Joanne Whitney sits in a large conference room, eyes focused on an interviewer, arms slightly raised, palms up and in a pronounced Bronx accent says, “What can I tell you; I’m eclectic.” She points to a long list of diverse roles in pharmacy, medical education and public service over a career spanning five decades. When ...
When any one of us does an online or in-person banking transaction, do we wonder about the “what ifs?” What if our funds could not be retrieved? For the most part, we don’t wonder. That’s because engineers like Steve Hayashi and his team at Tandem Computers were among the first to build a fault-tolerant computer ...
“Gomer, get out of my emergency room.” Gomer was the code language for ailing seniors used by Jay Luxenberg’s fellow trainees at Albany Medical College in New York. The cruel dismissal, out of earshot of any patient, was Luxenberg’s call to duty. His grandparents, he thought, could be “gomers” in the eyes of these classmates. ...
Ruthe Stein’s parents unwittingly imbued her with a love of the movies, a romance that would lead to a lifelong career. Her dad, beleaguered with the responsibility of caring for his daughter on Saturday afternoons, would drop her off at one of Chicago’s giant movie houses. “The movies were his babysitter,” Stein said. “He never checked ...
Education, formal and informal – was the air, bread, and water of Hartmut Fischer’s reality from the age four – in a farming village where higher education was dismissed as valueless. “I was the only one in a community of 60 children to reach higher,” he said. For the sons and daughters of the area’s ...
The trajectory of Micky Powell’s career path was lovingly set over 40 years ago by her mother, a professional ballet and Armenian folk dancer. When Ruth Jevarian retired in 1974, she turned her Inner Sunset District school, Star Dance Studio, over to her daughter. “It was a natural thing; the studio was in the basement,” ...
