Some kids have a harder time getting to a school than others, not for any fault of their own, but because of the way the transportation system is set up, because of the way crime clusters in particular places. Getting kids to school is going to have to be something that we pay more attention to as we open up [school] choice options.
Border Crossings
Photo by Alexey Kolosov of William Brumfield in Vologda, Russia in 2011.
William Brumfield’s books on Russian architecture, including his groundbreaking survey, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge University Press, 1993), have won him considerable acclaim.
It is a body of work created over 50 years of research, and animated by an abiding love for Russian culture. That love has been reciprocated by Russian scholars and organizations; Brumfield is a member of the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Science and the Russian Academy of the Arts.
“In the course of my many years of working in Russia, there has been a response,” he says. “My thirst has been met with an understanding over there.”
Brumfield is a professor of Slavic Studies at Tulane University, where he took his bachelor’s degree in 1966. But his interest took wing in introductory courses in the Russian language he took when he matriculated at Hopkins in the early 1960s.
Church of John the Baptist in Vologda, Russia. [Photo: William Brumfield]
“I was searching for something,” he recalls. “I’d already begun reading Russian literature and I found some answers, or at least some thoughts, that resonated with my own quest.”
The first encounter was decisive. “There was who taught Russian [at Hopkins] at the time, and that was Norman Henley,” Brumfield recalls. “But that made all the difference, because I was ready to enter that space. Learning the language was critical.”
Brumfield’s photographs of Russia’s architecture are particularly valued by scholars and archivists around the world. His images not only illustrate his research, but also create a record of structures often under threat from the predations of nature and mankind. The photos reside in permanent collections in the National Gallery of Art and the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., and they have been exhibited in the State Museum of Architecture in Moscow.
Yet Brumfield is particularly proud of an online repository maintained by the Russian federal district of Volgoda that holds 36,000 of his images. “That is something that they created for my work,” he says. “It shows the importance of that field work I’ve done for their own heritage.”
A student of literature who took his doctorate at University of California, Berkeley, Brumfield’s bold decision to weave photography into his burgeoning interest in Russian architecture came when he was an assistant professor at Harvard University in the 1970s.
“I was a tutor at Leverett House,” he recalls, “and there was a dark room nobody was using.”
Brumfield says his new path meant that “I was no longer going to specialize in literature. I was going out into another dimension of Russian culture.” In less than a decade, he published his first book on the subject—Gold In Azure: One Thousand Years Of Russian Architecture (Godine, 1983)—with a title that taken from a work by Russian symbolist poet Andrei Bely.
His journeys in Russia have taken him to many of the nation’s vast corners. “The immensity of the space is just beyond belief,” he says. “It’s something we don’t understand.”
Traversing those distances in winter can be challenging. Even risky. A trip in 2000 to see a historic church in the northern Russian town of Kimzha led to a faceoff between his driver’s vehicle and a truck loaded with fuel on a narrow “winter road” of packed ice over tree stumps.
“They found a place a few meters back where it was a little bit wider,” Brumfield recalls. A delicate operation commenced. “It was a matter of fraction of centimeters between us. We crawled forward in increments, and it took almost an hour to get past. But we made it.”
Brumfield’s attraction to Russia’s northern reaches is the focus of his most recent book, Architecture at the End of the Earth (Duke University Press, 2015). The region boasts many of the nation’s iconic and beloved wooden churches, which Brumfield describes as “beacons within the forest.”
Yet Brumfield says the landscape holds a great complexity. “It’s also a tragic area, because of the Gulag era,” he says. “The concentration camps that were dotted throughout the North. The forest camps. That’s something I allude to in the book. There are shadows in that world.”
While he acknowledges the challenges presented by the fractious political environment of this moment, he says that almost 50 years working in the Soviet Union and its successor states provides useful perspective on the long-term trajectory of the U.S./Russia relationship.
“The whole thing has become a miasma,” he observes. “But I’ve been there through very difficult times. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during the Afghanistan period in their history, or during the tense moments after the shooting down of the Korean airliner [in 1983]. All of these things that resonated during the Cold War.”
Brumfield says the warm reception of his work by scholars in Russia demonstrates the power of cultural exchanges to create mutual understanding “People of good will, and intelligent people,” he says, “are going to find a way to communicate.”
