BRIEFLY...
Eli Winkelman(2006,pictured with President Clinton) has continued to see her Strauss project - Challah For Hunger - expand into a flourishing empire of sorts: there are now 30+ chapters dotting the country, and she was awarded $20,000 from Chase Community Giving. High-level recognition is hardly new. The website prominently features a YouTube clip from a Clinton Global Initiative session a few years ago, in which President Clinton outlines and praises Eli's story of founding the organization... Mark Michalski (2003) passed along an article from the San Jose Mercury News that chronicles the ongoing progress, seven years later, of his project: Creating Communications Infrastructure In the Schools of the Himalayan Mountains. He, working in collaboration with Mahabir Pun (pictured right, foreground) 
and others, installed an Internet network in the Nepali mountain region, thereby providing new educational and other opportunities in the region...Catie Bereznay (2006) touched base to let us know that she had concluded her first year at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and has been selected as a Gate's scholar - and next year will be doing an internship examining maternal health issues in either Eastern Africa or Bangladesh...Josh Nesbit (2008, below, assisting a patient), operating from the base of his Strauss project (Expanding the Role of HIV-Positive Community health Workers: A Communication Initiative in Rural Malawi), has expanded the scope of his public service and text message networks providing medical information and care, wearing such hats as co-founder and executive director of FrontlineSMS: Medic and FrontlineSMS Ambassador. Visit www.jopsa.org for information and posts about the projects, international health, mobile technology, and more...Once in a blue moon, the enhanced professional opportunities afforded to alumni recipients of the Strauss Scholarship originate rather close to home: Emily Rasmussen (2006) was hired by Strauss Founda
tion Chair Nancy Barry to work at Nancy Barry Associates - Enterprise Solutions to Poverty... At this point, it's not uncommon for Strauss alumni and their projects to intersect with the Clinton Global Initiative. Indeed, Samantha Wilson (2008) received a grant from the CGI for what's now called the Child Leader Project, but was launched as a Strauss project with a longer, more unwieldy name She discusses the history - and future - of the project in this local CNN interview (although without acknowledging its Strauss roots, an egregious oversight for which we forgive her!)...
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Jamie Zim
merman (Strauss 2007, pictured left; there's also a photo from her film, below right) let us know that as an outgrowth of her Strauss project, Heart of Africa: Using Film To Bring Refugees' Stories To An American Audience - which hit some cultural and ethical bumps on the road to film fruition - she and her colleagues did complete a short documentary. Entitled "Far From Gone," the film relates the stories of two refugees from the Republic of Congo. The documentary was selected to be screened at the 
International Documentary Association's DocuWeek festival held last summer at the ArcLight Theatre in Hollywood...Matt Spence (1999, below left) fills us in on some of what he's done in the decade since he was a Strauss Scholar: After graduating Yale Law School, he clerked for a federal appeals court judge in Chicago, followed by working for the Obama campaign- specifically, for Susan Rice. He moved to 
Washington, DC, in the employ of the Obama transition team, and on Inauguration Day, he began work at the White House on the National Security Council. His office is in the West Wing, where he reports to National Security Advisor General James Jones and his deputy, Tom Donilon...Leah Katz (1998, below right) is living in Oakland and working as the Grants Manager for Sustainable Conservation (http://www.suscon.org/), a California-based non-profit organization that believes protecting the environment can also 
be good for business. "As for other great news," she adds, "I am getting married this fall."...Shawn Mattison (2000) reports that he graduated from UCSF Medical School in May, and began a four-year joint residency program in internal medicine and public health at Kaiser in Oakland. In his fourth year, Shawn will be attending UC Berkeley's School of Public Health to get an MPH ("my third master's degree, as ridiculous as that is"). About his Strauss project, Safe Space: A Free Clinic for Homeless Youth, he notes that it "continues to thrive! I have had the opportunity to work there as an undergraduate and a medical student, and now I am looking forward to returning as an attending physician as soon as I am licensed!" ...Brian McInnis (2005) wrote to inform us that his Strauss project, University of California: Increasing Voter Participation, spurred a more consuming interest academically and professionally - further galvanized, he says, by an important conversation with Strauss Foundation trustee, James Stofan. This 
led to graduate school in public policy at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, and an additional year there as a reseacher, and he's now working for the Rand Corporation on education public policy issues...Jenna Harvey (2007, left) was first runner-up in the Miss California contest held last summer in Fresno, where more than 50 counties were represented. Harvey was pre-med at UC Davis, graduating with a major in communication and minors in music and neurobiology, physiology and behavior - medical school is on the immediate horizon, with a likely path towards pediatrics...
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Tess Bridgeman(Strauss 2002, pictured left) touched base to let us know that she is about to begin her third and final year of law school at NYU and is " still finishing up my doctorate in International Relations at Oxford (in my " spare time ")" and later says, " by way of update on my Strauss-funded project, Puente a la Salud Comunitaria, is still up and running in Oaxaca,Mexico"... Amy Cantor(1998) currently resides in Ventura, CA, where 
she is starting her final year as a family medicine resident at the Ventura County Medical Center... Alex Quick(2005, pictured right), who founded Donor Dudes, a student organization designed to help address the shortage of lifesaving donors(organ, tissue, blood, marrow, etc.) recently wrote in "to let the Strauss Foundation know that Donor Dudes is still doing their thing. Feel free to sign up for our quarterly newsletter at www.DonorDudes.com"... 
Thomas Duncan(1997, pictured left), is Director of Public Policy and Outreach Coordinator of a green technology company called TernionBio Industries-- and in an instance of Strauss synergy, he is collaborating on certain projects with Aram Nadjarian(2005), who's now working as Director of Special Projects and Special Advisor to the Secretary of California's Environmental Protection Agency; another hat Aram is wearing: organizer for the Governors' Global Climate Summit 2 in Los Angeles (www.governorsglobalclimatesummit.org)... Sarah Averbach(Strauss 2001), whose project was entitled "Helping Hands Women's Clinic: Khandbari, Nepal," reports that she graduated from UCSF School of Medicine in May, and has started her residency in Ob-Gyn at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard University ...Ankur Luthra(2002), is living in Saratoga, CA and working in Palo Alto for Ziff Brothers Investments, a private, New York City-based investment firm, handling technology investments for the firm... Devra Wang(1999, pictured right), 
whose project was "Reducing Barriers To Buying Green Electricity," is living in Sunnyvale and spending most of her time looking after her identical twin baby boys, but is also working part-time for the Natural Resources Defense Council, promoting energy efficiency and other solutions to global warming ...
If you're a former Strauss Scholar, we'd love to include your information — professional and/or personal — in BRIEFLY. Please send updates, including pictures to Barbara Taborek at admin@straussfoundation.org. Thanks.