Guest Shervyn von Hoerl , Dartmouth '96, is Iranian-American and had thought as a child touched by the fallout from foreign policy decisions that he would hitch his wagon to a politician’s star and be Secretary of State one day. Participating as an operative in campaigns during high school seemed to pave the way. But after college, he felt burned out on politics in general and even questioned the point of it all. Deciding to “sell out” as he called it and make a living in New York in the world o...
Feb 01, 2021•29 min•Season 3Ep. 31
Guest Gregory Papajohn , Dartmouth '96, had thought that Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service would be the way to live out the service ethos that he’d grown up with. But, even for a kid who lived in the shadow of Manhattan, he realized during a visit to D.C. that urban life didn’t seem to fit his idea of college. Dartmouth’s setting provided him with a groundedness that he still relies on to help him make big decisions. A government major, Gregory interned at a law firm during a leave term and...
Jan 25, 2021•34 min•Season 2Ep. 30
Guest Matt Wiltshire , Dartmouth '96, grew up in Nashville in a family that was active in politics and in serving the community around them in a variety of ways. Ever the fiery, argumentative one, Matt went to college to study government and thought law school was in his future. Thinking he’d save a little money before law school, he followed in the shoes of senior year roommate and went into investment banking. He hadn’t intended to make it into a fifteen-year career but the idea of sticking wi...
Jan 18, 2021•22 min•Season 2Ep. 29
Guest Matt Little , Dartmouth '96, had a bit of a free-range childhood, allowed as he was to paddle out to his own little island fiefdom near his parent’s lake cabin in Central Minnesota. Finding frogs and other friends and feeling one with that special place, he knew then—as a young child—that he wanted to do all he could to protect special places like this. With an eye to one day becoming head of the Environmental Protection Agency, he pursued his high school studies to get him to the right co...
Jan 11, 2021•22 min•Season 2Ep. 28
Guest Jennifer Wullf , Dartmouth '96, never thought she was college bound, let alone Ivy League material. But with encouragement that she was a strong writer who had the goods, she entered Dartmouth as a transfer student at the age of 23, making her time at college seem somewhat out of sync. Perhaps that is one reason the memoir she tried to write during her last year’s fellowship—though packed with a roller-coaster plot—ended up missing the mark. She continued her journey as a writer with a qui...
Jan 04, 2021•26 min•Season 2Ep. 27
Guest Darryl Knudsen , Dartmouth '96, was technically a comparative literature major in college, but one could be forgiven for thinking he was a paddling major given the amount of time he spent on the water. Unsuprisingly, he began adult life as a river guide. But when he stood on the banks at one point and realized he didn’t have the tools needed to make the impact he wanted, he took a different course. He embarked on a career in human rights and business—one he needed to forge for himself as t...
Dec 28, 2020•34 min•Season 2Ep. 26
Guest Suzie Brown Sax , Dartmouth '96, was part of lots of communities in college, from sports to Greek life. But she found her “people” for the first time, senior year, when she joined the female a cappella group the Rockapellas. While the group provided the creative outlet she didn’t know she needed, it also made her question her long-standing dreams to join her science skills with her interest in helping people in a life of medicine. Sage words from a summer music teacher right before she wen...
Dec 21, 2020•23 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Guest Rebecca Oettinger Feder , Dartmouth '96, knew enough about business after leaving college to know that she didn’t know enough. After a rotational program and an executive MBA, she realized she was drawn most to Human Resources, which she came to regard as more than just an enabling function to the businesses of which she was a part. Her roles supporting senior managers across the entirety of a business gave her an intimate look at all sides of the business and a courtside seat to how senio...
Dec 14, 2020•20 min•Season 2Ep. 24
Guest Marc McDonald , Dartmouth '96 and self-proclaimed film lover, had been combining his love of media and communications and sports through writing and broadcasting during college. After sticking around campus for a year after graduation as an assistant track coach, he also took advantage of the opportunity to run the Dartmouth Film Society and a chance to connect with the Telluride Film Festival kicked off a passion that he was able to stoke for over two decades. Although he immediately knew...
Dec 07, 2020•29 min•Season 2Ep. 23
Guest Scott Anthony , Dartmouth '96, was never really thinking about a life in journalism. But he found the time spent working on America’s oldest college newspaper, The Dartmouth , enjoyable because of his ability to pose questions and do research and tell a story. Years later, those skills would come back together in the work he does as an author on business innovation topics. Though he credits growing up in a family that valued tinkering, trying things, and finding new connections as one insp...