Neighborhood Watch
Bronte Nevins is an avid volunteer and the senior’s LinkedIn page lists more than six organizations she’s given her time to, dating back to high school when she tutored homeless children. But she’s gotten more from this work than just warm feelings—it’s honed her career aspirations.
“I started out thinking that I wanted to go into medicine,” Nevins says. “But from my experiences working in clinics and with families in a variety of settings, it came to my attention that just working with individuals, while really important, won’t necessarily change things. To address the more systemic problems that affect people you have to use policy.”
She’s found a public health major with a minor in social policy to be a good fit for this focus, in addition to her involvement with the Krieger School’s Poverty and Inequality Research Lab, an interdisciplinary social science lab run by Stefanie DeLuca, the James Coleman Professor of Sociology and Social Policy. Nevins worked on a project called “Who’s Moving In?,” which examined patterns of investment and disinvestment in 10 neighborhoods near the Homewood campus. A number of philanthropic and public initiatives are at work in central Baltimore, designed to fight crime and grime, boost economic vitality, and address vacant properties. What’s working and what’s not? And how do residents feel about it all? For this, Nevins had to hit the streets and knock on doors to ask.
“We wanted to see if the changes are being done in a way that the community likes and that is actually benefiting people,” she says. “In the beginning, I was like, oh my gosh, nobody is going to want to talk to me.” However, she discovered that many residents did, particularly as she honed her interview techniques. “The best interviews were when I kept my mouth shut more and just listened and let people guide it the way they wanted,” she says. “I think I learned more that way.”
She gave a PowerPoint presentation on her efforts to date—some 90 hours of taped interviews from some 30 residents—but the work is ongoing. There are more interviews to perform before the responses can be analyzed in order to discern any overarching community response to the considerable focus—and funding—directed at this part of the city.
“In my classes, we talk about mechanisms and how we think a given policy will affect this or that, but we really don’t think about all of the unintended consequences,” she adds. “How might it ripple out? So, I think that this experience really brought home to me how policy is processed in an individual home.”
How does your garden grow?
Senior Naadiya Hutchinson sorts produce at The Blue Jay’s Perch, a community garden located at Johns Hopkins Eastern, where she serves as co-manager. Founded by members of the student organization Real Food Hopkins, The Perch was designed for Johns Hopkins students, faculty, and staff, alongside community members, to learn, teach, and practice safe and environmentally sustainable food production methods. Groups from Hopkins partner with community members to manage plots in the garden together, sharing both the work and the bounty while building relationships in the process.
By the Numbers
- 7 years in existence
- 50 students involved in spring 2019
- 15 community residents involved
- 25 garden plots and multiple fruit trees
- 25 varieties of produce
Take a look at Naadiya’s Instagram Takeover for @JHUArtsSciences:
SNF Agora Institute Announces Inaugural Director
Hahrie Han, a political scientist who has dedicated her career to understanding civic and political participation will now work to advance them as inaugural director of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She starts July 1.
The SNF Agora Institute is an interdisciplinary academic and public forum with a goal of strengthening democracy by fostering civic engagement, inclusive dialogue, and the open exchange of ideas. A scholar, prolific researcher, and author, Han comes to Baltimore from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she currently serves as the Anton Vonk Professor of Political Science and Environmental Politics and runs a lab dedicated to investigating how to build meaningful political and social action.
“Hahrie Han possesses that rare combination of qualities that we believe will make her a uniquely effective inaugural director for this institute,” Johns Hopkins President Ronald J. Daniels said. “Not only is she an outstanding scholar, whose work on civic participation has already shaped her field, she also brings a far-ranging strategic vision, boundless energy, and exceptional collegiality to all she undertakes.”
The SNF Agora Institute, created with a $150 million gift from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, aims to bring together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners, along with government, the media, and the broader community, to forge new ways to support its efforts in promoting healthy democracies. Han’s research focuses on the essence of the institute’s goals: civic and political participation, collective action, organizing, and social change.
“Strengthening our ability to realize the promise of democracy around the world is one of the great challenges of the 21st century,” Han said. “With its focus on blending the highest quality scholarly research with communities of practice and the public conversation, the SNF Agora Institute is uniquely poised to not only help us understand the complex problems, but also identify actionable solutions to address them. I am deeply honored by the opportunity to help build it.”
