Adrien Dumoulin-Smith '09
Adrien Dumoulin-Smith is an honors graduate of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. His concerns regarding inequality were fueled by his volunteer work with Project SHARE, a program to help feed and clothe the homeless of New York City while inviting friendship and conversation. In high school he was troubled by the long history of injustice and strife in the realm of workers’ rights. At Cornell, Adrien pursued a major in Industrial and Labor Relations and minors in Inequalities Studies, Law & Society, and Economics. He sees defense of workers' rights as a key issue to global equality and the labor movement as a conduit toward international social justice. The son of a Belgian immigrant and grandson of an American Foreign Service officer, Adrien has an international curiosity that has driven him to travel across the globe, including a semester of study in China that had an intense impact on his world view. He has joined the fight for fairness and justice through his work for UNI Global Union in Switzerland and the former Food and Allied Service Trades Department, AFL-CIO in Washington, DC. He also has been involved on campus through organizations such as Cornell Students Against Sweatshops and the Cornell Organization for Labor Action. Read Adrien’s honors thesis regarding globalizing labor law or Adrien's paper on China's social health insurance system.
Graham Rengert '09
Graham Rengert has been concerned about social inequality since childhood, but in his few years at Cornell these concerns developed into a passion for social justice. He began to understand how historic imbalances of power perpetuate the systemic injustices that produce inequality and he began to study the politics of oppression and people's movements of resistance. His research and activism mainly focus on systems of criminalization and incarceration and the oppression of racial, gender, and sexual minorities in U.S. society. He is a senior in the Government Honors Program with minors in Spanish, International Relations, Africana Studies, Law & Society, Latin American Studies, Inequality, and Lesbian, Bisexual, & Gay Studies. Graham is a member of the Roosevelt Institution's Equal Justice Group and a Roosevelt Institution Research Fellow studying policy responses to structural inequality as an intern with the Center for Social Inclusion. On campus he is a member of the Prison Activist Coalition, Direct Action to Stop Heterosexism, and the Women's Resource Center Board. He knows that the Center for the Study of Inequality has helped him build an academic foundation for his future of activism and community organizing. Read the abstract of Graham's paper on adoption policy and gay parents.
Elan Greenberg '08
A native of Rockaway, NJ, Elan Greenberg is a Meinig Scholar and a Policy
Analysis and Management graduate in the College of Human Ecology. As Student
Assembly President, Elan has applied his studies in inequality to his work
on the University Diversity Council-Working Group, chaired by CSI
Executive Committee member Professor David Harris. Most recently, he has
moderated a community diversity forum in the wake of racial tensions at
Ithaca High School, and he has assisted the Asian and Asian American Forum
in its fight for an Asian American Community Center accessible to the
entire Cornell community. Elan is a recent graduate of Marine Corps
Officer Candidate School, and he will be commissioned a Second Lieutenant
in the Marine Corps in May 2008. He writes: "The Minor in Inequality Studies
has provided the tools to address issues of inequality both on campus and
in the greater Ithaca community. I'm confident that these tools will
remain relevant as a Marine Corps Officer, too."
Christy Ley Kidner '08
Christy Ley Kidner, from Ashtabula, Ohio, is majoring in sociology with minors in both inequality and law and society. She has focused most of her inequality studies on the gender wage gap, employment discrimination, and women's education. Currently, she is conducting research for a senior honors thesis on the relationship between cultural appearance ideologies and women's occupational aspirations. This summer, she hopes to apply her knowledge of anti-discrimination policies in an internship at a nonprofit women's rights organization in New York City. During her final semester at Cornell, Christy will shift her studies to another area of inequality, considering poverty's effects on health outcomes. Ultimately, she hopes to further apply her knowledge of women's rights by practicing as a civil rights attorney, where she will focus on employment discrimination. Christy writes: "The Minor in Inequality Studies has enabled me to analyze the roots of social ills, a skill that will prove beneficial to me as a civil rights lawyer."
Sarah Olesiuk '08
Hailing from Asheville, NC, Sarah Olesiuk is a Meinig Family Cornell National Scholar and a recent graduate with a major in Development Sociology and minors in Latino Studies and Inequality Studies. Sarah first became interested in inequality after visiting a small West Virginia town that was subject to the destructive coal mining process of mountaintop removal. She has since extended her interest in inequality into action through her work with Appalachian Voices, a non-profit environmental organization that seeks justice for the people and the environment of the central and southern Appalachians. Additionally, under the instruction of Cornell professor Ron Mize, Sarah was part of a three-year research project that mapped the settlement and migration trends among immigrants in upstate New York. At Cornell, Sarah also participated in the Cornell Urban Scholars Program, spending a summer in NYC working at the Legal Aid Society. Upon graduation, Sarah enrolled in law school at Boston College Law School and plans to use her law degree to make the world a more just place.