Nov 30, 2020•23 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Guest Chesley Homan Flotten , Dartmouth '96, entered college thinking she would be an advocate in the legal sense—one who is professionally qualified to plead the cause of another in a court of law. But a love of history soon blossomed and she found herself in graduate school with the idea of researching and teaching. Ultimately, that path didn’t resonate with her either and, as a new mother, she sought to exercise her professional side in a role where she could make more direct impact on people...
Nov 23, 2020•32 min•Season 2Ep. 21
Guest Jonathon “Stew” Stewart , Dartmouth '96, set off to Hollywood immediately after graduation to become a writer and director in Hollywood. Without ready-made connections or a pre-determined path, he had to stumbled around in the beginning until a few observations of the sublime and the ridiculous within his own family made him take stock anew and recommit to the path he’d chosen. Embarking on a collaboration with fellow Dartmouth writer Eyal Podell ’97, he worked on a biopic script about a p...
Nov 16, 2020•29 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Recently , ROADS TAKEN sat down to talk with Justin Boyd about his journey through being a student-athlete in college, managing his time well enough to get into dental school, and emerging as the fourth generation of his family to practice dentistry. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, he had to help his family shut down the practice and then use the time to rethink dental care in this modern age. Join Leslie Jennings Rowley as she talks to Justin about this for a special covid-19 Bonus Episode o...
Nov 06, 2020•9 min
Guest Justin Boyd , Dartmouth '96, may have been destined to practice dentistry with three generations of dentists on his father’s side preceding him. But as captain of the men’s lacrosse team, Justin realized his first job was to learn to juggle his role as a student-athlete (and fraternity member) with his pre-med studies. Knowing dentistry wasn’t the only game in town, he found himself seeking advice from a teammate’s father who was a prescient physician: He told him that it appeared that gen...
Nov 02, 2020•24 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Guest Michelle Erickson Waters , Dartmouth '96, had originally thought she’d be a lawyer, but after she spent a fellowship term with a legal aid organization at the border doing more grant-writing and bureaucratic stuff and less helping people, she listened more carefully to the call to the ministry. A path to divinity school took a slightly different turn than expected when she chose to attend the same school as non-Christian-boyfriend-turned-Christian-fiancé. They have now served together as a...
Oct 26, 2020•22 min•Season 2Ep. 18
Guest Joey Hood , Dartmouth '96, had originally thought he’d spend a life in government service or maybe in politics, but after he realized government majors were mostly really passionate, argumentative lawyers in training, he concentrated in his beloved French. Taking opportunities that presented themselves and ones he concocted on his own, he did every foreign study program in France available, taught English and studied west African literature in Senegal, and pursued a Fulbright Fellowship in...
Oct 19, 2020•28 min•Season 2Ep. 17
"My main objective of starting the ROADS TAKEN podcast was to highlight the stories of my classmates as we travel the road this year to our 25th college reunion – to reflect on who we were when we graduated, who we thought we’d be, and how we’ve traveled down various roads to get where we are today. I wanted to hit home the idea that, regardless of the paths we’ve taken, we’ve still lived into these full lives. "But at this time when so many young adults out there are wondering what their future...
Oct 05, 2020•16 min
Host Leslie Jennings Rowley wanted to take a moment to say thank you to the ROADS TAKEN listeners. "I know you are out there – From Seattle to Austin, Aspen to Cranford, Brasilia to Nairobi. And I really appreciate that you keep coming back. "When I started this podcast, I wanted to share the stories of my classmates and how they’ve navigated their sometimes winding roads since college. I knew the stories would be as varied as the individuals telling them. "What I didn’t anticipate was that you ...
Sep 28, 2020•2 min
Guest Aleph Henestrosa , Dartmouth '96, knew that he needed good grades and an Ivy League degree in order not to disappoint his father, who had staked out a “central plan” for young Aleph from an early age. This dutiful son did what was expected. Though a personal wake-up call came during his junior year, making him realize he’d always relied on that central plan, he heard the call but didn’t quite have an alternative to the path to the top. Onward to McKinsey and then Stanford’s Graduate School...
Sep 21, 2020•27 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Recently, ROADS TAKEN sat down to talk with Brandon del Pozo about his journey from philosopher in the academy to the police academy and back again. Having spent nearly two decades as both an on-the-ground patrol officer and a leader in precincts and districts. In a moment when current events have led society to question the role of policing in America, we sat down with the guy who wrote the book on it—his dissertation on police and the state—to hear what he thinks of the defunding movement and ...
