Meredith Herbolsheimer Hart ’01: Getting to Know the General
Meredith Herbolsheimer Hart ‘01 would like to thank Professor Eugene Hill for instructing her, in English 101, on where exactly a semi-colon should go. Grammatical consistency has come in handy as she writes the speeches for a US Army general.
Not any old general, mind you, but the commanding general of the US Army Forces Command, David Rodriguez, who is responsible for the training and readiness of more than 820,000 active duty and reserve soldiers. His predecessors include former US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The general’s needs are varied and Meredith, a civilian employee who’s been in the job since last May, has written remarks for him welcoming President Obama to command headquarters, a speech he delivered at West Point Academy, notes for a Veteran’s Day event, and a welcome home to combat troops.
Writing in someone else’s voice requires getting to know the general, if you will, his favored tone, style, and personal flair. “He likes to tell jokes,” says Meredith, which is fun—and challenging. She frequently shadows Rodriquez in meetings and speeches to “watch and listen. Some words roll off the tongue easier than others,” she points out.
So how does one get a job writing for a general? After graduation, Meredith went to work on Capitol Hill, ultimately landing as a legislative assistant to Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a member of the congressional Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. After Nighthorse Campbell retired, Meredith went to the Pentagon and worked on budgetary issues for the Navy, and later for then Secretary of Defense William Gates, writing some of his testimony for Congress.
After the birth of her daughter, she and her husband decided they wanted to raise her in a smaller town—the general is based at Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. So Meredith applied for the speechwriting job and was hired—from a field of more than 100 applicants. “I had a skill set that matched,” she explains. Including that semi-colon expertise.
Settled into her new life, Meredith is appreciative of both small-town life and the collaborative nature of the armed forces. “We always are working together,” she points out. “I like…the common sense of dedication. It’s very rewarding.”—M.H.B.
Good Eats
Eat Your Way Around the World the Alumnae Way
The next time you go out to dinner in Manhattan or stop at a café in northern Costa Rica, let it be at a business run by a Mount Holyoke woman. All of these alumnae—from the class of ’59 to the class of 2009—have made careers for themselves in the food industry, whether running a beloved French bistro in New York’s Chelsea or a small farm-to-table restaurant in rural North Carolina.
Gail Ogilvie ’66, Alka Smith ’14
McSeagulls; Boat House Bistro; Mine Oyster
Boothbay Harbor, ME
SPECIALTY: seafood
SAMPLE ITEMS: seafood, tapas, raw bar
Tina Carman ’01
Café Cristina
Guardia, Costa Rica
SPECIALTY: quality organic coffee
SAMPLE ITEMS: paninis, salads, desserts
Melva Max ’78
La Lunchonette
New York City
212-675-0342; no website
SPECIALTY: French bistro
SAMPLE ITEMS: escargot au cognac, lobster bisque, trout amandine, omelette Parisienne, braised leek and French lentil salad
Jen Pearson ’96
Guadalupe Café
Sylva, North Carolina
SPECIALTY: tropical fusion/mostly Caribbean
SAMPLE ITEMS: goat tacos, fried plantains, vegan/vegetarian options
Amanda Smith Englund ’06
Lion Heart Kombucha
Portland, Oregon
SPECIALTY: high-quality kombucha (fermented, probiotic tea)
Priscilla Chung ’02
moonbabycakes
San Francisco, California
SPECIALTY: custom-order cupcakes
Rebecca Kelsey Roby ’94
Hard Rock International
Orlando, Florida
SPECIALTY: 10 oz. burger
Joan Dembinski ’59
Yono’s
Albany, New York
SPECIALTY: Indonesian, French,
eclectic global cuisine
SAMPLE ITEMS: sautéed alligator, chicken saté, nasi goreng (a traditional Indonesian fried rice with chicken, beef tenderloin, pork tenderloin, shrimp and vegetables)
Eviana Englert ’09
Luke’s Lobster
New York City and D.C.