Five Questions: Farouk Dey
Farouk Dey arrived at Johns Hopkins in fall 2018 as the inaugural vice provost for integrative learning and life design. Dey leads programs and services that bridge curricular and experiential learning with life aspirations for undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and alumni across the university’s divisions.
1. What are integrative learning and life design?
Integrative learning is connecting inside- and outside-of-the-classroom experiences so students develop their ability to apply newly learned concepts and knowledge in a complex world.
Life design is a system of trying different things, pursuing areas of curiosity, and allowing your life and career to evolve. It’s an alternative to the outdated approach to career planning, which assumes the person knows enough about themselves and the world to make accurate predictions, and is quite linear, when most people describe their journey as a series of chance events that made a difference.
I work with students not to find their life purpose, but to construct it.
2. You say life design is based on design thinking principles. What are they?
Design thinking is a common engineering method used all over the world. It’s a five-step process: You start with an area of curiosity, then define a problem, think of ideas, try different solutions, and then test and retest until you think you might have a solution. Not every step is unfamiliar; an internship is a great way to “test” a solution.
3. Why does Johns Hopkins need this? What is the impact you hope to see?
First, the ultimate outcome is not for alums to get a job; that’s just a basic outcome. The goal is for them to live and thrive in their ultimate life aspirations.
Second, all students need to have the same shot at achieving those life aspirations. I think about all of our students who may identify as an “other” and may feel an audacious move is too daunting. That brings me to our responsibility: to develop the network of support so all students, particularly the most underrepresented, have the same level of confidence and chance and ability and permission to make the transition from inspiration to audacious move.
4. How do you go about achieving these goals? What will look or feel different?
This approach is not going to be implemented in conventional career counseling with one-on-one interaction. Every academic department will have a career person who is not there to provide advising but to develop a dynamic community with programs, experiences, and experiments for students to engage with employers, alumni, faculty, and staff, and ultimately develop their life purpose.
5. How did you develop a passion for career and experiential education, and what is your life design?
I started with an MBA and enjoyed working with student groups. I took a class in counseling and absolutely fell in love with it. I decided to add an additional year and pursue a master’s in counseling psychology. Walking by the career center, I saw a flyer looking for grad students to serve as part-time career counselors, and I literally just took a right. That was when I developed a passion for helping people pave their way toward their future.
Colorful Questions
Neuroscience might generally be considered a contemporary field probing the frontiers of our understanding of the human brain and, as such, not an academic arena concerned with the thoughts of 17th-century philosophers, such as John Locke. But senior neuroscience major Brianna Aheimer says the English thinker’s ideas do come up in her classes.
“A lot of the background of cognitive science really started with philosophy,” she says. That’s because some questions about how humans learn are evergreen and unanswered. Locke, for instance, argued that concepts could only be learned through first-person experience. Aheimer was inspired to test this assumption. She has been working in Assistant Professor Marina Bedny’s neuroplasticity and development lab that focuses on comparing congenitally blind and sighted individuals. She mentions Locke’s philosophical position in the proposal for the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award she was given for a project titled “Learning About Color in the Absence of Vision: A Training Study with Blind Individuals.”
Locke would have to agree that blind people can never experience colors—but then how do they learn about them? Aheimer, working with PhD student Judy Kim, is building on an earlier experiment in the Bedny lab wherein blind and sighted individuals were asked to sort common animals according to various parameters, such as shape, size, texture, and also, color. Blind participants performed the task with far less accuracy, particularly in regard to color. One possible reason for this is that while blind individuals might have heard or read that polar bears are white and elephants are gray, that understanding was not reinforced by having repeatedly seen imagery of these animals as sighted people have. Another explanation is simply that blind people might not have many reasons to learn about color—they don’t have to know that limes are green and that lemons are yellow to pick them out at the grocery store.
Aheimer’s research aims to level the playing field, so to speak, and create a study where sighted and blind individuals have the “same opportunities” and “same motivations” to learn about creatures and their colors. But how to do that? “We don’t want to rely on animals that are already known about,” she says. “So, I think at the moment we are leaning toward creating magical creatures on a different planet.”
Participants will read stories about mythical, other-worldly animals that include various levels of descriptive information about them. Next, they will be quizzed about the animals and their color. She’s still developing just how the study will be structured. “Sometimes I think I should be asking my brother for help,” Aheimer says. “He’s into playing Dungeons and Dragons.”
