“I was blown away about the psychology of it, the science of it, knowing what target you’re going for, and what you want the brand narrative to be,” Kogolo said. “I thought it was super interesting and tied back to my undergraduate minor in psychology. And then I just couldn’t get it off of my mind.”

After doing some research, Kogolo, who earned her bachelor’s degree at Rutgers University, decided to pursue an MBA in marketing. She chose Fordham partly because her older brother graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill, and also because the Gabelli School most closely aligned with her values. “It checked all the boxes,” she said. “I resonate with the culture, the community, and the Jesuit values, and how [the school]is a change maker at the forefront of ESG. All of that meshed with what I want to do.”

Now, with graduation around the corner, Kogolo will soon take what she’s learned in the full-time MBA program to her position as a marketing associate at Morgan Stanley. The opportunity materialized after she completed a summer internship in the firm’s global brand marketing division.

“I was so thankful and honored to have the opportunity to complete a summer internship with Morgan Stanley,” she said. “I worked with an amazing team and I’m so excited to go back.”

As Kogolo reflects on her years at the Gabelli School, she said she is grateful for the experiences she had to develop leadership skills, including serving as the vice president of the Black & Latinx MBA Association and as vice president of events for the Student Advisory Council.

Traveling to London for her capstone project was especially memorable as it was Kogolo’s first trek outside of the U.S. In addition to gaining consulting experience with Shopify, Kogolo enjoy sightseeing with her classmates.

“It was so much fun, I didn’t want to leave London!” Kogolo said. “As a marketer, it was instrumental to my career to see a different culture and to meet different people and understand their mindset.”

Kogolo works with the Office of Academic Advising and Student Engagement as a graduate assistant and volunteers with Girls Inc. of New York City and She Runs It, a mentorship program for women. She said she admires the women leaders at the Gabelli School, including Dean Lerzan Aksoy, Ph.D. “She is an inspiration to all of us. You can tell by her passion that she really cares about her students.”

One of four children, Kogolo and her siblings are first-generation college graduates. She credits her mother, a Nigerian immigrant, for making her academic success possible.

“My mom is an extraordinary woman. As a single parent, she worked three jobs just to make sure that all of us got a proper education because she wanted the best for us,” she said. “She’s the one who gave me the drive and ambition to discover my purpose and my calling.”

—Claire Curry for Fordham Business Magazine

“At Fordham, I learned not only how to interpret the law but also how to be a lawyer and a leader for everyone,” said Lanier. 

His path to law school was unconventional. He studied theater and media communications during his undergraduate years and then moved from his native Texas to New York to pursue a job in public relations, but later realized this wasn’t the right career move. Lanier went on to found a nonprofit focused on LBGTQ+ health and wellness, where his community could safely exercise and “celebrate their queerness” together. After building the nonprofit, he realized he wanted to continue helping his community, but on a larger scale. 

“The only logical next step for me was to go into law, where I can help effect change for not just one person, but millions of people,” he said. 

Using the Law to Help Underserved Communities

Lanier’s first visit to Fordham Law took place in 2020, on the day the University shut down due to the pandemic. The building was empty, except for Lanier and a kind admissions counselor who gave him a tour, but that was all it took to convince him to enroll at Fordham. 

Lanier served as a student leader, including as president of the law school’s Student Bar Association and as a New York State Pro Bono Scholar. In the latter role, he worked with the NYC Anti-Violence Project on cases for several clients, including a gay man who was seeking asylum in the U.S. 

“The few times I was able to meet him, he was always very nervous and shy. But the minute the judge said ‘We are granting you asylum,’ his whole demeanor changed,” Lanier said. “During our post-asylum work, he has been so happy and joyful. You can see on his face that he feels safe. And to know that I was a small part of that huge change in his life is something that I will always remember.” 

After graduation, Lanier will become an associate at international law firm Clifford Chance, where he will work in white-collar litigation and criminal defense.  

Later in life, he’s thinking about serving in the political realm, where he can develop better legislation for the LGBTQ+ community, help formerly incarcerated people to return to society, and protect people from falling into homelessness, using the law as a tool. 

“Will is older and more experienced than many law students,” said adjunct professor Jerry Goldfeder, who taught Lanier last year. “I’ve come to see a real sense of his maturity and centeredness that I have no doubt will enable him to be a successful attorney.” 

Life Lessons From Illness

Lanier said his past personal challenges will also inform his career as a lawyer. He has lived with ulcerative colitis since he was 18 and was diagnosed with colon cancer when he was 28. Lanier said these challenges have taught him to be resilient, cherish life, and keep an open perspective. 

“You never know what someone’s dealing with,” said Lanier, 37, who is now nine years in remission, engaged, and father to a shiba inu named Cash. “Meet everyone with compassion, assume positive intent when someone’s speaking to you, and always have an open heart.”