SPECIALTY: New England-style seafood rolls
SAMPLE ITEMS: lobster, crab, or shrimp rolls; seafood chowders
Kate Old Magnere ’90
Le Monaco
Paris, France
33-014-33146-96; no website
SPECIALTY: traditional French food
SAMPLE ITEMS: boeuf bourguignon, blanquette de veau, pot-aufeu, coquelet au pesto, chapon, confit de canard
Nicky Mesiah ’77, owner of Mesiah Event Planners and Miss Nicky’s Gourmet Toffee in Upper Montclair, New Jersey
“What I bake does not taste like a twig,” says Nicky Mesiah. Indeed, her vegan oatmeal raisin cookies—named after makeup artist Bobbi Brown, who is a big fan—are crisp and satisfying despite not containing butter, eggs, or flour. Her Miss Nicky’s Cashew Toffee (also gluten-free) contains whole cashews, and no corn syrup, additives, or preservatives. (Maya Angelou, for one, has professed her love for these.) Mesiah, who was a sociology major at MHC, has fond memories of making custard on a hot plate in her room in the Mandelles.
Miss Nicky’s: Sales online via PayPal; the toffee is also available at three gift stores in Montclair—Noteworthy Stationery, The Banyan Tree, and Jacklyn Kling Gallery; 973-744-1788;
Abby Hitchcock ’94, chef owner of CAMAJE in NYC, and Abigail Café & Wine Bar in Brooklyn, New York
Abby Hitchcock spent her junior year at the University of Bristol in England and “absolutely fell in love with it”—so she stayed. A botany major, she was finishing her senior thesis—on moss as an environmental matter—when she realized that she just didn’t enjoy lab work. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is incredibly boring. I won’t be able to do this,’” she recalls. Her father, who had always encouraged Hitchcock to tinker in the kitchen, suggested she give culinary school a try.
Today, she serves as executive chef at CAMAJE, where she devises the menu—studded with dishes like housemade chicken liver pâté and Moroccan lamb tagine—and teaches many of the restaurant’s popular cooking classes. In conjunction with artist Dana Salisbury, she runs CAMAJE’s “dark dining event,” during which guests wear blindfolds throughout a four-course meal, which is punctuated by live music or tap dancing. “We want people to experience their other senses being heightened,” says Hitchcock.
In 2008, Hitchcock and her husband, Jason, opened Abigail Café & Wine Bar in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The space is bigger, and the menu is seasonal American instead of French. In winter, you might find pumpkin risotto and cumin-crusted pork tenderloin on the menu; in summer, curried zucchini and basil soup and sautéed market fish with a vegetable ratatouille.
CAMAJE: 85 MacDougal St. (Greenwich Village); New York, NY; 212-673-8184
Abigail Café & Wine Bar: 807 Classon Ave. (Prospect Heights), Brooklyn, NY, 718-399-3200
Chloe Martin ’06 (kitchen manager) and Emma D’Amato ’11 (counter staff ) at Ula Café in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
Initially, Chloe Martin had misgivings about her decision to go to MHC. Then her mom told her about the college’s tradition of nightly M&Cs. This small detail made all the difference to the seventeen year-old, for whom baking was a passion. “Mount Holyoke gets it!” she remembers thinking. A philosophy major, Martin spent a semester in Copenhagen her junior year. The academics were great, but it was the traditional Danish layer cakes sold at La Glace, the city’s oldest bakery, that inspired her to pursue baking as a career. Two years after graduation, she took a job as prep cook at Ula Café, where she’s now the kitchen manager. Ula Café won “Best Local Coffee Shop” in the Boston Phoenix last year, and it’s easy to see why. Located in the historic Heffenreffer brewery building, the café has exposed brick walls and comfy banquettes—and free Wi-Fi. Regulars come for the popovers (served with butter, Nutella, or peanut butter) and for the roasted sweet-potato sandwich, made with Monterey jack, tahini, avocado, red onions, alfalfa sprouts, tomatoes, and a poppy-yogurt spread. Among the panoply of baked goods are chocolate chip walnut cookies, vanilla-bean cupcakes, éclairs, and French macarons.
The woman-owned café is apparently a magnet for MHC alumnae, too. “Susannah Furnish ’04 and Caitlin Reed ’05 founded their law firm at the café. And Bekka Lee ’04 wrote many papers for her master’s in public health and her PhD here,” says Martin.
Ula Café: 284 Amory Street, Jamaica Plain, MA; 617-524-7890;
—Hannah M Wallace ’95
This article appeared in the spring 2012 issue of the Alumnae Quarterly.
Moments of Clarity
Clarity Guerra ’09 Proves MHC Is Ready for Its Close-up
Clarity Risska Guerra’s first job out of college was to go back to college—not as a student but as an observer, a chronicler, and a messenger to the YouTube generation.
