“I came into college just really trying to have this one focus. … On the first day of sophomore year I realized I wanted to change my major,” said Singer. “I found these two things that I’m really interested in. My thinking was, ‘Well, I might as well try them both and see what sticks.’ Turns out they both stuck, so here we are.”

Recently, the two disciplines have converged in unexpected ways, particularly when people became infected with COVID-19 at religious gatherings and when large religious gatherings were subsequently banned. As a theology major and a religious Jew, Singer understands the importance of religious rituals in times of crisis. But as a biologist who interned at a virology lab for animals, he understood the public health risk. He doesn’t believe anyone should be in large gatherings during this time for any reason.

“I wasn’t working with the virus directly, but I saw how careful you needed to be and how easy it was to contaminate everything,” said Singer, whose concentration was in organismal biology. “A public health response really needs to have a lot of empathy to be successful. Just in a utilitarian sense, you’re not going to accomplish what you’re hoping to accomplish if you’re not cognizant of what that takes for people.”

Curiosity Beyond the Familiar

Singer said that being a Jew in a Jesuit institution has taught him a lot about understanding others. He said the starting point for any dialogue should be a genuine curiosity about those outside one’s intimate circle.

“It’s not out of trying to debate or find points that you disagree on, because that’s not productive, and that’s not the point of having theological conversations at a school like this,” he said. “It’s more about trying to really understand how another person is thinking, without trying to point out flaws in their argument and break them down. It’s about practicing empathy through logic.”

His mentor, Assistant Professor of Theology Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Ph.D., said Singer is poised to understand the sometimes-rocky intersection of science and theology.

“One of the things that we’re learning right now is how science and medicine are very much connected to all of the other dimensions of our lives: to urban planning and to race and to religion and communities,” said Kattan Gribetz. “Understanding how tied people’s spiritual lives are to their physical health is something that is really important. Someone like Michael who is really comfortable in both worlds can navigate that in really creative ways.”

Separate Interests Converge

The clash between ideology and science is nothing new, said Singer. But studying them together in today’s specialization culture is rare. He recalled his semester studying abroad at Trinity College in Dublin. His European counterparts were confused when he discussed his double major.

“It was completely unheard of for a lot of professors and students that a person could do two unrelated majors,” he said. “But I wouldn’t say they’re completely unrelated disciplines.”

In his studies, he learned that in the 18th century, before science was a fully established profession, theologians attempted to reconcile the two disciplines to show that the scientific discoveries of Newton and Galileo were indeed connected to the spiritual realm.

“They ended up with this really impersonal deity that was divorced from people’s spiritual reality, and ultimately ended up being a very poor reflection of physical reality,” he said of deism, which espouses a belief in a supreme being, though one that doesn’t interact with the natural world.

Though he’s aware of and inspired by the many ways they intersect, he considers his areas of study to be two separate pursuits, with science concerned with the physical and theology focused on the metaphysical, he said. Indeed, some of his theology professors had no idea he was also majoring in biology until he told them.

“I wouldn’t have even guessed he was a biology major, except for that he told me. I would say he’s such a deep humanist. I’m sure he has this really intense, scientific side too, but I really felt, when he was in the class, he was in the class because he was deeply invested in learning theology,” said Kattan Gribetz.

She added that while she imagines Singer has a very bright scientific future ahead of him, he could have had a promising career in theology as well.

Trusting the Text

Singer just completed an internship in a lab at Rockefeller University and will spend the next two years working in a lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering. At Sloan Kettering he’ll be focused on epigenetics, researching DNA in the developmental process to see if mutant signals that lead to cancer can be intercepted. From there, he expects to grasp the research he wants to pursue in graduate school. It would seem that the scientific side of Singer will be at the forefront of his budding career, with theology continuing to inform his life.

“I think one of the things I learned at Fordham is that even though they’re so different, there are these weird places of contact. There’s a concept in theology called exegesis, which, especially when reading the Bible, refers to the idea that you’re supposed to draw out the meaning inherent in the text. You’re not looking for anything in the text. You trust that the text knows what it’s saying and will tell you,” he said.

The concept of exegesis has become very helpful to him in the lab.

