“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.”

“I’m not coming from a background where my entire family is doing finance,” he said. But some of the other students, he noticed, had been exposed to the fields of corporate banking and hedge funds because of their families’ experience in the field.

So Li, an international student originally from Shanghai, decided to learn everything he could from his classmates—from etiquette to insight into how financial markets work. Many of them, he said, began interning as early as freshman year.

“They had their part-time career, part-time jobs—and I was kind of jealous, honestly,” he said. “So that really pressured me a little bit, but at the same time, it encouraged me to do a better job.”

He continued applying throughout sophomore year, and landed an internship at Aflac. Around that time, he also began working with Jennifer O’Neil, associate director of career advising in the Gabelli School’s’s Personal and Professional Development office, who helped him improve his resume and tell his own story better.

“Before he even came to see me, he had gotten his first internship at Aflac and he did a great job of [not just]taking…an internship but leveraging his foreign language skills and coming up with an idea to penetrate the Chinese business community for [Aflac’s] products,” O’Neil said. “He’s just always thinking outside the box.”

This thinking allowed him not just to add an internship to his resume, O’Neil said, but “add value to Aflac in a way that another intern couldn’t.”

O’Neil said that her biggest role was helping Li take the skills he had acquired from Aflac, his work in school, and other hobbies and showcase them on his resume to highlight his unique interests, which extended beyond finance and academics. His first year on campus, he auditioned for the Fordham University Choir.

“When I went to the audition, I did not expect that it would be for this formal University choir,” he said with a laugh. “I thought it was a club, somewhere that could give you some kind of lesson—Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, something like that.”

Li said that he was the only one who hadn’t been singing since high school or middle school, but after the director took a chance on him, he decided to stick with it for all four years.

“I learn very quickly. I think that’s one of the things the director [saw in]me” he said.

It’s that dedication that helped him land a summer internship his junior year with Bank of America as a fulfillment, service, and operations analyst.

“I was lucky enough to get a return offer from them,” he said.

After Li graduates, he’ll be starting as a full-time corporate banking analyst at their headquarters in Shanghai.

“I will be covering multinational corporations’ subsidiaries that are operating in Asia, in China, who have a revenue of $2 billion and above as well as some local corporations,” he said.

O’Neil said, often international students have to work hard to overcome some of the challenges they face, such as language barriers or lack of familiarity with the country. Li was a great example of how that hard work can pay off, she said.

“I tell a lot of the international students—get on the treadmill next to your American counterparts and put the incline on 10 and put the speed about two miles per hour faster than them, because that’s how much harder you’re going to have to work,” she said. “And he did it.”

Li said that he was grateful for the support from Fordham faculty and staff, like O’Neil, as well as the unique education Fordham offers.

“Studying in the city at Fordham Gabelli, you’re able to talk to people from all over the world; being able to emerge from such an environment has definitely broadened my horizons and given me more insight from different people of different backgrounds.”

“I said, ‘You know Mo, if it was anyone else I’d be really, really concerned, but I wasn’t concerned because it was you,’” he said. “She was able to do it all.”

From starting as a walk-on in her first year to breaking records her senior year, from juggling internships to pursuing a passion for storytelling, Morgan Williams, a television and film major in the Fordham College Rose Hill Class of 2020, proved her coach right.

Williams started all four years on the volleyball team as a libero—a defensive specialist position. Her senior year, she became the first Fordham player to win the Atlantic 10 Libero of the Year award. She broke seven school records and tied an eighth, making her Fordham’s most decorated libero.

Lately she’s been reflecting on some of the excitement of past games.

“There’s so many little moments that I’ve been thinking about,” Williams said.

One of those was the match against George Washington near the end of her senior season.

“We were down in the fifth set, I think 11 to 14—we had one really long rally and won. For as long as I’ve been playing volleyball, it feels like whenever the game is on the line and nobody wants to be the one serving, it always ends up being my turn,” she said with a laugh. “It happened in the George Washington game, and we came back and won and it was just such an amazing feeling.”

Williams became the program’s all-time digs leader, finishing her career with 1,862. She finished her senior season with 641 digs, at a pace of 6.05 per set, ranking her in the top 10 nationally in both categories.

