When K’sean Henderson (C’12, L’18) steps back onto campus at Georgetown University, he notices how things have changed in the past decade since he was a student, but also, just how much has remained the same. The students today are asking themselves the same questions that Henderson once did.

“There is still just a group of young people trying to figure out what’s next for them as they face a lot of questions about what tomorrow looks like,” he said.

Henderson was heavily involved in various student leadership roles on campus, and now, as an alumnus, he wants to mentor and support younger generations of students as they navigate life after Georgetown. He is inspired to give back to the community he calls home.

For his efforts and contributions, Henderson, who works as an associate at the law firm in DC, received both the and the this year. The former is given to a graduate who has made a significant positive impact in their community, profession or field, including meaningful contributions to the Black community, and the latter recognizes outstanding service by undergraduate alumni who have exhibited leadership across many activities.

“It’s helpful to stay involved because I think Georgetown over time has just given me so much and has poured into me in ways that I probably can’t even explain,” Henderson said. “I look for opportunities to give back to make sure that other alumni are also having a great experience with the university.”

A Deeper Learning

Born and raised in Hempstead, New York on Long Island, Henderson was drawn to politics at an early age. His mother has always been an active voter, he said, and because of that, Henderson paid close attention to local politics in his town. 

“I wanted to know how things are done and why they’re done that way,” he said. “How do we prioritize issues? How do we pay for things? Who’s in the room when these decisions are made? I wanted to get a better sense of what happens behind the curtain.”

When it came time to choose a college, Henderson said he wanted to study in Washington, DC — the epicenter of politics — and so picking Georgetown was an easy choice.

As a member of the Henderson quickly immersed himself into Georgetown through the five-week academic summer program and said he “already had 40 friends” by first-year fall semester. 

“It was such a cool experience,” he said. “I credit it with helping shape me, certainly in the early stages and then certainly throughout the rest of my time on the Hilltop.”

Henderson majored in government and minored in history in the 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences and found the smaller, seminar courses enriching. 

Some of his favorite classes included The Church and the Poor and Struggle and Transcendence by . Henderson also enjoyed the African Atlantic course taught by history professors and Shobana Shankar and Prisons and Punishment by .?

“I felt like there was deeper learning happening, because you really do get to engage with your classmates,” he said of the seminars. “You get to have some back and forth. You get to have some disagreements. You get to really wrestle with some of the materials that you’re working through.”

Beyond the classroom, Henderson was involved on campus as a senator for Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA). He was also a member of the and the and helped coordinate . Henderson had many touchpoints with university leaders through his roles, including as a student intern in the Office of the President.

, the senior associate dean of students and the executive director of access and success, said she marveled at Henderson’s “ease of creating relationships and his infectious spirit that allows him to fully engage across the university.”

“K’sean is thoughtful and competent and remains focused on the success of student experiences while showing full investment in the ambitions of future Hoyas,” Brown-McKenzie said. “K’sean has had multiple interactions with the -affiliated programs and his outputs produce an immediate impact, especially on service delivery and student engagement.”

‘A True Hoya’

After graduating from the 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences in 2012, Henderson moved to Greenville, Mississippi to teach eighth grade English with Teach for America.

At that time, Henderson thought he would pursue a career in education policy, and one of his mentors, Rhondale-Marie Barras (C’97), a founding member of the , encouraged him to get into teaching. 

“She said, ‘Can’t you imagine how much better it would be if people who went into policy had been in a classroom?’” Henderson said. 

He stayed in Mississippi for three years and the experience gave him a close-up view of the systemic issues impacting the students. “It does matter if you have a teacher who’s committed and dedicated in the classroom, but some of the issues need to be addressed on a much larger scale,” Henderson said.

When he returned to DC to attend Georgetown Law School, Henderson thought back to his earlier interests in politics and leaned into more leadership roles. He served as vice president and then president of the , senior editor of the and as a member of , Georgetown Law Center’s intramural and interscholastic advocacy competition organization.

“K’sean is one of the gutsiest Hoyas I ever taught,” said Kemp, one of Henderson’s mentors and undergraduate professors. “K’sean deepens the virtue definition of a true Hoya, and his commitment to all to share the gifts of creation keeps me inspired.”

Henderson graduated from law school and joined Ropes & Gray LLP in a full-time role in 2018. He said he regularly draws on his liberal arts education as an associate who primarily handles internal investigations related to allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption.

“The liberal arts background, I think of it as a complete well-roundedness of an education,” Henderson said. “When I approach issues, I try to bring in things I’ve learned — not only from things I’ve learned from a political science class, but also something I might have learned from philosophy or theology. …The way you bring information, the way you synthesize it and then the way you communicate it with other people — that’s pretty much what I do as an attorney.”

Advocating for the Next Generation

Henderson’s involvement in the Georgetown community has strengthened as an alumnus.

Since graduating, he has served on the programming committee for three , as a class ambassador for the Class of 2012 and with Georgetown Law’s . He joined Georgetown University Alumni Association’s in 2020 and serves as chair for the nominations committee. Henderson also chairs the Board of Directors for the Patrick Healy Fellowship. 

He and his college roommates — Ryan Wilson (C’12, L’15), TK Petersen (B’12) and Dr. Jamil Kendall (C’12) — established the 1440 Center for Multicultural Equity & Access Endowed Fund in support of the and the Patrick Healy Fellowship.

“His temperament, dedication and experience are exemplified in his over a decade long service to Jesuit education,” said Brown-McKenzie. “K’sean lives out the values of people for others consistently in his national engagement with the Hoya networks and especially in his contributions to Georgetown University. His personal and professional experiences are deeply influenced by Georgetown University’s values.”

As an alum, Henderson advises current Georgetown students to “slow down” and enjoy the journey. He recommends “depth over breadth” when it comes to activities. Find the things that you can commit yourself to, and don’t spread yourself too thin, Henderson said. 

It will go by quickly. And when it comes to life after Georgetown, trust that things will work out.

“I want to say, hey, I was there. It looked different then, but I’m fine. You’ll be fine, too” he said.

(Top photo taken by Lisa Helfert at the 2026 Patrick Healy Dinner)

When (C’11) moved to West Palm Beach, Florida in 2015 to work for the newly launched American Sports Network as a sports reporter, anchor and analyst, she figured she would be leaving DC behind her. 

But less than two years later, the network laid her off. It was her second layoff in three years. She moved back in with her parents in the DC area with her “tail between [her] legs,” McNutt said. She was uncertain where she stood in the sports journalism and media industry and frustrated by the lack of steady employment. 

“I was embarrassed, because as much as you are told a layoff is not personal … what you do as a journalist, particularly on television, is so closely attached to who you are,” she said. “It’s hard to separate the two.”

“I wanted to be working so bad, and I can remember having little fits punching pillows,” McNutt continued. She saw other journalists on air and thought, “I can do that too. Why is this happening to me? Like, what is going on?”

That volatile period would eventually lead McNutt to where she is now. McNutt is an NBA, WNBA and college basketball analyst for ESPN and an analyst covering the New York Knicks for MSG Networks. Sports fans can find her analysis and expertise on various television and radio programs and podcasts. The time McNutt spent bouncing between jobs ultimately gave her a more well-rounded perspective on her life. She had time to go to lunch with her parents and the even joined a recreational basketball league with former teammates. 