Michael Snyder '08
Michael Snyder's interest in the field of inequality stemmed from his years as a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers' union Local 367 during high school in his hometown of Gig Harbor, Washington where he witnessed first hand some of the benefits trade unions can bring in alleviating inequality in the workplace. In pursuit of this interest Michael attended Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, graduating in May of 2008 with a Bachelor of Science in Labor Relations. During his time in the ILR school Michael focused on the role of labor organizations in combating inequities in employment, spending a semester working with the Transport and General Workers' Union in the United Kingdom as well as assisting in a national study of union organizing tactics and conducting senior honors thesis research on recent international union organizing campaigns. He now works for the Seattle office of the National Labor Relations Board investigating charges of unfair labor practices and conducting union representation elections in the workplace. On the Minor in Inequality Studies Michael writes: "The program not only provided me with a solid grounding in the field of inequality but also helped me to develop research skills that will undoubtedly be useful in the future."
Read the abstract of my paper on international trade union organizing campaigns.
Shane Dunn '07
Shane Dunn '07 works as a program/development assistant at the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where he began in
September, 2007. Additionally, he is a part-time MA student in the higher
education administration program at Boston College, where he plans on
graduating from in May, 2010. He is also co-state coordinator of
Massachusetts for the United States Public Service Academy, an effort to
pass a bill in Congress to build a civilian counterpart to the US military
academies to train the next generation of government leaders. He is also
staying close to his public service and civic engagement roots by serving as
a volunteer research assistant to Liz Hollander, former executive director
of Campus Compact and currently a senior fellow at the Tisch College of
Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, where they have created
a survey to assess the undergraduate civic engagement and service learning
practices and challenges of thirty research universities. Once the
assessment is complete, Liz and Shane will publish a paper and begin putting
together a comprehensive system for making the information widely available
to other schools and researchers. And finally, he is very active in the
local Boston Cornell alumni community, serving as programming chair for the
Cornell Club of Boston.
Sharon Jank '07
While working full-time as a custodian on campus, Sharon Jank completed her bachelor's degree at Cornell in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies through the Employee Degree Program. Simultaneously working in the service sector while attending an elite university fostered Sharon's interest in understanding mechanisms that generate inequality from a sociological perspective. Since graduating in 2007 after completing CSI's Inequality Concentration and an honors thesis on educational inequalities and popular media, Sharon has spent a year at Cornell as a full-time PhD student in the Department of Sociology where her educational and employment experiences integrally shaped her research interests. Sharon is now a PhD student in the Sociology Department at Stanford University where she hopes her research in stratification, gender, and labor market organization will meaningfully contribute to contemporary debates surrounding poverty and inequality.
John Chu '06
A native of Brooklyn, New York, John Chu graduated from Cornell with a degree in
Communication studies and a Minor in Inequality studies. After graduating, he
immediately began an internship with the Student Conservation Association, where he
did communications work at the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Congressman
Ron Kind on Capitol Hill. John graduated from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and
Public Affairs at Syracuse University in June 2008 with a Master of Public
Administration and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Conflict Resolution. John was
selected as a Presidential Management Fellow in 2008. Through the fellowship
program, he has worked at the U.S. Census Bureau to address the undercounted
population for the 2010 Census, and is currently working as a Medicaid analyst for
the Secretary of Health and Human Services. John writes: “The Minor in Inequality
Studies has provided me with a solid foundation in understanding
issues of racial and economic inequality."
Samantha Henig '06
Samantha Henig became interested in inequality after she relocated to an elite Manhattan private school from a large public school outside Washington, DC and saw firsthand how stark the differences in education can be. A 2006 graduate of Cornell with a degree in sociology, she is now pursuing a career in journalism. Samantha works as Newsweek as the editorial director of college projects, where she has spent the last year running Current, a national magazine written by college students. She also freelances regularly for Slate Magazine, and has also written for Newsweek, the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Harvard Magazine. She is particularly interested in news stories concerning education, the gender wage gap, and health issues for the poor. Her Cornell education and its emphasis on inequality has turned her into a more thoughtful, analytical writer. Samantha writes: "My studies through the Center for the Study of Inequality constantly guide my work as a journalist."
Sarah Vaughn '06
Sarah E. Vaughn is from Chicago, Illinois and graduated in 2006 as a College Scholar, studying both anthropology and sociology. While at Cornell, Sarah appreciated the flexibility of the Minor in Inequality Studies. She was able to explore a number of disciplines outside of her specific area of study while still focusing on her main research interests. After graduation, she began a PhD program in Anthropology at Columbia University. As a graduate student, Sarah is currently thinking about how NGOs shape nationalist discourse(s) about race and gender in Guyana. An integral part of her research is to understand the links between the work of academics, civil organizations and NGOs.
