SID Program News
Interview from the West Coast
Amman-Brandeis-Amman
Boston Urban Forest Coalition
On Mission in Mindanao
Faculty Updates
Careers Services
Career News
Missing SID Alums

Archive: Nov 06 Newsletter
Archive: Aug 06 Newsletter

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ALUMNI NEWS
(click to enlarge photos)

Congratulations to Leslie Blanton, MA 05, and husband Brendan Cavanagh. The couple is expecting triplets this summer.

Magda Lanuza, MA 05, gave birth to Oscar Ignacio on September 7, 2006 in El Salvador. He weighed 7.9 pounds, was 51 centimeters long, and has both Salvadorian and Nicaraguan nationalities. Congratulations!

Best wishes to Alice Macharia, MA 04, on her recent marriage to Eric Ray in Nairobi, Kenya in mid-December.

Carmela Vargas, MA 06, and Yung Ju Oh, MA 06, spotted together in DC.

Desmarita Murni, MA 04, on assignment with the WWF in Indonesia.


Paul Bertler, MA 06, working on Heifer International's Overlook Farm.


James Wirth, MA 06, and Stacey Martin, MA 06, greening the world one plant at a time.

Maria Catoline, MA 05, and Professor Kelley Ready met unexpectedly at the UN CEDAW Committee Session in NYC. Both were going to listen to the review of Columbia on its women's human rights record. Maria was co-leading a training for grassroots advocates from across the US and Professor Ready led a group of SID students.

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ALUMNI ANNOUNCEMENTS

Tate Munro, MA 06, started a Yahoo group for SID alums in DC. Email him to join: Munrot@enterpriseworks.org.

Sean Kvingedal, MBA 06, started a Google group called HellerConnect for SID alums. Email him to join: kvingedal@gmail.com or respond to the invitation that was sent out on April 10.

The Heller School's Alumni Association hosted a Boston SID alumni evening, providing a tour of the new Irving Schneider Family Building, refreshments, and an opportunity to catch up with SID professors and fellow alumni on April 12 at 6:30pm. Photos of the event can be found here.

In her spare time, Maria Catoline, MA 05, is organizing a charity race to benefit the Gorilla Organization, which works in Central Africa to save the last mountain gorillas and also address poverty-alleviation and conservation. The Great Gorilla Run will be held in San Francisco on June 10. Participants will run in full gorilla suits to raise money for this work.

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Programs in Sustainable International Development

The Heller School for Social
Policy and Management

Brandeis University
Mailstop 035
415 South Street
Waltham, MA 02454-9110
Tel: 781-736-2770
Email: sid@brandeis.edu

SID Program News

Welcome to the Spring SID alumni e-newsletter! In this edition, we feature community members who work on health care reform, access to education, and urban ecology. We also include updates from Professors Richard Lockwood, Joan Kaufman, Maria Green and Attila Klein on their recent work in food security, human rights, ecology, and HIV/AIDs and public policy.

In late January, former US President Jimmy Carter addressed the Brandeis campus, and in the last few months the Heller School has hosted a few new programs, including the Philosophy Cafe and weekend Pro-seminars taught by distinguished outside scholars. Moreover, we have received good news that the Heller School/SID Program has been designated as a host institution for World Bank Scholars pursuing graduate degrees. Read more> > >

Interview from the West Coast
Dean Laurence Simon on leave at Google Foundation
Professor Simon, on sabbatical this semester, is serving as Senior Advisor on Global Poverty to the new Google Foundation and Google.org. Reached in Mountain View, California, Dr. Simon was interviewed for the Global Alumni eNewsletter (GAeN). Read the interview > > >


Amman-Brandeis-Amman
Haneen Al-Halawani, MS 05
On my birthday, July 28, 2004, I received an email from Brandeis University informing me that I was accepted into the Heller School's new Master of Science degree in International Health Policy and Management (IHPM). I highly appreciated this precious birthday gift, and will remember it always. In the beginning, I was hesitant about going to Brandeis University. I was afraid of being discriminated against because I am Muslim and wear a headscarf. Moreover, I am Arab-Jordanian of Palestinian origin. Friends and relatives in the US assured me that Brandeis University, and especially the Heller School, is highly professional and has a reputation for promoting social justice and equity. Read more > > >


Boston Urban Forest Coalition
Sherri Brokopp, MA 03
Try to imagine a city with no trees. What do you see? Probably a stark, barren, concrete jungle that leaves you bracing yourself against the harsh winter winds and unprotected from the blazing summer sun. Now does that sound like a place you want to live? I didn't think so.

For the last year, I have served as the Chair of Boston's Urban Forest Coalition (BUFC), a newly-formed coalition composed of non-profit, city, state, and federal organizations working to improve the urban forest ecosystem, public health, and quality of life for Boston's residents. As these different organizations started meeting, we realized that we share a common vision for Boston's urban forest -- to protect and grow the urban forest because it's part of what makes our city a great place to live. We wanted to plant trees, to help others plant trees, and to help people understand the importance of trees in our city. Read more > > >

On Mission in Mindanao, Philippines
Gustavo Payan, MA 05
There are many things I like about working for the Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC). Three elements make my job an amazing journey full of learning, fulfillment, and adventure: meaningful, transcendental, and interesting work; well-experienced, capable colleagues and mentors; and active physical involvement during project implementation in countries like the Philippines, Cyprus, and Bahrain.

