Cooke Scholar Alumni Buzz

Hello Cooke Scholars and Alums!

We hope that this message finds you doing well. We’re less than one week away from Scholars Weekend 2021 and we are excited to “see” you all soon. For this edition, we are featuring some of our amazing Cooke Scholar Alumni who you can meet at this year’s event! Here’s an update on what’s going on in the community and some of the great things your fellow Cooke Scholars have done recently. Alums, please reach out and send us your updates so we can feature you and your work! Just send us an email at alumni@jkcf.org.

Community Buzz

Alumni Engagement Opportunities

During the month of August, the Foundation will be announcing opportunities to engage with the Cooke Scholar and Alumni community. Applications for the Cooke Outreach Representative Program (CORP) will open where scholars and alumni can share information about the Cooke scholarships with interested applicants to help the Foundation discover the next generation of Cooke Scholars. Also, we will be looking for our next cohort of Chapter Leaders to help build our communities across the globe through organizing and hosting social activities. More information about these opportunities coming soon!

Connect on LinkedIn

Take a moment to continue building your LinkedIn network by joining the Cooke Scholars & Alumni LinkedIn Group today. We are continually adding scholars and alumni to this group so we can connect, network, and learn from each other. The group is a great place to share employment opportunities and get in touch with other community members in your areas of interest.

Scholars Weekend Buzz

This Scholars Weekend will again be a virtual experience taking place August 5 - 7, 2021. Take a moment to explore the Scholars Weekend website. To celebrate this special annual event, below are some of our amazing Cooke Scholar Alumni you can meet at this year’s Scholars Weekend:

Lisandra Rickards

2008 Graduate Scholar, Harvard University

Lisandra is the co-founder and CEO of Soul Career, which is a professional training and coaching company with programs for professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs. She loves helping others figure out their purpose and find meaningful careers. Come to Scholars Weekend to hear about Lisandra’s “From College to a Fulfilling Career” journey and her thoughts on approaching career changes, as well as her experience on how to successfully run an organization with a family member.

Ricardo Ortega

2011 Dissertation Fellow, University of California at Santa Barbara

For the past eight years, Ricardo has worked in Diversity & Inclusion spaces including as Director of the Center for Equity & Inclusion at University of Washington at Tacoma. He is passionate about social justice and helping to address broken socioeconomic political systems. Ricardo’s Career Pathway Spotlight session at Scholars Weekend this year on “Social Justice World Building: Managing Community and Coalition” will explore the many stresses that come from doing social justice work outside of higher education spaces and what to expect from the corporate world.

Isidore Bethel

2014 Graduate Arts Scholar, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Isidore’s directorial debut Liam received the Paris LGBTQ+ Film Festival’s Jury Prize in 2018 and is streaming on Tënk. His second feature Acts of Love premiered at Hot Docs and Thessaloniki in 2021. Filmmaker Magazine included Isidore among its “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2020. More recently, Isidore edited and produced Toby Bull's "Some Kind of Intimacy," which started its festival run at Geneva's Visions du Réel in April and screened at New York's Museum of the Moving Image this summer. To kick-off Scholars Weekend, Isidore will be speaking with other alums sharing how their college experiences helped them in their work and commitments to contribute to the world.

Emily Hunsberger

2009 Graduate Scholar, George Mason University

In 2014, Emily founded Tertulia, a bilingual communications consultancy business, and in 2017, she started a podcast by that same name, both of which serve to support the use of Spanish as a vibrant language for culture, commerce, and community building in the United States. This past winter, the Alumni Engagement Council spent some time to talk with Emily about her life and career, and her passion for the Spanish language and Tertulia - you can read more about that here. Her Career Pathways Spotlight session at Scholars Weekend on "Living Out What I Wrote in Those Application Essays While Being a Full-time Caregiver” will explore pursuing your professional passions while balancing the responsibilities of raising a family.

Dr. Nahiris Bahamón

2008 Undergraduate Transfer Scholar, University of Wisconsin – Madison; 2011 Graduate Scholar, Boston University School of Medicine

Dr. Bahamón is a board-certified pediatrician at Esperanza Health Center in Chicago, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), and a member of the board of directors for Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), an organization that advocates for comprehensive single-payer national health insurance. She is also an advocate for children and families as an active member of the Illinois Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and its committees on social determinants of health and immigrant health. Come to Scholars Weekend to learn from Dr. Bahamón and other medical professionals in our community on how they responded to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and how they are currently supporting their community to fight this healthcare crisis.

Alumni Buzz

Jesús Rodríguez

2015 College Scholar, Georgetown University; 2019 Graduate Scholar, Georgetown University

Jesús recently published a new article in The Atlantic about “The Irony of Being Undocumented” and how “to undocumented people like me, a few pieces of paper are the difference between stability and crisis.” He writes about his immigration story to the United States from Venezuela, and how immigration policy continues to impact his life. Jesús is a writer in Washington, D.C., a contributing editor at Politico Magazine, and a third-year law student at Georgetown University Law Center.

Twila Fisher

2011 Undergraduate Transfer, Columbia University; 2014 Graduate Scholar, University of Pennsylvania

Twila recently joined her alma mater, Reading Area Community College, to catch up and chat about what she has been up to these days since her days at community college. Twila recalled her time at RACC and mentioned, “I pursued RACC for myself for the same reason I recommend it to people of all ages: location and affordability.” Twila is currently the director of community and economic development at The Hill School and serves on six different boards and committees. You can listen to the podcast here.

Shaun Zhang

2004 Young Scholar; 2007 College Scholar, Georgia Institute of Technology; 2010 Graduate Scholar, Georgetown University

Georgia Tech recently recognized Shaun as part of their “40 Under 40 Class of 2021” along with other “talented individuals have made significant contributions in their fields at an early age.” Shaun works as a litigator and patent attorney at the nationally recognized law firm Goldman Ismail, where he counsels leading companies in the high-tech, biomedical, and industrial fields in matters involving complex technologies. You can read more about Shaun here.

Katie Taylor

2010 Young Scholar; 2015 College Scholar, Duke University; 2019 Graduate Scholar, University of Alabama

Lisa Borders, former president of the WNBA, recently interviewed Katie and fellow Women's Impact Network Scholar Idalis French on her podcast “Enlightened.” In the conversation, they discussed the journey of Katie and Idalis’ powerful friendship and the supportive bond they have cultivated with each other. You can listen to the Podcast here.

July 2021

Cooke Scholar Alumni Buzz

Community Buzz

Scholars Weekend Buzz

Alumni Buzz

Throwback Photo of the Month