really into film, to New York City, where thousands of people are—or want to be—filmmakers.” Always a serious visual artist, Tze spent his first year after graduating from college painting portraits. Represented by a gallery in the city, he found that was a fine way to earn a living. “However,” Tze admits, “eventually I had to choose between film and painting. I realized that if I wasn’t willing to follow the career path I was on for the next ten years, I might be wasting my time and energy. I knew that working in film would allow me more mental space.”
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Torrey Androski
Research Associate
The National Academy of Public Administration,
Washington, D.C.

Torrey has an insider’s vantage point in Washington: In a layer beneath the harangue and hyperbole of elected officials debating in the media limelight, she works with public service professionals applying brain power, goodwill and hard work to the crucial activities of government. They are dealing with myriad issues, from water quality, fish stocks and transportation safety to the off-shoring of service jobs, or cleanup from weapons production. Torrey is a research associate at The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). Established in 1967 and chartered by Congress, the Academy is trusted government-wide to be objective and to find practical, innovative solutions by bringing the best thinking and experience to bear on governmental problems. It is a coalition of highly respected top policy makers and management leaders who tackle the most critical, timely and challenging problems facing the government.
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Lydon Friedrich Vonnegut
Middle School English Teacher
Collegiate School, New York City

Lydon Friedrich Vonnegut teaches English to sixth- and seventh-grade boys at the Collegiate School on the Upper West Side of New York City. When she told Milton classmate Lindsay Haynes she had clinched this job, Lindsay said: “That’s great! And it’s exactly what you said you wanted to do senior year at Milton—teach middle-school English.”

Lydon was surprised. She didn’t remember her career ambitions being so explicit or clear in high school. “I was an English and political science major in college and got into stage management,” she says. “I spent lots of time dealing with people and solving problems as a stage manager, and I enjoyed it. I was good at organizing things to run smoothly.” Focused on finding a job after graduation that would involve dealing with people to solve problems, she thought to try her hand at management consulting or public relations.
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Michael Lanzano
Photographer and Software Programmer
New York City

Michael Lanzano hasn’t always labeled himself an “artist.” Facile with math and computers, he gravitated toward economics in college. Shortly after graduating, Michael was hired by an investment bank, where he develops the company’s trading software and automated reporting systems. “I actually spent most of my time at Yale in the metal shop,” he admits. “I always wanted to do something more physically creative.”

In order to pursue the artistic, Michael maintains flexible hours that allow him to schedule photo shoots. These days, that means two days a week spent “at the desk” maintaining the trading software. “The programs have a high degree of connectivity,” he explains, “so we’re always having to adapt to new protocols set by data vendors and trading partners. It’s important [for the company] to have someone on staff who is familiar with the systems so we can respond quickly… Sometimes my job requires me to redesign an entire system; often it’s a matter of putting a comma somewhere. My working part time gives the bank a great value and it gives me the hours I need. It’s very win-win.”
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Neo Tapela
Howard Hiatt Residency in Global
Health Equity and Internal Medicine
Harvard University,
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA

Neo Tapela knew as a young teenager that she wanted to be a physician; a measure of serendipity, however, intervened in her disciplined career preparation and markedly affected her future. Now, when she returns to Botswana, she will have worked on developing, concurrently, skills for clinical practice, health care policy development, advocacy, and leadership in resource-limited settings.

A scholarship student at a private secondary school in her native Botswana, she was given the chance to come to Milton through Milton’s Korean War Memorial Scholarship, and she took the opportunity. “I had no idea where, or to what kind of a school I was going,” Neo says, “but not knowing anything was actually kind of comforting; I had to be open to whatever I found. All I knew was I was going to America, with the chance to train as a doctor there.”
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The Big Take-Aways:
What life lessons have you learned so far?

Torrey
Flexibility of mind and thought are extremely important.
Collaboration with a very diverse group of stakeholders can be as hard as it is important. My skill set with that situation came from my days in Hathaway House. To make progress, you have to question how you’ve acted before, and how you will act in the future.
From Milton, many things have stayed with me—a sense of the importance of social justice, my interest in things that are complex and interdisciplinary, the need to challenge myself and commit to a high standard of work.

“Dare to be true” especially stays with me—that simple idea that, day after day, means so much. It’s helped me to grow so much over the years.
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The Big Take-Aways:
Are you optimistic?

Tod
Researching climate change, and looking at current policies and programs, it’s hard to be optimistic. But seeing the amazing technologies that are nearly ready, so much interest and investment in them, and the room to make improvements, I think we will be surprised at how fast things become mobilized. The political will isn’t there yet, but the political will is nearly there. And in the meantime, we’re seeing that all the predictions about climate change are being exceeded: The North Polar ice cap was first predicted to be ice free in 2050, then in 2030, and now in 2013. Scientists were conservative.
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Upperclass Students at Milton:
Looking Out at the Decade Ahead

What do you know about yourself that helps you decide what will be important in your work life: What energizes you; what gets you excited; what's gratifying?

Christine Sanchez
Whatever I do will have to be people-oriented: something people are interested in and care about, something where people are part of the process, or part of the outcome.

I’ll need something that isn’t too narrow, or limited—something that’s open to interpretation, that might change over time, that might be flexible and responsive.

Zachary Moore
My work will need to involve things I’ve never tried. That’s what a lot of theatre and the entertainment world is about in a raw sense. It’s always evolving, there’s always new technology. I need to be able to play with these “new toys.”

I like building up a sense of what’s next, what’s the next big thing. I’m always on the lookout for what I can do that’s tackling a big problem. What stimulates me is challenge: when you’re not sure you’re going to come out on top of the problem and you have to overcome that barrier.
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