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When you’re an art history major deeply immersed in 19th-century painting, it might seem unlikely that assessing the value of Coney Island memorabilia is in your future. But that’s what happened for Abby Gardner Athanasopoulos ’02, the founder of Spectrum Appraisals.

Edie Hu ’97 swam the English Channel in 2018 as a two-woman relay, completing the 21 miles in just under 15 hours. After the grueling effort, the lifelong swimmer tinkered with the idea of attempting the feat on her own.

The image towers over a street in East Harlem, New York, invoking an intimate and peaceful moment—a Black woman having her hair braided. Shani Evans ’96 is the subject, though she says the artwork is meant to represent a universal, rather than a personal, moment of peace and connection.

For more than half a century, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) in California have dreamed of harnessing nuclear fusion to reproduce the process that powers our sun. Computational physicist Judy Harte ’68 has been there almost from the beginning.

Like many science-inclined students, Lamiya Mowla ’13 arrived at Wellesley intending to become a doctor. But an introductory astronomy lesson altered her ambitions—and the course of her life.

Courtney Streett ’09, a Native American and member of the Nanticoke Tribe, co-founded a nonprofit, the Native Roots Farm Foundation, to reclaim, cultivate, and celebrate Native relationships with the land, plants, and communities for the next Seven Generations.

After nearly 20 years in the House and Senate advising lawmakers on policy, strategy, and messaging, Bronwyn Lance ’90 this year became the first woman in the history of North Carolina’s 11th District to be named chief of staff.

In late May 2020, Michele Moody-Adams ’78 went for a walk, hoping to clear her head during a particularly busy season in her life. Instead the Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia, stumbled upon a protest—and the inspiration for her next book.

Since starting her jewelry business, Porcelain and Stone, in 2012, Kimberly Huestis ’05 has made pieces for celebrities, big brands, and private customers. For Madeleine Korbel Albright ’59, she made a mint-colored, gold-speckled brooch based on her best-selling uni necklace—uni means sea urchin in Japanese, and sea urchins are adaptive, tough, and well-traveled—which the former secretary of state received at a Washington Wellesley Club event.