Our Global Footprints

In 1987, Nancy Press ’69 co-founded Child Aid, a nonprofit group designed to support disadvantaged children in Latin America. 

Three grad students—Gillian Blaber MS ’11, Lindsey Alico MS ’11, and Ny Hoang MS ’11—traveled to Guatemala to gauge whether Genet-Assist, the nonprofit they created as their thesis project, could provide genetic counseling there.

Elinor Mayer ’36, Peggy Rosenbaum ’36, Claire Strauss ’36, and Judy Kauffman ’35 ventured to Mexico in 1936, spending a night at the Mexican Symphony with famed artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Nicole Karsin ’94 covered the civil war in Colombia for seven years as a journalist based in Bogotá.

While a student, Christine Spinelli ’10 filmed a short documentary on national adoption in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

As a first-year student, Trevor Wallace ’13 filmed a documentary on environmental conservation in Antarctica. The Compass Points South was screened at The Explorers Club, and Wallace was inducted as a member.

As founding head of school, Joan Cannady Countryman ’62 helped Oprah Winfrey and Nelson Mandela launch Winfrey’s Leadership Academy for Girls.

Elke Zuern (politics) spent six months at the University of Cape Town last year as the Van Zyl Slabbert Chair in Politics and Sociology.

As the founder of Repowering London, a nonprofit cooperative, Agamemnon Otero ’01 has emerged as a leader in Britain’s sustainable energy movement.

The Sarah Lawrence College Chorus, directed by Harold Aks (Music), embarked on a six-country tour of Europe in 1964.

On a 1987 trip to the Soviet Union with other college presidents, Sarah Lawrence President Alice Ilchman met with Nobel Laureate Andrei Sakharov. 

This semester, SLC undergrads are studying human development in Tanzania, Malawi, and Zimbabwe and conducting fieldwork with program leader Kim Ferguson (psychology).

Roy Brand (philosophy) spent the 2010-11 academic year as director and chief curator of Yaffo 23 at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. 

Lois Murphy (psychiatry) lived in India for four months in 1950, three years after the country’s independence, studying the dynamics between Indian children and their parents. 

Meghan Roguschka ’12 and Amanda Ota ’12 spent a summer building a community garden alongside villagers in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh

Aryn Baker ’95 wrote a Time magazine cover story in 2010 about a young Afghan woman whose nose had been cut off on Taliban orders. Today Baker is Time’s Africa bureau chief. 

A crew of 10 Sarah Lawrence faculty and alumni spent three weeks in Nepal filming Red Monsoon, a movie written by Eelum Dixit ’09. 

Joyce Zankel Lindorff ’71, a Juilliard-trained harpsichordist, became the first permanent visiting professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. 

Joshua Muldavin (geography) has spent 30 years doing field research, often with Sarah Lawrence students, in rural areas of China, India, and Nepal.

Epidemiologist W. Ian Lipkin MD ’74 served as adviser to the Chinese government in dealing with the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Edith Mirante ’74 has investigated atrocities and resistance in some of the most remote corners of Myanmar’s frontier war zones. 

Jiway Tung ’89 founded Karang Widya (The Learning Farm) in Indonesia for at-risk children.

Diplomat Daniel Russel ’75 was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs by President Obama in 2013.