Alumni Experience Archives

Meet Alumni Board Member Lesley Kroupa ’97

October 15, 2021

Lesley Kroupa ’97

For what grades did you attend MPA?
K-12

Why did you choose to pursue a position on the Alumni Association Board?
Joining the Alumni Association board is just one small way I can give back after growing up in the halls of MPA.

In what ways do you see yourself as a supporter of MPA and its mission?
The mission of MPA is more important than ever, and since my time at MPA I continuously strive to act with integrity and recognize our responsibility to support our communities.

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?
I am currently the Interim Policy Director of the Tisch Center for Food, Education, and Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. I provide strategic policy recommendations for ongoing research projects and participate in local, state, and federal campaigns related to child nutrition and nutrition education. Prior to joining the Tisch Food Center, I spent 11 years practicing corporate law in New York City. My husband and I recently moved to San Diego and I am adjusting to winters without parkas and mittens.

How did you get to where you are in your career? Did you attend college and if so, where? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?
I went to Smith College after MPA and went to the University of Michigan Law School a couple years thereafter. After years of practicing law, I knew I wanted to pivot my career to the non-profit sector, so I got a master’s in nutrition and public health from Teachers College, Columbia University. I now use my legal skills to advocate for public health policies.

What do you to see happen during your time on the Alumni Association Board?
I would love to see MPA continue to connect and maintain its relationships with its alumni living throughout the United States and abroad.

Meet Alumni Board Member Isabel Meyer-Mueller ’17

October 5, 2021

Isabel Meyer-Mueller ’17

For what grades did you attend MPA?
I was at MPA for K-12

Why did you choose to pursue a position on the Alumni Association Board?
I have never been a part of a more supportive, caring, and intellectually stimulating community than MPA. For 13 years, MPA provided me with not only a place to learn, but a place to build life long friendships, pursue my passions, and create a home. I chose to apply to the Alumni Association Board as a way of giving back to a community that gave me so much and to ensure that even after graduating, each alum knows that they have a place in the MPA family.

In what ways do you see yourself as a supporter of MPA and its mission?
During my senior year at MPA I was voted “Most School Spirit” and that love for MPA has never dwindled. In a lot of ways, I believe that the MPA mission has formed the bedrock of my personal and professional identity. I do my best to prioritize respect and inclusivity, thinking independently, and living up to my responsibility to change the world for the better. Most importantly, I see myself as a lifelong learner and find joy in learning something new everyday.

How did you get to where you are in your career? Did you attend college and if so, where? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?
I graduated from Macalester College in May with a B.A. in Psychology and Community and Global Health. This fall, I will begin a Master of Science degree in Marriage and Family Therapy at UW Stout. I will also be working with Just The Pill, a mobile clinic that provides medication abortions to rural Minnesotans, as a community outreach coordinator. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, baking, playing pickleball, exploring new running routes in Minneapolis, and going for long walks with my sheepadoodle puppy, Bertie.

How did your MPA experience prepare you for your life today? How did MPA help you dream big and do right?
I am so thankful that MPA prepared me to thrive in college. Not only did I learn the necessary writing and reading skills, but I learned how to think critically, manage my time effectively, maintain healthy relationships, and balance academics, athletics, and arts, all of which set me up well for my time at Macalester. Most importantly, MPA instilled me with the belief that I have not only the ability but the responsibility to make a difference in the world. MPA not only gave me the skills to form my own opinions and develop passions but also the confidence to go out and change what needs changing.

What’s next? Any aspirations – personal or professional – that you’d like to share?
My professional goal is to become a sexuality therapist/educator. As a result of my time at MPA, I put a high value on education that teaches students how to think, not what to think. And that is exactly what quality sex education is — giving students all of the information and then letting them decide what is the best decision for their own body. My goal is a world where everyone has the information they need to make the best decisions for their own body and the vocabulary to articulate what that looks like. Personally, I have recently taken up running and I hope to run a marathon next year. I have also been training my dog, Bertie, to become a Canine Good Citizen with the hopes of eventually training him to be a therapy dog.