“I just look back on that year, and I often think about how God was able to use it to remind me of when I feel most loved, and how important it is to carve out time to make sure that that is still a part of my life,” McNutt said. “The only thing truly inevitable in our lives is change.”

A Hoya from the Start

From a young age, McNutt was “entrenched” in Georgetown basketball, she said. McNutt played basketball while growing up in Prince George’s County, Maryland and became a standout player at the Academy of the Holy Cross. 

Her dad is a “huge” Georgetown fan, she said, and McNutt has fond memories of going to Georgetown basketball games as a kid. One time, she was a ball girl for Georgetown when the Syracuse University men’s basketball team was in town, and she was able to see future NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony, a player that she and her father had followed and studied, up close.

When Georgetown recruited her to play basketball, it felt “serendipitous,” she said. 

At a recruiting visit to Georgetown when McNutt was in high school, she remembers meeting the late , or “Big John.”

“Having a chance to sit down and chat with Big John … and knowing all that he had meant at this point — to basketball, to the Black community, to Georgetown, to my dad — it was really surreal,” she said. Meeting Thompson and her future teammates and coaches led her to choose Georgetown, which McNutt considers to be “one of the best [decisions] I’ve made over the course of my life.” 

During her senior season, McNutt led the Hoyas to the Sweet 16 of the . She scored a in a close loss to the University of Connecticut. McNutt still looks back fondly on the practices with her teammates, “folks that I still share a group chat with today,” and camaraderie in the locker room, she said.

McNutt was captain of the team for two years and a leader both on and off the court for the Hoyas.

, the associate athletics director for communications at Georgetown, said she quickly realized that McNutt was the perfect spokesperson for the team. “She really knew how to captivate an audience and how to get her point across,” Barnes said. 

After her final game for the Hoyas, McNutt introduced herself to the reporters assembled in front of her. She told them she was now looking for a career in broadcasting. As her athletic career came to an end, McNutt looked to the future. “I wanted to be able to host, to report, to tell stories,” she said.

Finding ‘Resilient Stories’

After graduating, McNutt worked as a kindergarten aide for a year and then enrolled in the Philip Merrill 海角论坛 of Journalism at the University of Maryland for her master’s degree.

While she got experience in different types of journalism through the program, McNutt knew she wanted to stay in sports journalism. “I felt that the experience [in sports] for me had been so powerful, and there were so many great stories,” she said. “I want to stay with the joy of sport, the triumphant nature, the resilient stories.”

As women’s basketball continues to grow and rise in popularity, McNutt wants to tell stories that celebrate women and ensure fair coverage of the Black women who were pioneers of the sport. “I am protective of a space that has worked so hard for every bit of attention and dollar and sponsorship that it has right now. Everybody that helped get here should be respected,” she said.

Her time as a Division I athlete and an English major at Georgetown University 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences helped prepare her for a career in broadcast journalism. She realized she wanted to be a journalist after taking Professor Barbara Feinman Todd’s Media and Techniques class, and her love for the field grew from taking another class taught by Athelia Night, a former Washington Post reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist. 

“Georgetown is the foundation of my career,” . “It’s a place that helped me find my voice and develop the basketball eye that would be critical to the career I continue to build. My time on the women’s basketball team, particularly the two years that I was a team captain, helped me develop self-awareness which has benefited me tremendously personally and in the workplace. At the root of media is the ability to communicate, which requires understanding your audience.”

“I remember a number of classes and discussions on the Hilltop centered on community and understanding,” she added. “While I am in front of the mic professionally, I still value community and understanding and want to remain respectful of the people that I’m privileged to cover.”

McNutt started her broadcasting career at Prince George’s Community Television, and then worked at WJLA NewsChannel 8. But when Sinclair took over the station, she lost her job. Sinclair then brought McNutt to Florida to work on its new sports network, American Sports Network. After just over two years, the network shut down.

Moving back home, McNutt spent the next year and a half “hustling and grinding,” she said, and navigating the freelance world while working for ESPN, CBS, FOX Sports and local television. That experience, she said, was “really instrumental in my life at large” and required steadying herself “through faith and community.”

When ESPN launched the ACC Network , the network hired McNutt. This year marks her seventh year with ESPN. 

“All the credit goes to Monica, because the thing I’ll say about her is, at the beginning, she was willing to [cover] anything, no matter the sport, no matter how low level it was,” Barnes said. “She was willing to go out there and do it, and I think that is why she’s been so successful.”

Staying True to Yourself

Graduating from Georgetown in 2011, McNutt remembers people in her class were scared to start their careers in a rocky job market. One key to success then and now, McNutt said, is the ability to combine creativity and “outside-of-the-box” thinking with practical skills.

“If you can solve a problem, you have a skill that is desirable,” she said.

McNutt encourages those entering the sports media industry to be authentic. 

“My advice in general to young people getting into space is to take yourself with you wherever you go,” she said. “Just be mindful of how you’re showing up wherever you are, especially in an era of social media, because employers potentially look up your LinkedIn and also your Instagram.”

McNutt also advocates for having “a healthy relationship with ‘no.’” 

“I totally understand the importance of being able to support oneself financially,” McNutt said. “But I also have the lived experience that it is not a personal relationship with these jobs, and so you got to be able to hear ‘no’ without it decimating your hopes and dreams, and to use no in order to protect your hopes and dreams as you figure it out.”

While she did not take a straight line to get to where she is today, McNutt said she has few regrets. Each experience has been a learning opportunity, helping her become a more well-rounded and healthy person. Because of the winding path, she has been able to build both a life and a career.

“If I hadn’t been laid off, I don’t know if my compass for my life would be so deliberate about carving out time for my loved ones and my family,” she said. “I think all things work out. They work together. So there’s not much that I would have changed. I think even in our missteps, there’s such beautiful lessons, and I think that’s important to our journeys.”

(Top image courtesy of Georgetown University Athletics)

Pre-health students at Georgetown University have a new space to call their own.

Located in Poulton Hall, across the street from White-Gravenor Hall, pre-health students can now visit the in a dedicated space. , an associate dean in the 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences and director of the pre-health advising team, moved her office into the building this January, along with assistant directors, and . 

“I love the location,” Connell said. “It’s easy for students. …And I’ve always loved being in the middle of where their classes are.”

This move provides pre-health students with more opportunities to connect with their advisors and classmates. They can use the physical space to conduct video interviews for medical school, reserve rooms for meetings and study sessions and attend social events with guest speakers. It’ll also allow the advisors to expand on the work that they do. 

The Pre-Health Advising Office, housed under the 海角论坛, serves all pre-health students at the university preparing for careers in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and other health professions. Connell, Ericson and Cherner advise approximately 900 undergraduates across the university who are preparing for health professions. The vast majority of pre-health students are pre-med, Connell said, and are in and , with additional students in the McDonough School of Business and the School of Foreign Service. The advisors also support dozens of postbaccalaureate students and more than a hundred alumni. 

“Students are accompanied on their four-year journey to figure out and discern what they want to do,” Connell said. “We make sure they are as prepared as they need to be.”

A Longitudinal Relationship

Anna Douglas (C’24) credits the pre-health advising team for guiding her on the path to medical school.

At Georgetown, Douglas majored in neurobiology and minored in fine arts, while also competing as a dressage rider. She was originally nervous about how she would fit into the pre-health community as someone with a “background that doesn’t immediately connect to medicine,” she said, but meeting with Connell and the advising team made Douglas feel at home.