Wizard of Vlog
Angelamarie Malkoun is a self-described “book nerd” who’ll devour most anything between two covers. But the junior, pursuing a Writing Seminars and history double major, has a special interest in young adult (YA) fantasy books—an interest that developed after she discovered The Chronicles of Narnia books in the fourth grade. “I like to think that my imagination is more out-of-the-box and I would credit that to the fantasy literature I picked up,” she says.
But despite a certain young wizard named Harry Potter blowing up the genre with the mega-selling series of tomes by J.K. Rowling, Malkoun feels YA fantasy is often misunderstood outside of its fan base and dismissed as unworthy of analysis. “I think there is an aversion, sometimes, to the fantasy genre in academic settings, which I do not understand,” she says.
As part of a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, Malkoun read some 100 fantasy books dating back to the 19th century, exploring themes and tracking the development of how their adolescent protagonists are depicted. (The “YA” designation didn’t really emerge until the 1950s, but she included early works, such as the 1840s French fairytale-like novella Undine.)
She had hoped to engage adolescents to read some of the books and hold discussions afterward—until she discovered there are prohibitions against research involving minors.
So Malkoun switched gears and connected instead with the books’ creators. She shot videos of her interviews with best-selling YA authors Kendare Blake, Cinda Williams Chima, Amy Ewing, and Tamora Price to create a video-log (vlog) project, “The Fiction Around Fantasy and YA.” Created from more than eight hours of raw footage, the vlog is broken up into manageable nuggets on a designated YouTube channel and Facebook page. (A Dean’s Undergraduate Research Award helped her acquire the camera and editing software.)
“I definitely had a bit of stardust in my eyes at first,” Malkoun says. “But all the authors were so relaxed and willing to talk.” The lively discussions covered the “fictions” surrounding the genre, with each author dismissing a prominent assumption: that YA plots and prose are dumbed-down. While the project will also include an academic paper, Malkoun specifically chose the vlog format so that she could still reach adolescents through social media. “I wanted to produce something that could catch the attention of teenagers and maybe give them motivation to try something new,” Malkoun says.
She has a couple more author interviews lined up and has one biggie she’s yet to land: a pow-wow with Potter-creator J.K. Rowling. Malkoun is currently studying abroad at the University of Oxford in Rowling’s native Britain. So far, her numerous efforts to reach YA’s superstar have been fruitless. “I’m going to keep trying,” Malkoun says. “I know Rowling doesn’t do interviews like this at the moment, but I have nothing to lose. Until then, I’ve got wonderful authors such as Gail Carson Levine, V.E. Schwab, Victoria Aveyard, and Cassandra Clare to track down.”
Counting for a Cure
Since last summer, junior Emnet Atlabachew has been busy working in Associate Professor Shilpa Kadam’s lab at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, investigating the mechanisms underlying epilepsy in neurological disorders.
Atlabachew’s exacting work requires great concentration, such as when using a cryostat machine to section out tiny samples of biological material at subzero temperatures. As she works, her family is never far from her mind. That is because a close relative suffered from epilepsy and that loved one’s seizures were a troubling part of Atlabachew’s girlhood.
“I would be very frustrated with doctors because they would never have an answer to anything,” Atlabachew recalls. “Going into undergrad, I wanted to know more about the brain and also I knew that I wanted to focus on epilepsy.”
The neuroscience major’s lab work is part of an Albstein Research Scholarship awarded last year. Her specific project involves measuring the density of parvalbumin-positive interneurons in brains from a mouse model of genetic epilepsy. (Parvalbumin is an important intraneuron protein, and scientists believe parvalbumin-positive interneurons may play a significant role in epilepsy but that role needs to be better understood.) She uses the cryostat to make very thin slices of the brains only 14 micrometers thick—much thinner than a human hair—and mounts them on slides, which are then stained with antibodies to highlight and identify certain neurons.
“After the staining, I put them in an apotome, which is just basically an amazing version of a microscope allowing you to actually see the neurons,” she says. Photos are taken and a software program aids Atlabachew in counting the neurons containing parvalbumin. The project is ongoing, but she will be comparing counts with control brains that were not modified. “We want to see if there’s a difference in the density of parvalbumin between the two, and also any differences in density among different areas of the brain,” Atlabachew says.
