What happens when a global health crisis leaves the Western media spotlight?

As he watched a patient he’d grown close to die at one of Mother Teresa’s homes for the terminally ill in Kolkata, Joseph Woodring, DO, FCRH ’98, felt overwhelmed by his inability to help the man—and he had an epiphany. “I’d been holding his hand, watching his chest rise and fall,” said Woodring, who first visited India in 1995 as an undergraduate in Fordham’s Global Outreach program. On that trip, he learned to connect with suffering and honor the human dignity of sick and impoverished people. But now, a few years out of college, he wanted to examine the bigger picture. “If I don’t get upstream and learn what these guys have,” he thought, “I’m not fixing anything. I want to be able to actually treat people.” 

Last year, during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Woodring deployed to Liberia as an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His job was to trace the spread of the virus and work with local people to arrest the contagion. By showing respect for the dignity and self-determination of people in the villages, he said, he was able to convince communities to adopt practices that stopped the spread of Ebola.

That kind of community-minded approach is still needed to fuel social and economic recovery in the Ebola zone and prepare for the next disaster, said Ellie Frazier, GSAS ’15. A recent graduate of Fordham’s master’s degree program in international political economy and development, Frazier was in Sierra Leone in June 2014, studying the role paralegals play in knitting the nation back together after its civil war, when Ebola emerged as a major problem.

Now back in New York, Frazier, an adjunct instructor at Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, stresses that recovering from the outbreak will require sustained international attention and sincere collaboration with affected communities. Emergency Ebola treatment centers are being turned into permanent clinics. That’s good, Frazier said, but villages will also have to reintegrate stigmatized Ebola survivors, negotiate what to do with the land of families wiped out by Ebola, find a way to care for and pay school fees for orphaned children, and address other consequences not yet identified.

“The immediate emergency seems to have subsided, but now what? The tendency with media and some humanitarians is OK, done. But for there to be full-on economic recovery, it is going to take a lot of time,” she said, and “it needs to be bottom up.”

More than 11,000 people died. For eight months, the response was left to just two international charities: Doctors Without Borders and Samaritan’s Purse. While they did heroic frontline medical work, they and later arrivals were ill-equipped to halt the spread of the disease. They had a hard time convincing people to stop kissing or shaking hands, and to suspend traditional burial practices that involve washing and caressing the body—expressions of deeply held spiritual beliefs but also certain methods for communicating the disease.

Medical response teams full of foreigners wrapped in bright yellow plastic suits with shields over their faces arrived on trucks in remote villages to remove the bodies of the dead. They were met with resistance and fear. People hid their sick relatives and buried the dead secretly, allowing the disease to blossom. 

When he arrived in Liberia in October, Woodring realized a different approach would be necessary. He focused on communicating with people who could effect change. “It’s the village elders that made the impact,” he said, by enforcing quarantines and maintaining the 21-day observation of anyone directly exposed to the disease. “The village elders were at the apex of those societies, and [people]were roaring in and stripping them of their traditional role. We had to go to the elders and work with them. You’d inform traditional healers and give them due deference and tell them, look, this practice is very dangerous.” 

Collaborating with local social systems is key, experts say, both for effective containment of diseases and to lay the groundwork for recovery. Thousands of foreign nurses, doctors, and aid workers, among them several Fordham alumni and staff, aided their West African counterparts during the Ebola outbreak. A year later, the disease is nearly abated, and Western media, which fueled hysteria and panic in the United States during the outbreak, has shifted to other crises. But the affected countries are still struggling to recover, and humanitarian experts are studying the Ebola outbreak to learn how the world can respond sooner and better—and even prevent the next disaster.

The solutions are straightforward but terribly difficult to achieve, according to Alexander van Tulleken, MD, senior fellow at Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs. “The next pandemic is prevented by building a world where people are given the opportunity to get educated and thrive,” he said. It might sound trite, but he’s serious. A strong healthcare system, access to education, and a stable civil society are what ultimately protect against disease. 

The reason Ebola was so deadly and persistent in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, while cases elsewhere were more quickly contained, has everything to do with the destabilizing effects of war and extreme poverty. “Diseases are opportunists,” Van Tulleken said. “They only thrive in certain climates. Like criminals and terrorists, they look for places where rule of law is broken down.” 

