Alumni Association

Brookline, MA

Leigh Heyman '98 studied Philosophy at Sarah Lawrence, an experience that set him up well for a career at the intersection of technology, and civic and political action. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Framework Homeownership, a fintech startup building technologies supporting inclusion and access for first-time and first-generation homebuyers. Previously Leigh was a White House Senior Policy Advisor and Technology Director in the Obama Administration, where he was responsible for the development and operations supporting President Obama's digital engagement. Since 2018, Leigh has also served as the Chair of The Fund for Sarah Lawrence. While at Sarah Lawrence, Leigh also joined the rowing team, and continued with the sport after graduation, eventually becoming a member of the U.S. National Team, competing at the World Championships and winning multiple national championships. In 2019 Leigh was inducted into the SLC Sports Hall Of Fame. In addition to his SLC degree, Leigh holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. He currently lives in Brookline, MA with his wife, daughter, and cat.

Baltimore, MD

Khaliah Williams '02 began her career in college admissions and counseling as a Sarah Lawrence tour guide and senior interviewer in the Office of Admission. After graduation she joined the office as an Admission Counselor and later as the Director of Multicultural Recruitment. She received her MFA in Fiction Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has published her short stories and nonfiction at the Hawaii Women’s Journal, Frontier Psychiatrist, Buzzfeed Book Country, Day One, American Short Fiction and Day One Year One Best New Stories & Poems 2014. She is also a fellow at the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction. While at Sarah Lawrence Khaliah studied Italian, Literature, and Film History and credits Judy Serafini-Sauli, Bill Park, and Cristina Anzilotti for shaping her SLC experience. She is currently a college counselor at the Berkeley Carroll School and a Fiction Writing instructor at the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop.

New York, NY

Sean Campbell's stories focus at the intersection of social justice, race, and public health. His articles have prompted action from members of Congress, change in the CDC, and contributed to changing Twitter's policy, among other forms of impact. His investigations have covered topics ranging from racism and discrimination in Doctors Without Borders, to disproportionate federal sentences for George Floyd protesters, to children being shot in Flint, Michigan, to nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. His pieces on disproportionate gunshot death rates in New York City sparked conversations about hospital trauma care, promises for action from local politicians, and discussion within the data journalism community on combining gun violence and health reporting. Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, the facility at the center of that investigation, launched a new trauma wing this year. His interrogation of the "Craigslist" of gun sales formed the basis for a lawsuit against Armlist.com, and his pandemic reporting has spurred legislation by state lawmakers. Sean's story on the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s finances was one of the lead features for New York magazine’s “Ten Years Since Trayvon” issue, which was honored with a 2023 National Magazine Award. He's received the 2021 Excellence in Journalism Award by the North Carolina Advocates for Justice, the 2020 Les Payne Award for Coverage on Communities of Color from the Society of Professional Journalists' Deadline Club, and a Sidney Award from the Hillman Foundation, among other recognitions. His feature work has been published by Rolling Stone, ProPublica, and Insider, among other outlets. He's also published short stories with the Bellevue Literary Review and Hayden's Ferry Review.

He is an adjunct assistant professor in the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and holds a bachelor of science in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida, a master of fine arts in writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and a master of science degree from Columbia Journalism School.

Atlanta, Georgia

Ann Fountain ’05 (they/them) became an unexpected "Sarah Lawrence evangelist" during their time at SLC, where they studied literature & writing, anthropology & sociology, and art history and theory, while also working in the admission office, becoming captain of the crew team, serving as a resident advisor, and participating in student government. After gra duating, they stayed at SLC for several years as an admission counselor and crew coach before moving on to roles at Bennington College in Vermont and Saint Edward's School, a K12 independent school in Florida. Today, they work as a high school principal at The Galloway School, a progressive K12 school in Atlanta, Georgia – an environment that shares many commonalities with SLC, from its strengths in the creative and performing arts to the significant amount of trust, freedom, and agency it gives to students in their educational pursuits. Ann is passionate about helping define their paths to, through, and beyond high school.

Ann lives in Atlanta with their spouse, Alison Keohane '05, and their two energetic, video-game-loving nine-year-old sons. Ann serves on the Alumni Council to help SLC sustain and grow its unique mission, vision, and pedagogy.

Williamstown, MA

Soledad Fox Maura is V-Nee Yeh ’81 Chair in Spanish and Comparative Literature at Williams College. She has a a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and an MPhil and PhD in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is a scholar who has also written about women, politics, and literature for El Mundo, El País, La Revista de Libros, and Lit Hub, including an op-ed in El País was an op-ed on the role of women in President Biden’s successful presidential campaign.

