Deciding on Fordham involved a bit of serendipity. A fellow Kinder alum, Chandler Dean, FCLC ’18, was already enrolled at Fordham College at Lincoln Center and loving it. But Freedman also had her eyes on Georgetown. Her father suggested she visit the Lincoln Center campus to help her decide, and after a tour, they took a break on the Plaza. 

Taking in the scene, her father noticed for the first time the name of the Lowenstein Center. Leon Lowenstein, the man for whom the building is named, also funded a scholarship that allowed him to attend University of California at San Diego. The moment felt like fate.

“That was one of those moments where I believe everything kind of happens for a reason,” she said. After that, she and Dean spoke at length, and his recommendation convinced her to enroll in the FCLC honors program. On May 21, she will graduate as a dual political science/film and television major. 

But the serendipitous moments didn’t end with that afternoon on the Plaza.

Freedman’s senior project, which was supported by an FCLC Dean’s Senior Thesis/Capstone grant, is a play titled “Self Portrait of a Modest Woman,” about the life of the artist Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. A staged reading of the play directed by and acted out by theatre students was held in front of a small audience at the Lincoln Center campus on April 25. 

Freedman’s play was inspired by Labille-Guiard’s painting “Self-Portrait with Two Pupils,” and takes place in 18th-century France and the present-day gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the painting resides. Freedman said became fascinated with the work during an art history course, and in the process of writing a paper on it, was dumbfounded by how little research there is about Labille-Guiard. 

“I was only able to find one biography about her, and I adored it. I kept it in my bag for several weeks and I would pull it out and take notes. While reading it, I was like, ‘This would make such a good screenplay. It’s such a good story,’” she said.

It turns out that the biography, titled Artist in the Age of Revolution (Getty Publications, 2009), was written by none other than Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center. 

“It’s so incredible for me to be able to know the only biographer of this French 18th-century artist, and to be able to ask her what she thinks about certain people and their lives,” she said.

Like her classmates, Freedman had spent a year and a half mastering in-person learning before having to pivot to remote learning in March 2020. Living in Houston added another wrinkle, as her home was one of the thousands whose water pipes froze and burst in February 2021 when the Texas power grid failed. Her family ended up living in a hotel for nearly six months during the pandemic, a period in which her dog went half blind and she needed to visit the hospital several times.

“It was such an intense experience. I jokingly refer to this as my study-abroad time in Houston, because this also would’ve been the time that I would’ve potentially been studying abroad,” she said.

A Potential London Debut

Freedman still made the most of her time. During her sophomore year, her first full-length play, The Wilde and Rambling Consequence of Being Virginia, was a finalist in a playwriting competition sponsored by the Questors, a theater company in London helmed by Dame Judi Dench. 

That in turn led to a partnership with a director at the theater to have Freedman write a new play, which may be staged at the theater company’s stage in the future.

She said the honors program has been everything that she hoped it would be, both because of the academic rigor and the camaraderie she developed with her 20-member cohort.

“I just really adore every single person in my class. The honors program is kind of like a sorority, because you have what’s like an intense hazing process your freshman year, where you have four honors classes,” she said.

“But that’s exactly what I wanted.”

Karina Hogan, Ph.D. a professor of theology and director of the FCLC honors program, had Freedman in her Sacred Texts of the Middle East.

While some students arrive their first year with a ‘deer caught in the headlights’ look in their eyes, Hogan said that Freedman stood out from the beginning as knowing exactly what she wanted.

“She is just an outstanding student and is really happy to volunteer and help out with things in the honors program, like mentoring other students,” she said.

After graduation, Freedman is going to take a few months off to travel with her roommate Gabby Etzel, with whom she started the website Absolutely Anything.—which chronicles their adventures in New York and beyond. At some point, she expects to travel to England, to help shepherd the play to completion. 

“Joan Didion has a wonderful quote that I always whisper to myself: ‘I don’t know what I think until I write.’ I think that’s so true,” said Freedman, who also writes screenplays.