As part of her award, she attended an annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society in New Orleans, which brings together the field’s leading researchers for lectures, conferences, and networking. “It was kind of intimidating to go there because I didn’t see any other undergraduates—it was mostly PhDs, MDs, and postgrads,” she says. “But they were very welcoming, and it was really an amazing experience for me.”
When not boning up on how the brain works, Atlabachew challenges her own brain with a different type of thinking: a minor in Africana Studies. As the daughter of Ethiopian immigrants, the subject interests her. “Because I’m so top-heavy with science courses,” she says, “I also wanted to do something a bit different.”
Camera Ready
Associate Producer Rachel Witkin stands near the Washington, D.C. studio for MSNBC’s Hardball. [Photo: Geet Jeswani]
On a Friday evening in early December 2018, cable news shows such as MSNBC’s Hardball had to improvise around an immense challenge.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller was due to file legal documents with fresh information on investigations into Paul Manafort—the former chairman of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign—and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer. Yet as the sun set on the East Coast, the court filings were still under wraps.
The heavily redacted memos were finally released less than an hour before Hardball began airing at 7 p.m. that night. For associate producer Rachel Witkin ’14 it was the sort of night she finds both edgy and exhilarating as the show’s team pored quickly through the documents to find the news in them.
“We have to produce a show with what we know,” says Witkin, who majored in Writing Seminars and environmental science. “Knowing that it might totally get overturned. [That night] was an example of a day when the news is really big, but we weren’t able to really know that for sure. It’s a question of being able to adapt to what’s breaking at the moment.”
Witkin says that her job often requires her to fill in gaps. Recently, she’s been working on Hardball’s social media profile to make sure Hardball discussions and video excerpts reach an audience beyond the show’s broadcast window.
“Digital is such a huge part of the job,” she says. “Social media is a great way to get people who might not be sitting down and watching the show.”
Witkin observes that the political deluge of the past four years has altered the metabolism of cable news in other ways. “What goes on that show, or how much time we have to produce it, can change every day,” she says. “It’s a very hectic time, but it’s very important work to be doing. And even if the day is kind of crazy, we’d rather be covering all this news than scrambling to find a story to put on air.”
Witkin has been rising through the ranks of NBC’s television news division. Her initial NBC production internships were at Hardball and at another MSNBC show, The Daily Rundown with Chuck Todd. Her first full-time job was as a desk assistant at NBC News.
The desk assistant job was a rotation position that allowed Witkin to try her hand at a number of jobs and dig deep into all aspects of the television news business. “What I love about TV is there are so many jobs that you wouldn’t even know existed,” she says. “I’m very curious about all of them, and I’ve wanted to try as much as possible.”
She says that she is especially fascinated by tasks outside the realm of writing, interviewing, or finding video. “On cable TV, there’s also a technical side,” Witkin observes. “What actually gets on to the TV. Here’s what the graphics look like. The banners everyone’s working on. Those things are just as—if not more—important. So I really wanted to learn more about that side of it.”
Witkin says that working at The Johns Hopkins News-Letter as a student—including stints as the newspaper’s managing editor and editor-in-chief—was excellent preparation for a career in journalism.
“I started off in my freshman year getting thrown into a news editor position, and having to figure out what was important to cover,” she recalls. “And how do I edit this in a way that’s not only interesting, but informative and accurate?”
Added responsibilities at The News-Letter meant developing skills in management as well as journalism.
“Being editor-in-chief was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” says Witkin. “It was a lesson in working with other people. Not only having to do the work, but also work well with other people.”
Witkin adds that her Hopkins experience also instilled a work ethic that has helped her navigate the hustle and bustle of a cable television newsroom. “I was always very busy at Hopkins,” she recalls, “and that led me to enjoy being busy at work. Having to do something under a deadline.”
In all the commotion of putting together Hardball, Witkin says those who watch the show “might not expect that we have a lot of fun.” But in fact, she and her colleagues do enjoy themselves, amid all the bustle. “It’s a high-pressure environment, but everyone is very personable.”
Riding a Dream from Hopkins to Hollywood
Emma Needell ’11
As a young girl whiling away her time on a cattle ranch in a remote reach of Colorado, Emma Needell ’11 could only dream of the world beyond the wilderness surrounding her. That, and watch hours of films in search of some clues.
“On the ranch, we didn’t have TV, but we did have movies. They were inspiring to me,” says Needell. “They made me aware there were people in the world, and that they all had their own stories.”