“They were so nice, so understanding and so excited to hear about my story and the different things I was thinking about and curious about,” Douglas said.

She is currently deciding on which medical school to attend starting this fall.

“I have received more interviews and acceptances than I could have ever expected,” Douglas said. “I am now in the process of attending accepted students weekends at a number of schools and feel incredibly grateful to have a choice of several incredible schools.”

Throughout the medical school application process, which she began in the fall of 2024 while taking a gap year, Douglas turned to the advisors for help.

“I was really, really impressed and appreciative of the fact that I already had this longitudinal relationship with them, that I felt comfortable enough to meet with Dr. Connell and ask specific questions,” she said. “But also that there was constant information and workshops and seminars for everyone to go to.”

The advising begins by the time pre-health students arrive on campus.

Ishaan Kumar (C’24), a first-year medical student at Harvard Medical School, said that both his advising dean at the time and Connell had emailed him within his first two weeks at Georgetown. Over the next three and a half years — Kumar graduated a semester early with a neurobiology degree — he became close to the pre-health advisors, as they guided him through the application process.

“They’re the best,” he said. “They just really helped me figure out my path to medical school, because otherwise, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. It was helpful to have them walk me through it.”

The advice they gave was personalized. Ericson sat down with Kumar and “made a step-by-step, month-by-month plan” for his schedule to fit in studying for the Medical 海角论坛 Admission Test (MCAT) as an undergraduate student, he said. And when he was ready to apply to medical school, Connell, who received her M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1989, helped him prepare by conducting mock interviews.

“I was applying to more research-oriented schools, so she tailored her mock interview questions,” Kumar said. She also put him in touch with at least two alumni of the schools where he interviewed. 

In addition to personalized one-on-one advising, there are informational webinars and workshops that students can attend. Cherner, who coordinates Georgetown’s, has built a large Canvas course full of resources for pre-med students and also those interested in pursuing education in other pre-health professions, like physician assistant programs and optometry school.

“We have a whole Canvas course available to us in order to learn all the things that prepare us to apply, whereas so many of my friends from other universities just had to use YouTube or pay advisors from outside their university exorbitant amounts of money for private tutoring and counseling,” Douglas said. “I feel really, really grateful for the amount of support I’ve gotten. The advisors genuinely care.”

Both Douglas and Kumar recommend that students reach out to the pre-health advising team as early as they can and to meet them in person. The more the advisors know about the students’ interests and motivations, the better they can assist them.

“They’re the kind of people who won’t try to put you into buckets, or say, ‘Everyone should do this,’” Kumar said. “They’ll find opportunities that align with your interests to help you have the kind of college experience you want, rather than trying to just fit a certain narrative that helps you get into med school.”

A Collaborative Effort

All students who express interest in pre-health can receive support from the Pre-Health Advising Office. 

In addition to Connell, Ericson and Cherner, the 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences and School of Health both have advising deans and faculty members who are knowledgeable about the pre-health admissions process and work collaboratively with the pre-health advisors. 

“In my faculty advising role, I feel relatively comfortable giving students some basic advice, but when it comes to any sort of very specific types of questions, I really do rely heavily on the Pre-Health Advising Office,” said , an associate professor in the School of Health and one of the 11 staff and faculty members that sits on the . 

The committee, chaired by Connell, reviews students’ application material and sends their evaluations to schools.

Connell said the acceptance rate of Georgetown students into medical schools is “stellar” and has continued to climb since she began her role in 2019. She is also proud that the pre-health advising team does not “gatekeep” access to support. The advisors will help anyone interested in strengthening their applications.

When students are applying for medical school, Connell prepares them on what she calls, “the big three” focuses: research, clinical experience and service. 

“We help them with opportunities,” Connell said. “Research opportunities abound at Georgetown, and not just on the undergraduate campus, but the is right here. …We educate them about all the other wonderful sister and brother institutions we have here where they can find like-minded folks and go out to serve the community.”  

Thom Chiarolanzio, director of advising and senior associate dean in the 海角论坛, believes that Connell has strengthened the pre-health advising program in a comprehensive way. 

“I consider us to be very lucky to have somebody of her own experience,” he said. “I’m really appreciative of her attention to providing more expansive opportunities for students that wasn’t always there.”

“She leverages her connections, and she builds new ones,” added , an associate dean in the 海角论坛 who is also on the Pre-Health Recommendation Committee. “That has really served our students well.”

Connell helped Eleanor Miskovsky (C’23), a third-year medical student at Columbia Vagelos 海角论坛 of Physicians and Surgeons, find opportunities to shadow surgeons and gain clinical experience while she was at Georgetown. 

“It’s so competitive to find even unpaid, like volunteer positions, so it was huge that she helped connect me with people I could shadow and get some clinical experience with too,” said Miskovsky, who majored in biology of global health and minored in French. 

The Pre-Health Advising Office assisted Mahad Mohamed (H’22) in finding mentors. During his application cycle, he was paired with a first-year medical student at Georgetown University School of Medicine. 

“My mentor was an amazing resource,” said Mohamed, who graduated with a health care management and policy degree from the School of Health. “He helped me with mock interviews and essays and things like that.”

He remembers meeting with Connell at least once every semester to check in and share updates. Even after graduation, he continued to meet with Connell and utilize the resources provided by the pre-health advising team. Mohamed is now a second-year student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. 

“I help students during this journey, and in a way that gives me the same pride I had while accompanying my three kids to adulthood,” Connell said. “I have the most heartfelt thank you notes and emails from my students and it, you know, makes me cry. I’m here to help students. That’s why I do what I do.”

(All photos taken by Lisa Helfert for Georgetown University 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences)

It was May of 2017, and she had just graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in Spanish and justice and peace studies. Niebanck planned to spend the summer relaxing, traveling and enjoying her time with friends before moving to Boston for a job in technology sales. The post-college life she envisioned for herself was just beginning. 

But 10 days after she walked across Healy Lawn as part of the , Niebanck had a stroke during a scheduled brain surgery. She woke up paralyzed on the left side of her body and couldn’t speak or swallow. Suddenly, Niebanck’s full-time job became rehabilitation.

“I had to learn how to walk, how to sit up in a wheelchair, how to speak, how to swallow,” she said. “I had to do everything all over again.”

Niebanck watched her friends move to different cities, launch their careers and live what seemed like glamorous lives in her mind. The sense of being left behind grew. But conversations with her mentors, including a Georgetown professor, shifted her perspective and gave her a new mantra: Obstacles are opportunities.

In the years since Niebanck’s stroke, she has published two books — Fashion Fwd: How Today’s Culture Shapes Tomorrow’s Fashion and Fast Fwd: The Fully Recovered Mindset — and has become a public speaker and advocate for stroke survivors. In 2023, the World Health Organization invited Niebanck to speak about her rehab journey at its in Geneva, Switzerland. 

“We all experience obstacles in our lives,” she said. “It’s about how we respond to it and decide how to turn that into something positive for ourselves and for our communities.”

Finding a Place to Thrive

Niebanck grew up in Chatham, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City, as the oldest of three siblings. 

She knew from a young age that she wanted to study languages, and came to Georgetown because of its and location in Washington, DC. 

“It just seemed like a place where I could thrive,” Niebanck said. 

At Georgetown, she joined an investment club at Georgetown Collegiate Investors, where she rose to a leadership position. She volunteered as an English language tutor for low-income immigrant families in DC through the and participated in the and . Niebanck also worked as a front desk clerk for the .