What do you to see happen during your time on the Alumni Association Board?
I am very excited to get to know the other members of the Alumni Association Board and make connections with MPA graduates across generations. I hope that as a team we will be able to facilitate relationships between MPA and its alumni and that everyone who graduates from MPA knows that they will be an important part of the community for the rest of their lives. I am particularly excited to be a part of the new Subcommittee for Alumni for Antiracist Practice in order to increase awareness of antiracism at MPA and among alumni.

Please share your favorite MPA story.
When I was in high school and the school day ended, I never wanted to leave. MPA was one of my favorite places to spend time. Some of my favorite MPA memories are from the countless hours I spent hanging out after school. It didn’t matter if I was doing homework with friends in the yearbook room, going to soccer practice, singing in the spring musical, or helping a teacher with a project, I was always having a blast and did not want to leave. I think this speaks to MPA’s incredible ability to create a safe and welcoming environment for students and I am so grateful that my school felt more like a second home than anything else.

Congratulations Logan Sand ’08!

May 28, 2021

Congratulations to Logan Sand ’08 on winning MPA’s Alumni Association Award for the 2020-2021 year!

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?
I am program manager for the Seeing and Exploring Life’s Future (SELF) Program at Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota. We do comprehensive, medically accurate, and culturally relevant sex education all over the Twin Cities. I’ve been with LSS since 2017 when I came back to MN after graduate school. I started as program coordinator and I’ve been managing the program since 2019.

The majority of my work is with middle school students but we also work with youth in the community who are at ‘high risk’ for sexual exploitation/unplanned pregnancy/STIs (in other words, folks who would really benefit from sex education). I’m particularly proud of the fact that our program is one of the few in the area providing sex education to individuals with cognitive and intellectual disabilities (with content specifically tailored to that population). We always seek to provide our education through an anti-oppression lens. Good sex education is anti-racist, gender inclusive, and honors cultural experiences and worldviews; I like to think that SELF does really good sex education. Read More

Meet Margaret Lee ’14

April 13, 2021

Margaret Lee ’14 works as a Production Assistant at The Film Posse, a documentary production company based in Middletown, CT. They are premiering a 2-hour program, American Oz, on PBS for the series American Experience on April 19, 2021 at 8PM CST.

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?
I am currently working in the documentary production field. I live in New Haven, Connecticut, but will be moving to New York City in the next couple months to pursue other documentary film or TV work there.

How did you get there? Where did you attend college? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?
I attended Yale University, where I majored in Film & Media studies and graduated in 2019. I initially started the major intending to work in academia. My junior year, I took a screenwriting class which drew me to the more creative side of film. My screenwriting professor was a huge inspiration in choosing that path; he was extremely honest and blunt (something I was not used to as a Minnesotan!), but made each of his students feel like we mattered and that he only wanted us to be excellent, as he knew we could be. Taking four semesters of classes with him not only thickened my skin as a writer, but pushed me to rethink the ways in which stories could be told. This is why I pursue filmmaking and writing now. Read More

Meet Dr. Sirid Kellermann ’88

April 13, 2021

Dr. Kellermann, class of 1988, is experiencing MPA again as parent to ninth grader Aixa Kellerman!

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally? How did you get there? Where did you attend college? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?

After graduating from MPA in 1988, I went to the University of Minnesota for a B.S. in cell biology and a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular immunology. Then I had the option to take a job in either Connecticut or Palo Alto, California. The job interviews were both in early December – it wasn’t hard to decide which position to accept! I spent 14 years in the Bay Area at R&D and marketing positions at various drug discovery companies. I also got an MBA in sustainable business management along the way. The Bay Area is a great place to live if you have no kids and you were one of the first 30 employees at Google or Facebook and you don’t mind sitting in traffic on the 101. As none of these applied to me, I found it made sense to return to Minnesota where I ultimately started my own consulting business in 2012. Read More

Meet David Slade ’01

March 26, 2021

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?

I am currently an assistant professor of Infectious Diseases at Loyola University Medical Center in the Chicago area. The COVID-19 pandemic has been central to our efforts over this past year, and we have been working hard to stay abreast of the latest treatment options and infection control measures. I have a background in law and my academic interest is primarily in that of health care policy. My hobbies these days are cycling, running, learning Italian, and cooking.

How did you get there? Where did you attend college? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?