Add it all up, and Williams is now one of the most decorated Fordham volleyball players of all time, something she never thought possible when she began her career as a walk-on.

While Williams, originally from Los Angeles, planned to play volleyball like her sister Ashlie, who played at Georgetown, she was a late recruit to Fordham, committing in April of her senior year of high school. By then, all of the athletic scholarships had been distributed. Still, Williams decided to bet on herself.

“I had a plan to earn my spot, and then also hopefully earn a scholarship,” she said. “I was really intimidated at first because there were two liberos ahead of me. I worked really hard and … when it was time for our fall preseason game, my coach read off the starting lineup and she read my name off as the libero.”

Once Williams got the spot, she never let it go, missing just three sets in her entire career. She was awarded a scholarship for her final two years.

“It was calculated by her, and it was self-actualized,” Choi said. “She demonstrated more than enough value.”

Volleyball was Williams’ first love, but her passion for storytelling grew alongside it.

At one point in high school, she said, her love for the game also began to cause her some anxiety.

“So my dad found me this writing class at UCLA … and it was three hours long and all you did was write stories. It was the best outlet.”

She grew to love writing dialogue and set her sights on screenwriting, which inspired her to major in television and film. When Williams got the chance to intern at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, she knew she couldn’t let it slip away. Still, the internship would require her to miss a few practices, something that traditionally wasn’t allowed.

Williams presented the opportunity to her coaches who helped her come up with a workaround, albeit one that required long hours on her part.

“Mondays would start with an early morning lift,” she said. “[I’d] get out, shower, get dressed, hop on the train, get to work around 8:30, 9 … and when it was over, I’d head straight back to the gym, and one of my assistant coaches would be there with the court set up and we would do an hour, hour and a half of reps…and then I would go home and do my homework.”

“That was most definitely my toughest semester at Fordham,” Williams added, but also said it gave her some incredible memories.

“It was just really cool to watch Stephen [Colbert] test out jokes to make sure that when it was showtime he gave the people the funniest stuff he could,” she said. “Soundcheck was awesome because I could watch it for both the house band, which is stacked with super cool jazz musicians, and for the music guest.”

Choi said that he was proud of her for being able to balance it all that semester.

“Spot on for Mo to finish her career with this award—the only Libero of the Year I know who got to work with Stephen Colbert,” Choi said. “I’m happy to see her go out this way.”

Williams plans to continue to play volleyball recreationally and hopes to volunteer to teach it at local schools. She’s also applying for jobs in the media industry and working on a few side projects, including a book about the journey of a volleyball player and the lessons learned along the way.

“It’s been a really crazy ride, but something I wouldn’t trade in a million years,” she said.

“A lot of people with Ph.D.s don’t look like me, or sound like me, or have a name like mine,” said Rodríguez, a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of Education who will be the first in her family to have a Ph.D. “I want people to know that just because I’m this little girl from East Harlem with a family that isn’t the most educated doesn’t mean that I don’t belong.” 

In the Neighborhood

For Rodríguez, East Harlem has always been home. In the summers, she spent her weekly allowance on snacks from a little blue truck near her building that sold microwaveable cheeseburgers and juices for a quarter. Sometimes, the local Icee man gave her free ice pops. 

When Rodríguez was a little girl, she wanted to be a medical doctor. Her parents aren’t technically immigrants—her mother, previously a substance abuse counselor, and her father, a construction worker, were born in Puerto Rico—but her family held onto the “immigrant dream” and hoped to see their daughter get a medical degree one day, she said. Little did her mother know that she was inspiring her daughter to become a different kind of doctor.

For many years, Rodríguez’s mother worked as a substance abuse counselor at Rikers Island. Her clients were imprisoned for drug possession, scamming, theft—sometimes worse. When they were released from Rikers, they often ran into Rodríguez and her mother in their neighborhood.

“I remember seeing how happy they were to see my mom and give her updates on how they’re doing well and how they’re committed to their programs [to stay sober], and now they’re clean,” Rodríguez said. “I remember just feeling so impressed by that—how much of an impact my mom had on them and feeling like I wanted to be in a similar position.” 

Rodríguez, now 27, wants to be a psychologist for children and their families. She will graduate this May with her Ph.D. in school psychology from the Graduate School of Education, where she also earned her master’s degree in the psychology of bilingual students in 2019. 