With national infrastructure—not just roads but electrical systems, healthcare, communication, and trust in government—broken apart by years of armed conflict and underinvestment, fighting Ebola was especially difficult, said Melissa Labonte, PhD, an associate professor of political science at Fordham, who has studied the region extensively. She said doctors focused on a medical and technical response, but social wounds allowed Ebola to fester, so a social response was also needed to beat it back. 

“You can’t go in and just do things. The imperative is to respond, I know, but you have to know what you are doing before you start acting,” Labonte said. “Local knowledge matters. It was undervalued. Once we started to listen to it and value it, things changed for the better.”

Because the virus is strongest at and even after death, people who care for the sick and prepare the deceased for burial are at highest risk for contracting the disease. One sick person could infect dozens of others, as Woodring learned when he traced the root of 65 cases in one rural county to a man who had cared for his Ebola-stricken brother in Monrovia. That man returned home, got sick, and went to a bare-bones clinic. A grandmother from another village cared for him, wiping up vomit and comforting the man as he died overnight. The grandmother returned home and grew ill. Because she was a central and beloved figure in her community, dozens of people attended her funeral, caressing her body, kissing her—and contracting Ebola. Forty-seven of the infected people died, a 72 percent fatality rate.

“Honestly, all our efforts were for naught if we couldn’t control the burial system,” Woodring said. “Even though there is a huge science to Ebola, if you didn’t get people’s respect from the beginning—by offering it—you were just another white guy coming in telling them what to do.” He hopes national governments can harness the training and funding that followed the Ebola crisis to build sustained healthcare systems in the affected countries.

It’s an approach Elin Gursky, GSAS ’13, considers essential. In April, when United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon named a high-level panel to study the global response to health crises and present a report by the end of the year, Gursky was appointed to the resource group of experts supporting the panel. Broad and deep international cooperation and political will to invest more money in strong public health systems are what’s needed to prevent and counter future disease outbreaks, she said. 

“You can bring in experts and surge capacities, but it needs to support, not supplant, local systems,” Gursky said. “It needs to start at the community level.” 

When Laura Sida, a pediatric cancer nurse and a graduate student in Fordham’s master’s degree program in humanitarian affairs, arrived in Sierra Leone last spring, she thought she’d be part of a treatment clinic. But the work quickly shifted to disaster recovery. After six months spent helping ministry of health workers improve clinic management and supervising psychological and social support teams for Ebola survivors, Sida said recovering after the disaster is just as crucial for long-term health as responding to the crisis itself. She’s found her master’s thesis topic: the challenges of rebuilding after a disaster.

A particular difficulty in the aftermath of Ebola is that the disease attacks precisely the people who might be relied on to lead a social recovery, she said. “It kills the caretakers, the people who are the most caring and compassionate. So who is left? Ebola clears the household.”  

How the countries build back, from the most immediate relationships in villages to the strength of national health systems—and what the international community learns from Ebola—will determine how the next global health crisis plays out. The world isn’t getting any less connected, as the few Ebola cases that emerged in the United States show, and there will inevitably be a next time, Van Tulleken said. “We need to understand that my life and the life of the poorest person in Africa are intimately linked.”

—Eileen Markey, FCRH ’98, is the author of a biography of Maura Clarke, one of the U.S. nuns killed in El Salvador in 1980, to be published next year by Nation Books.

Since its founding in 2013, his online bulk-shopping service Boxed has raised $26 million, hired nearly 70 full-time employees, and opened three shipping centers, which can deliver Costco-style value packs of anything from cereal to toilet paper anywhere in the lower 48 states within two days. And earlier this year, Huang announced an ambitious plan to fund college tuition for his employees’ children.

What inspired you to guarantee college tuition for children of your full-time staff?

My undergraduate tuition at Johns Hopkins was paid partially by financial aid but also through the generosity of my mom’s employer. They gave me a huge scholarship. I guess they saw something in me. 

And now you want to give the same opportunity to your employees?

Absolutely. I look at the folks in our warehouses and see that some of them can’t even afford a car. How are they ever going to get above that level? My parents were able to fight their way through hard work and a stroke of luck. But if that luck never strikes, there could be generations stuck at that level. I thought, “Why not give these folks that upward mobility that I achieved?”