In December 2006, during my second visit to the beautiful country of the Philippines, I took these pictures at schools in Mindanao, the second largest and easternmost island in the Philippines, where EDC is active. This trip was very different from my first visit eight months earlier when we conducted pre-award assessment activities. This time, my 12-day mission mainly consisted of working with in-country project staff to develop a communication strategy to increase the visibility of project activities in Mindanao. Read more > > >

Faculty Updates
Food Security at SID: Richard Lockwood, PhD

I recently spent six weeks in Ecuador, including the Amazon region that borders Colombia, to field test an Emergency Food Security Assessment Handbook, evaluating the usefulness of the handbook and providing information to the World Food Programme (WFP) in Rome. There is currently a refugee problem involving Colombians who cross the border between Colombia and Ecuador to escape the violence generated by drug traffickers. Once the refugees are in Ecuador they need emergency food assistance. The food is purchased by the World Food Programme from within Ecuador and distributed to them at feeding centers usually run by the Catholic Church. Read more from Professors Lockwood, Kaufman, Green, and Klein > > >

Career Services

Opportunities with GOOGLE: As mentioned above, Professor Simon is on sabbatical with the Google.org. Currently, there are positions available in the program areas of Poverty and Sustainable Development and also on Climate Change and Global Health. More information > > >

Introduction: Hello, I'm Edward Kibirige and I am Heller's new Career Advisor for international development careers. I've been working in the fields of international relief and development for the past 12 years or so, mostly in Africa. I've had the opportunity to manage humanitarian relief and development programs in places as diverse as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Burundi, Uganda, Liberia and the Central African Republic, and have consulted on other programs in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Darfur and Southern Sudan. My personal interests are in the fields of Refugee Affairs, Education and Public Health, especially Child Survival and HIV/AIDS. I look forward to the opportunity of working with you all in the near future.

I'd like to encourage you all to sign up and log onto EASE, our new Career Services database that is a goldmine of jobs and internships in various fields relevant to Heller students and alumni. Log onto EASE, upload your resume into the database to be seen by various employers, and search for jobs in your field. If you are an employer you can also post jobs onto EASE -- so log on and search away.

Heller alumni in the Boston area are welcome to any of the career events at Heller. Please check the calendar regularly.

Career News

Azalia Mitchell, MA 05, just started as the Haiti Training Coordinator for Partners in Health (PIH). She is based in Boston but will spend more than half her time in Haiti. Azalia will be doing training design, workshops for community-based health workers and logistics. The training center in Haiti is the first and largest for PIH. Since PIH is working in new countries and receiving many requests for training materials, the Haiti training center will be used as a model for all other training centers. Azalia will have the opportunity to develop training methodologies, standards for evaluation and she will work on standardizing all of the training materials.

Aziz Jan, MA 06, in January 2007, joined the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington DC as Executive Officer.

Chris Chin, MA 05, (chrischin28@yahoo.com) has recently taken a position as Monitoring Manager with the Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development. Located in central Guyana (South America), the Centre manages 371,000 ha of tropical forests to show how tropical rainforests can be conserved and sustainably managed. Chris will be working with the Resource Management and Training Unit, supporting the development and management of a monitoring program for the conservation reserve's rivers, roads, and forest. He will also be incorporating socio-economic monitoring of the impact of business ventures on local communities. Chris was the Senior Environmental Education Officer within the Environmental Protection Agency, Guyana. Read more about SID alumni careers > > >

Missing Alumni

Many SID alums have their alumni email account forwarding to their old Brandeis email address. To change this, register in the system, or get a new password, follow this link.

Also, if you have contact information for any of the following SID alums, please send it to (sid@brandeis.edu) or forward them a copy of this e-newsletter and ask them to get in touch with SID.

Tseggai Teamrat, MA 96
Dmula Dissanayake, MA 97
Ludmilla Samoilenko, MA 97
Ogbai Ghebre-Medhin, MA 98
Zakhele Ndlovu, MA 00
Lalita Nakarmi, MA 02
Eriko Atsumi, MA 03
Dalia Emara, MA 04
Tseten Gyurmae, MA 04
Scott Hasselmann, MA 04
Oscar Zapata-Rios, MA 04
Mahbatsho Bahromov, MS 05
Shira Cohen, MS 05
Stella Egbufor, MS 05
Ulzii-Orshikh Luvsansharav, MS 05
Sarah Shiundu, MA 05
Natsagdorj Tserendorj, MS 05
Yunzhen Xirao, MA 05
Teddy Agwang, MA 06
Jennifer Kovolski, MA 06
Emmy Wassajja, MA 06
Xiongnuluosang, MA 06