Composing a New Musical

Sutedjo has applied this combo approach to his research and musical works, including composing the book, music, and lyrics, for Fly Me Away, an original musical featuring a teenage jazz pianist named Frank and his father who move from Shanghai to New York City.

“He does in a single day, more than most people do in a month,” said Eric Bianchi, an associate professor of music and one of Sutedjo’s mentors.

The idea to write a musical came to Sutedjo in high school, when he realized “that there just wasn’t a lot of Asian representation in the musical theater canon.”

He began working on it in his free time, until he developed it as his honors thesis. His work intensified junior year, when Sutedjo participated in Fordham’s partnership with Juilliard. Jake Landau, one of his instructors there, told Sutedjo that he would be a perfect fit for a program he was leading that summer.

“I was able to secure funding from the Fordham undergraduate research grant, which allowed me to participate in this two-week intensive in Italy—the New Voice Composers Studio at the Narni International Vocal Arts Festival—which was really cool,” Sutedjo said. “I was able to workshop and premiere two new pieces of mine at this international music and arts festival.”

Uplifting Voices

At the center of Sutedjo’s work is a desire to share and uplift the stories of Asian Americans, particularly after witnessing and experiencing marginalization, and microaggressions against the community.

“I’ve been able to find my voice and realize this is something that not only can I do, but it’s needed—if I was feeling that way when I was 14, I’m sure there’s a lot of other young Asian kids who also feel that way,” said Sutedjo, who is Indonesian American of Chinese descent.

Sutedjo said this work is particularly important now as many Asian Americans have experienced discrimination over the past few years.

“In order to combat these stereotypes, you need to tell a much wider array of stories that portray Asians not as a monolith, not as a stereotype, but really as a diverse array of people with individual stories,” he said.

The Power of Connections

Sutedjo knows how impactful representation can be. When he was an actor (and later assistant music director) with Fordham’s theater club Mimes and Mummers, the group brought in Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li, a director of Taiwanese descent and the director of performance, storytelling, and community at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in Lower Manhattan.

“He was the first Asian director that I’ve ever worked with and that was a very cool experience for me to see someone that looks like me in that position of theater leadership,” he said.

Sutedjo participated in a couple of projects helmed by Li, and eventually their connection led to Fly Me Away’s debut at MOCA, with support from Fordham’s undergraduate research community and honors program.

A Debut Reading at the Museum of Chinese in America

“We were able to bring on an all-Asian cast and creative team alongside two Fordham musicians,” Sutedjo said. “We had a full stage reading, and roughly 90 people came to each show, which was a great reception.”

Sutedjo said that he plans to use the feedback to revise the production before its next iteration.

“Most musical projects don’t go that far,” said Bianchi, who is also a musician. “To watch somebody who’s 21 do that, it’s astounding by any count.”

Fly Me Away was also recognized at Fordham, as he received the Fordham College Alumni Association Research Symposium Award for the production.

Advancing the Music Department

Another mentor, music professor Nathan Lincoln-Decusatis, said Sutedjo’s unique talents and skill sets have not only benefited him, but they’ve also helped the music department explore new areas, such as “music as research.”

“Research can be in the performing arts, and Miguel opened the door for the future at Fordham, because he was the first one to really think of harnessing the resources of the research community,” he said. “And now that’s a precedent. Miguel was the trailblazer for that.”

Global Perspective

Sutedjo said that he hopes to use this Fulbright to immerse himself in teaching and his own heritage, and use those experiences in the future.

“Being able to live abroad in Taiwan for a year, absorbing the language, I think will not only help me connect with my heritage, but also it allows me to tell a greater range of stories through having that lived experience,” he said.

“I think my own experiences with counseling were really transformative,” Syper said, adding that she enjoys being able to “be part of people’s lives and help them through really difficult experiences.”

Now, studying at Fordham, Syper found that the support from peers and professors combined with the well-rounded curriculum and hands-on practicums have set her up to do just that. 

“When I interviewed at Fordham, I felt connected to the people. I felt like I could build a community with professors and with the other students,” Syper said. 

Using Dance Therapy in Body Image Work

Syper plans to combine her counseling work with another form of therapy that’s been meaningful in her own life—dance. Discovering dance as a teenager taught Syper to connect with and appreciate her body. And in college at the University of North Texas, she studied modern dance and double-majored in psychology and dance. 

In addition to her studies at Fordham, Syper’s working to become a dance/movement therapist through a program at the 92nd Street Y, where she’s learning how to help people connect with their bodies in meaningful ways that assist their healing processes. Syper works with teens and young adults with body image issues and eating disorders and finds it’s often beneficial to incorporate elements of dance therapy into her talk therapy sessions.

With clients, Syper helps them assess: “How do I know if I’m anxious? How do I know if I’m upset? What are the cues my body’s giving me? And how can I connect with my body? … How do I use that information to identify what’s going to make me feel better moving forward?”