“Playwriting and screenwriting is a way of understanding the world, how you feel about it, making sense of all of the insanity, and trying to find cohesion in a theme.”

“Dr. Porco told me that she loves accounting because there’s always a right answer—it’s the only discipline in business that has an answer that you can get to at the end of the day,” Dougherty said, adding that that’s what drew him to the field.

With Porco’s help, Dougherty threw himself into accounting, getting his undergraduate degree in December 2021, followed by his master’s in professional taxation in May 2022—fully completing two degrees in four years.

Dougherty, who’s originally from right outside Philadelphia, said he was able to make it happen thanks to some pre-college credits, summer courses, and relationships with faculty like Porco and the dean’s office. He was able to take five master-level courses as an undergraduate student, which enabled him to have just one full-time semester as a graduate student.

For Dougherty, juggling a lot of work has always been a part of his life. He worked three jobs in high school, including as a janitor at his school, to save up some spending money for college, and continued working at Fordham as Ram Van driver in addition to his internships.

Once he decided he wanted to pursue accounting, this desire to do as much as possible carried over to his academics.

“The faculty have always been great, and willing to work with me,” he said. “I think I drove some of them up a wall at times—I was asking for a lot—but they were really helpful and they were totally understanding that [getting these degrees]was something that I wanted to do.”

Porco said Dougherty’s success is due in part to his clear vision.

“Planning is key—students need to have the plan, and the earlier you have that vision, then you have more capacity to be supported and guided,” she said. “I had him first semester sophomore year. I had some guest speakers. He was inspired by some of the things that he was learning. I was launching a ‘wintership’ program. [A winter internship program which Porco defined as “a win for the firms, and a win for students.”]  And he was one of my first participants in the program—all of that early planning is part of what I think creates the success.”

Porco emphasized that Dougherty’s confidence and consideration of others played a role in his achievements.

“He’s a strategic thinker, he is mature, responsible, articulate, amiable—very considerate of others, very eager to help other people,” she said. ”He’s assertive, he’s confident, but there’s a humility there, and I think it’s a striking balance.”

As part of the winternship program, Dougherty worked at KPMG as a student. He also completed internships at Ernst and Young and Buchbinder Tunick.

“I was working full-time at KPMG, and I was able to take a full semester worth of classes, so that was a really cool opportunity that not many students get—it’s kind of a unique situation to Fordham because we’re in New York City,” he said.

Because of his dedication to his schoolwork and internships, Dougherty, who just finished his CPA exam, will be starting a full-time role as an associate at KPMG in their mergers and acquisitions tax department in November. Before that, he’s squeezing in one more internship this summer at CBS with their Paramount Global division in their tax accounting department.

As much as he loves New York, Dougherty also credits Fordham’s Global Outreach program to Kolkata, India, with expanding his perspective and contributing to his success. Dougherty said that he came across the Global Outreach table at the club fair and talked with students there about the trip next semester to India.

“Global Outreach was probably my favorite experience in my four years of Fordham,” he said. “I was the only one that was a freshman, and it was an experience especially outside of my comfort zone. It was just a really powerful experience.”

Dougherty said some of the most vivid memories from the trip included a visit to the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity to learn about Mother Teresa’s work and her impact in the area. The group also spent time with college students from India.

“We got to meet students at a university in India—St. Xavier’s, Kolkata—and that was a really cool part of my Fordham experience, meeting people who are in my same position, just on the other side of the world,” he said.

Dougherty said that the trip allowed him to see things from a different, more global perspective, something that he put into his work at Fordham.

In addition, Dougherty said he felt connected to the Gabelli School’s “business with a purpose” mantra, something he was able to put into action through a former club called Social Innovation 360, which encouraged first-year students to start a business and approach business problems creatively.

“It was to encourage social innovation and try to promote more sustainable versions of business,” he said”

Dougherty said he plans to carry that mission with him as he moves forward in his career, along with a message he took from Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, and the William J. Loschert Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship at the Gabelli School of Business, Professor Benjamin Cole, whom Dougherty took two classes with, including a blockchain course his senior year.