She came to Fordham because she wanted to work with Giselle Esquivel, professor emeritus of the Graduate School of Education, who was known for her work in bilingual psychology. 

“Unfortunately, she was very sick by the time I got into Fordham, and she actually passed away,” said Rodríguez. “But I remember feeling how Fordham really emphasized culture and language and practiced what they preached.” 

In Rodríguez, Equivel’s work carried on. 

A Hard Pill to Swallow

Over the next six years, Rodríguez served as a psychology intern and extern in organizations across New York City, including the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx and the Harlem Child Development Center. She has provided therapy and conducted psychological evaluations for many clients, from infants to adults, with neurodevelopmental disorders like autism and ADHD. 

Sometimes, the possibility of a diagnosis is a hard pill to swallow. There was one mother, recalled Rodríguez, who refused to accept her son might be autistic. Her oldest son is nonverbal and autistic, but because her younger son could speak, she believed he couldn’t be autistic, too. 

“To accept the fact that your child is on the spectrum, in some ways, is like mourning the potential of your child,” said Rodríguez. “Every parent has a dream or vision of how their children are going to be. And I think her defensiveness was really because she wasn’t open or ready to accept that her other child also is on the spectrum—and what does that mean about maybe her as a parent, or what does that mean about this child’s opportunities and the child’s potential?” 

After a year of working together, the mother allowed Rodríguez to refer the boy for a psychological evaluation. Rodríguez’s supervisor later confirmed that he had autism, she said. 

“Not knowing is so difficult. Not understanding why their children are behaving the way they are. And when they have an answer and they have more information, I’ve noticed—sometimes, not always—they feel a little comforted or reassured by that,” Rodríguez said.  

Some days are emotionally taxing. But Rodríguez says it’s rewarding to see people make gains and better understand themselves—especially clients of color. 

“I really love working with people of color and seeing them feel less stigmatized by their diagnoses. There’s a lot of misinformation and stigma behind mental illness. I think that’s a global problem, but it’s even bigger for people of color,” said Rodríguez. “Especially working with Latino populations, I’ve heard a lot of myths and misconceptions and hesitations around therapy. I hope to show people that a lot of those misconceptions are incorrect and that therapy is not for crazy people—therapy is useful for everyone.” 

‘Her First Time’ Presenting

Through Fordham, Rodríguez also traveled to Kenya in 2019 and mentored children. She was accompanied by several students and a longtime mentor, Diane Rodriguez, Ph.D., professor in curriculum and teaching at GSE (to whom she shares no familial relation). For several years, Ashley served as Diane’s graduate assistant. They co-authored a peer-reviewed article in the journal Insights into Learning Disabilities in 2017. That year, they were supposed to co-present their research at the New York State Association for Bilingual Education’s 40th anniversary conference in Westchester County—the first professional presentation for the younger Rodríguez. Diane was unable to attend the conference because her father became very ill, so Ashley presented alone. 

“It was her first time, and I wasn’t there with her to support and guide her … But then my colleagues who went to see both of us were sending me these fantastic, raving emails about how wonderful my graduate assistant was at presenting the data,” said Diane. “As faculty, what you want to see is how your students grow and become these outstanding professionals and do the job better than you. She’s one of those people.”

After graduation, Rodríguez said, she will become an adjunct instructor in bilingual assessment at GSE. She will also continue to work at New Alternatives for Children, a child welfare agency in New York City, where she currently serves as a paid psychology intern. Next year, her title will change to postdoctoral psychologist and she will earn a salary instead of a stipend. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has switched the therapy sessions she does there from in-person to virtual, and it’s not the same—especially for her young clients. 

“I’m hoping that my clients see that even through a pandemic, I’m still there for them,” she said. 

Fulfilling a Promise

When Rodríguez receives her Ph.D. in a few weeks, there’s one person who won’t be around to witness it: her abuela. Rodríguez was close to her grandmother, a woman named Petra Soto, since she was born. Soto was a homemaker who went to school until second grade, when her mother became paralyzed and required constant care. But Rodríguez said she always told her abuela she would receive her doctorate, and her grandmother knew she would become a doctor before passing away three years ago at age 99. 

“I know she was really proud that I’ll be able to serve our community,” said Rodríguez.

