AitN: May 6, 2019

Activist Ady Barkan ’06 was featured in The New York Times’ Opinion section on May 3. The piece, “Dying Is No Reason to Stop Fighting,” focuses on Barkan’s (who is diagnosed with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) campaign for universal health insurance.

On April 30, Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City announced the appointment of Alicia Guevara ’94 as its new CEO, effective June 10; Guevara will be the nonprofit’s first female CEO. She says in the press release: “I’m committed to carrying forth Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC’s legacy to meet the diverse needs of all youth across our City, ensuring that they have the opportunities and tools they need to succeed by igniting their potential and promise.”

Ai-jen Poo

Ai-jen Poo ’96

Ben Hider

Activist Ai-jen Poo ’96 was featured in ELLE.com’s April 29 feature, “Cecile Richards’s New Political Group Supermajority Aims to Mobilize 2 Million Women Before the 2020 Election.” From the article: “Former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards has teamed up with Alicia Garza of Black Lives Matter and Ai-jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance to form a new women’s political action group ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The organization, called Supermajority, will partner with different groups to educate and train two million women in activism and political participation across the country. … Supermajority not only aims to ensure a women’s agenda is represented at the ballot box in 2020, but also to drive change around issues like the wage gap, childcare costs, maternal mortality rates, family leave, and family separation at the border.”

Playwright Terrence McNally ’60 is one of three Broadway luminaries being honored for their lifetime achievements at this year’s Tony Awards. The awards administrators announced the honorees on April 25, and the ceremony will be broadcast on CBS on June 9. McNally is a four-time Tony winner and his writing has been the basis of 24 (soon to be 25) Broadway productions.

On April 17, The Oregonian published a feature focusing on David Schiff ’67, GSAS’74’s three decades of musical impact and the celebrations planned around his upcoming retirement from Reed College. From the article: “Schiff, Oregon’s best-known living composer and probably the American composer most accomplished at creating viable classical-jazz hybrids, is also one of the country’s major composers of Jewish music for classical forces.”