Her work has focused on Spanish and French literature and history, biography, exile, particularly Spanish exiles in France and Mexico, the Spanish Civil War, and life-writing in its broadest sense. Her revised doctoral dissertation on the influence of Cervantes on Flaubert was published by Sussex Academic Press (UK) in 2008. The Spanish translation was released in 2021 by the Editorial Renacimiento (Spain). Her first biography, of Constancia de la Mora, one of the most important female figures in the Spanish Civil War, was also published by Sussex Academic Press and Editorial Renacimiento.

Soledad spent five years researching and writing her biography of Jorge Semprún which was published by Penguin Random House (Spain) in 2016, Flammarion, Grandes Biographies (France) in 2017, Arcade (USA) in 2018, and Sussex Academic Press in 2018. This biography was excerpted in Salon.com and was internationally reviewed in numerous publications, including: The Wall Street Journal, the Times Literary Supplement, Le Monde, La Vanguardia, Marianne, and many more. In 2019 The Wall Street Journal listed it as one of the “top five literary lives”.

In France, she presented the book at the Instituto Cervantes Paris with Semprún’s nephew, historian Jean-Marie Soutou and the then Cervantes Director Juan Manuel Bonet. She was interviewed by Pierre-Edouard Deldique for RFI. She was also featured on RFI’s Spanish Language program “El Invitado”, and on the Radio de La Communauté Juive. In New York the US edition was presented at Albertine.

Her first novel, Madrid Again, was published by Arcade in November 2020. It was a WAMC Radio Fall Pick, and the release was featured in profiles of the author in Vanity Fair Spain and The Berkshire Eagle. She presented Madrid Again at the Oxford Center for Life Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford University, the Silver Unicorn Bookstore (USA) and at the Desperate Literature Bookstore in Madrid.

In 2021 and 2022 she edited and prologued two books of recovered women authors in collaboration with Editorial Renacimiento in Spain. The first volume in this series, Mi Cárcel (My Prison) by Isabel Alvarez de Toledo, is the autobiography of a Spanish aristocrat who was imprisoned for her anti-Franco activities. A best-seller in 1972 when it was published in the United States by Harper & Row, this is the first time it has been published in Spain. The second volume is Tiempo de llorar: Obra reunida the collected work of María Luisa Elío, an exiled Spanish-Mexican author, screenwriter, and actress.

Matthew is an attorney at Jia Law Group (JLG). He has over 20 years of experience in international employee mobility, immigration compliance, and business- and family-based immigration. He advises companies and individuals on visas for investors, skilled workers, extraordinary ability, and intra-company transferees, and provides high-level strategic planning for the modern international workforce. His clients have included tech startups, high-end Asian restaurants, a Spanish renewable energy company, a multinational Chinese biotech firm, fashion boutiques, a French music production studio, and other creative and innovative businesses.  He has also advised leading technology companies, media organizations, hospitals, financial institutions, think tanks, and non-profits on their international employee mobility needs, and has litigated before the immigration agencies, the immigration courts, and the federal courts of appeals. Other areas of expertise include permanent residence based on investment, labor certification outstanding research, extraordinary ability, and the national interest, in addition to family relationships and marriage. Prior to joining JLG, he was Counsel at an international Am Law 100 firm where he assisted major corporations and investors with their global mobility needs. Before that he was a Legislative Fellow with the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington, DC, where he provided legal and policy analysis of immigration reform legislation proposed by the 113th Congress.

​After graduating from SLC, Matthew earned a J.D. from George Washington University Law School and is a graduate of Universidad Complutense. He is a member of the New York Bar Association and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.  He is admitted to the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

London, UK & Madrid, Spain

Patrick Larvie ’90 is a researcher and nonprofit leader with a career that bridges user experience design, organizational culture, and social impact. Formerly the global lead of the Workplace User Experience Team at Google, Patrick has spent decades exploring how people engage with their environments and how those spaces can better serve their needs. Whether evaluating signage, airflow, or office layouts, his focus has always been on making physical spaces more intuitive, efficient, and effective for the people in them.

Before joining Google, Patrick led international user research at Yahoo!, managing UX initiatives across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Australia. Earlier, he served as research director at the Instituto de Estudos da Religião, one of Brazil’s most respected nonprofit policy think tanks, where he oversaw a multimillion-dollar research budget and a staff of 40. Patrick earned his PhD in psychology from the University of Chicago. He continues to champion people-centered design as a tool for institutional and civic transformation, drawing on insights from across disciplines.

At Sarah Lawrence, Patrick developed a deep appreciation for cultural and historical context—an intellectual foundation that continues to inform his thinking today. He credits his education with sharpening his interdisciplinary lens and curiosity.