I attending college at the University of St. Thomas, and enrolled in the MD/JD program at Southern Illinois University after college. I’ve had the chance along the way to learn about many fascinating aspects of law, health policy, and bioethics. During training, I completed an internship at the National Institutes of Health in health policy which inspired me and has continued to define my career interests in this area. Read More

Meet Beth Larson ’08

March 10, 2021

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?

I am a doctoral student at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Population, Family and Reproductive Health Department. My research interests include the use of normative approaches to understand family planning use and how social norms affect people’s decision-making around family planning internationally, and with a focus on Francophone West Africa. I aim to base my work in reproductive justice, which represents the right of a person to have the autonomy to decide to have children, to not have children, and to parent children in a safe and supportive environment.

Outside of school, I work on several projects, including Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA), a large-scale international mobile phone-based survey on key sexual and reproductive health indicators. I also participate on a research project based out of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health that aims to understand how to increase womens’ voices to ensure the ethical provision of family planning care to women in Francophone West Africa.

I also play on numerous tennis and softball teams throughout the year, volunteer as an escort at Planned Parenthood, have been providing emergency food relief to people in my community since the start of COVID, and, of course, strive to be the best dog mamma possible to my dog Sasha. Read More

Meet Tom Hooven ’97

February 22, 2021

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?

I’m an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Newborn Medicine in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics. I run a research laboratory that uses molecular genetics and bioinformatic techniques to better understand the interactions between bacteria, pregnant mothers, and newborn babies. The goal of this work is to develop better preventative and treatment approaches to avoid the worst complications of bacterial infections in pregnancy and early newborn life. I also serve as an attending physician in the neonatal intensive care units at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and Magee-Women’s Hospital of UPMC, where our teams care for newborns and infants with complications of prematurity, congenital malformations, and other neonatal illnesses. I teach medical students, residents, neonatology fellows, and research scientists training at the University of Pittsburgh and affiliated institutions.

How did you get there? Where did you attend college? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?

I attended college at Yale University, where I benefitted from a true liberal arts education that let me study broadly, with very few constraints. I did not enter college planning a career in medicine or science. (I thought I’d be an English major!) I think having the freedom to explore many topics allowed me to find a calling in medicine that I hadn’t expected. It was a result of realizing that I wanted a career that combined reason and science with humanitarian goals. Read More

Meet Laura McPherson ’04

February 9, 2021

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?

I am an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Dartmouth College, where my research focuses on documenting understudied languages (primarily of West Africa) and studying the relationship between language and music in “talking drum” traditions.

How did you get there? Where did you attend college? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?

I always loved languages (as faculty at MPA could attest to!). In college at Scripps College, I discovered the field of linguistics—the scientific study of how languages work—and knew it was exactly what I had been looking for. My wonderful undergraduate advisor did research with African languages, and after a class where we spent the term working with a speaker from Uganda, I was inspired to do fieldwork of my own. I received a Fulbright and spent eleven months in Mali after graduation documenting a Dogon language called Tommo So. Throughout my PhD program at UCLA, I continued taking trips, first to Mali, and later to neighboring Burkina Faso. I was lucky enough to get the job at Dartmouth in 2014 when I finished my PhD and I’ve been there ever since! Read More

Meet Katherine Garvey ’11

February 9, 2021

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?

After working in D.C. for three years in with different education-focused nonprofits, I was offered a position with Senator Amy Klobuchar’s Presidential campaign and moved back to Minnesota. Currently, I am the Campaign Manager for Judge Pat Diamond for Ramsey County and entering my first year of graduate school at Hamline University.

How did you get there? Where did you attend college? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?

After graduating from Montana State University, I was offered an internship with the Tanadana Foundation as the ESL teaching intern in Otavalo, Ecuador. After that ended, I moved to Washington, D.C. to work with the educational nonprofit City Year AmeriCorps. With City Year, I worked in classrooms in Southeast D.C. helping bridge the gap between what schools were built to do and what students needed from their school. Wanting to stay in D.C., I found myself as an advisor for foreign Fulbright Scholars and working with Department of State contracts at the Institute of International Education. While I enjoyed learning about the visa process and advising, I realized I missed the personal connections I got to have in the classroom. Read More