“Growing up, I was consistently faced with situations where we had less than my peers had or where systems at school were set up so that you had to pay for particular activities, and they had very few students [like us]who couldn’t pay,” she said.

“I had access to a lot of privileged stuff, but at the same time, I think that early experience prepared me for an interest in advocating for people who not at the top of the food chain.”

After high school Chamberlain went to Barnard College, where she earned an undergraduate degree in anthropology in 2012. She worked as a paralegal at a firm before landing a position in 2015 with the Legal Aid Society’s health law unit. Working with clients who were sorting out issues related to Medicaid changed her view of what law can do for people, she said.

“Pretty much every client I had would call and say, ‘Thank you for dealing with this issue. I’m also having a problem with my food stamps.’ Or ‘I’m also having an issue with my apartment.’ Or ‘I’m having an immigration problem, can you help?’ It was really incredible to be able to say, ‘Yes, we actually do that too,’” she said.

She enrolled in Fordham Law two years later, and this spring, she will graduate as one of the school’s prestigious Stein Scholars. Pending her passing of the New York State Bar Exam, she will return to the Legal Aid Society in the fall to work in the organization’s housing rights unit.

“I wanted to stay in New York City, and I wanted to do something that would really make an immediate impact in people’s lives, so housing law actually stood out as a realm where you can do that as a brand new law grad,” she said, noting parallels to her work with Medicaid recipients.

“It ended up being a logical conclusion to this path that I’d taken, because even though it’s not health related, it is in a way, right? Because if you’re not healthy, it’s harder to find a place to live.”

During her time at Fordham Law, Chamberlain worked for the Legislative and Policy Advocacy Clinic and for the first-year legal writing program as a teaching assistant. She also did a summer internship at for the Center for Reproductive Rights. In an article published last year in the Fordham Law Review, she argued for repealing a 2017 anti-sex-trafficking law called the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. In addition to failing to protect victims of sex trafficking, she argued that it punishes adults seeking to engage in consensual sex work.

“It’s a really interesting issue because it does implicate a group of people that have been pretty consistently maligned by society. In my opinion, everyone deserves certain fundamental rights, and everyone deserves basic dignity,” she said.

Aisha Baruni, director of counseling and public interest scholars, said Chamberlain has had a tremendous impact on the Stein Scholars program since she started. Most recently, she created a guide that rising 2L students in the program can consult to get a better sense of what to expect.

“She didn’t just come and tell me, ‘This needs to be done, and you should do it.’ She just did it and distributed it among her classmates. If it were on Yelp, it would get five stars. It got raves,” she said.

“It’s just an incredible thing to do—to see something that would be helpful only to others, and wasn’t something that she needed at all, and to gather information from upper class Stein Scholars to try to make the experience better for 1Ls and 2Ls.”

Housing rights are human rights, Baruni noted, and Chamberlain’s dedication to improving life for those in underserved communities is particularly relevant in New York City.

“The work she’s going to be doing is absolutely essential to help ensure that families living in affordable housing can remain in that housing,” she said.

“The Legal Aid Society is really fortunate to have her, because she’s is so deeply committed to this work. It’s not a trend, it’s her purpose.”

In some ways, the pandemic that threw the worldwide economy into an unprecedented tailspin has made Chamberlain feel like her work is more relevant than ever. She’s hopeful that there will be changes on a systemic level with respect to how we take care of each other as a society and what the government is meant to provide to people.

“I do think that one of the things COVID-19 has done is force the whole country to contend with the reality that poverty is caused by a whole confluence of interconnected things, rather than just being something that’s an individual’s fault. My hope is that out of this we can get a better, more compassionate, and realistic social system. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to be part of that movement and help, in a small way, shepherd it through,” she said.

“I’m really excited to be starting work, but at the same time there’s some trepidation too. What is the world going to be like in September? We don’t really know. It’s scary, but I think there’s also a lot of opportunity.”

At a certain point though, he realized he needed more training if he was going to continue with the type of work he was called to. He found what he wanted in Fordham’s Graduate Program in International Political and Economy and Development (IPED), which is administered by the Graduate School in Arts and Sciences. This year, he will earn two masters degrees, in IPED, and economics.