Washington, DC

Alex Leff '00, born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, is a digital editor on the international desk at NPR in Washington, D.C. After completinghis BA at Sarah Lawrence College in 2000 (largely in social sciences, but with many arts and music courses in between), he moved to Barcelona, where he taught English, resumed studying piano and choir singing as he had done at SLC — this time performing with a Catalan chorus in centuries-old churches. While in Europe he eventually discovered his passion: international journalism. He completed a master’s in journalism taught at the University of Barcelona in conjunction with Columbia University, and became a reporter at a local newspaper. He soon relocated to San José, Costa Rica, where he edited stories at The Tico Times newspaper and went on to report for Reuters, GlobalPost and other publications. There he also met his future wife, Jessica Webb, an environmental conservation professional. The two finally moved back to the U.S. in 2012, first to Boston for a few years, and now in Washington, where they live in a little old rowhouse and recently adopted a rescue dog from Puerto Rico.

Washington, DC

Ouida Maedel '06 has served as a Theater and Musical Theater Specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts since 2018, where she manages a diverse portfolio of applicants and grantees seeking funding for arts projects across all 50 states and the U.S. territories.

Previously, she was the Grants Manager at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC.  In that capacity, she leveraged more than a decade of experience in theatre performance and production to maximize efficiency and collaboration in institutional fundraising efforts and special project management including Woolly’s participation in the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Adaptive Capacity program, the Wallace Foundation’s Building Audiences for Sustainability initiative, and the Weissberg Foundation’s Fund for Diversity in Theater.  While at Woolly Mammoth, Ouida also served as an inaugural co-chair of the theatre’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Working Group. 

Prior to her work at Woolly Mammoth, Ouida led artistic producing efforts for Dance Exchange in Takoma Park, MD as Partnerships and Production Manager. Notable projects under her supervision were How to Lose a Mountain which included a 500-mile hike and community engagement tour from Washington, DC to West Virginia and culminated in an award-winning National Performance Network commission for the stage, and Bricks & Bones, a multi-site performance series developed in partnership with Dallas Faces Race. She has also worked with New York City based organizations Move This World, 13th Street Repertory Company, and NYU Tisch’s Lee Strasberg Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute where she was a Stage Manager in Residence, among others.

Ouida has served as a mentor for early-career stage managers through USITT’s Stage Management Mentor Project, and Theatre Communications Group, the national service organization for the American theatre, named her a Rising Leader of Color in 2016. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and an MA in International Communication and Arts Management from American University, where she was a recipient of the Dean’s Award in the School of International Service. 

New York, NY

Halie May MS '18 is a graduate of the Joan H. Marks Graduate Program in Human Genetics at Sarah Lawrence College. Upon graduating in 2018, she began working at the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), where she led research in the areas of rare disease-gene discovery and the genetics of cerebral palsy, publishing her first manuscripts and joining the ranks of faculty in just a couple of years. She left CUIMC to work as a private genetics consultant, and is currently creating direct-to-consumer genetic testing panels at Tomorrow's Health. Halie is Chair of the New York State Genetics Task Force's Public Policy Committee, and leads the efforts in passing New York state's bill for genetic counseling licensure. Halie is committed to increasing access to genetic counselors and conducting research that results in actionable information and transformative healthcare. She is grateful for the widespread alumni-base of the Joan H. Marks Graduate Program, and is proud to be an alumni of the first genetic counseling program in the country!

Myra McGovern is the founder and principal of The Polaris Collaborative, a consultancy that helps schools and nonprofit organizations manage crisis situations while staying true to their missions.

She worked for the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) for more than two decades before starting her own firm. Most recently, she was the Vice President of External Relations, where her team handled media and public relations, advocacy and public affairs communications, and executive communications. Before that, she served as the Vice President of Media for eight years, overseeing the team responsible for book publishing, a quarterly magazine, multiple content-rich websites, video content, and social media.

While at Sarah Lawrence, Myra focused on literature and photography, but she enjoyed her courses in various other disciplines as well. She also holds a master’s degree from George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. She and her family live in the Washington, DC-area. 

Chicago, IL

Tasha F. Neumeister '99 focused her studies on developmental psychology, African American literature, and creative writing while at Sarah Lawrence. During her junior year, she participated in the now discontinued Florence program, which had a pivotal influence on her world view and fostered a love of opera and Italian culture.

After graduating, Tasha earned a master’s degree in newspaper and online journalism from Syracuse University. She went on to become a multimedia journalist for several NPR affiliates and print media outlets in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago. Covering topics from economics and municipal government to education and politics, a highlight of her journalism career was covering the 2008 presidential election and the ultimate election of President Barack Obama.

Tasha now works in higher education communications and faculty development, having won numerous accolades and serving on the board of PRSA’s Counselors to Higher Education. A  native of Los Angeles, Tasha finds herself still adapting to Midwest winters after living in Chicago for more than a decade. In her free time, she spends time fighting for racial equity and inclusivity in K-12 public schools and hanging out and indulging the curiosities with her two little people.