“Father McShane always tells students that they’re going to leave Fordham bothered by the injustice of the world and determined to fix it,” he said. “I’ve kind of experienced that same thing with being in [Cole’s] class. He challenges you to think about the broader implications of things—it’s not just about, ‘how can I make money?’ but also, ‘what’s really going on in this crazy world that we live in?’”

“I learned discipline, and I’ve been able to mature a lot more and make better decisions in my life,” said Garcia, who has served as an active-duty Marine for about a decade. “The military shaped me into a better man.”

Garcia now aspires to become a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps. When he retires from the Marines, he said, he plans on returning to civilian life—with the help of his new Fordham degree. This August, he will graduate from the School of Professional and Continuing Studies with his bachelor’s degree in information technology and systems.  

A NYC Native Who Grew Up in the Dominican Republic

Garcia was born and raised in Brooklyn. As a child, he always saluted police officers in the street. He considered them heroes and dreamed of becoming a police officer or a member of the U.S. military, he said. But when his father was unexpectedly deported to the Dominican Republic, 10-year-old Garcia put his dreams aside. 

“I left behind good friends, and life in the DR was not what I was expecting, especially coming from New York,” said Garcia, who lived in the DR until finishing high school. “It was challenging, but it prepared me for life ahead and made me a tougher person overall.”

After high school graduation, he returned to New York City to attend the Globe Institute of Technology and play collegiate-level baseball. But he said it wasn’t easy to balance sports, school, and a full-time job. He dropped out of school before graduating and joined the Marine Corps in 2012.

Garcia also worked as a Marine recruiter in Brooklyn. One of his favorite memories as a recruiter was participating with his fellow Marines in the Tunnel to Towers Race in New York City, an annual run that honors the final route of a fallen firefighter on 9/11.

“It not only represents the Marine Corps, but also New York and the United States,” Garcia said. “Being together and having all the civilians cheering us on was very powerful. I still have my running badge number with me.”

An Officer in Training and Aspiring Cybersecurity Specialist

For many years, Garcia has served as an enlisted Marine, with the goal of becoming an officer. But in order to become an officer, he needed to earn a college degree. In 2019, he was selected to join the Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program (MECEP), which allows select active-duty Marines to serve in the military while attending a four-year college full time. 

“This program allows me to pursue my education, to better myself, and ultimately, to become an officer and serve in the fleet Marine force, where I can better serve my military branch and become a leader among the enlisted ranks,” he said. 

In 2020, Garcia enrolled at Fordham and its Navy ROTC program. Over the past two years, he said he has learned to think outside of the box and gained valuable networking experiences. His uncle who works in IT inspired him to study information technology and systems. Now he hopes to also earn a master’s degree in cybersecurity and specialize in that field in the Marines. 

Upon graduation, Garcia will become an officer in the Marine Corps. He said he hopes to spend at least another decade in the Marines and then retire from the military. What awaits him is life as a civilian—and the ability to give back to his community full time. 

“I struggled as a kid, seeing my dad get deported. So when I think about my kids and others who may be struggling and unable to see a way out, I want to give them hope,” said Garcia, now a 32-year-old father who lives on Long Island with his wife and their three children. “I reach out to young individuals I recruited and see how they’re doing; I try to show them different programs they can participate in or push them to further their education.” 

‘What It Means to Succeed’: A Mentor for Young Marines 

Kevin Dewaine Leonard, a retired master sergeant who was stationed with Garcia in New York from 2015 to 2019, described Garcia as a family-oriented man. (Their families are close, and their children have trick-or-treated together during Halloween.) That same dedication toward his family has extended to his brothers and sisters in the Marines, said Leonard. 

Garcia took young Marines under his wing, especially teenagers who were living away from home for the first time, said Leonard. There were other higher-ups around, but it was Garcia who took the initiative to organize physical training sessions for the young Marines, work out with them, and get them in shape. 