How are you funding the program?

We have cash to cover the short-term obligations, and then the longer-term funds are tied up in my personal stock in the company. If Boxed does well, there’s enough to pay a lot of tuition. If Boxed doesn’t do well, the program won’t work. It’s kind of a motivation cycle that feeds into itself.

So it’s about leveling the playing field, correcting injustices. Is that at all why you chose to go to Fordham Law?

I always had a passion for the law, but as a kid I was more reacting to injustice. I could tell, even as a child, that my parents were having a difficult time with simple things, like getting a driver’s license. I still remember one vivid moment: The DMV rejected my mother’s signature [they couldn’t read her handwriting]. As I got older, I realized there’s some screwed up stuff going on in the world, and so that was the genesis of me being an attorney.

Why’d you go into tech?

I saw the rise of Facebook and mobile gaming upstarts like Zynga. I also had one of the first iPhones. I thought, “These things are only going to get more powerful.” We started Astro Ape Studios, and things really took off. Within a couple of years, Zynga bought the company, using us as their New York office.

 How did you make the transition from gaming to online retailing?

The most sophistication and knowledge on mobile is concentrated in gaming. We were at the forefront of knowing how user behavior works, how user acquisition works, how to make a great experience. So why not go after the largest prize we could find? The consumer bulk-shopping industry is a significant driver of the economy, but only 1.5 percent of it exists online.

It’s fairly far from where you started. Is your law degree still useful? 

Fordham has a pretty liberal study abroad policy, so my first summer we went to Korea, and I worked at Samsung in a business capacity. I really was exposed to both sides of the table. My training as an attorney helps me know what I don’t know, which is just as important as knowing something myself. If you don’t have legal training, either you need an expert for everything or you think nothing is dangerous, which can really screw you later on.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Corinne Iozzio, FCLC ’05.

Pictures of family mix with military service medals and images of “Skylark,” the B-24 on which he served as an engineer during World War II. There are citations from the many groups that have honored him for his work, both in the courtroom and the community. And there are mementos of his student days at Fordham, including a photo of him in cap and gown, smiling broadly, arm-in-arm with his mom on graduation day, 1948.

Ever since then, Lucianna has been one of Fordham’s most loyal supporters. “No matter what amount it was, I always gave,” said the 92-year-old attorney, whose gifts to his alma mater now total more than $260,000.

In recent months, Fordham has begun to recognize donors like Lucianna, people who have given to the University for more than 20 years and whose quiet, steady generosity has helped generations of students. These loyal supporters are being distinguished through the newly formed Doty Society, named in honor of the late George E. Doty, FCRH ’38.

Lucianna first enrolled at the University in 1942 but soon left to serve in the U.S. Army Air Forces. He survived an attack on his B-24 aircraft, which was shot down over Yugoslavia. “I’m a very thankful man. I lost 14 of my friends during the war, and I think about them every day,” he says, reciting their names. “They were only 18, 19 years old—they didn’t get a full life.”

After returning to Fordham, he became captain of the track team and went on to Fordham Law School, graduating in 1951. He credits the University for giving him an ethical sense that’s kept him from “stepping over the red line” in his work as a criminal lawyer—and for fostering in him a firm belief in redemption, even for some of the most hardened criminals. “I go to Mass every day,” he says. “It’s hard, but I do it and still make it in to court in time.”

Lucianna and his wife, Dolores, have been married for 60 years, and their daughters have followed in his footsteps: Nancy, FCRH ’83, LAW ’86, has her own law practice, and Diane, LAW ’81, is a partner with her father. (A third daughter, Susan, died of breast cancer in 2007.) And now Lucianna’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Wafer, is a sophomore at the University.

“I have an outstanding debt to Fordham that I can’t forget,” he says. “I’ll keep contributing as long as I can.”

—Ryan Stellabotte and Tom Stoelker

“The kids look up to the adults, and the seniors will take the children under their wings,” says Karen Bianca Bisignano, GSS ’12, the director of My Second Home, a community-based alternative to nursing homes or the high cost of supported living centers. “Bonds are formed.”