Reston, VA

Karl Peña '99 brings over 25 years of professional experience in leadership, technology, and community engagement. His time as Chairperson of the SSSF Senate Committee on campus was pivotal, honing his leadership, strategy, and communication skills, which continue to drive his career pursuits today.

Currently serving as VP of Support and Operations at a software company, Karl leads a global team, leveraging his customer-centric leadership to achieve optimal results across departments. His role centers around training teams to provide an exceptional customer experience for a service that optimizes web performance, increases revenue, and reduces the internet's carbon footprint.

Beyond his professional endeavors, Karl remains actively engaged in community organizing, reflecting his ongoing interest in fostering collaboration and innovation within the tech community. He is involved in organizing the annual DevOpsDays DC conference. Karl trains in Capoeira Angola and enjoys photography—two passions he began to pursue while on campus—and he cherishes quality time with his two brilliant teenagers, Astrid and Eneko. Astrid, attending Sarah Lawrence with her cat, Chandler Bing, is passionate about reproductive biology, teaching, organizing, and helping others. Eneko is passionate about languages and advancing social justice.

New York, NY

Celia Pilkington '94Pilkington ‘94 studied Theatre at SLC. A member of Actors Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA, she created the production company Studio 28 and has produced original plays Off-Broadway. She has performed in numerous Off-Broadway productions including Aftermath based on the writings of feminist icon Andrea Dworkin. Stuyvesant Town: This is Your Home which was presented at The Signature Theatre, a dramatization of the turbulent formation of Stuyvesant Town. Freed Speech, based on testimony taken from the first public hearings on pornography in which she portrayed Linda Lovelace. Hiroshima, a play with music by Yoko Ono, at Theater for the New City. She has also appeared in numerous television shows and independent films.

She has served on the Reunion Committee and is currently the the 1994 Class Chair.

Joyah is a Director at Assured Guaranty, a global financial guaranty insurance company, where she manages portfolios in the U.S. and United Kingdom that specialize in Public Finance and Infrastructure. Prior to Assured Guaranty, Joyah was an analyst at Moody’s Investor’s Service. Joyah is a member of the Municipal Analysts Group of New York (MAGNY), Women in Public Finance (WPF), and the National Black MBA Association. She has an undergraduate degree from Sarah Lawrence College, studied abroad at Oxford University (Wadham College), and holds an MBA from Fordham University.

Philadelphia, PA

Slade Roff '12 studied social psychology, theater and languages (Spanish and Italian) during her time at Sarah Lawrence. After graduating, Slade moved to Philadelphia where she developed great friendships and even happened to stumble upon her now-husband, Jeff. Slade holds a Master’s degree in Social Work (MSW) from The University of Pennsylvania--with a concentration in direct clinical practice. Currently, Slade serves as a mental health counselor at Thomas Jefferson University and has recently entered into private practice. Slade is passionate about working with the emerging adult population and credits her Sarah Lawrence experience for her desire to work with college students. Slade has always recognized the uniqueness of the Sarah Lawrence education, but since working in college/university settings for eight years, Slade has grown a deeper appreciation for the academic freedom Sarah Lawrence provided.

Austin, TX

Benjamin J. Salazar, ’95, MSEd ’96, was mentored at Sarah Lawrence by Sara Wilford, who taught him that not only was there an art to teaching, but also that teaching itself is a lifelong vocation, if the passion remains.  While finishing his undergraduate degree, Benjamin served as a cultural expert for the Organization of American States throughout Latin America on a multi-year economic development initiative that provided technical and sales assistance to indigenous women entrepreneurs working in sustainable materials.  During his graduate studies, he simultaneously directed an arts program in the New York City public schools.  Benjamin’s grandparents were California farmworkers, and as the graduate commencement speaker, he remembers the thrill of sharing the podium with Cornel West and publicly having the opportunity to give thanks to his family and to Sarah Lawrence for all their support.

After graduation, Benjamin taught for two years in Westchester public schools before returning to graduate school full-time for his MBA at UNC, Chapel Hill, where he received a full fellowship and was a teaching assistant in economics.  He was a consultant for HP to begin his corporate experience, and later worked for American Express, Citigroup, The Richards Group and BBVA USA in roles that included business development, marketing, strategic planning and commercial lending, where his practice focused on business owners and entrepreneurs. 

He currently lives and works in Austin, TX for the Technology & Life Science division of a bank that provides capital to venture-backed technology startups.  His clients represent many sectors, and all stages of growth from inception to post-IPO.  He also mentors and advises numerous startups in the ecosystem and is active in various investor networks.  He is a gallery teacher for the Blanton Museum of Art and is involved with the Austin Music Foundation’s artist development program.  Benjamin has also recently begun fundraising for a nonprofit, The Mexican Coalition, that provides infrastructure, public health, and legal aid programs and opportunities for youth in rural, migrant-sending communities throughout Mexico and Central America.