In her sophomore year, she became an Entrepreneurship Fellow through the McDonough School of Business. 

“One of the things that I loved the most about Georgetown was that everyone was so driven and passionate about something,” Niebanck said. “I found it really refreshing that everyone was motivated and hard working and had diverse areas of interest, and we could all collaborate together.”

As a senior, she took the Launching the Venture course with , an adjunct professor in the McDonough School of Business who would become one of her closest and most influential mentors.

Niebanck looked forward to the path she thought lay ahead after graduation. She didn’t even stress or think about her upcoming brain surgery. 

Since childhood, Niebanck had dealt with migraines, culminating in a series of migraines that lasted more than 20 days during high school. Doctors her with a in the right occipital lobe of her brain. She elected to have brain surgery after college to remove the risk of a potential rupture.

“In my mind, it was just like, oh, this is just a thing that’s gonna have to happen, and then, you know, I’ll rest for a month, and I’ll be fine,” she said.

‘What Really Matters’

Before surgery, Niebanck had a pre-operative procedure. It caused a blood clot in her brain that burst, leading to a brain hemorrhage. She was rushed into emergency surgery. 

After her stroke, Niebanck spent 15 days in the intensive care unit, five weeks as an inpatient and two and half years as an outpatient.

Niebanck stayed in touch with Koester after graduation, and during one of their conversations while Niebanck was struggling with the constant physical and cognitive and speech therapy, Koester encouraged her to view the stroke as an opportunity to explore her interests and dive into her passions. 

“He was like, if you could do anything and work any job, what would you do?” Niebanck said.

For Koester, Niebanck embodies the idea of cura personalis, or care of the whole person, through her willingness and ability to inspire others with her story.

“Maddi is one of those people who never sought recognition, but her actions day in and day out brought people hope, joy and lessons for their own journeys,” Koester said. “I think what’s amazing about her is she never once let any limitations she faced as a stroke survivor slow her down. In fact, quite the opposite. She was the one who wouldn’t let others slow her down.”

Niebanck describes Fr. Matthew Carnes, S.J., as another influential figure in her recovery journey. Carnes, the vice president for mission and ministry who taught in Georgetown’s Department of Government and School of Foreign Service from 2009 to 2024, met Niebanck through her work for CLAS. Carnes said that Niebanck “points us to what really matters.”

“She kept her eyes on what was possible, and this has allowed her to make such amazing progress, and eventually to succeed in her career, and as an author, and in so many other ways,” he said. “But it’s not the success or the stroke that defines her. It’s the spirit that beats in her heart and has nourished her to this point, and the way she shares that spirit generously with others.”

Building a Supportive Community

When Koester challenged Niebanck to think of her dream job, she thought back to a self-published fashion magazine — Passion for Fashion — she designed in eighth grade. 

On the cover is her younger sister, Bridget, striking a model pose. Colorful headlines coat the page: “What’s in Style?”, “A Day in the Life of Model Bridget Niebanck”, “Fashion Advice: Just Be Yourself!”

Niebanck’s first job after her stroke was as a reinsurance underwriter for a Spanish company. But while she was rehabbing, Niebanck reached out to her network and cold emailed people for connections in the fashion industry. This time would eventually lead to her first book, Fashion Fwd, published in 2018, which explored fashion trends and how the fashion landscape was evolving.

“I interviewed everyone from small business owners to fashion executives to the [former] Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan,” Niebanck said.

She also worked for three years as the client relations coordinator for Hermès, a French luxury goods company, and is now a marketing manager for Cionic, a biotechnology startup that makes clothing to aid mobility. 

Today, Niebanck lives independently and works full-time in New York City, but still struggles with her vision. She lost half of her peripheral vision on the left side of both of her eyes. She does not drive.

“When I’m walking down the busy streets of New York City, I have to constantly scan and turn my head to make sure I’m not missing anything,” Niebanck said. “I get bumped into all the time.”

For a while, she said, the challenges of her recovery left her dejected and questioning, “What did I do to deserve this?”

But while writing her second book, Fast Fwd, published in 2020, Niebanck started to build a community of stroke survivors. She decided to share her journey with the public in hopes of meeting others with similar stories.

Since then, she has chronicling her experiences and co-hosted a live video every Sunday with another stroke survivor on . Niebanck has also given talks about her journey to college students. 

More recently started hosting , where stroke survivors and caregivers get together in person to “connect with others who share similar experiences and build a supportive community.” Niebanck has hosted four so far, with the first summit taking place in New York City in April 2024 and the most recent in Birmingham, Alabama, this October.

“Real life events are super impactful for people to be able to connect with the community and meet other people who are like them,” she said.

Embracing New Opportunities

There is a specific moment that Niebanck remembers as an inpatient.

She was walking up and down the hall in the hospital with her cane, trailed by her mother pushing her wheelchair. She passed the rooms of other patients and thought to herself, “I am so lucky and fortunate that I have this opportunity to work hard.”

Niebanck credits her family members, friends, New Jersey network, Georgetown community and the people she met in rehab for keeping her motivated. By working on her recovery, she wanted to show herself and her supporters that there is life after a stroke, Niebanck said.

“I don’t let my disability stop me or hold me back from achieving the things that I want to in my life,” she said. “Obviously I had a stroke, but I view it as a testament to my resilience and my ability to adapt and overcome and take a different step — literally and figuratively.”

Niebanck thinks back to when she was on the Hilltop and wants students to remain open minded to opportunities they might not have considered in school. If she hadn’t, Niebanck said, she would never have written one book, let alone two, or become a public speaker and disability advocate. The unexpected things that happen in life aren’t necessarily an ending, she said. They can also be a new beginning. 

“Your path can change,” Niebanck said. “It will change, actually, and that’s okay.”

The illustrious career of Yamiche Alcindor (C’09) began with a single story.

She was in high school when she first learned about a Black teen who was abducted, brutally beaten and lynched after being accused of flirting with a white woman in the Jim Crow South.

“I wanted to be a journalist since the moment I learned the story of Emmett Till, who was murdered in 1955 by a racist group of men in Mississippi while he was on a vacation from his home in Chicago,” said Alcindor, who is currently a White House correspondent for NBC News.

Soon after, at 16, she started an internship at The Westside Gazette, an African American newspaper in South Florida, where she learned the basics of the profession from “its caring and intelligent staff,” she said. Over a career spanning more than 20 years, where she has covered everything from presidential campaigns and administrations to the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after a police officer shot and killed 19-year-old Michael Brown, Alcindor has experienced firsthand the shift in technologies that bring breaking news to the public. But she’s also experienced what has remained constant.

“Through all of this evolution, the core of journalism has not changed,” she said. “Journalism is about holding powerful people accountable, being fast but accurate and getting to the heart of what the American people want to know about their lives, about their government, about how we are all surviving and thriving in this country.”

For her work, Alcindor has received a bevy of accolades, including a Peabody, the Radio Television Digital News Association’s John F. Hogan Distinguished Service Award, the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Gwen Ifill Award, and the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage.

In addition to covering the second Trump presidency, she’s currently working on a memoir about growing up as the child of immigrants from Haiti, reflecting on the person she wanted to become while still in high school and the struggles she’s endured, and of living her wildest dreams of being a journalist for NBC News.