Since last spring, when she was an MHC senior taking a digital film production course, Guerra has been producing short movies. What started as an academic exercise morphed into a vocation when Patricia VandenBerg, executive director of communications and strategic initiatives at the college, asked Guerra to join her staff and make videos about different aspects of life at Mount Holyoke. “She offered me the job as I was coming back from swim class. I was soaking wet in the freezing cold and in a bad mood,” Guerra recalled during an interview in the cubicle in Mary Woolley Hall that she has transformed into a digital-editing suite.
An environmental studies major, Guerra wasn’t sure if making promotional videos was the career move she was looking for, but the job’s appeal proved irresistible. Since September, Guerra has been posting a steady stream of short videos to the Mount Holyoke YouTube account on topics such as a hip-hop course given by Brooklyn-based dance artist Jennifer Weber. (Did you know that B-boying, aka break dancing, is “the foundation of all hip-hop?”) There is one on a papermaking class taught by Associate Professor of Art Rie Hachiyanagi. Guerra’s lens also captured the introduction of Lynn Pasquerella ’80 to the campus community as Mount Holyoke’s eighteenth president. The video uses the snappy graphics, engaging soundtracks, and impromptu interviews characteristic of Guerra’s work.
During the NCAA Division III women’s field hockey championships played on campus last fall, Guerra could be seen haunting the sidelines and stalking the stands with her tripod, buttonholing fans and participants willing to talk into her high-definition camera. She captured not only the excitement of the event, but also the hard work done behind the scenes by a student organizing committee—and the contribution that experience made to their education. Guerra knows that her work is helping to shape Mount Holyoke’s image, especially among new media-savvy applicants. Her mandate is not to take that responsibility too seriously. Her marching orders are to have fun, which she says is exactly what she is having. Maybe that is why her affection for the college comes through seemingly effortlessly as she explores the rich smorgasbord of activities on campus. Her productions aren’t slick in a conventional sense, which is a good thing. They are serious, yet exude personality and humor. For example, in a video extolling the virtues of the Kendall Sports and Dance Complex, Guerra throws a clip into reverse so that a line of racers magically emerges feet first from the water, landing in a perfect crouch with a waveless, almost glass-like pool in front of them. In the hip-hop piece, silly moments and less than utterly graceful poses are preserved, injecting a sense of authenticity along with a few yucks.
“I am very fortunate in that my personal experience of the college is in line with what they are trying to convey. So I don’t have to betray myself by saying, ‘Oh, I have to make Mount Holyoke fun, when it’s not really fun,’” said Guerra. Her ideas get green-lighted as fast as she comes up with them. Recently she accompanied Mount Holyoke women on a trip to New York City’s Anthology Film Archives. That became a three-minute piece of cinematography combining iconic moving images of hustle and bustle with thoughtful sound bites from Robin Blaetz, chair of film studies, and her students. Tying it together is music that Guerra crafted on her laptop using SoundtrackPro, an application that allows her to create original soundtracks.
Practitioners of her craft must be ever mindful of copyright issues, so knowing how to use the software is integral to the creative process. “I like some of my images to be cut to the music, so I’ll mix the music first and cut the images to it,” says Guerra, “but if there is a certain sequence of images I like already, I’ll drop that into this program and then edit the sound to it.”
Recalling the trials and pleasures of rowing as a student, Guerra accompanied the crew team to a workout that got under way at 5:30 a.m. She put a driving beat under interviews, some of which tend toward the bleary-eyed, and action shots that include bench pressing, jumping rope, and putting oars into indoor tanks.
Guerra hopes to build a livelihood that combines environmental science with the journalism talent that she is discovering as she hones her communications skills. A native Los Angelena whose father, Cástulo Guerra, is a successful actor who has appeared in hits including Terminator 2, Amistad, and the television series “The West Wing,” Clarity Guerra never considered a career in film.
Guerra attended a magnet high school associated with the Los Angeles Zoo. As a senior there, she went on a study excursion to the Virgin Islands Environmental Resource Station, making videos documenting events such as preparations for a midnight snorkeling expedition. Guerra credits a course at the University of Massachusetts taught by journalist Madeleine Blais with opening her eyes to how to find and convey stories that arise out of real events.
