We’re seeking makers and purveyors for our second annual Alumni Holiday Gift Guide. Submit your own wares or help us spread the word to talented Ephs in your circle before the Oct. 31 submission deadline. Last year’s inaugural edition welcomed nearly 5,000 unique visitors during the holiday shopping season.

Join the open forum on Aug. 27 at 3 p.m. ET and help shape this year’s vision and priorities for BiGLATA, Williams’ LGBTQ+ Alumni Network. 

Michael A. Brown ’07, vice president, assistant general counsel and corporate secretary at The New York Times, has been recognized by the Minority Corporate Counsel Associate (MCCA) as a 2023 MCCA Rising Star. MCCA’s Rising Stars is an annual list of “attorneys to watch” based on “professional achievements and commitment to improving their community,” according to the organization’s website.

On the radio show Marketplace, Oren Cass ’05, executive director of a new conservative group called American Compass, advocates for treating student loans like any other debt and allowing them to be discharged during bankruptcy.

“Fashion—even at the highest and most superficial echelons—is inherently political and, when executed with the intention, culturally transformative,” writes Virginia Cumberbatch ’10 in an essay on PopSugar that looks at how women of color have shined a light on the realities of ongoing injustice through fashion.

Forbes’ 50 Over 50 2023 list features Williams alumni Mariam Naficy ’91, founder and managing partner of Heretic Ventures, and Adena Testa Friedman ’91, chair and CEO of NASDAQ, in the investment category; Christine Wormuth ’91, Secretary of the Army, U.S. Department of Defense, in the impact category; and Donna Carpenter '85, owner and chair of the board of Burton, in the lifestyle category. Partnering with Forbes to create the list is journalist and author Mika Brzezinski ’89.

The Diego Mongue Band will represent The Capital Region Blues Network in The Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tenn., in January 2024. Diego Mongue ’25 is the son of Dr. Gina Coleman ’90, Williams rugby coach and the leader of Misty Blues (former finalists in the IBC). Fellow student Chase Bradshaw ’25 plays bass in the band.

The latest episode in a podcast series hosted by Gordon Earle '75, features an interview with Dr. Frank (Rick) Richards ’75, one of the world's leading experts on parasitic infections. Rick talks about his long tenure at the Carter Center in Atlanta and his work with President Jimmy Carter, his experience as a Black student at Williams, his campus activism and the challenges he experienced during his years on campus.  

Catch up with fellow alumni in the most recent edition of Williams People available online.

The approximately 180 students who participated in the nine-week Summer Science Research program sponsored by the Science Center and individual science departments presented posters showcasing their collective work with faculty members on Aug. 4. Students’ peers reviewed the 73 posters at an event in the Schow Science Library, awarding prizes to the top three posters based on their effectiveness in communicating the research to others. (Note: This annual event is not affiliated with the Summer Science Program as was noted in last month’s edition of EphNotes.)

Joining other New England college presidents in advocating for liberal arts education amid declining enrollment in humanities programs nationwide, Williams President Maud S. Mandel tells The Boston Globe, “We train broad thinkers who are able to solve complex problems by pulling from a wide variety of disciplinary ways of knowing. To me, that’s the heart of innovation.”

In a new video about tutorials—classes with only two students and a professor—students and faculty share what they learn, how they connect and why this signature academic experience is so rewarding. Political science professor Justin Crowe ’03 says tutorials are a “student-centered pedagogy that allows the faculty member to direct where students are going but forces students to develop the intellectual vocabulary for what they want to do and to pursue the academic interests that they have.”