“It’s been a remarkable experience to be able to put down on paper why I am who I am — and that includes understanding that I am the product of a village of people in my mother and my grandmother, my father, my brother, my husband and now my young son,” Alcindor said. “All of those people have contributed to the way that I see the world and to the way that I report and how I report from the heart. I’m a reporter who is emotional, who feels the stories that I tell, who wants to go out and tell hard truths about America — who wants to cover politics, but who also cares about civil rights.”

It’s a mix that was nourished at Georgetown, where she majored in English and government and minored in African American studies.

“I use my college degree every day as a journalist as I cover politics, race, social justice and the future of democracy,” she told the Class of 2023, while providing the keynote address during commencement. “Be proud. You took classes that taught you about the importance of language, of dialogue and of communication. And you learned about the art of war, studied history and are graduating with a base of knowledge and of truth that will help you wherever you go next.”

For Alcindor, that base of knowledge has helped inform her distinctive voice, shape her unwavering commitment to truth and share the breaking news and stories that define our era.

To read an original Q&A with Alcindor on her experience covering the recent presidential election, writing a memoir and living her wildest dreams, visit college.georgetown.edu/news-story/yamiche-interview.

Photography by Jennifer Chase

After graduating with a degree in theology, in lieu of a traditional career path, Geoff Tracy (C’95) decided to do some soul-searching. He flew out to California with a Cannondale road bike and pedaled from the Pacific Ocean to the shores of Florida. “It was going to be my mission — my spiritual mission — to find my calling,” said Tracy. “So I rode all the way across the country and realized that I had discovered nothing other than I could barely walk. I took a Greyhound bus back to Washington, DC.” This year, Tracy, who is better known by Washingtonians as Chef Geoff, is celebrating a quarter century of his eponymous restaurant’s operation. And, as he’ll preach to anyone who will listen, he’s nearing a decade of preparing fresh, quality food for the Jesuits who live on the Hilltop.

Answering the Call(ing)

Wolfington Hall, which serves as the residence for the members of the Jesuit Order at Georgetown, is built in the style of the New 海角论坛 Gothic, integrating pointed arches, stone masonry and beautiful brick cladding. For those entering the Hilltop campus from Prospect St., it is a welcome sight. Underneath the surface, however, there are nearly a dozen cooks, pastry chefs and line cooks chopping vegetables, baking loaves and simmering sauces.

“We basically provide all the food service for the Jesuits at Georgetown, 365 days a year, 3 meals a day. And we’ve been doing it for eight years,” boasts Tracy, the owner and founder of , which operates three restaurants in the DC area.

Nine years ago, Rev. Ronald Anton, S.J., the superior of Georgetown’s Jesuit community, had another, more mundane, task than his usual duties: Figuring out the food service at Wolfington Hall.

Anton, who had previously served as dean of the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola University Maryland, had taken a liking to Tracy’s flagship restaurant, Chef Geoff ’s, located on New Mexico Ave., a 10-minute drive from the university’s front gates.

After an initial phone call, Tracy learned that the Jesuits were looking to renew their food service contract and were hoping to have fresher, healthier options. First, Tracy visited Wolfington Hall with Anton to take a look at the food they were eating and appraise the situation.

“I went down there and it wasn’t great,” said Tracy. “Basically all of the vegetables — and most of the product — was in the freezer. When I looked at the menus, it was like a bad teenage boy’s diet, chicken fingers and hamburgers. And, you know, the average age down there would not be described as youthful.”

Anton proposed that Tracy take over the food service, but even after more than a decade in the restaurant industry, he’d never handled an operation of this kind. Just like when he’d opened his first restaurant, Tracy took a leap of faith. The first few weeks provided an opportunity to learn from customer feedback.

“We took over and received the directive to be fresh and healthy. So, we made it super fresh and super healthy,” said Tracy. “After about six weeks of it they were like ‘You know, the food is very good — thank you. It’s much fresher, it’s much healthier, but, maybe not that healthy.”

After a few tweaks to the menu, Tracy and his team were able to strike the right balance. “It’s worked out really well — we’re able to provide them with a product that’s both healthy and that people like to eat,” said Tracy.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tracy found that pre-packaged meals and takeout options were in demand at all three of his restaurants in Washington, as they were across the country. That kind of food prep, however, requires additional kitchen space — something Wolfington Hall’s subterranean level has in droves.

In 2020, Tracy reached a new agreement with the Jesuits that allowed his team to use more of the kitchen space and reduce the cost of food service borne by the society. In addition to the daily food service on campus, Tracy’s team is producing fresh pasta, bread and sauces that are served at his restaurants, right on the Hilltop.

“Today, we have chefs and cooks over there producing products in a commissary format,” said Tracy. “The real benefit for the Jesuits, however, is we’ve got people over there working on the desserts and now the Jesuits get those desserts right away, they get those fresh burger buns right as they’re coming out of the oven, so it’s really a win-win situation for us.”

For Tracy, having a footprint on the Hilltop is special. It’s brought him back to a place and a community that shaped his life.

Left: Chef Amilcar mills tomatoes for the day’s sauce. Center: Chef Geoff and Valdemar prep ingredients. Right: Tasha and Iris knead dough for focaccia bread.

A New Course

Tracy, who was admitted to Georgetown as a student in the McDonough School of Business, originally intended to pursue a career in finance, consulting or business, just like his father, an accountant.

“There were two classes I recall taking my freshman year: The Problem of God and Accounting,” said Tracy. “I loved The Problem of God and I detested Accounting, so after my first year I put in a request to transfer to the 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences.” Tracy remembers calling his dad on a payphone located outside of Vital Vittles and admitting, “I can’t do accounting. It’s so tedious and boring.”

After that fateful phone call, Tracy continued pursuing the fire that ignited within him during The Problem of God, deciding to major in theology and specialize in world religions.

“To study theology, and to do it at Georgetown, in the oldest department at the school, was very cool — I had so many great professors and classes and enjoyed it immensely,” said Tracy.

But a career in religious studies never felt quite right. After his bicycle trip across the country, Tracy returned to DC determined to figure out his next steps. One day, while walking on M St., Tracy ran into an old family friend who was the corporate chef for Clyde’s Restaurant Group.

“Right there on the sidewalk, I said ‘You have a cool job. Can I take you out to lunch someday and pick your brain?’” said Tracy. “And he kind of laughed at me and said, ‘You’re a 21-year-old kid with no job. I’ll take you out to lunch.”

The friend gave Tracy the advice to first work in a restaurant because, according to him “you have to be crazy to work in a restaurant.” If Tracy liked that, then he should pursue culinary school. After falling in love with the energy and rhythm of a working kitchen, Tracy went to Hyde Park, New York, where he attended the Culinary Institute of America. After graduating top of his class, Tracy returned to DC and worked as a sous chef and a dining room manager at 1789.

“At that point, I asked my mentor how many years I should work for others before I tried to open my own restaurant — 10, 15, 20 years,” said Tracy. “And he told me, ‘Geoff, in 20 years you’re going to be old. You’re going to have a job, a wife, kids and a mortgage. The time is now.’”

Twenty-five years, three restaurants and one Jesuit residence later, the rest, as they say, is history.

The Wolfington Hall Jesuit Residence is home to the Jesuit Community at Georgetown, where many live. They often host students and other members of the university community. Opened in 2003, it was named in memory of and in honor of the parents and other family members of Vincent Wolfington (C’62).