‘A Gifted Therapist’

Currently, Syper’s wrapping up a year-long internship at University of Colorado Boulder’s  Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS) as part of her Fordham Ph.D. program. Similar to a med student’s residency, the position gives her hands-on clinical experience wherein Syper conducts individual therapy sessions, co-leads graduate student process groups, and serves as an eating concerns case manager.

“She’s a very talented, gifted therapist who, at an early stage of her career already has very defined interests and expertise,” said Elizabeth Parsons, Syper’s clinical supervisor in Boulder. In particular, Syper is highly organized and adept at building a strong rapport with clients quickly, Parsons said.

“[Syper is] very effective in helping clients understand their own patterns in a way that they can shift them … she really meets people where they’re at,” Parsons said. “She’s very aware as well of social justice issues and able to connect with people across a lot of identity variables.”

A Holistic Approach, Mirrored at Fordham

At Fordham, Syper found the same support and holistic approach to her as a student that she fosters in her professional work. 

“Fordham really provided the opportunity for us to acknowledge what comes up for us as therapists when we’re holding the weight of all the things our clients are sharing, and we’re going through these really difficult experiences alongside them—like when a global pandemic happens, we’re also experiencing that,” Syper said. “[Or if] they’re experiencing body image concerns, and I have had body image concerns, how do I work through that so I can take care of myself and I can be the best support for my clients.”

Recently, Syper successfully defended her dissertation, “Mind-Body Connection, Self-Esteem, and Social Support as Predictors of Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa,” and also published a study about the mind-body connection in the American Journal of Dance Therapy, titled “Dance/Movement Therapy for Individuals with Eating Disorders: A Phenomenological Approach.”

After graduation, Syper will complete her 92nd Street Y program and plans to work in a clinic or treatment center that serves young adults with eating disorders and body image concerns as she continues to find ways to incorporate dance therapy into her work.

—Meredith Lawrence

“I’m a city girl at heart, and I really love the Lincoln Center area. You have Central Park, a variety of restaurants and theaters, and a lot of diversity here,” she said.

Med-School Bound

She also knew that she wanted to go into medicine. She had lost her father, Mohammad, during her senior year in high school to complications from a stroke, and the experience inspired her to pursue a career where she could help prevent similar tragedies.

At Fordham, she joined the pre-health track and chose natural sciences as her major, where she took classes such as animal physiology, neurochemistry, and neuropharmacology. She is applying for medical school in the spring, and looking for research assistant positions in the meantime.

The kindness of medical staff that she encountered while her father was undergoing treatment is part of what inspires her.

“I want to be that kind of positive light for families that are going through it,” she said.

Fellowships in Science and Humanities

Last summer, she participated in a University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry Undergraduate Research Fellowship, where she conducted research on mortality rates for patients undergoing pancreatic cancer surgery.

Though she majored in the sciences, Asha also enjoyed her humanities classes at Fordham. As part of a Teagle fellowship in 2021, Asha did a project tying the themes in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and W.E.B. Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk to contemporary issues of racial injustice that were exacerbated during the COVID pandemic.

Her favorite course at Fordham was Faith and Critical Reasoning, which she took with Leo Guardado, Ph.D. It helped her see how theology can apply to scientific concepts such as artificial intelligence, she said.

“I also come from a Muslim background, so even though Fordham is a Catholic institution, I appreciate the fact that he took the time to go through the sacred text of each religion, and just made it all really easy to understand,” she said.

Prioritizing Mental Health

Just as important was the help she got when the road to graduation got a little bumpy. Her return to in-person classes after the pandemic was accompanied by notoriously hard classes such as organic chemistry, genetics, and anatomy.

Last year, Asha found herself battling anxiety and insomnia. She decided to prioritize her mental and physical health by going to University Health Services, working with a psychiatrist, and asking for accommodations for testing and assignments from Fordham. She still made the Dean’s list three years in a row.

“Looking back, I’m very grateful because things are just gonna get harder going forward. There are always going to be things that pile up. It was just really a learning experience, and because of last year, I’m in a much better mindset this year,” she said.

Hope to Spare

Deborah Luckett, Ph.D., a senior lecturer of biology, had Asha in her Concepts in Biology course as a first-year student and again this year in Science, Technology, and Society’s Values. She has no doubt that Asha will thrive.

“She’s going be my doctor whether she realizes it or not,” she said laughing.

In addition to drive and good grades, Luckett said Asha possesses a keen ability to pay attention to others.

“If you don’t really know Afsana and you’re talking to her, you may think she’s not listening, but she can say word for word just about anything you just said,” she said.

“She’s very dedicated, she loves what she does, and she loves being around people. If she’s caring for a person who is very ill, they will never feel neglected and will never feel like there is no hope. Because she will have hope for both of them.”