“You’re not trying to impose your existing conception of reality on your experiment; that’s data fudging. That’s extremely bad. People lose careers over that,” he said. “What you’re trying to do is just let the observation show you what the real meaning behind the data is. I suppose it’s sort of Zen. … It’s the concept of sort of just working really hard at surrendering to whatever the text is telling you, or the observations are telling you.”

Enoch has seen nearly every corner of the Harlem community, and from several different perspectives. He’s seen the inside of its drug clinics as both a patient and later as an advocate. He served on the board of several nonprofits, sat on community board committees, worked with the homeless, marched in dozens of protests, fought for voter education, and ran for New York City Council. As he leaves the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) with a master’s in social work, he’ll return to his community, this time as founder of a new nonprofit for the visually impaired called the 145th Street Alliance. 

A Head Start

Enoch’s story has auspicious roots. He attended the prestigious Ethical Culture Fieldston School before heading off to Boston University in 1976. Despite problems with his eyesight that began when his left eye was hit with a baseball as a child, forcing his right eye to work harder, he continued to play baseball in college. But he left Boston after two years under the false impression that he wasn’t doing well in school. He took a job offer at a bank in back in New York City.

“I fooled myself into thinking I was doing badly at school so I could come back to New York,” he said. “I was making good money at the bank, but I also wound up working at some famous nightclubs.”

He said he’d stay up all night at the club and try to work the next day at the bank. Something had to give, so he dropped his job at the bank, stayed at the clubs, and worked a bit in real estate. He was the living the quintessential lifestyle of what became known as the Go-Go ’80s, until things took a turn for the worst. He became addicted to cocaine, which lasted until the mid-2000s. He became homeless.

Getting Back Up to Run

A shaky recovery began in 2003. He joined Picture the Homeless, an organization founded by and serving New York’s homeless population. By 2007 he was officially clean. Among the established nonprofits he worked for are Hope Community, Working Families Party, and most recently for Transportation Alternatives, the nonprofit advocating for cyclists, pedestrians, and straphangers. There, he helped strategize with the group to gather more than 45,000 signatures in a campaign to improve public transport. But by 2012, issues with his eyes became very serious.

“My eyesight was bad for a while, but then it started getting really bad and I realized I could no longer do that work. I was tired of running into things on the bike,” he said.

He had been diagnosed with glaucoma and cataracts and could no longer work with Transportation Alternatives. To make matters worse, he was battling lung cancer. He had two lobes removed. On recovering, he decided he wanted his voice heard, loud and clear.

“One door closes, another door opens,” he said. “I was like, ‘Well what can I do?’ I said, ‘I know what I’ll do, I’ll run for City Council.’” And he did, in 2013.

“I lost to Mark Levine, but that’s cool. Him and I are still close. He’s a good guy.”

Enoch knew his chances were slim, as most of the candidates had already secured union support and political endorsements, but he had grassroots support. At the time of the race, New York Amsterdam News, the august African-American newspaper, called him “a Harlem resident with a rough past.” It was a description he wore proudly; Enoch made no secret of his battle with cocaine addiction—a struggle many voters in the district understood, he said.

“If you look at my history and the history of Harlem, it’s the same,” he told the website DNAinfo during his run. “We’ve had our downtimes and now we are where we’ve always wanted to be.” 

Learning to Learn

In 2015, he formed the 145th Street Alliance as an LLC, in an effort to keep the issues of the blind at the forefront of politicians’ minds. But his failing eyesight became something he could no longer ignore. He went to the New York State Commission for the Blind, which offers an array of services for the blind, including career services and training.

A counselor there suggested he apply to City College, though he was warned, to his secret relief, they would not likely accept his 40-year-old credits. As an older student, he was more than a little reluctant to return to school. But his relief was cut short by a surprise. When his transcript arrived from Boston University it turned out that he had actually excelled in college, despite his youthful insecurity about his grades. He was accepted into the college’s prestigious Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership.

“I thought, come on, will somebody say no? Will somebody stop this madness?” he said with a laugh.

Though he graduated magna cum laude, he didn’t get into the law school. Again, he breathed a sigh of relief—until Fordham’s GSS accepted him.

“I’m like, [expletive], I guess I have to go,” said the reluctant scholar.

Leadership Realized

Enoch’s journey continued to evolve. The GSS faculty began to recognize Enoch’s growth and his potential as a leader within the school’s community.