“I was frustrated that I wasn’t able to move forward in this field and I wasn’t able to contribute as much as I had wanted to,” said Ferraro, a native of Armonk, New York.

“The IPED program really seemed like the best of all worlds in terms of practicality and theory.”

While pursuing his master’s, Ferraro conducted research on a little-understood but potentially large problem: cattle lead poisoning in India. After traveling to India and Bangladesh in the summer on a GSAS-funded fellowship he began working on a project titled Lead and Livestock: Estimating India’s Bovine Lead Exposure. The paper for the project, which he will present at the Northeast Agriculture and Resource Economics Association’s conference this June, uses Indian government data from 2010 to create a machine-learning model that tries to predict the total livestock fatalities due to lead exposure there.

“When I was at the site, people kept talking about how their livestock had been perishing very quickly with these very severe symptoms. After further research, I came to realize that it is a phenomenon, but it’s something that’s not really well-documented,” he said.

The problem stems from two realities of contemporary life in rural India. Livestock, which are in many cases the only form of capital poor families possess, are free to roam as they please, while lead battery recycling plants are poorly regulated. No one knows exactly how big the problem is though; Ferraro hopes that his paper can get the issue on the radar of the Indian government.

“I’m estimating that just due to car battery recycling, India lost millions of dollars in livestock assets, and the people who are most affected are poor rural farmers,” he said.

Ferraro is also the co-author of a meta-analysis study of all the research that’s been done on lead exposure in low and middle-income countries. The purpose of the study is to try to develop a “background,” or baseline level of lead exposure that a person can expect to have based on where they live. The study is being conducted in partnership with Pure Earth, an environmental research organization where Ferraro has been a research assistant since January 2019.

“It’s been a really great experience, and I think the meta-analysis especially is going to be meaningful when it comes out. It was nice to work with a team, and I gained a lot of the statistics knowledge,” he said.

Andrew Simons, Ph.D., an assistant professor of economics who taught Ferraro in his Econometrics and Agriculture and Development classes and supervised his research for the India lead study, said his dedication to a cause like this isn’t surprising, given his drive and initiative.

“Very often Greg would hang around after class and have some question that was probably a little bit more advanced than what we were talking about in class, and I would give him some answer about that and then the next week, he would have gone and read about it or thought more about it,” he said.

“Professors really appreciate that kind of self-driven inquiry and self-driven initiative, which he definitely has a lot of.”

Upon graduation, Ferraro will be traveling to Cote d’Ivoire on a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship. Working with the country’s agriculture ministry, he hopes to use his expertise on data collection to help officials use low-cost, open-source software to create computer models for problems such as child labor and deforestation.

“There’s a lot of money that gets invested into trying to reduce child labor, and we’re not even sure if it’s effective or not. Obviously, I’m not going to resolve this issue on my own, but I think that even governments with low budgets should be able to start their own data management collection,” he said.

“Just being there and starting it, I think could have an impact.”

The trip has been delayed until January 1 due to the coronavirus pandemic. But as an Ironman Triathlete, Ferraro is used to taking the long view.

“I grew up in a more privileged background, and I had a lot at my disposal and was never in need. So, I’ve been motivated to perform work that I know has a positive social effect,” he said.

He’s also motivated by past failures, including times when he didn’t have the skills he needed.

“For all the things I have done well, I’ve had projects blow up,” he said, noting that past plans for both law school and doctoral studies have both fallen through.

“These are just some examples just to press the point that it’s not exactly a linear path, and I think I actually enjoyed that. Because for every step of the way, I’ve learned something, and it forces me to really sit down and work hard to get whatever it is. At the end of the day, I think I’m better for it.”

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.

“That career dream turned into becoming a surgeon,” said Krisch, a February 2020 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill. She is heading to medical school this fall. 

Body Cells, Dry Ice, and Dissections

Krisch has lived on Long Island her whole life. She grew up in Glen Cove with her mother, a high school anatomy and chemistry teacher; her father, an IT worker; and two older brothers, an accountant and an aspiring police officer. 

The three siblings were surrounded by science, thanks to their mother, who carried her classroom home. Once she scraped the inside of her children’s cheeks with a toothpick and showed them the structure of their cells under a microscope. Another day, she brought home dry ice and explained the science behind sublimation, the transformation from solid to gas. One summer, after Krisch helped her mother clean her classroom, the two of them dissected a fetal pig. For the first time in her life, Krisch saw an animal heart and “spaghetti” intestines up close. 

