Articles

Documentary director Jennifer Redfearn DS ’03 illuminates social issues through “the humanity of the people who are at the center,” she says. The 2024 Guggenheim Fellow’s work has a clear theme: curiosity. Curiosity about the natural world led her to an environmental studies major at Wellesley. Though Jennifer found “becoming a scientist wasn’t the best fit for the way my curiosity worked,” taking photography and film gave her new ways to explore.

Sometimes change needs to start with something small. Perhaps even a tiny butterfly the size of your thumbnail. “I realized if I could convince people to just plant a plant that a butterfly might visit, that starts them on the road to becoming nurturers of nature,” says Mary Benton ’80, founder of Bound by Beauty and president of GROW (Gardeners Restoring Our World) Miami.

For Sidney Aldridge Bonnet ’75, a retired pediatric hospitalist turned artist, landscape painting is more than a creative outlet—it is her way to give back to a deeply personal cause. For 22 years, Sidney’s son John, who has cerebral palsy and developmental delays, has lived at Marbridge, a nonprofit residential community in Manchaca, Texas. Since 1953, Marbridge has offered transitional and lifetime care for adults with developmental disabilities. John moved there right after high school. “The community is extraordinary,” Sidney says. “I have never seen a culture that is so beautiful and accepting.”

Nana Lampton ’64 had a circuitous path to serving on corporate boards and conservation work.

“If I had had to map out my career before I started, I wouldn’t have imagined I would have done as many things as I have,” says Page Talbott ’72, who followed her B.A. in art history with advanced degrees in early American culture and American civilization.

Fran Lewitter Schulman ’75 earned her M.B.A. at Stanford and worked as an investment analyst in New York City, retiring in 2023 after a 40-year career. In retirement, she is just about as busy as she was as an analyst, she says, but her schedule is more flexible. She has time to visit with her son and grandchild, and she has gotten deeply involved in volunteer work, including co-chairing her 50th reunion this May.

Growing up in many different countries, Kweilin Moore Ellingrud ’99 observed “two ends of the [gender equality] spectrum,” which got her thinking about how women “live and lead in different ways around the world.”

Carol Clingan ’63, through years of effort, saved a historic Jewish mural hidden in a disused synagogue in North Adams, Mass. It now hangs in the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass

Lisa Lim ’86 has had a legal career defined by landmark real estste deals that transformed New York City’s landscape.