The directorship at My Second Home was Bisignano’s breakthrough job in social work, the field she decided to enter in her mid-40s after a successful 25-year career developing visual effects for commercial and feature films.

She studied for her master’s degree at Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service in a part-time program that convened on Saturdays for four years. After she earned her degree, she lost her job at the production company and her mother became ill. She helped out with her mother’s care and landed a job at Fordham, helping coordinate the online MSW program.

“That’s when the heavens opened up and the sunrays were shining down,” Bisignano recalls. She’d first heard about My Second Home when she took a Fordham course, Death and Dying, taught by Rina Bellamy, GSS ’05, an adjunct professor who had interned at the intergenerational program as a student and became its director in 2007. Last spring, when Bellamy left My Second Home to work in a hospice program, Bisignano was hired.

“I remembered her from class,” says Bellamy, now a hospice social worker at the Visiting Nurse Association of Hudson Valley. “We share the same vision: that until the end of life, no matter what happens during their lifespan, people should have dignity, respect, and self-determination.”

The program features activities throughout the day to provide stimulation, conversation, and some fun for the senior citizens, many of whom suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. Activities include arts and crafts, visits by a therapy dog, singing, and dancing.

“Music remains deep in the memory, and playing it helps give them a dignified, enjoyable, social day,” Bisignano says. “It’s so important for those with cognitive impairments to be participatory and social, and not isolated and depressed at home.”

—David McKay Wilson

When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys by Thomas Maier, FCRH ’78 (Broadway Books)

“In the twentieth century, no two families existed on a bigger world stage, epitomizing the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ over four decades” than the Churchills and the Kennedys, writes Thomas Maier.

In When Lions Roar, he weaves together the intertwined histories of the two dynasties from the 1930s through the ’60s, skillfully managing a large cast of characters. The book is filled with lively anecdotes of war and espionage, adultery, the Vatican, and “so many of [the families’]private and political dealings.”

Maier, an investigative reporter at Newsday, also shines light on little-known connections. In October 1933, for example, Joseph P. Kennedy, looking to capitalize on the approaching end of Prohibition, travels to England and strikes a lucrative deal to import British liquor to America. Churchill, meanwhile, obtains stock in two U.S. companies directly tied to Kennedy in what seems, according to Maier, like a pay-to-play deal.

By the late 1930s, however, the Kennedy and Churchill, “once so friendly, now seemed at fateful loggerheads” on how to handle the rise of Nazi Germany. (Kennedy was an isolationist.) The families would become friendly again by the 1960s, Maier writes, “as if only they could understand one another, lifelong participants born into the political arena, with all the blood, brains, and passion that drives family dynasties from one generation to the next.”

“If Fordham is alive and flourishing today, it is due to no one more than to Joe.”

That’s what James Finlay, SJ, Fordham’s 30th president, said 40 years ago about Joseph Cammarosano, PhD, the economist, professor, and administrator whose steady hand helped guide the University through the turbulent late 1960s, when student unrest and fiscal troubles threatened to sink colleges across the country.

The 92-year-old Cammarosano—affectionately known as Dr. C—gave up his administrative duties in the late 1980s, but he’s still teaching. And next year, when Fordham begins a yearlong celebration of its 175th anniversary, he’ll be marking his 75th.

“I only missed the first 100 years,” says Cammarosano, who enrolled at Fordham as a freshman in 1941. “In those days, the squirrels outnumbered the students—and they didn’t pay tuition!”

Formed by Family

Cammarosano grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, just across the Bronx’s northern border. “My father was a contractor, and my mother was a very fine seamstress,” he says, recalling how his parents, who emigrated from Sorrento, Italy, worked hard to give him and his brother opportunities they themselves didn’t have. “My mom ultimately did the heavy lifting,” he says, “because my dad, although he was a great role model for me, passed on rather early in my life.”

War interrupted Cammarosano’s studies at Fordham. By 1943, he was a member of the Army Signal Corps, serving mostly in England and Belgium. “The war ended just before I was ready to load up and go to Japan,” he says, so he returned to Fordham instead, enrolling in an accelerated program. “It was hurry up and run. We’d already lost three years in the service.” He graduated magna cum laude in 1947 and went to work as a U.S. customs inspector. After getting a master’s degree at NYU, he returned to Fordham, where he began teaching economics in 1955, earning a doctorate in the subject the following year.