“I remember thinking, wow, everything in here is a lot gooier than I thought it was, but also a lot larger and complex,” said Krisch. “From a very young age, [my mother]instilled a passion for science in me.” 

In high school, she found a field that combined the two passions she had honed throughout her childhood: orthopedic surgery. 

“Bones. Musculoskeletal systems. Joint replacements, broken bones, traumas—all of that,” Krisch explained. “They call it the carpentry of medicine because there’s a lot of power tools involved.” 

For almost eight months in 2015, Krisch shadowed a local orthopedic surgeon in Great Neck, New York, and saw him diagnose and treat many patients. She recalled a man with osteoarthritis who couldn’t walk when he first arrived at the clinic. 

“By the end of my time shadowing Dr. Simonson, that same patient was shooting hoops with his grandchildren,” said Krisch. “I was like, wow, I want to be able to do that. That’s a miracle in medicine.” 

A Future Doctor at Fordham

In 2016, she graduated as valedictorian of Glen Cove High School. For the next three-and-a-half years, she studied biology on the pre-health track at Fordham College at Rose Hill. She mentored first-year students as an undergraduate assistant for the ASPIRES Scholars Program, served at-risk high school students through the Fordham chapter of Strive for College, and taught review sessions as teaching assistant coordinator for the Fordham chemistry department. 

“She is, at her core, a teacher, which is why she’ll be such a phenomenal physician,” said Ellen Watts, assistant dean for pre-health advising. “She has the natural ability to see when others need help and be able to guide them through what they need to move forward—not just to give them answers, but to help them learn.” 

At Fordham, Krisch took classes in medieval history and ancient philosophy—things that don’t necessarily go with biology, but can help her connect with patients from many backgrounds, she said. 

“Surgeons get the bad rap of being impersonal; they’re only interested in science, they can [only]talk about their profession. Fordham offers that great, well-rounded liberal arts education that enables you to talk about more than your major,” said Krisch. 

In her first month at Fordham, she began serving as an emergency medical technician with Fordham University Emergency Medical Services. Throughout various roles, from crew chief to captain to head of day staff, she provided patient care to both members of the Fordham and Bronx community until December 2019—her final month as an undergraduate. 

Krisch said she graduated a semester early to help her save money for medical school and give her brain a much-needed break. This spring semester, she’s worked as a full-time tutor for high school and college students and visited the Rose Hill campus several times to co-present workshops to juniors and seniors preparing to apply to medical school. Krisch said she has been accepted to two medical schools in New York state, but is waiting to hear back from several more; she will make her final decision by July. 

‘It’ll Be Maria Who’s Helping Them Be Their Best’

Becoming a physician in orthopedic surgery, a male-dominated field, will be a little challenging, said Krisch. More than 84% of orthopedic surgery resident physicians are men, according to the American Medical Association. But Krisch says she’s ready. 

“I’m excited to be able to make those dramatic life-changing transformations. I’m excited for the unpredictability of the job. No broken bone is the same,” she said. 

Krisch is becoming a doctor amid one of the worst health catastrophes to hit the world: the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the U.S. health care system didn’t lack the proper training to handle the pandemic, but it suffered from a shortage of ventilators and personal protective equipment. After things settle down, she said, it will be important to review what we did right and wrong. Her initial thoughts include returning the manufacturing of medical equipment/supplies/pharmaceuticals back to the U.S. and addressing socioeconomic disparities in health care. 

“In medicine, it’s absolutely important to be proactive, but it’s equally important to be flexible and reactionary when a Black Swan event such as COVID-19 comes about,” she said. 

Ten years from now, Krisch envisions herself as an orthopedic surgeon, a medical school professor, and an overall mentor. It’s a desire that stems from her science-driven upbringing and her mentoring experiences from high school to college, she said. 

Krisch isn’t a physician yet, but her mentor said she can already see her future. 

“She’s not even there yet,” said Watts. “But you can see that these little kids who are 5, 6, 7 years old who think they want to be a doctor 20 years from now—it’ll be Maria who’s helping them be their best.”