“Brodie’s background brings that connectivity between being an advocate and his own resilience and that makes for a great social worker; we’re just putting on the final touches to mint him as a part of our profession,” said Ji Seon Lee, Ph.D., associate dean at GSS. “Like a lot of people who come to this work, Brodie has a sense of what he wants to do; we provide structure so he can have a guided purpose to achieve his goals.”

Enoch’s field placement with Pastors for Peace allowed him to delve into his passion for policy via a street-naming project that put him back in touch with community board members and City Council. Alongside his placement, he continued with his own work with the 145th Street Alliance.

“It was at that point that I spoke to a couple of people at Fordham and realized that it would be better for me to start a not-for-profit, and that’s what I did in January of this year,” he said.

The 145th Street Alliance’s improvements to the built environment for the blind help create safer streets for the elderly and for young children through the group’s Walk Safe 20/20 project, he said, which addresses street safety.

“If you’re doing stuff for the visually impaired, it works for everybody,” he said.

Ador’s assigned gender at birth was female. While he identified as a lesbian in his late teens, he eventually transitioned to male four years ago. He spent his early years near an old mill town in Massachusetts with a religious family that held fixed views on gender and sexuality. At 13, the family moved to the deep south, an environment that was even more defined by strict cultural codes.

“There was always this animosity and it not being right with God. I was ready to get out of there when I could,” he said.

He attended college for a bit, majoring in theater, but soon left to go back north and move in with a more accepting aunt.

Cooking at Sea

Ador loved to cook and attended culinary school. But after living from paycheck to paycheck working at restaurants, he decided to join the Navy in 2012. He rose to the rank of third class petty officer as a culinary specialist. His highly honed skills brought him to the officer’s mess, where he became a private chef for 30 of the ship’s top brass.

“The people on the downstairs galley would have to follow these recipe cards and a menu plan, but if it was steaks, I could do the sautéed mushrooms and onions with it and those little extra things,” he said. “I enjoyed being able to express myself a little bit more.”

He was stationed on the ship for about five years, based primarily out of Spain from 2014 to 2016. He said he enjoyed the traditions of the Navy, but what he misses most is the sense of belonging that many veterans express during their transition to civilian life.

“There’s obviously a huge sense of camaraderie and that’s something a lot of people, including myself, miss and look for when we get out,” he said.

Ador had been out of the closet as a lesbian when Obama rescinded the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and the armed services had begun to accept trans people. But under the current administration, he said, that support was rescinded.

“I didn’t fully come out as trans until about four months before I was leaving the ship,” he said. “It wasn’t a lot of time so I kept it pretty hush, hush.”

Transformation in New York

He was discharged from the Navy in Virginia, where he enrolled in a community college and began to study photography. His transition to male was concurrent with his transition to civilian life. It was around that time that a Navy buddy and two-time Fordham graduate told him about Fordham. In short order, he moved to New York City.

“My first summer in New York City really changed my life,” he said. “It was the first place that I had ever been since my transition where nobody knew me by the name I lived with for 24 years of my life,” he said.

While he continued to concentrate on photography at Fordham, the required core courses in philosophy and theology gave him back something that was essentially denied to him by evangelical upbringing.

“I’m a very spiritual being and a deep thinker and I’m interested in having these types of conversations,” he said. “I didn’t really know what to expect. Then I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is what I love.’” He’s now planning to pursue a master’s of divinity.

A Return to the Bible Belt

Ador said his theological work began to inform his photography. With the help of Joe Lawton, associate professor of visual arts, he qualified for an Ildiko Butler Travel Award and a Fordham Summer Research Grant to go to Tennessee and photograph people like himself.

“I wanted to go back to the Bible Belt and photograph the LGBTQ community and interview them. Just talk to them and try to better understand their relationship between their identity and God,” he said.

He said he held philosophical conversations about his vision and with longtime Adjunct Professor Anibal Pella-Woo, whose wife happens to be going for her Ph.D. in theology, so the conversations were familiar.

“This project was more than outside of himself, this was digging into his own past in his own upbringing which was very, very rough, so we spoke about that and we were concerned about his safety,” said Pella-Woo. “We wanted to make sure he had contacts down there and a safe place to stay, so all that was part of the discussion.”

The results are quiet and plainspoken photos of LGBTQ people of faith.