Fiscal Crisis Averted

In 1961, Cammarosano took a consequential sabbatical, joining the Kennedy administration as an economist in the U.S. Bureau of the Budget. A year later, he worked in the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. Bolstered by his government service, he was elected president of the Fordham Faculty Senate in 1965, the first to hold that position. And as the University started to encounter serious financial problems in the late 1960s, he was put in a place to help.

By June 1968, Fordham was operating at a $2 million deficit, and Cammarosano, who’d been chair of the faculty budget committee, was named executive vice president. Together with the University’s treasurer, Brother James Kenny, SJ, and the academic president, Paul Reiss, PhD, GSAS ’54, he fought to help Fordham avoid bankruptcy.

“How did I get into this mess?” he asks now. “Out of the Bureau of the Budget. I knew what budgeting was all about, and that’s what I put into practice. I learned something from President Kennedy. He put a strict limit on the budget. Everyone thought he was a spendthrift, and he wanted to prove the contrary.”

During the late ’60s, nobody could have accused Cammarosano of being a spendthrift. Tightfisted was more like it.

“I always wore a black hat, and Father Walsh, to the extent that he could, wore the white hat, although it was probably a gray hat,” he says, referring to Michael Walsh, SJ, president of Fordham from 1969 to 1972.

Cammarosano put a stop to all new construction. Maintenance was deferred. He even posted signs on the Xerox machines: “Why don’t you try carbon?” Like Cammarosano, the suggestion was unfailingly polite. He says it was more psychological ploy than cost-saving measure. “I wanted people to know we were in dire straits, and we had to pull ourselves out of this.”

By 1970, Fordham’s $2 million deficit had been transformed into a $2 million surplus, thanks in part to the advent of Bundy Aid (support for private colleges from New York state), the opening of what became Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and Cammarosano’s fiscal discipline.

“No one lost a single job,” he says. “I felt if we could hold expenses down, do no more than we did last year, and with a very modest tuition increase and the Lincoln Center campus coming on stream, we may make it in very short order. That was the formula.”

A Campus in Turmoil

As the fiscal crisis cooled, student protests intensified on campus. “It pretty much had to do with the Vietnam War and the ROTC’s presence on campus,” Cammarosano says of the wave of demonstrations in 1969 and 1970. “The students took over my office two or three times. I’d come in in the morning, and my windows would be smashed. There was a fire in the McGinley Center. They did a lot of damage.”

Cammarosano was surprised and disappointed by the students’ behavior (“it wasn’t the way they behaved in class”), but he could understand their grievances to a point. “I could relate to them, but don’t take it out on us,” he told them. “I would stop the war, but I had no control.”

Characteristically, he found some humor in the situation. “The students took over the switchboard at one point, and when someone called for me, they said, ‘No, he’s no longer with us, we fired him.’ I almost wished they had fired me!” he says, laughing.

To deal effectively with the unrest, he says, “You had to be reserved, to know when to hold back, when to move forward. We took a lot of hits, but I’m glad we were able to keep our perspective. And we survived.”

Not all of Cammarosano’s “old Fordham war stories,” as he calls them, are as heavy as the financial crisis or student protests. He also fought to transform Edwards Parade, which he says had become “a dog patch.” During the 1970s and ’80s, he initiated periodic “spring offensives for the re-greening of Fordham,” joining facilities workers as they seeded grass, pruned and planted trees, and constructed footpaths.

“I used to say, keeping that grass green means 100 students,” he says, referring to Edwards Parade’s appeal to prospective undergraduates. These days, he’s impressed by the landscaping prowess of the facilities team. “I keep an eye on it, and they’re doing a great job.”

The Dynamo

Some of Cammarosano’s greatest contributions to Fordham, however, have been more personal than institutional. At the Faculty Convocation in fall 1976, the University honored him not only for his administrative skills but also for his work in the classroom, calling him an “exacting taskmaster” who earned his students’ appreciation by preparing “meticulously” and lecturing “dynamically.”

E. Gerald Corrigan, GSAS ’65, ’71, a managing director of Goldman Sachs and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, studied with Cammarosano during the 1960s, helping him produce economic studies of the Bronx and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“He’s a dynamo,” Corrigan says, recalling how his Fordham mentor would deliver “two-hour lectures nonstop at a fevered pitch.”

