Where are
they Now?
We’ve met many UNCG alumni and learned their stories, over the years, through the pages of this magazine. Let’s check in with them. Where to begin? Let’s go back to the start of the last UNCG campaign. A team of writers reached out – through calls, through Zoom, coffee shop chats, hugs-and-smile-filled and sometimes tear-filled visits – to nearly 50 alumni featured in these pages since 2004. Make yourself comfortable, sit back, and let’s all catch up.
Broadway star Beth Leavel will speak at May Commencement
Beth Leavel owns some of Broadway’s biggest awards, including a Tony. On May 6, she’ll receive an honorary degree from UNCG Greensboro, her alma mater. And she will address the graduates as the commencement speaker. After graduating from UNCG with her master’s in fine arts in 1980, she headed to New York to build her […]
Star teacher help students reach for stars
When interviewed for a 2016 UNCG Magazine cover story, Leslie Ross ’97, ’08 MEd said, “Teaching is a work of the heart.” An educator and activist, she’d recently returned from a US Department of Education panel on high-need schools and a White House lunch with then-President Obama. She’d won national recognition, as she’d been selected […]
PUTTING HOPE IN THE HOOP
Kevin Graves ’04 believes basketball is a key component to UNC Greensboro’s future success, and his recent gift is a testament to that conviction.
Graves has pledged $275,000 to the UNCG Men’s Basketball Enrichment Fund, which helps support some of the team’s greatest needs. His donation represents the largest commitment UNCG Athletics has ever received from a minority donor.
Veteran Jessica Rambo, on her unique journey
After the military, Jessica Rambo came to UNCG to pursue a BFA and possibly an MFA. In the middle of her undergraduate program, though, her work with veteran resources in both UNCG and the broader Greensboro community took her down a different path: She now lives as a nomad in the Painted Buffalo Traveling Studio, […]
Adam Kampouris:”Theater creates magic”
When Adam Kampouris ’13 graduated from UNCG, he hit the road for a cross-county trip with a friend, then hit New York City. If you’re an actor, it’s the place to be. He’d come to the city the year before as part of his UNCG Theatre cohort’s “Spartan Showcase.” Economically and speedily getting around on […]
Oscar nominee Emily V. Gordon: Hollywood projects in works
Emily V. Gordon ’01, ’03 MS/EdS had received an Oscar nomination for “The Big Sick” when she was featured in the Fall 2018 UNCG Magazine The screenplay was based on her own unconventional courtship with (now-husband) Kumail Nanjiani, her co-writer. Their recent pandemic-era/relationship podcast “Staying in with Emily and Kumail,” part self-help and part real-life […]
Vivid visuals of Kyle Webster
Kyle Webster ’99 has served as illustrator for several issues of UNCG Magazine, including two covers. And he has furthered the artist’s age-old tradition of making his own tools: “I ended up building my career on bringing my training in natural media into the digital world,” he says. After starting a business developing digital brushes […]
Richard Vestal: From research on Glioblastoma to Zika virus
While a UNCG doctoral student at JSNN, Richard Vestal ’10 MS, ’15 PhD focuses on identifying ways to target cancer cells, with the goal of reducing the pain and suffering associated with chemotherapy and radiation treatments by improving the deliverability of cancer therapies. As he explained in a UNCG Magazine story, his father died as […]
Sina Reid: Caring, compassion, and Civil Rights
Sina McGimpsey Reid ’65 was a key figure in the 1963 Tate Street boycott, a Civil Rights milestone for the UNCG community. Led and carried out by Woman’s College (UNCG) students – and with the official support of the student government – students demanded the racial desegregation of three businesses located near the business section […]
Anne Prince Cuddy: Trailblazer in SGA, IBM, and more
Anne Prince Cuddy ‘64 has been a trailblazer in her career and in retirement. In breaking norms, she got her start at Woman’s College. As a freshman, “I was the nerdiest nerd,” she recalls. “I was tall and clumsy.” By the time she was a junior, she won the race for Student Government president, running […]
Kaira Wagoner, “all the buzz”