In te reo Māori, the language of the Indigenous people of New Zealand, instead of saying “Hello, how are you?,” you might say, tēnā koe (“there you are”). The phatic expression originates from the Māori creation story, when Hine-ahu-one, the first woman, sneezed after Tāne-te-waiora, the god of mankind, breathed life into her nostrils. His first words to her were: there you are.

“I think it’s a beautiful way to recognize the inner spirit of the person before you,” said Travis Richardson (C’15), a Ph.D. candidate in sociolinguistics.

Richardson is currently in Aotearoa, the Māori word for New Zealand, as one of the 28 inaugural Fulbright-John Lewis Civil Rights Fellows. Established through bipartisan legislation in 2024, the fellowship honors the legacy of civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis by supporting scholars studying civil rights, justice and equity on a global scale.

As part of his fellowship, Richardson is investigating how government support for the Māori language is reshaping the responsibilities of non-Māori citizens. He’s particularly interested in how this model could inform revitalization efforts for Native American languages in the United States.

“In New Zealand, being a good citizen is seen as supporting Māori endeavors, including language revitalization,” Richardson said. “There’s a lot we can learn from their successes — and their missteps — as we work to preserve U.S. Native American languages.”

For Richardson, the cause is personal. After graduating from Georgetown with a major in linguistics, he helped develop language curriculum for the Zuni people in New Mexico. He also has ties to the Choctaw Nation, the third-largest Indigenous tribe in the U.S. His father was adopted by Choctaw parents, raised on the reservation and was fluent in the language, but was denied tribal affiliation because of his adoptive status. Richardson grew up estranged from the language and culture, which left him wrestling with questions of belonging.

“Now that I’m an adult and speak some Choctaw, I’m interested in learning more,” he said. “But I grapple with: How appropriate is it for me to pursue it? Am I taking a seat from someone who is Choctaw?”

These questions became more pronounced for Richardson while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan. Richardson is fluent in Kyrgyz — as well as 10 other languages, including English. His fluency, however, sometimes caused unintentional harm.

“I witnessed my fluency in Kyrgyz being used to shame local children who attended Russian-speaking schools,” he said. “People would say, ‘Look, this American speaks better Kyrgyz than you.’ ”

In linguistic anthropology, this is known as the double bind of shame, where Indigenous people face criticism both for not knowing their ancestral language and for not mastering it when they attempt to learn it later on.

For his dissertation, Richardson is exploring what he calls the “double bind of colonial shame,” where outsiders feel guilt over benefitting from colonial systems and seek to learn Indigenous languages — but risk taking up space intended for the community itself.

“Language revitalization policy the world over really is not taking this into consideration,” he said.

Richardson’s work underscores the precarious balance between appreciation and appropriation — while providing perhaps a new way to recognize the people before us.

Lost in Translation

Richardson is researching the effects of whakamā, or shame, in non-Māori learners and speakers of te reo Māori at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington.

Richardson knew before he even started at Georgetown that language would be part of whatever he dedicated his life to. His first semester, he took Introduction to Language and decided his major right on the spot. Along the way, he picked up a fascination with sociolinguistics — or how people use language to express their identities and acknowledge their different backgrounds.

“The real power of language is its ability to connect us to — or separate us from — other people,” Richardson said. “When you speak a different dialect from somebody, you might find that quaint and cute, but that can also be the impetus for excluding, othering or stereotyping people, too. Linguistics looks at both of those potentialities, and that’s what I love to dig into.”

To share that love, we asked Richardson — a self-professed linguaphile — to break down some of his favorite expressions from a handful of the languages he speaks and studies.

“Chuka achafa”

LANGUAGE: Choctaw
LITERAL TRANSLATION: One house
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: “This is the word Choctaw use for ‘family,’ as people who live in the same house as you are your family — be they related by blood or not. Family is all about working toward the common good of all in your community.”

“jakshy k?rüü”

LANGUAGE: Kyrgyz | Жакшы к?р??
LITERAL TRANSLATION: To see and be happy
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: “Although an equivalent verb to the English ‘to love’ exists in Kyrgyz (С?й?? / Süiüü), this is by far the most common way of expressing your love for someone or something. Loosely translated, it means ‘everything is good when I see you,’ and I think this is a really beautiful way to express the concept of love. Interestingly enough, it’s quite common cross-linguistically for languages to express love periphrastically (that is, using phrases and roundabout expressions instead of having just one word for something). In Luxembourgish, for example, ‘I love you’ would be Echhunn dech g?r (I am glad to have you) — which is very similar to Kyrgyz.”

“罢补办颈飞ā迟补苍驳补”

LANGUAGE: te reo Māori
LITERAL TRANSLATION: Being in one’s space
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: “A neologism for autism, this word is an attempt to account for enculturating Western concepts but many autistic Māori individuals question the appropriateness of it to describe their lived experiences as autistic people, and some outright reject it in favor of their own coinages, or will even use the English word ‘autism’ instead.”

“enryo no katamari”

LANGUAGE: Japanese | 遠慮のかたまり
LITERAL TRANSLATION: Lump of hesitation
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: “This term describes the last bite of food on a communal table. It’s the ‘lump of hesitation’ because — even though you may secretly really want to finish off the last little bit — Japanese culture values deference and consideration for others’ wants/needs as signs of respect, so you wait patiently to see if someone else will take the last little bit first!”

The latter is exactly what she felt was missing after spending three years working in a corporate environment. It’s also a concept that she was first introduced to while participating in Georgetown’s Social Responsibility Network (SRN). Created in 2019 by senior associate dean Thom Chiarolanzio, the program provides lessons, programming, networking and mentorship opportunities for roughly 25 students each year in the 海角论坛 of Arts & Sciences.

“The goal behind the Social Responsibility Network is to expose students to the social impact sphere, which can include community development, nonprofit work, education and more,” said Chiarolanzio, who students refer to as simply Dean C. “In addition, mentorship is a key pillar of the SRN. We have a wonderful advisory board all of whom are CAS graduates and who serve as mentors to the students. This engagement allows students to gain valuable knowledge as they plan for post-Georgetown careers in the social impact space.”

When she was a sophomore, Awal was pre-med and majoring in biochemistry but wasn’t enjoying her classes.

“Dean C knew I was struggling to connect to my classes and wanted me to find something I was passionate about,” she said. “He really helped me out — as he does with a lot of students he advises.”

As a result, Awal was paired with alumni mentor Mackenzie Copley (C’15) who co-founded One Tent Health, a nonprofit that provides free HIV screening to anyone in the Washington, DC, area who needs it. She also attended a range of conversations on campus, where diverse speakers from different nonprofits talked about their work and what they love about it.

“SRN showed me that a career doesn’t necessarily have to be monetarily focused,” Awal said. “It’s about the impact you can have on the communities you serve.”

It’s not all too different from his Fridays as an undergraduate at Georgetown, when he would hand out bagged lunches in Dupont Circle with the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic organization that has helped form Bartoli’s spiritual journey and vocational life. 

Today, Bartoli heads a homeless outreach program in New York City called “The Solidarity Project.” The program, a collaboration between the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Community of Sant’Egidio, aims to complement existing state and nonprofit systems in the city through “personal bonds that overcome the anonymity of bureaucracy,” according to Bartoli.

“We want to encourage and enable all people of goodwill to serve others they would not otherwise engage with on a daily basis,” said Bartoli. “We want to build relationships that go beyond the usual expectations of our society and, in so doing, build a better world, little by little.”