Cammarosano is quick to celebrate his many students and colleagues, including all six University presidents since the mid-’60s, each of whom has come to him for counsel. A firstborn son of Italian immigrants, he’s now the head of a three-generation Fordham family.

“All three of my kids are Fordham graduates,” he says. “My daughter’s son graduated from the Law School last May, and now I have a granddaughter in the Gabelli School of Business.”

And he is particularly grateful to the Jesuits with whom he has studied and worked for nearly 75 years.

“They’ve been a great influence on my life,” he says. “The way they deport themselves, you couldn’t help but emulate them.”

Roger Wines, PhD, FCRH ’54, professor emeritus of history at Fordham, served on Cammarosano’s budget committee during the fiscal crisis and worked with him as a member of the Faculty Senate.

“His whole life of service without pretensions is really a tribute not only to Joe but to the old-time Jesuits who were our dedicated teachers at Fordham,” Wines says. “They taught us by example about working selflessly for a good cause. Realistically, but selflessly.”

Last May, at a dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Faculty Senate, Wines delivered a tribute to Cammarosano, keeping it brief, he says, so as not to embarrass his friend, calling him “a mentor, a man of character, a good family man, husband of his late wife Rosalie, father, grandfather, and … a talented scholar and teacher.”

“There are not enough words to express adequately the appreciation owed to him by several generations of Fordham faculty and students,” Wines concluded. “Let us just say two: Thank you.”

Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty

For decades people have assumed the worst of Ty Cobb. The Georgia Peach, who played from 1905 to 1928, was perhaps the greatest baseball player of all time—undoubtedly one of the most aggressive and exciting. But was he a violent racist who attacked a groundskeeper simply because he was black? Did he intentionally injure opponents with his spikes? According to Charles Leerhsen, the popular perception of Cobb the psychopath is largely a myth created by biographer Al Stump, whom Leerhsen brands a liar. The truth, in Leerhsen’s compelling telling, is that although Cobb was a complex, ornery, violent character, he was not the monster he’s been made out to be.

Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship 

In Shapeshifters, Aimee Meredith Cox writes about the young black women she met and came to know during the eight years she spent doing fieldwork at a homeless shelter in Detroit, “arguably one of the most beleaguered U.S. cities.” Cox, a former professional dancer, gives voice to the girls as they and their families struggle to make a living in a service-oriented economy. She focuses on how the girls fight the stereotypes (of race, poverty, and gender) that constrain them, using dance and poetry and other means to “shift the terms” of what it means to be seen as “acceptable or disrespectable citizens, through their own definitions of family, care, love, success, and labor.”

The Graduate School Mess: What

The numbers tell us that graduate school is in trouble. Too many students take longer to earn PhDs than they should, and when they finally do, the job market is not what they expect it to be. In The Graduate School Mess, Leonard Cassuto makes a case for revamping curricula to emphasize “higher education as a collective social good.” And he beseeches his fellow professors to prepare students not strictly for academic careers, which are rare, but for a broad range of employment opportunities. “When we teach Ph.D.s to be satisfied only with professors’ jobs, we are, quite simply, teaching them to be unhappy. That’s more than just an ethical failure,” he writes. “It’s a moral one.”

What do you see as the biggest problems for women in the workplace?
I’m very big on the language that we use. Stop with the sorry! Men don’t say sorry. Women apologize all the time without doing anything wrong. Get the word out of your vocabulary. And don’t raise your hand. I’ve seen this many times, and I’ve mentored many women. Men talk over women. And women have to do more. I’m speaking in broad-brush terms, I know that. But you have to stand up for yourself. Don’t worry about being nice. You’re not gonna shout or curse. But do demand respect. Because if you don’t demand it, it will not come back to you.

The other thing is, women don’t ask. You get 100 percent of nothing if you don’t ask. If you ask, you get 50 percent; you increase your chances. With the Women inPower program, they were putting together an advisory board and I wasn’t asked. So what? I went and asked. Twice. And now I’m on an advisory board whose advisers include the co-founder of the Malala Foundation and many other powerful and wonderful women. And I’m contributing to a cause that I am passionate about.