Kaira Wagoner ’15 PhD is 50% research scientist, 50% start-up founder, and all abuzz for bees. After graduating from UNCG in 2015 she served as a postdoc researcher in UNCG’s Social Insect Lab, and became the research scientist for her own lab at UNCG in April of 2021. “Bees contribute to one in every three […]
Nancy Adams: NC’s first genetic counselor
Nancy James Adams ’60, ’77 MS has worked longer as a genetic counselor than anyone else in this state. That’s because this UNC Greensboro alumna was the very first. Dr. Bruce Eberhart, then the Department Head of Biology, and Dr. Laura Anderton advised Adams on her master’s degree in genetic counseling during the 1970s. It was […]
More than a meme! Grace Cindric ’16
She’s never been a fan of the spotlight, but she admitted it was fun to laugh at the memes that were made from the viral photograph of her working as a nurse early in the COVID pandemic. She’s now working as a travel nurse in hospital emergency departments around the country. She completed an assignment […]
Steven Lloyd leads NC mountains’ most impactful theater complex
Steven Lloyd ’85 MFA arrived in Waynesville as a visiting artist at Haywood County Community College. That was 1988. He’d soon lead the town’s theater organization. “In 1993, we moved out of an old theater downtown and we built a 250-seat facility,” he says. The rest is North Carolina theater history. The Haywood Arts Regional […]
Social justice through song, with Laurelyn Dossett
The North Carolina Folk Festival returned Sept. 10-12, 2021. And once again, “Songs of Hope and Justice,” led by Laurelyn Dossett ’99 MS, helped launch the weekend festival. Laurelyn Dossett was the cover feature in the Summer 2008 UNCG Magazine. At that time, she was composing music for the summer’s Triad Stage musical production, “Bloody […]
Marine veteran Jordan McClendon
Jordan McClendon was only a few classes away from finishing his media studies degree at UNCG when the pandemic hit in 2020. “I had an internship and was working for Central Intercollegiate Athletics Association, when everything just stopped.” But in the middle of the summer, he looked for opportunity and found it, starting a small […]
Notable Illustrator: Ash Mohan
Ash Mohan ’19 created an eye-popping visual of alumna Lauren Holt at Rockefeller Center. Ash currently works in the psychology department of UNCG as an administrator, but keeps crafty, too. Besides creating an online beaded jewelry business, Ash is also applying to become a children’s book illustrator.
Alumnus and Marine veteran Ben Hunter
After finishing up his time running computer networks for the U.S. Marine Corps in San Diego, Ben Hunter 09, ’11 MS and his wife looked at cities across 10 states in the South, “and she chose Greensboro; it has the amenities of a big city with a local feel.” Hunter began classes in UNCG’s Entrepreneurship […]
A nurse at 30,000 feet: Mary Jo Abernethy
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, UNCG Magazine covered several alumni nurses – in the combat zone, at Ramstein Air Base, and on flights with wounded soldiers. We recently caught up with Mary Jo Abernethy ’77. The last time we’d spoken, in 2007, she’d mobilized to Germany where she was the senior nurse/flight nurse […]
Elizabeth Hudson
Elizabeth Hudson ’95, when UNCG Magazine last profiled her, was showing the yellowed paper she has long kept pinned at her desk. On it are notes from Charles Davis’ Southern Fiction class at UNCG that she uses as a guide to build each issue of Our State magazine, where she is the editor-in-chief. In recent […]
‘Relationship building’ with alumna Saundretta James
Saundretta James ’08, 12 MEd appeared on the cover of UNCG Magazine’s campaign issue in 2006 as the Students First campaign was having its public launch. The article followed her on a day in her life as a student, going to classes, meeting with professors, studying, and hanging out with friends. As a driven, first-generation […]
A nurse’s life in LA
You may know Amber Gagliano ’17 as the student nursing intern on the cover of the Spring 2017 issue, the one celebrating UNCG Nursing’s 50th anniversary. After graduation she worked as a traveling emergency/trauma nurse, which brought her to LA. Since 2020 she has shifted to a company that provides at-home doctor visits and IV […]
Ernest Dollar