“We never had a situation where a Marine failed a PT test or didn’t meet their development milestones because Garcia constantly had his hands on the pulse with those guys. And his training was effective. When the unit got called up to deploy in 2018, we didn’t have any Marines who weren’t in shape or ready for the task at hand. Sergeant Garcia made sure that those Marines were ready,” Leonard said. 

“Garcia was willing to work and to show those Marines exactly what they needed to be successful and to advance within the Marine Corps,” Leonard said. “He showed the Marine Corps what it means to succeed.” 

“I appreciate the beautiful ways that Roman Catholicism has shaped me. But as an openly gay woman, I wasn’t sure if I could find a home in the church,” said Stapleton Smith, who is now training to become a priest in the Episcopal Church, where women can become priests. 

“I want to be for a young queer kid what I needed when I was their age—somebody who embodies a love of the gospel, shows that it is OK to challenge church teachings, and lives in the hope and promise of God’s love for us.” 

Stapleton Smith is now a doctoral student in theological and social ethics at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. After she graduates this August, she said she will use her Fordham education to not only better inform her ministry, but also her work as an educator. 

“I want to work in ministry on the ground, but also teach and conduct research at a university,” Stapleton Smith said. “God is calling me to academic life, to be a disciple of Christ, and to be a church leader who brings people closer to God and heaven.” 

‘Where I Could Live in the Fullness of My Being’ 

Stapleton Smith was drawn to her faith at an early age. She was raised in a devout Roman Catholic household, where she recalled pretending that her stuffed animals were receiving the Eucharist. She graduated from the Ursuline School, an all-girls Catholic middle and high school in Westchester County, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in theology from Boston College and a master’s degree in religion from Yale Divinity School. 

Several years ago, she felt a calling to the priesthood. However, her personal life conflicted with the official teachings of her Roman Catholic faith. The church does not condone gay marriage, but Stapleton Smith is married to a woman, she said. In addition, the church does not recognize women as priests.

“I didn’t leave the church in hate …  [A]ll of my scholarship stems from a deep love of Roman Catholicism. I left the church in a movement of grace and love of God—to where I could live in the fullness of my being and become the best Meg that I can be,” said Stapleton Smith, who will be ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church this fall. 

Her identity as a queer white woman has shaped her perspective as a church leader. “As someone who has been marginalized by ecclesial communities and church teachings, I’m sensitive to power dynamics,” she said. “Am I leaving someone out? As a white person, am I unintentionally preaching a sermon that recapitulates the language of anti-Blackness or a narrative of the church as a colonizer?”

‘I Didn’t Even Know that People Like You Existed’

Stapleton Smith’s queer identity has also informed her scholarship at Fordham, where she studied the intersection of liberation theology, virtue ethics and sexual ethics. Her dissertation “Queer Virtue Ethics: Mary Daly’s Challenge to Catholic Sexual Ethics,” is the culmination of her research. It focuses on Mary Daly, a key figure in modern feminist theology, and Daly’s ideas on using the virtue of courage and Catholic sexual ethics to counteract sexual shame, said Stapleton Smith, who spoke in detail about her dissertation in a Fordham News story last March.

“Meg is an incredibly perceptive thinker, teacher, and human being who sees the ways that ideas can take root in bodies, for better or for worse. As someone studying theological and social ethics, she brings those concerns to her work in the classroom and in her ordination to the priesthood,” said Christiana Zenner, Ph.D., associate professor of theology, who has taught and mentored Stapleton Smith. 

While reflecting on her time at Fordham, Stapleton Smith recalled why she chose to attend the University six years ago.  

“It was actually one of my mentors from Boston College who said to me, looking at the professors at Fordham, ‘That’s the place for you. You want to ask the deep questions, and Fordham is going to bring you to that place,’” said Stapleton Smith, a recipient of the Elizabeth A. Johnson Endowed Scholarship Fund and a dissertation mentee of Bryan Massingale, S.T.D., the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics. 