The Community of Sant’Egidio

The Community of Sant’Egidio began in 1968, when high schooler Andrea Riccardi recognized the material and spiritual needs of the underserved neighborhoods on the periphery of native Rome. With a small group of friends, Riccardi began organizing acts of charity, from free classes for underserved schoolchildren to answering material needs for food and clothing. These like-minded friends were trying to live up to the gospel message by living it out every day. 

More than half a century later, that community has grown into a global community with a presence in more than 70 countries. The community centers its actions around a spiritual life rooted in fraternal bonds and service to others.

“Our theory of change at Sant’Egidio, if you can call it that, is that personal relationships are the foundation of any sort of society,” said Bartoli. If we want to change the world then we start with ourselves and the people we meet on any given day.”

The community encourages members to maintain what they call an “ear for suffering,” which consists of listening and engaging with people who have often been pushed to the peripheries of society. 

“All of the services that we do, whether it’s free meals on the streets or visiting the elderly in nursing homes, are conceived of in response to the communities in which we live,” said Bartoli. “Sant’Egidio is present all over the world and, depending on the context in which a local community finds itself, the individuals who make up that community try to respond to needs as a brother or a sister would.”

For members of the community, maintaining an ear for suffering entails more than just listening, it requires action. 

“We try our very best to make our lives available to the people we meet, to listen to what it is they ask us to do for them and to respond seriously to the invitations that they make on our lives,” said Bartoli.

“Many of the people walking down the street in New York are crying out for help. In all major cities, many people are in need of an invitation to lead a full and good life, a life that they were meant to live, a life that they were built for, a life that brings them into contact with other people, that isn’t just centered around themselves.”

Through the building of substantive relationships with one another, the Community creates systems of spiritual and material support. Just during the preparation of this story, Richard, a friend and member of the Community, entered permanent housing for the first time in over a decade of friendship. 

Bartoli on the Hilltop

Before his work with the Community of Sant’Egidio became a full-time job, Bartoli had spent years growing, professionally and spiritually, with the community. During his time on the Hilltop, Bartoli volunteered weekly with the Washington, DC chapter of the community, serving the unhoused and those in need.  

“The community revolves around the idea that every person of faith has a call and an invitation to serve the poor freely,” said Bartoli. “I have found that this not only speaks to the heart of the gospel message but is a solid foundation for a Christian life that is worth living.”

As an undergraduate at Georgetown, Bartoli not only had an impact on the city through the Community of Sant’Egidio, but on the Hilltop through his academic pursuits and lived faith, which those close to him witnessed. Eric Wu (SFS’17) remembers meeting Bartoli as first-year roommates in Darnall Hall. 

“I wasn’t close friends with very many religious people growing up and, of the religious people that I did know, I basically never spoke with them seriously about religion,” said Wu. “Regrettably, I didn’t exhibit much curiosity about their faith traditions or how they lived out their faith day to day.”

“Then, I became freshman year roommates with Pietro and he practiced his faith in a way that was so human and so in touch with the realities of his day-to-day life, his friendships, his family and his work — for me that completely flipped on its head the concept of religion and what it meant to be religious.”

A theology major and history and Jewish civilization minor, Bartoli completed a senior honors thesis that examined the contemporary relationship between Jewish and Catholic theologies. His thesis started with Nostra aetate, an official declaration from the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican that focuses on how Catholics should engage with, and live alongside, people of other faith traditions. 

“My senior thesis studied the Catholic Church’s actions beginning with and since Nostra aetate in light of the Orthodox Jewish document, “To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven,” said Bartoli. “I argued that an intentional line of thinking could be found in those 50 years that demonstrated a willingness to engage in the other’s terms, signaling hope for a better future.”

After graduating in 2017, Bartoli earned his M.A. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. His thesis, titled “Interpreting Faith and Religion: Lessons from Social Justice Catholics,” explored the lives of Catholics in the Bay Area who chose to live out their faith as a profession. 

“My interest is on the role of faith in an increasingly secularized world, particularly regarding how faith motivates people to contribute to the common good,” said Bartoli. “All throughout graduate school, it was very clear to me that Christianity and the life of a Christian disciple is a life of service to the poor. We are called to abide by a love for those on the peripheries of the society as if they are our brothers and sisters.”

Before undertaking full-time work on behalf of the Community of Sant’Egidio in 2021, Bartoli actively served with the group in various capacities for more than a decade. Whether as a mentor in the School of Peace in the Bronx or as a volunteer handing out food on the street, service has remained a constant in Bartoli’s life. 

“In a world that atomizes each person and drives us further apart, we have the option and responsibility to choose dialogue, friendship, and peace,” said Bartoli. “The world needs a revolution of tenderness, as Pope Francis likes to say, and we can only achieve this through a spiritual revolution that opens us to loving in ways we never thought possible before.”

Photography by Todd France.

Related Stories

Medical Care Around the World: How Dr. Rasha Khoury (C’04) Works Alongside Communities Affected by Catastrophe

Dr. Rasha Khoury (C’04) has worked in emergency obstetrics around the world with Doctors Without Borders, providing care to those in communities affected by war, political upheaval and catastrophe.

Read Rasha’s Story

Listening for the Perfect Story with Bill Healy (C’05)

Bill Healy (C’05) tells authentic, human stories. It’s a craft that he’s honed over the past two decades as a journalist and educator in Chicago.

Read Bill’s Story

Just weeks into her two-month assignment, the worst Ebola outbreak in history began to ravage the country. 

“Sierra Leone was my first time confronting what a high maternal mortality rate actually means – not on paper but in real life,” said Khoury. “There, I lost anywhere from one to two women a week. Witnessing any death is devastating, but more so when it’s from something that’s completely preventable or treatable, whether it’s hemorrhage or high blood pressure or infection. These pregnancy complications are compounded by lack of access to treatment facilities, medications and trained staff”.

A decade later, Khoury has been on six assignments with MSF, an acronym of the organization’s French name, Médecins Sans Frontières. Throughout each assignment, her dedication to solidarity alongside communities affected by war, political upheaval and catastrophe has remained constant. This year, she was elected president of the MSF USA board of directors, a position which allows her to contribute to the organization as a whole. 

“I think of service not as doing something for others but as doing it with them, in accompaniment and solidarity, informed by their values and desires,” said Khoury. 

A Foundation in Service

As a child in East Jerusalem, Khoury’s desire to pursue a life of service was kindled by both her family and her surroundings. 

“I was raised by two political activists and human rights journalists, and by my grandmother, who was a social worker in Palestine,” said Khoury. “Education was drilled into me as a tool of liberation and emancipation for communities. Tied to my family’s reverence for education was also a reverence for solidarity and service, not in the sense of charity, but in collaboration and community.”

Khoury noticed the very real needs of her community and how organizations like MSF were able to cut through political red tape to deliver much-needed help. 

“Part of the reason I pursued medicine was to work with organizations like Doctors Without Borders,” said Khoury. “I had been around them as a person from the affected community that they were serving — Doctors Without Borders has been in the Occupied Territories for decades.” 

Khoury on the Hilltop

That desire to be in service to others brought Khoury to Georgetown, where for the first time she took classes in English and became acquainted with students and faculty members from a myriad of backgrounds. 

“Georgetown was really my introduction to the United States,” said Khoury. “I worked hard to attend college in the United States because I knew I wanted to pursue a liberal arts education but with an interest in science and, ultimately, an interest in medicine.”