“There’s a real empathy to his photos so that they’re both familiar and familial, with a sense of recognition that’s a hard thing to do in photos,” said Pella-Woo. “It goes back to the level of life experience that many of our veterans have had that really informs the way they think about their place in the world, which is also why they’re great to have in classes.”

A Spiritual Reckoning

Ador said that he felt “extremely fulfilled” by his photography professors, in particular Lawton, Pella-Woo, and artist-in-residence Carleen Sheehan. He was also a student worker at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies’ Lincoln Center office, where he said he got additional support from all the deans.

“For me, Fordham was place of learning, stimulating the mind, and having earnest discussions—and needed discussions,” he said.

For now, he’s planning a nine-month break to do a wilderness program in Washington State before moving forward to pursue his master’s in theology.

“It’s been a full circle journey, coming from my family and my upbringing I had this resentment toward God,” he said. “But I always had a feeling that I was a spiritual seeker, and then I came to this understanding of who God is, in my opinion, and who the Christian God is. I now believe that every God that everyone believes in is the same God manifested in different ways, because we all resonate with things differently.”

He paused before continuing.

“These are just my own thoughts but these are the things that I’m interested in exploring more and the things that have really helped me get back in touch with my ability to believe,” he said.

Caballero Jaime is a pastoral mental health counseling student at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. This May, she will graduate with her master’s degree and plans to transition in the future from her full-time job as a liaison at the Mexican consulate in New York City to a job in her new field. 

“I would like to continue helping women especially, and children, to be with them in this journey they have, and try to help them in any way possible as a pastoral mental health counselor,” Caballero Jaime said. 

An Immigrant from Mexico

Caballero Jaime was born and raised in Mexico City, the fifth most densely populated city in the world, according to the United Nations. She grew up in a conservative Catholic family with her parents and two older brothers. Her father, a lawyer, passed away when she was 9 years old, but instilled a love for reading and writing in his daughter—“one of the best presents you could ever have,” said Caballero Jaime. 

She said she also found a role model in her mother, a family housewife who became a vice-director in a cosmetics company. 

“I am here because of her hard work,” she said. 

Caballero Jaime went on to serve as deputy director of public relations for the Senate of the Republic of Mexico and political adviser for the National Action Party in Mexico City. In 2008, she moved to the U.S. to work for the Consulate General of Mexico in New York, where she currently works to assist the Mexican population living in the tri-state area. The consulate provides passports, IDs, records, visas, and consultations on protection and community affairs. Its members travel to more than 60 locations, including regions that are eight hours away from its main office in Manhattan.

“She articulates a deep desire to improve the quality of life of Mexican immigrants in the United States,” said Faustino “Tito” Cruz, S.M., dean of GRE. “In many ways, she is an insider-outsider who attempts to address both the personal and systemic/communitarian quest for human dignity.”

Five years ago, she realized she wanted to help people in a different way. From 2015 to 2018, she served as a pastoral care volunteer at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, where she supported patients with neurocognitive disorders, addictions, trauma, and terminal illnesses. It was an eye-opening experience that made her want to do more, she said. 

One day, she sought advice from her pastor. “I think I have this call[ing],” she remembered telling him. “I think you should look at this,” he said, pulling out a copy of Fordham Magazine and showing her a story referring to the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. Later that night, she returned home and browsed the GRE website. She was hooked. 

‘You Are Here, and You Are More Than Welcome’

For three years, she learned about a new world. Instead of studying translation and political science, as she had done for her prior degrees, she learned about psychopathology and diagnosis, trauma, and ethics. She studied religion and theology from different perspectives and learned how important it is to embrace the culture and country you come from. In a supervised clinical internship at the Family Health Centers at NYU Langone in Brooklyn this year, she said she realized the need for bilingual psychotherapists—especially with a background like her own.

“One of my patients, I remember, she told me when she first saw me, she thought, oh my goodness, she’s not going to understand where I am coming from because she’s white,” said Caballero Jaime. “She said she felt identified when I described myself. I said, ‘Well, my name is María, I’m Mexican, and I’m also an immigrant.’ That was the link. That was the click.” 

She said that experience reminds her of one of the most important lessons she learned from GRE. 

“It’s something that Fordham has taught me. It doesn’t matter where you come from. It doesn’t matter if you are Latina, if you are Chinese, Korean, Egyptian. You are here, and you are more than welcome,” Caballero Jaime said. 