Now, Needell is living her own Hollywood dream. Her script for a film called The Water Man, slated for production this summer, earned her nearly $100,000 in upfront fees, plus a percentage of the film’s prospective profits.
It also attracted some serious star power. Disney and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films will produce Needell’s tale of a young boy’s search for a known healer who can save his mother from cancer. David Oyelowo, who starred in Selma, will direct the movie and play a key role as the boy’s father.
“I’m very excited, though I’ve learned to be cautious,” says Needell, 28, of her own rising star power. “Last year was the year I learned how to juggle.” While making rewrites for the movie she was also working on original scripts in a writer’s room for Steven Spielberg’s anthology series, Amazing Stories.
Two other Needell-scripted films will look to start production this year. Songs of the Damned, a prison break musical-within-a-film set in 1984, will be financed by Orion Pictures. Mark Ronson, the top-selling, retro-loving music producer, will create the songs. And shooting should begin on an as-yet-unnamed family adventure film for Netflix, with Needell handling the concept and script.
Her success follows several years that involved surviving on low-wage production work, taking an unpaid internship with a producer of several Quentin Tarantino films, and avoiding what she calls “shinecrafters”—the many borderline characters who paint a perfect picture of their filmic visions, but who are more likely to exploit and underpay the unwitting than follow through on their designs. “This can be a predatory industry,” Needell says.
Paying her dues—which made her consider leaving Hollywood after a mere three months there—has given her ballast, leading her to emerge as a Left Coast rarity: a screenwriter who eschews the derivative designs of modern Hollywood to create original scripts. And who succeeds in getting them into production.
“Film has always been about rebellion and breaking the rules for me,” she says.
As a teen, she got caught drinking at high school. Her parents grounded her, but left her one out: attending a summer education program. Needell chose a film academy primer, much of it held on the backlot where the original Pirates of the Caribbean was shot.
Her fascination with narrative and movies came with her to Johns Hopkins, where Needell would earn a dual BA degree in film and media studies and Spanish, and benefit from the mentoring of John Mann, senior lecturer in the Film and Media Studies Program, and Professor Eduardo González, the cinephile who heads the university’s undergraduate Spanish studies department.
Upon graduation, Needell decided to take the leap to Hollywood—where she was immediately chastened.
“I had written five scripts that were awful,” she says. A yearlong UCLA screenwriting extension course helped her to fully imagine The Water Man. It put her over the hump, she says.
“Writing for film is a way to connect with other people. It’s a lonely job. I don’t like the loneliness, but if I can write something I fundamentally believe in, I feel more connected to the world,” she says.
Curriculum Vitae: Wes Moore
Author, combat veteran, social entrepreneur
Education
1998
Valley Forge Military College
2001
Bachelor’s degree, international studies, Johns Hopkins University
2004
MLitt, international relations, Oxford University
Work History
2017–Present
CEO of Robin Hood, one of the largest anti-poverty nonprofits in the nation.
2014–Present
Founder of BridgeEdU, a tech platform promoting college completion and job placement for underserved students.
2007–12
Investment banker with Deutsche Bank in London and Citigroup in New York.
2006–07
White House fellow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
1996–06
Captain and paratrooper with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne, including a combat deployment to Afghanistan.
Notable
- Raised by a single mother in Baltimore and the Bronx
- Graduated Phi Theta Kappa from Valley Forge and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University
- Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University
- Produced a 2014 series called Coming Back with Wes Moore that tells the story of Moore’s search for answers to difficult questions related to returning from war
- Produced All The Difference, a documentary film and media project that explores critical issues and offers insights and solutions related to African-American manhood
- Hired as the first CEO in the 30-year history of Robin Hood
In His Own Words
“I stand here because someone saw me here first. Someone was willing to put in the work and give me the time and attention and second chances I was able to take advantage of.”
Wes Moore
ABC6, WNLE-TV
“We need to be abundantly clear on this—people living in poverty are the victims, not the perpetrators of it…the chronic and systemic nature of poverty does not exist because there is not enough philanthropy; it exists as a direct result of failed policies. We must fight the war on poverty in a manner that reflects the great American spirit: with impatience, investment, and unwavering resolve.”
Wes Moore
TIME magazine
Books
- The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates (Story has been optioned by executive producer Oprah Winfrey and HBO to be made into a movie)
- The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters
- Discovering Wes Moore
- This Way Home