The shift, from classes in Arabic at a K-12 school in East Jerusalem to an English-speaking research university in Washington, DC, was a monumental one for Khoury. 

“I arrived at Georgetown as a 17-year-old student and it was completely other worldly, in terms of culture, language, and social dynamics,” said Khoury. “Those were critical years of learning to understand the different backgrounds and upbringings that brought all of my peers to Georgetown.”

“It was a difficult transition and a very transformative one — it catapulted me to some of my subsequent studies and career directions and also shaped the health worker that I am today.”

Khoury, a biology major, found solace and community in ’s lab. 

“Professor Elmendorf’s class saved me,” said Khoury. “The transition to learning in English was challenging and being in a class that was working with participatory learning, supported by teaching assistants, supported by labs, and supported by all these outside-of-the-box ways of learning was vital to my success.”

After her first class, Khoury was hooked. For Elmendorf, the memory of having Khoury in the classroom is still fresh. 

“I met Rasha back in August 2000. That’s 24 years ago and the beginning of my second year at Georgetown, and yet I recall quite clearly our first conversations,” said Elmendorf. “I knew then that she was something special — brilliant, creative and passionate. She evinced a hunger for knowing ‘why’ and ‘how’ — never settling for my first answers.”

Over the subsequent years, Khoury  took several classes from Elmendorf and eventually worked in her lab during both the academic year and over the course of several summers. 

“Professor Elmendorf’s classes helped me build confidence, networks and skills that empowered me to succeed in other science classes,” said Khoury. “And then pursue medical training — I really think that if I hadn’t been absorbed in that creative way of learning and teaching then I probably would not have been able to apply and then be accepted into medical school.”

For Elmendorf, watching Khoury’s career bloom since graduation has been a joy. 

“I watch Rasha’s career now with awe. It is astonishing to me all that she has accomplished — often under the most difficult of conditions,” said Elmendorf. “And yet, I knew that about her from the beginning. She was under tremendous pressure at Georgetown, working to balance a demanding curriculum with the stresses of her family’s struggles half a world away.” 

“I came in more than once in the morning to find that Rasha had run another multi-hour experiment overnight testing the effect of drugs on Giardia and simply catnapped in the lab between timepoints. All my admonitions to go home to sleep met with a stubborn insistence that she could do that later but she simply couldn’t wait to see the experimental results.”

For the faculty at Georgetown, Khoury’s time on the Hilltop, and her career since, have exemplified the values that define the school and community. 

“We often talk about college as a time of growth. That’s as true for professors as it is for students, and one of the great joys about teaching at Georgetown is how many of my students have helped me to grow,” said Elmendorf. “Even now, in my 26th year at Georgetown, Rasha stands out as a pivotal person in my development as a professor, scientist and human being. Her life’s work embodies our motto of cura personalis, and I still look to her to keep learning more about our world and how we each can best serve others.”

The Path to Practicing

Khoury traveled up the East Coast to New Haven, Connecticut, where she attended the Yale School of Medicine. There, she saw firsthand the need for equitable access to health care. 

“In medical school, it was jarring to see that depending on a patient’s background they get access to different levels of care within the same health system,” said Khoury. “It was the first time that I witnessed that where I was part of the system, with a patient in front of me and it became important to me to try and understand the structural reasons behind these disparities. I don’t think these disparities are innate to people, but are a systemic byproduct of the way that we have created societies.”

In medical school, Khoury worked at both the Yale Center for Asylum Medicine and the Community Service Network, which provides services to those experiencing houselessness. Khoury completed her residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). 

“I sought out training at UCSF because they have a strong reproductive justice framework to women’s health,” said Khoury. “My training involved learning how to think about and advocate for access to safe abortion care, safe pregnancy and birth care and safe living spaces to raise healthy children”

“I found a deeply engaged and like-minded group there and, ultimately, had the opportunity to work with people who were coming from various communities that have been disinvested in over the years. It just strengthened my desire to work in a setting that was both acknowledging these injustices and trying to do something about them.”

After completing her residency, Khoury continued her training for two years at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. There, she studied complex family planning and global women’s health. 

Doctors Without Borders

On Khoury’s first assignment with MSF, in Sierra Leone, she witnessed the harsh realities of pregnancy in volatile situations and under extenuating circumstances. In the decade since, Khoury has worked in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Ivory Coast, and Lebanon. 

“In Iraq, I was in Mosul, which was under siege by ISIS for several years,” said Khoury. “When I was working there, it was being recaptured by the Iraqi government. Watching people emerge from that siege, watching how a previously robust city with a sophisticated healthcare infrastructure was now decimated with people needing to seek care from MSF was deeply painful.” 

In Mosul, Khoury saw pregnancies that were affected by the realities of war, chemicals used in weapons, toxins leached into the soil and the sheer trauma of living through armed conflict.

“One case I remember was a 16-year-old girl who came in with excessive bleeding after birth,” said Khoury. “The local team wanted to perform a hysterectomy, which would save her life but leave her without a uterus. Because MSF was there, we had the supplies and tools to preserve her uterus and save her life. Retaining her uterus was not only meaningful to her, but meaningful to her family and her social standing. Those kinds of experiences never leave you.” 

Khoury spent more than a year in Afghanistan, where MSF was delivering more than 2,000 babies a month, a number that many U.S. hospitals approach in one year. 

“The sheer volume of that workforce was about 400 locally-hired staff: midwives, nurse anesthetists and doctors with obstetric skills,” said Khoury. “All of those people were working in service of their community, providing care with an attention to dignity. That dignity manifested not only in quality of care, but in the inclusion of family, in freedom of movement and in access to food. It’s hard to capture how special that is anywhere but especially in unstable contexts.” 

In 2019, Khoury joined the MSF USA board of directors to not only lend her expertise in a leadership capacity but amplify the voices of the patients and global staff she’d worked alongside. 

“I continue to work with MSF because when we enter into a context we are clear about providing medical care to anyone who needs it. We ensure we have adequate staffing, that staff have the expertise and compensation they need to do their job well, that they have access to the life saving supplies and medications they may need”, said Khoury. “I feel that I have been able to give the highest level of care in each of those spaces and that really stands out compared to other humanitarian organizations that may be constrained financially or logistically.”

“I don’t think it would be possible to keep working for an organization like MSF if those things weren’t true because to go and witness suffering and preventable death and to feel like you’re not prepared to act would feel unethical.”

Currently, Khoury works full time as a subspecialist in maternal fetal medicine and complex family planning at Boston Medical Center, but keeps two months of her year reserved for overseas assignments with Doctors Without Borders. At Boston Medical Center, a non-profit and safety net hospital, Khoury works with communities living in poverty and forcibly displaced migrant communities who have faced seemingly insurmountable barriers to equitable care. 

In May, Khoury was elected president of the MSF USA board of directors. 

Cover photo by Jessica Scranton.

Related Stories

Listening for the Perfect Story with Bill Healy (C’05)

Bill Healy (C’05) tells authentic, human stories. It’s a craft that he’s honed over the past two decades as a journalist and educator in Chicago.

Read Bill’s Story

The Global Classroom: Leah Chen (C’25) Studies Access to Health Care in Thailand

Leah Chen (C’25) travelled to Northern Thailand where she worked with researchers at Mae Fah Luang University.

Read Leah’s Story