Part of the fun of her Mount Holyoke job is featuring her favorite mentors. “I loved my organic chemistry professor,” she said. Now Sheila Ewing Browne can be found on the Internet heralded as one of “the coolest professors on the planet.” Viewers learn that not only did Browne receive a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mentoring, but she also has a thing for Cajun zydeco dancing and got her scuba diving certification on a trip with students to Key Largo in 2007.
Guerra’s videos are migrating beyond YouTube to other parts of the Mount Holyoke Web site, such as on departmental home pages. “What I’ve been trying to do with these videos is to re-create for people highlights of my own experience,” said Guerra. The challenge with each new project is figuring out “how to communicate something that’s hard to communicate, like the feeling that you get when you walk onto this beautiful campus, full of intelligent women, in a vibrant and diverse community.”
—By Eric Goldscheider
This article appeared in the spring 2010 issue of the Alumnae Quarterly.
See all MHC’s video uploads at www.youtube.com/user/mountholyokecollege.
Jenna Doty ’05: To Catch a Thief
On TV shows like CSI, it’s usually the detectives who get the credit for cracking the case. But officers in the crime scene lab at the Worcester (MA) Police Department rely on MHC grad—and civilian—Jenna Doty to come up with the hard evidence.
As a latent fingerprint examiner, Jenna is a chemist with specialized training who relies on a delicate balance of high-tech science and keen observational powers to put a suspect at the scene of a crime. Even though she is not a member of law enforcement, friends and family inevitably compare her work to that of TV investigators.
Indeed, some of the cases she has worked on could serve as plot lines on popular crime dramas: collecting evidence at the scene of a sexual assault resulting in a conviction, or solving a drug case by finding evidence in a hollowed-out Pirates of the Caribbean-style treasure chest.
Although Jenna’s quick to say that her interest in forensics was piqued “pre-CSI,” Hollywood might deserve some of the credit for her career path. “I remember watching The Bone Collector (with Angelina Jolie and Denzel Washington)… I was a sophomore in high school … and [then] did a shadow job with the Springfield Police Department.”
Whether she is lifting prints from duct tape so that police can get a warrant, heading out to a crime scene with detectives, taking the stand to testify as an expert witness, or using her skills to visually examine individual fingerprint patterns, Jenna considers her job the “… ultimate responsibility. … What you say determines your credibility and someone else’s freedom. It’s nerve-wracking.”
Confidence is key in her work, but Jenna has always trusted the force of her convictions. As a high school student, she made a plan: she would go to MHC for a chemistry degree, and then to University of New Haven for an MS in forensic science. “I didn’t apply anywhere other than MHC and New Haven. I’m lucky it worked out!”—J.S.
Suzanne Agasi ’93: Save Money. Look Good. Swap Clothes.
In unreliable economic times, when jobs are hard to come by and saving is the new spending, it’s not unlikely that what might have been a new pair of shoes becomes next month’s rent check. But just because you’re not splurging on the latest spring fashions doesn’t mean you can’t still look your best. Suzanne Agasi ’93 has found a fun and easy way to look good, save a buck, and benefit local charities.
Suzanne is the founder of Clothing Swap, a business that hosts events giving women an opportunity to get together, get pampered, and exchange clothing. With a reasonable cover charge ($10–$25) and a minimum of ten articles of unwanted clothing, women can participate in a “girls night out” that won’t leave them empty handed. After the event, clothes that haven’t been swapped are donated to local shelters and other charitable organizations.
Since her first swap in 1994 with a few close friends and an open closet, Suzanne has hosted more than 200 gatherings in the San Francisco Bay area, with up to 400 women attending. With cocktails, a spa treatment, and racks of clothing to browse through, women can shop till they drop without spending a fortune.
“We wear 20 percent of the clothes in our closet 80 percent of the time,” says Suzanne. “If you don’t wear it, why not donate it?” Though most of Suzanne’s events are for women, she has also held special clothing swaps for coed groups, plus-sized women, and teenaged girls.
With the motto “Be Good. Be Green. Be Glam!” Suzanne has helped women realize that recycling can be as glamorous as something new with tags. “Couture karma” is how Suzanne describes the atmosphere at her events. “It can be Prada or Old Navy; it’s all about women feeling good and looking beautiful.”
Suzanne hopes that Clothing Swap becomes a nationwide success, and is planning on hosting her second New York swap this summer to coincide the movie premiere of Sex and the City 2.—Cass Sanford ’10