Sep 18, 2020•17 min
Guest Brandon del Pozo , Dartmouth '96, stood on a folding chair on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after the first tower fell on 9/11, tasked with shutting down the exchange and getting people to safety. Some people weren’t listening until a patrician old banker said “This officer’s talking, and we’re going to listen and do what he says.” In time, a lot more people would echo that sentiment: This officer’s talking, and we’re going to listen and do what he says. A public health, drug po...
Sep 14, 2020•31 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Guest Zack Stein , Dartmouth '96, found that his early stint as a consultant seemed a less (ful)filling, cheap imitation of the romantic life in the craft beer he had imagined for himself. When he finally made it into the beer biz, though, he realized that the lifestyle wasn’t quite as romantic as he’d made it out. What he loved, however, was telling a story about the brands. On the road to his marketing future, though, he was given the opportunity to take control of the operations and buying si...
Sep 07, 2020•30 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Guest Brad Parks , Dartmouth '96, figured out in high school that he loved the world of sports journalism and honed his craft in college by founding The Sports Weekly. After graduation, he was on the road—literally—to a career in sportwriting, covering just about every Tiger Woods match in the golfer’s heyday and a host of other top sporting contests. Eventually stories featuring high-paid athletes became harder to write when he was seeing so many other lives worth highlighting—like those in pos...
Aug 31, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Guest Fiona Danks , Dartmouth '96, thought she was going to be a doctor or veterinarian and has almost all of the pre-med credits to prove it. But she didn’t love the competitive nature of those courses and was drawn instead to geography. A happy chance of a lack of summer funding led her to Arctic science, which just happened to meld her love of biology and the physical and human sides of geography. Not wanting to be pigeonholed into one narrow field, though, she stayed away from doctoral progr...
Aug 24, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Guest Aassia Haroon Haq , Dartmouth '96, always considered herself a writer and had the opportunity right after college to return home to Pakistan and begin writing international news stories that it may have taken her years to have the chance to cover in other markets. But a chance encounter with a childhood friend blossomed into romance and required a move back to the States and an investigation of how to parlay her communications experience into business opportunities. Eventually, having move...
Aug 10, 2020•31 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Guest Betsy Miller , Dartmouth '96, left college directly for law school but had this sinking feeling she probably should have been a therapist. What she found, though, was that it just meant that she was drawn always to the human elements of the law. After years of varied work in the legal field—from accomplished litigator to law school instructor—she started asking where others in the legal profession were going to get the leadership lessons they needed to succeed and not just the “vocational ...
Aug 03, 2020•26 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Guest Kelcey Grimm , Dartmouth '96, planned a one-year sabbatical from her VC job with three months in southeast Asia, three months in India, and three months in Africa. But after meeting a loveable group of lion dens and bonding with them immediately, she scrapped her itinerary and stayed with her new brood. No long after, though, she realized all was not as it seemed. Thus started nearly two decades of struggles against the canned farming industry, the South African government, and local actor...
Jul 27, 2020•30 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Having grown up with traditional Passamaquoddy traditional music in his home community of Motahkmikuhk in Maine, guest Chris Newell, Dartmouth '96, got into pow wow singing in college and helped found an intertribal drum group on campus. But it was an elective in world music that really awakened the performing spirit from this once-engineering major. Playing at more pow wows and circles, he made connections around the drum and ultimately was asked to join the professional touring group Mystic Ri...
Jul 20, 2020•28 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Recently, ROADS TAKEN sat down to talk with Jeneen DiBenedetto Graham about her journey that included a quick jump to independent schools after graduation, a pause for early motherhood, and a return leading a school of her own. Entrusted with the safety and well-being of a school full of students and educators when the coronavirus pandemic hit, she had to send everyone home and work with her colleagues to make plans for delivering meaningful online education—all in about 72 hours. Join Leslie Je...
Jul 17, 2020•9 min
Guest Jeneen DiBenedetto Graham , Dartmouth '96, had been intrigued by the world of Independent Schools after college and so thought she was on the right path consulting and recruiting for independent schools. But after starting to question things and wondering who she was, she left her job and moved across country as a new wife and a new mother—both earlier than she’d envisioned. Feeling a loss of her own identity, she thought of where she most felt herself. She had to look no farther than her ...
Jul 13, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 7