Do you think things are improving for working women?
It’s going to take a hard change, a hard turn in our mindsets, but the turn is already starting. And we just have to keep it moving. All of us fall back at times. I speak from experience. And especially with my cultural background, it’s not in my DNA to do this. But unless you stand up for yourself, nobody is going to stand up for you. We will continue to move forward together. That’s why I always say, you help me, I help you, and we both get stronger. There is room for everybody here. So let’s work with each other, let’s help each other.

Why do you want to help women in the workplace?
I am a big believer in what Madeleine Albright said: “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” Before it was in vogue, before it was fashionable, there were women out there striving to help each other. I want it to be better for the next generation of women, the current generation of women, my generation of women. And I am very passionate about this.

Who are the women who helped you?
There was a woman, bless her soul, named Marge Lovero, who was the director of PR at the [New York] Botanical Garden. She took me under her wing and taught me about public relations. She let me take time off after graduation [from Fordham]and I came back full time. That kind of mentorship and kindness and graciousness and selflessness has stayed with me all these years later. And Susan Thomas of Thomas Associates, who was the first agency boss I ever had who put her employees first. She truly, authentically cared for her staff. What I learned from Susan is what I apply to my own business.

Your book, The Little Book of Big PR, is aimed at small business owners and entrepreneurs. But do you think self-branding is something everyone could find useful?
I wanted to share with other entrepreneurs what they could do [to help build their businesses]. But I do think, especially after the recession, people focused on building their personal brands—how do you make yourself stand out amidst this huge group of people to get to your next goal? Your personal brand will define who you are, define your uniqueness, and give you a consistent statement that will allow you to communicate who you are effectively. The elevator pitch is for a company. Apply the same principle but talk about yourself.

How has public relations changed since you first entered the industry?
At the time, public relations was considered the ugly dog that you did not want to be in your home. It is now a respected discipline that is part of virtually every business communication program. It has become much more strategic and much more nuanced. The tide has turned.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Alexandra Loizzo-Desai.

Four years later, her leap of faith paid off. She surprised track fans this past summer by earning a spot on the U.S. national team at the world championships in Beijing. Now she’s training for next July’s Olympic trials—one big step closer to her dream of competing at the 2016 Summer Games in Brazil.

How did your family respond to your career move?

We’re all pretty practical people, my family, and we’re all very close. When I told my dad, he sat me down in the living room and reminded me that I’d be giving up a salary, benefits, and a pretty clear path forward. He wanted me to know that it was going to take a lot of work [to make it as a pro runner], and it was a very long shot that it would turn into anything. Once I made up my mind, though, my family was supportive. They didn’t give me any pressure not to run.

How did it go at first?

We were entering an Olympic year, London 2012, and my big goal was to make trials. Most people talk about the Olympics—I knew that was not realistic at that point. I needed an eight-second jump in my personal best time to reach 4:12.9, the qualifying standard for the 1500-meter race. I had made big jumps, but at a certain point they get really hard to make. Not getting on the line at trials was a big wake-up call. It wasn’t the definition of a smart goal.

You made a big jump this year, bringing your time down to 4:03.56. How do you account for that?

I don’t want to say I was undertrained or underdeveloped, but I am kind of a late bloomer in the sport. Every year in college, I dropped almost 10 seconds, mostly because my initial times were unimpressive. But I had no idea there was a 4:03 in me at that point. If you had told me, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Is getting to the Olympics a smart goal now?

The dream didn’t become real until this year, when I made the world championships team. Now that I know I’m capable of it, it’s a very real goal for me. I want to get to the final and be among the top three at the Olympic trials.

Did you ever doubt that you did the right thing leaving Morgan Stanley?

That came up quite a bit, particularly after not making the trials in 2012. I ended up getting sick at the end of that year because I was training over my head. I considered moving on, but I had made a decision and wanted to see it through.

What compels you to run?

That competitive nature that athletes have—that’s what kept me engaged in the beginning. I wasn’t really fast at the start. Every time you get to a new level, there’s more work to do. That can sound demoralizing, but it’s more motivating for me than anything else. As long as I can rise to each challenge, I’ll see how high I can go.

—Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Ryan Stellabotte.