Sarah writes that the classes she took for the Minor in Inequality Studies "directly influenced my current research and commitment to producing scholarly work that not only sheds light on issues about inequalities worldwide but also provides possible solutions."
Anthony Panzera '05
New Yorker Anthony Panzera, a 2005 Biology and Society degree recipient, is passionate about applying the knowledge he gained through the Minor in Inequality Studies to his career goal: addressing the inequitable distribution of health and the disproportionate incidence of chronic disease in the United States. As a graduate student in the Master of Public Health program at Brown University, Anthony is currently working on a CDC-funded project addressing obesity in urban Rhode Island children who are on special assistance programs. Anthony capitalized on the Minor in Inequality Studies's interdisciplinary flexibility and recommends combining scholarly work with volunteerism as a way to make learning experiences both fruitful and effective. Anthony writes: "The Minor in Inequality Studies reminds me professionally of the goals I have set forth for my career and, personally, of the humanitarian passion I discovered at Cornell."
Genevieve Quist '05
Genevieve Quist is currently pursuing a doctorate in Social Policy at the University of Oxford through a Rhodes Scholarship, where she focuses on the intersection of urban housing and education policies. The 2005 Salutatorian of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Genevieve minored in Inequality and Law and Society. Her senior honors thesis on single-mother families and welfare reform, as well as her undergraduate research on rural childhood poverty, are directly rooted in what she learned through the Minor in Inequality Studies. After graduation, this Williston, Vermont native served as a Teach For America corps member in Los Angeles, where she worked to help her students make significant academic gains in a very low-income middle school. Genevieve writes: "The content I learned through the Minor in Inequality Studies were my motivation for joining Teach For America and pursuing graduate work in public policy."
Tara Leigh Castle '05
Tara Leigh Castle has made it a personal mission to effect positive change in the communities where she lives. After graduating in 2005 with a degree in sociology, she continued at the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs earning her Master's Degree in Public Administration. Tara is now a Development and Program Associate with the Young Women's Leadership Foundation in New York, an organization whose goal is to provide top-notch, all-girls public education for disadvantaged children. In this rewarding career, Tara sees first-hand the elimination of educational inequalities can result in greater opportunity for her students. Tara writes: "The classes at Cornell, and specifically the Minor in Inequality Studies, provided a great foundation for this line of work."
Carmela Blackman '04
Currently, Carmela Blackman works in Global Marketing for the Clinique brand
within the Estee Lauder Companies, where she plans and executes all retailer
special events around the world. Previously, she worked for the Aveda brand
overseeing the 3 corporately-owned Aveda Institutes in NY, DC, and
Minneapolis. After graduation, Carmela returned to her hometown of Manhattan
to serve as a Manager at the Cornell Club, a home away from home for
Cornellians since 1889. She majored in Sociology and is a member of the
class of 2004. Carmela enrolled in inequality courses at Cornell to gain a
better understanding of obstacles people face in today's society. Regarding
the Minor in Inequality Studies, she writes: "Having some knowledge of what
people are facing within their own cultures has added to my own character
and enables me to draw from a greater perspective when I make decisions
within my personal and career life." Going forward, Carmela hopes to get
more involved in business and organizational strategy at Estee Lauder.
Josh Tetrick '04
Since graduating in 2004 with dual majors in sociology and government,
Josh has taken his passion and expertise across a range of global
initiatives. An organization he founded, TelosWorks, engages
companies and students around the world on how solving our biggest
needs create dynamic opportunities to make a difference. He led a
United Nations business initiative in Kenya, worked for both former
President Clinton and the president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf,
and taught street children as a Fulbright Scholar in Nigeria. Of the
Minor in Inequality Studies he writes: "The seeds of my interest in
finding novel solutions to our world's biggest needs lie in the
experiences provided by the Minor in Inequality Studies."
Josh is also the founder and CEO of TelosMarkets, a clean energy investment firm; and, TelosWorks.org, an organization that fuels clean energy job creation in Africa. He is a proud graduate of Cornell University and the University of Michigan Law School. Read more about Josh in the Washington Post and Times Dispatch.
Kaitlin Tierney '04
Originally from Upstate New York, Kaitlin Tierney now resides in Washington, DC
and works for the World Bank Institute, Poverty Reduction and Economic
Management Sector. She works for the Public Sector Governance
Program, which promotes
responsive, responsible, and accountable public governance in developing
countries. The program reaches political leaders, senior policymakers,
legislators, managers, practitioners at various levels, technical experts, civil
society leaders, academics, and scholars. Kaitlin graduated from Cornell in 2004
with a degree in sociology and writes: "The Minor in Inequality Studies through Cornell has provided me with the foundational knowledge that is applied to my work at the World Bank."