The Office of Alumnae Relations and Development is thinking of our Smith community during these challenging times and we hope you are receiving the support you need.

All across the world, alums are stepping up to help their communities, stay social and lift up the most vulnerable among us. We’ve been so inspired—but not surprised—by the thoughtfulness and generosity of our community. In that spirit, we hope this collection of resources provides a welcome source of connection, information and even entertainment during this difficult time.

Remember to also update your profile in Smiith's newly redesigned alum directory, now called The Network, connect with your class and see how your local Smith club is keeping in touch. For updates on Smith’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak, visit the college’s coronavirus disease page.

Get Updates

• See all letters from President Kathleen McCartney to the community, including her February 2022 letter announcing she will step down in June 2023 as president of Smith..
• Meet Sarah Willie-LeBreton, the 12th president of Smith College, and read her recent interview in the SAQ.
• Get to know the 2023 Smith Medalists, who will be honored at Rally Day on February 23.
• College Magazine has put Smith on its list of the Top 10 Best Colleges for Networking. 
• Smith's board of trustees welcomed seven new members for four-year terms.
• Learn about Smith's innovative geothermal campus energy project that will help the college achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.
• Floyd Cheung, professor and vice president for equity and inclusion, talks about implementing Toward Racial Justice at Smith College—a strategic plan developed to advance antiracism work and make Smith truly inclusive.
• Discover how the college has replaced loans with grants in financial aid awards.
• Learn about the college's Here for Every Voice scholarship aid fundraising initative and watch students talk about how aid has transformed their lives. 
• Explore your alum website. Bookmark the site, then check back often to watch webinars, learn about upcoming events, see what fellow Smithies are up to and much more.
• Discover how Smith is one of the top 10 Fulbright-producing institutions, and then meet some of our Fulbright recipients.

Learn Something New

• President McCartney regularly invites influential thought leaders to share their expertise and inspire discourse on key topics. Learn more and check out this year's events.
• Naila Moreira—director of Smith’s new journalism concentration, a science writing instructor and a lecturer in English language and literature—authors this article about journalism and its connection to the liberal arts.
• Never have enough time to get it all done? Join the club! In this podcast hosted by Linda Nazareth, Sabina Nawaz ’88, a global CEO coach, leadership speaker and writer, talks about how to let go of “magical thinking” and figure out how to get control of your time,
• In this Tricycle Talks podcast, James Shaheen interviews Smith professor Jay Garfield about his new book, Losing Ourselves. They discuss the Buddhist notion of “self” as an illusion, and why belief in a self is what Garfield calls “a recipe for a very narrow kind of egoism; it’s a recipe for the idea that ... the first thing I’ve got to do is to care about myself.”
• Economists Laura D’Andrea Tyson ’69 and Lenny Mendonca co-author this article about voting rights in America. 
• A Washington Post article examines how institutions like Smith College and Ohio State University are managing the challenges, benefits and sustainability of no-loans financial aid policies.
• In this NPR podcast, Loretta Ross, associate professor at Smith, and Barbara Phillips, former associate professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law, talk with Stanlie James about her new book, Practical Audacity: Black Women and International Human Rights, in which James profiles 14 Black women dedicated to human rights.
• Sign up for one of Smith’s webinars and check out the Smith College Alumnae YouTube Channel for one of our previously recorded webinars, including:
• Ruth Ozeki '80: On Writing
• Explore Julia Child ’34’s former home in the south of France
• Band of Sisters: The Smithies Who Brought the Grécourt Gates to Smith
• Watch Smith College faculty share their expertise.
• View this workshop on using LinkedIn and the Alumnae Directory, now called The Network, for your job and internship search. 
• Check out Smith Executive Education, including upcoming free programs.

Feel Good

• Students were thrilled when, on Wednesday, September 28, the college bells rang out early in the morning, signaling the arrival of Mountain Day. Check out the photos and buy one of these cute Mountain Day t-shirts!
• More than a thousand alums celebrated Reunion. See the photos.
• Check out the winners of the Global Encounters Photo Contest.
• Download a beautiful Smith-themed Zoom background.
• Watch Pam Victor 88’s webinar “Establish a Resilience-Building Happiness Practice.”
• Watch this Alumnae Relations and Development webinar, "How to Take Action and Stay Hopeful in the Age of Climate Crisis.”
• Check in with your local club to see what programs are offered in your regional community.

Connect on Social

• Follow us on Facebook. For a much-needed distraction, check out #PetsofProfs.
• Browse the Smith College YouTube Channel. You might especially like:
• The YouTube Playlist: Smith Alumnae Today, which includes the video series “How I Got that Job.” 
• The YouTube Playlist: Campus Features, which features Gloria Steinem ’56, the Design Thinking Initiative, the Historic Clothing Collection and more.
• Find us on Instagram.
• Get the latest news on Twitter.

