#yaotm entry

Thanks to Gerta Malaj ‘13 (@gertapixel) for this month’s Wellesley Alum Of The Month submission!

Nuha is one of the smartest, sweetest, most resilient people I know. In the past year, she's been through a myriad of professional and personal challenges--from working extreme hours and weekends, to being hit by a car! Yet, she never gave up. She continues to work really hard and has also never ceased to be a wonderful friend. I could go on forever listing her qualities. She is a force of nature and I'm proud to be her friend and fellow alum. 

Thanks to Ariana Zarate ‘11 (@arianazarate89) for this month’s Young Alum Of The Month submission!

Leah works at the Woburn, MA location for Youth Villages- a nation wide non-profit organization that helps emotionally and behaviorally troubled children and their families live successfully.Leah specifically works as a LifeSet specialist which means she works and advocates directly for foster youths aging out of the foster care system. 

 Adulthood is scary even for people who have a stable and supportive family- it's even more daunting when young adults do not have that same benefit and have to navigate the adult world by themselves. That is where Leah and other LifeSet specialists come into the picture. Leah works with youths and their families to give them any sort of support she can offer as they become legal adults. 

 Leah helps clients apply for financial aid and college, practice for the SATs, prepare for and take driving tests, make and schedule doctors appointments, drives them to court, and basically watches out for their general well being and health by helping them advocate for themselves in order to set them up for a successful adulthood. She will even stay with her clients as they get a routine doctor's exam and will attend their high school graduation. 

Even though social work can be emotionally draining, at the end of the day Leah finds every bit of the work rewarding because it makes a difference in her clients' lives, truly embodying the spirit of Non Ministrari sed Ministrare.

Thanks to Sarah Mahmood ‘14 (@sarahmahmood01) for this month’s Young Alum Of The Month submission!

Raeesah is beautiful on the inside and out. She is fiercely loyal and always tries to do the right thing. She stands up for people even when it's unpopular, and she is always ready to offer a sympathetic ear or a helping hand. Raeesah really embodies Wellesley's motto - not to be served, but to serve others. The world is a better place because of her presence.

Thanks to Mimi Maciel’11 (@mimimaciel) this month’s Young Alum Of The Month submission!

I have never met Jordan, but thanks to her generosity, I was able to get through a difficult month and purchase groceries. In December of last year, Jordan posted on a forum offering to purchase groceries for alums who were struggling and needed help. Jordan's generosity inspired alums to donate money. Now, every month Jordan offers to purchase  groceries for an alum. Jordan, thank you for your help. Thank you for helping alums like myself put food on the table. I can't wait to pay it forward. 

Thanks to a lovely anonymous individual for this month’s Young Alum Of The Month submission!

Charlotte has had a very unique career in astronautics and space engineering. She's worked for NASA and Boeing and soon SpaceX. I hope to see her being an astronaut someday and I would love others to know about her path! :)

Thanks to Samaa Ahmed for this month’s Young Alum Of The Month submission!

Aryanne is finishing up her third year of her PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. 

Her research interests lie in discerning the process through which marital conflict impacts children's socioemotional development. She is also interested in the effect that marital conflict has on children's emotional and behavioral regulation, and the ways in which dysregulation affects children's functioning in social and academic environments. 

She recently presented at a conference in Baltimore at the Society for Research on Adolescence. She has also published a paper on her research in child development, Externalising Symptoms in Adolescents with Different Cortisol Reactivity Patterns to Conflict.

Aryanne is a proud Trinidadian, and while at Wellesley she was the president of WCD (Women for Caribbean Development) and the Caribbean representative on the Slater International e-board for 4 years. 

Not only is she an amazing up-and-coming academic, she is also my best friend. We met in the first week of international orientation and have been BFFLs ever since. Even though we live in different countries, we always make an effort to stay in touch. I know she's going to do BIG things!

Thanks to Charlotte Newman for this month’s Young Alum Of The Month submission!

Marseille embodies Wellesley's motto of service to others, evidenced by professional and personal leadership as a public servant and community leader. Since graduating from Wellesley in 2001, Marseille has demonstrated a deep commitment to causes beyond herself from working for the late Senator Edward Kennedy to overseeing the Warriors Trust Fund in Flint, MI.

That’s why it is fitting that Marseille has answered a call to serve others in response to the public health crisis in Flint, MI. Her call to others has been, let me be your boots on the ground in Flint and ensure that seniors and others who have trouble reaching distribution centers have the water they desperately need. Marseille’s efforts to raise money for water, baby wipes, and now shower filters have reverberated around the country. She’s successfully amassed over $53,000 dollars. Her GoFundMe campaign has been chronicled by CNN Money and the Detroit Free Press.

Marseille is highly deserving of being recognized by Wellesley Underground as Young Alum of the Month. I hope that Wellesley Underground's readers will join me in recognizing Marseille's outstanding work.

Photo credit: Jim Gipe, Pivot Media

Thanks to Rebecca Danos for this month’s Young Alum Of The Month submission!

"First off, Jenny is an admirable scientist, a physics professor at UMass Amherst, with an amazing lab which you can read abut here.  And she tries to encourage women in science and documents her experiences in her blog WomanOfScience.com.  You don't need me to tell you how successful she is, or how important her work is, and she is so humble I don't even know the surface of her accomplishments, though I also know she is on the scientific advisory board for the arXiv which is a science and math preprint server, no, actually the preprint server.  It is where most scientists post their papers to share it with the community, usually before submitting it to a journal.  Jenny is super accomplished, but that is not what I want to share with you about Jenny. I didn't meet Jenny at Wellesley but in Southern California during graduate school years where we were both studying physics, and I spent a year at her university.  Unfortunately I didn't get to know her better.  But Jennyis the kind of person when, after not meeting for six years, and I emailed her about a STEM article for WU, she got back to me the same day.  She's the kind of person when, if you say you'll be visiting her university after not seeing her for many many years, she'll take the time to spend with you and show you her lab, office, family pictures and catch up.  Professors are very, very busy, but Jenny makes time for the people she knows anyway and doesn't make you feel like you are burdening her but, in fact, makes you feel like you are important and valuable.  She didn't make my husband and me feel inferior in any way when we visited her, even though we weren't as advanced as she was on the academic ladder.  She is also an extremely enthusiastic and positive person, from the interaction I've had with her, and a very good influence in physics for the field and for women.  She is a true Wellesley woman, one who makes a difference, and is also very proud of being a Wellesley graduate.  And I am proud to have her as a Wellesley sister and to know her a little."