Ernest Dollar ’93 continues to tell the story of our state capital as the director of the City of Raleigh Museum. He tells us, “One of my life goals takes place (in April 2022): I have a book coming out on the end of the Civil War in North Carolina.” He has also been very […]
UNCG hoops star Lucy Mason now an academic coach
Lucy Mason ’15/16 was featured in the spring 2016 issue for her then-record basketball points total and for her research on African-American figures on campus. Since then she has pursued sports further, and taken up leadership and guidance positions with a master’s in sports business. While studying for her masters, at Temple University, she also […]
Latoya Jordan develops legal interpreting skills
Latoya Jordan ‘06, featured on the cover in 2019, is an American Sign Language Interpreter and a CODA, a child of a deaf adult. She has worked in several fields within the profession, from interpreting for state and federal agencies, to medical appointments, from theater and film and post secondary education, to concerts and music […]
Catherine Johnson
Leading through the Covid crisis presented challenges around every corner. “I kept saying I’ve never been faced with this before,” says Guilford County Family Justice Center Director Catherine Johnson ‘09 MS/EdS. While much of the world closed down, the Family Justice Center was negotiating how to keep helpers safe so they could keep survivors safe. […]
Chase Holleman
Chase Holleman ’16, when UNCG Magazine last covered him, was Program Director in GCSTOP (Guilford County Solution To The Opioid Problem), located in the UNCG Department of Social Work. In the community’s fight against overdose fatality, he was on the front line. GCSTOP functions as a clinical training site for social work students from UNCG […]
Catch up with softball’s Lindsay and Nicole Thomas
Twin sisters Lindsay Thomas ’16 and Nicole Thomas ’16, ’18 MS were star softball players at UNCG. Lindsay was catcher, and Nicole was pitcher. They’ve remained in the world of softball since! Both have played professionally across the world, and both have coached. Lindsay and Nicole together have played in Austria, New Zealand, and Italy, […]
Keivan Ettefagh ’12 PhD focused on lab testing innovations
Keivan Ettefagh was working with James Patrick Healy ’14 PhD and others at Select Laboratory Partners on an innovative COVID test, when we checked in during the first months of the pandemic. They have continued to do COVID testing using the process the company developed at the onset of the pandemic. “My focus (very recently) has […]
With UNCG Guarantee, Tyshea Lewis comes full circle
For Tyshea Lewis ’13, ’16 MEd, coming from a small town to the UNCG campus – or any campus – was intimidating. But in the UNCG Guarantee Scholars program, she found community and opportunity as a student. Now, she is leading the program, giving back to current UNCG students and helping them find that same […]
Writer, publisher, entrepreneur: Alex Albright ’75 MFA
Alex Albright ’75 MFA has elevated the literary and artistic vibrancy of North Carolina for several decades. And though retired as a professor, his impactful work carries on. The Graham native makes an appearance in the Gate City at the 2022 Greensboro Bound festival on May 21, 3:30 p.m., as he joins other panelists in […]
Notable Illustrator: Suzanne Cabrera
For Suzanne Cabrera ’07, her art consistently starts by hand, whether that is ensuring traces of her analog process come through in her Open Sketch Book project or in starting The Tiny Greenhouse as a place to share plants and well-designed objects with her community. She shares both projects with her husband, studio partner, and […]
Julie DeVore and Byrne’s ‘American Utopia’
Since working on “School of Rock” (when UNCG Magazine last featured her), Julie DeVore ’10 has continued her Broadway career. She has worked closely with pop-star David Byrne on the “American Utopia” show – and helped create his unique “Unchained” show when many cast members were out during the height of the winter Covid surge. […]
Notable Illustrator: Tristin Miller
With a background in art and graphic design, Tristin Miller ’10 is flexing other muscles these days. After several years of organizing the Hand to Hand Market and myriad other artist-community groups around the Triad, she is now also a weightlifting coach, focusing on trauma-informed private sessions with people who might not feel safe in […]
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