Connect with Campus

• Join fellow alums and friends of Smith College for a reception and program honoring President McCartney’s visionary leadership and the profound ways in which this great college has moved forward during her tenure. The free events take place in Washington DC, Boston, San Francisco and New York. Learn more and register.
• Associate Professor Loretta Ross named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow.
• Read the Insider's Guide to the Jandon Center for Community Engagement.
• Thanks to a recent anonymous gift of $3 million, Smith is establishing the Gloria Steinem ’56 Endowed Chair in the Study of Women and Gender, in honor of Steinem’s work as a leader in the movement for women’s rights. 
• At the 2022 Gender and Work Symposium, President Kathleen McCartney presented "Not a Cloister—An Intervention," in which she talks about the evolution of women's colleges and what stands out about Smith.
• Nine Smithies earn 2022 Fulbright Fellowships, including scholarship recipient Madeline Turner '21.
• Tour the new Neilson! Join Nyla Conaway ’23 and Jess Buslewicz ’22 as they take you on a seven-minute video tour of the new Neilson Library.
• Smith College Dining received the 2022 Local Hero Award from CISA—Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture.
• Currently in its 10th year, the Draper Competition has helped level the playing field for women entrepreneurs. It is now the No. 7 collegiate entrepreneurship contest in the country. In this article, Melissa Parker Draper ’77, who founded the competition with her husband, Tim, reflects on the past decade.
• Learn about the student-run Common Goods Resource Center, including how students recently voted in favor of paying a higher Student Activity Fee to benefit the center, which provides low-income students with dignified access to materials and funding resources.
• From pressing for increased assistance for undocumented students to finding ways to make college resources more accessible, the Advocacy for Equity Council has been a major catalyst for student organizing around social justice issues at Smith.
• Sign up for our virtual Alum Book Club and read Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster, about Eunice Hunton Carter, class of 1921. 
• The Poetry Center had an incredible lineup of virtual readings this past year. Watch the recordings.
• Watch student videos at The Narratives Project.

Relax with Smith-Related Entertainment

• Big Girl, the debut novel by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan ’03, is featured in this New York Times review. The book is a coming-of-age story about a young Black girl growing up in Harlem and learning what it means to take up space.
• Leila Mottley ’24 is featured in this article “4 stunning fiction debuts by Bay Area authors of color” for her book Nightcrawling. Based on a true story, the novel is an Oprah’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller.
• Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy ’02 is slated to direct a new Star Wars film currently in development. Known for her Oscar-winning documentaries Saving Face and A Girl in the River, Obaid-Chinoy also directed two episodes of Disney’s Ms. Marvel and plans to direct Paramount’s adaptation of Brilliance starring Will Smith.
• In this article in the fall Smith Alumnae Quarterly, Boutelle-Day Poetry Center Director Matt Donovan discusses his new book of poetry, The Dug-Up Gun Museum, and explains why he set out across America to uncover the stories behind the country’s troubled history of gun violence.
• Live Music in America: A History From Jenny Lind to Beyoncé by Steve Waksman, Smith's Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor of Music and Professor of American Studies, examines the evolution of live music across time periods and genres, and how it has reflected societal attitudes, including around gender and race.
• In this interview, two-time Oscar winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy '02 reflects on her experience directing two episodes of Ms. Marvel, which features the franchise's first-ever Muslim superheroine.
• Just weeks after the release of her latest novel, To Paradise, bestselling author and New York Timesthe editor Hanya Yanagihara ’95 sat down with the SAQ to share her inspirations
• The latest issue of Smith’s student-run arts and literary magazine, Emulate, is now online.
• In the Regency romance world—which was given a huge boost by the Netflix series Bridgerton—Sarah MacLean ’00 is a superstar. She recently published her 15th novel, Bombshell.
• See more. If you would like to have your work appear on our list of Smithie authors, please fill out this form.

Smith in the Community

• Amanda Malnati ’22 and Alyssa Cassity ’20 are the main collaborators on a new study led by Dong-Woo Kim of the Center for Astrophysics in which hundreds of previously hidden black holes were recently discovered.
• Elizabeth “Busy” Burr ’83 was recently named the interim chief executive officer of the Rite Aid Corporation. 
• Becca Balint ’90 will become the first woman and the first openly gay person to represent Vermont in Congress after recently winning the election for the state’s one House seat.
• Award-winning gender equality advocate S. Mona Ghosh Sinha ’88 was recently named the next global executive director of Equality Now, which seeks to achieve legal and systemic change that addresses violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world.
• In this Guardian interview, Pakistan’s climate change minister, Sherry Rehman ’85, talks about making wealthy polluting countries pay reparations to nations like hers who are suffering the consequences.
• Over the summer, MIT doctoral student Annick Dewald ’18 and her team of 15 interns from across the country built a 90-foot wingspan solar-powered unmanned aircraft that will perform climate science research.
• Over 30 years ago, Lata Nayak MED ’91 founded a school in Mumbai, India, for children who are hard of hearing.
• Gretchen Menn ’97 recently won the Martin/Guitar World 2022 No Limits Challenge.
• Nolvia Delgado ’11 will be the new leader of the Kaplan Educational Foundation, which provides high-potential, low-income students with academic and financial support and leadership training.
• Meet Margaret Nyamumbo ’11, founder and CEO of Kahawa 1893, the first Black- and woman-owned coffee brand to be sold at Trader Joe’s.
• Get to know Thelma Golden ’87, director and chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem.
• In this New York Times podcast, Ruth Ozeki ’80—novelist, Smith professor, and Zen Buddhist priest—talks about the link between meditation and writing.