In the years ahead, Caballero Jaime said she wants to empower her clients, especially women who have been physically or sexually abused. And no matter what that role looks like, Caballero Jaime will do a great job, said one of her mentors at GRE. 

“She’s very impressive, personally, intellectually, and in her own work in pastoral counseling studies,” said Francis X. McAloon, S.J., associate professor of Christian spirituality and Ignatian studies at GRE, to whom Caballero Jaime served as a research assistant for three years. “She is a godsend, really. And I know whatever she’s going to pursue in the future—presumably some kind of pastoral counseling practice—she’ll do a great job.”

But after two years of living in Jersey City, she felt confident enough to enroll in graduate school at the Gabelli School of Business. When she graduates this month, she will be a very different person.

“The whole experience of Gabelli has been so enriching and so valuable to me, and has transformed me,” she said.

Accounting was a passion for her already; she had worked in the field for five years in India, but it took her a few years before she felt comfortable enough in her new home to consider pursuing it further.

“I thought I should definitely make use of this wonderful opportunity of living here in the U.S.,” she said, noting that three of the big four accounting firms are headquartered in New York City.

Badekila and her husband have made the most of living in the United States. In the four years since she moved here, they have visited 30 states, with stops at national parks like the Grand Canyon.

In addition to her studies, she founded the Gabelli School’s South Asian Business Association (SABA).

“I was very aware of how it feels to live far away from your family and friends,” said Badekila, who serves as the group’s president. “I was really very keen on this concept of building a community inside a bigger community and letting people meet each other and get people from their own countries to talk to each other.”

That community extends to prospective students as well. Badekila has worked with the Gabelli School’s admissions office to send personalized welcome e-mails to prospective Indian students who have been offered admission.

The SABA group organized a Diwali party for more than 150 people in the fall. It was also scheduled to present the first ever Global Asia Conference on March 26, featuring a keynote address from Viral Acharya, Ph.D., former deputy governor of Reserve Bank of India. The event was postponed when Fordham closed its campuses but is tentatively scheduled for next fall. It would have been a part of the Gabelli School’s centennial celebration, and it was expected to draw attendees from around the New York metropolitan area, so Badekila admits she was disappointed it was put on hold. It hasn’t been all for naught though.

“I was able to reach out to all these people in the field and build good relations with them as I was planning the conference. I was able to build my own leadership and people skills, so it was tremendously helpful,” she said.

As part of her studies, Badekila got first-hand experience in the world of New York accounting. She worked on KPMG’s professional practice research team—a project overseen by Barbara Porco, Ph.D., Bene Merenti Professor of Accounting and Taxation, that had Badekila researching fraud in investment banking and capital markets industries. She was also a lead volunteer in 2019 for the annual symposium sponsored by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), a nonprofit organization that sets sustainability accounting standards for the accounting industry.

She he was offered a position at EY that is tentatively scheduled to begin in October.

Badekila said her time at Fordham has expanding her horizons when it comes to the accounting field.

“Accountancy is something which I’ve been involved in the past several years, but I was not very familiar with classes like forensic accounting, sustainability research and reporting, or data analytics,” she said.

“These were really new topics to me, which I found really fascinating. I could never have imagined that these kinds of topics are a part of accounting.”

Porco said Badekila was always willing to invest enormous energy in projects she was asked to join.

“She approached each one of them with enthusiasm, professionalism, dedication, integrity, and in many ways, incomparable acumen,” she said.

“To me, she is the personification of the type of individual you would hope would be assigned to your team. We can teach students how to do journal entries, we can teach them how to do tax returns. You can’t teach attitude though, you just can’t. That’s what she brings— this inspiring, enthusiastic, contagious attitude. It engulfs everyone that works with her.”

Badekila credits people like Porco and Lonnie Kussin, assistant dean of advising and student engagement, with helping her adapt and thrive. She also said she’s grateful for her husband’s support, noting that he’s pushed her “into achieving more and dreaming bigger.”

“I come from really a very humble background. If I was still living in India, I wouldn’t have even thought of doing a master’s, but after living a couple of years here, my husband and I decided we just save enough for me to get a master’s here,” she said.

It was a gamble they decided to take together, and while there were times when she wasn’t sure if it was worth the effort, she’s confident now that it was the right move.

“I’m ready for anything,” she said.