Stapleton Smith said that Fordham has also helped her grow as an educator. She served as a teaching assistant and instructor for four theology courses, where she taught students from different faiths and disciplines. Stapleton Smith said that at the end of the semester, she has received notes from students that remind her of why her work is important. 

“I remember one note that read, ‘I was not raised in a religious household, and I didn’t even know that people like you existed—a lesbian theology professor who’s becoming an Episcopal priest,’” said Stapleton Smith. “It’s notes like these that remind me of why I do what I do.” 

“I remember sitting with some really amazing, bright people, listening to their questions and hypotheticals. They seemed to have such a grasp on knowledge that I didn’t have, and many of them had previous work experience or parents who were lawyers. I didn’t know how I had snuck in. But what’s helped combat that feeling is working really hard and taking classes that I enjoy,” said Gogia, who will earn her Juris Doctor degree from Fordham’s School of Law this spring and start working as a litigation and government enforcement associate at multinational law firm Baker McKenzie this fall. “I’ve stayed true to myself and forged my own path.” 

Chehak the ‘Chirping’ Bird

Gogia was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Indian immigrants who moved to the U.S. in 1995. 

“My first name means ‘the chirping of the birds in the early morning,’ but my mom says it also translates to ‘talkative.’ She always jokes that she should’ve named me the Hindi word for ‘calm,’ and that would get me to stop talking,” Gogia said, chuckling. 

When her parents became naturalized citizens, she believed that the best way to pay it forward to the U.S. was to become its next president. 

In second grade, every president she learned about was a lawyer, she said, so she thought she needed to become a lawyer before reaching the White House. But even after she realized the truth, she continued to pursue the same goal. 

In high school and college, she served as an intern for several politicians, including as a foreign policy and defense intern for U.S. Senator Dick Durbin in Washington, D.C., where she said she helped to successfully advocate for the release of a political prisoner in Algeria. 

“I’ve always loved being able to break down an argument and convince someone to see my side of things,” Gogia said. 

In 2019, she earned a bachelor’s degree in global liberal studies from New York University, where she also served as captain of the mock trial team. Then she went straight to law school at Fordham. 

One of her most influential law school experiences was the Brendan Moore Trial Advocacy Center—a Fordham team that competes in mock trials with law schools across the country—where she said she placed in seven out of eight competitions and will be competing in a ninth this summer. She said her competition experience has helped her learn how to quickly adapt to situations in the courtroom. In addition, her semester-long experience at the law school’s Federal Litigation Clinic showed her how to advocate for real clients under the guidance of professors. 

“It’s interesting to be able to work on all sides of the legal argument and to be responsible for the legal advocacy for real people who need our help,” said Gogia, who helped to write briefs that were submitted to courts. 

Gogia said she will use these skills in her job at law firm Baker McKenzie, where she will help companies to work through investigations and settle disputes.

“My clinical experience has given me a lot of insight into what litigation will look like when I start working this fall,” she said.  

A Fierce and Confident Litigator 

Gogia is fierce, determined, and quick on her feet in the courtroom, said her mentor Brittany Russell, FCRH ’11, LAW ’13, a trial attorney at Weitz & Luxenberg who coached Gogia at the Brendan Moore Trial Advocacy Center last year. Russell recalled a competition where Gogia found her way out of a tough situation. 

“There were a series of facts that were inadmissible. But Chehak is a very good listener. She heard the other side’s witness say something that opened the door to those facts, and then she made an extremely sophisticated and creative argument—and she executed it beautifully, convincing the judge to agree with her,” Russell said. 

Gogia’s confidence in the courtroom often gets the attention of other lawyers, Russell said.

“When you put yourself out there in a competition trial, you get feedback from other attorneys from all over the country. Those attorneys may have different conceptions of what a woman in a courtroom is supposed to sound like. But Chehak has weathered sexist comments and never let them bother her,” Russell said. “She never listened to them or concluded that she should change something about herself. She always carries on with who she is, and being the best and strongest advocate she can be.”