Category: Spring 2021

When Ph.D. chemist-turned-entrepreneur Beau Wangtrakuldee ’10 was four years into her doctoral program, an accident in the lab caused a chain of events that changed the course of her career.

One summer, Wangtrakuldee was working in drug discovery during an internship at a large pharmaceutical company before completing her Ph.D. at Northern Illinois University. While experimenting with a possible cancer drug, toxic chemicals spilled onto her lab coat, soaking through her jeans and burning her leg. “I was wearing a lab coat and doing all the right things,” Wangtrakuldee says. “From a technical standpoint, the chemicals I was working with that day were pretty dangerous and it could have been much worse. That incident really changed my perspective of how having good personal protective equipment could be the difference between life and death for someone.” 

Wangtrakuldee went in search of lab wear that could offer additional protection, and found that options for women were limited. “It really sparked my business interest and caused me to ask, ‘Why is no one working on this?
Why is there a gap?’” 

Tucking that thought away, Wangtrakuldee finished her Ph.D., and in 2015 she went on to the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoctoral fellow in pharmacology and toxicology. There, she was introduced to an entrepreneurship program, investigating how to patent and market the medical technologies her team was developing. Her connection to the entrepreneurship community and her subsequent work with the Penn Center for Innovation led her to revisit the market opportunity of protective workwear for women. 

She began to ask her colleagues in the scientific community about their experiences with protective clothing. “I ended up talking with over 100 women scientists, validating my idea that this was something that women wanted and needed: professional-looking pieces that could be worn together and be chemical-resistant, fire-resistant and anti-microbial. And that’s where it started for me.” 

In 2018, Wangtrakuldee teamed up with a group of female scientists and fashion designers to create a line of apparel that could be protective with or without a lab coat. AmorSui, which means “love yourself” in Latin, launched in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and began with a collection that included fire- and chemical-resistant clothing, each style named after a renowned woman scientist. The first collection included the Rosalind Franklin pant, the Marie Curie dress (with pockets!) and the Dorothy Hodgkin top. 

“In the first year, what was really important to us was that our products would first and foremost be effective, meaning that they were safety certified. Second, they would be functional. And third—and this is something that differentiated us from what’s out there—was aesthetics. We wanted to make sure our products were as aesthetically pleasing as they were comfortable, and that’s not something that a PPE company would normally think about.” 

In August 2020, AmorSui expanded its inclusive reach by introducing the Rufaida Al-Aslamia hijab. Named after the first female Muslim healthcare professional in the Islamic world, the hijab is made from an environmentally sustainable fabric blend, is fire-resistant and antimicrobial, and features moisture wicking capabilities to keep the wearer cool. “Until now, no one had designed a flame-retardant headdress, and we were thrilled to create a solution that would help protect these women, who in certain parts of the world contribute to over 51% of scientific research,” Wangtrakuldee says. 

“Anytime we create a product, we always ask ourselves, ‘Does it fit within our mission?’ To make a fire-resistant hijab for Muslim women scientists is not something that makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint, because it’s a relatively small population. But we want to encourage women in that sector to be safe and to feel included. That’s why we created this product, and we hope to launch a program in the near future with a school in the Middle East to provide these hijabs to students who need them. COVID-19 has made it harder to launch a pilot program overseas, but we are in conversations to make the logistics work.” 

When the pandemic hit in early 2020, AmorSui shifted its business model to also support frontline workers. With medical facilities across the country experiencing a shortage of PPE and a resultant surge in costs, the company introduced a reusable and recyclable medical line with a PPE management platform. In a news release last August, Wangtrakuldee said, “We learned that hospitals are reusing disposable products that are meant for single-use because there is not enough disposable PPE available. This approach goes against the purpose of PPE to protect the users and may lead to higher chances of exposure to COVID-19, which may result in its transmission to patients. Disposable PPE also generates a lot of waste. We think there is a better way.” 

AmorSui introduced the Rebecca Crumpler Level 3 Antimicrobial Surgical Gown, which is engineered to be washed up to 150 times and is size-inclusive, offering XS-XL compared to typical one-size-fits-all disposable surgical gowns. It’s named for the first African American woman to earn a medical degree in the U.S. 

In its market research, AmorSui found that a major barrier to using reusable PPE is managing and tracking the lifecycle of the product—a process that’s critical to ensure PPE safety. AmorSui’s management app offers training modules for staff to ensure proper use of the gown, wash tracking and repair services, as well as usage analytics, reorder notifications and two-step ordering. In an estimate for hospitals of 832 full-time equivalent staff, AmorSui’s PPE solution was estimated to save more than $1.3 million annually. 

The new product will launch in a pilot program with a New Jersey-based health system in 2021, and AmorSui is also in conversations with other major healthcare systems to establish programs in a similar manner. “We are still staying true to our mission, which is making safety available to all, but we’re doing it in a way that’s impactful for the current trend, helping hospitals and companies protect frontline workers by adopting our gowns, saving money in the process and being more sustainable.” 

Sustainability was a key consideration in developing this technology. “The truth of the matter is that disposable PPE is made of plastic,” Wangtrakuldee says. “As COVID-19 needs keep increasing, over 200 million tons of disposable PPE are going to landfills, and it takes around 450 years for those items to degrade. So we wanted to contribute to a global effort in regard to that environmental impact.”

The pandemic also inspired AmorSui to develop a product for the everyday consumer. The Alice Hamilton reusable antimicrobial glove was designed for activities such as commuting on public transportation, grocery shopping or going to the gym. (Dr. Alice Hamilton was a pioneer of the epidemiology and occupational health and safety industries.) The glove was developed with Dr. Alyssa Cole, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician in Philadelphia, and like other AmorSui products, they’re manufactured 100% in the USA by women-owned factories and vendors. 

“One of the things that’s important to this business is quality control,” Wangtrakuldee says. “The easiest way to do that is to make sure that we source and manufacture 100 percent in the U.S. In fact, we actually do it where we can easily drive and see all the vendors and factories within a few hours, allowing us to do in-person quality checks.

“It’s also important to me that I support women-owned and minority-owned businesses. As a female-owned company, I know how hard it is for female companies to be successful, whether financially, in seeking funding, or in terms of building a network, so we work to ensure that each of our vendors and factories who have any touch point in making our product is a female- or minority-led business.”

Her business approach is proving to be successful. In its first year, AmorSui took in approximately $25,000 in sales with some help from IFundWomen, a crowdfunding platform that funds female entrepreneurs. By the end of 2020, AmorSui’s sales grew 932% and are closing in on a six-figure order in 2021.

While the pivot from scientist to entrepreneur wasn’t a foregone conclusion for Wangtrakuldee, entrepreneurship does run in her family. “My parents own a real estate development firm, and my grandparents ran a large motorcycle supplier in my native Thailand. So, at a young age, I learned that with good business sense, with a mission and with a lot of hard work, you can build a strong business that makes an impact on people’s lives. When I came to K and as I went through so many years in grad school pursuing R&D as a scientist, I was always thinking, what is my end goal? Am I going to discover a drug? Start a company with some sort of technology? It’s always been in the back of my mind.”

Wangtrakuldee credits K for creating a strong foundation for her future aspirations. When she chose K in 2006, she was looking for a place with a robust science program where she could also pursue her passion for tennis. K was a perfect match for those interests. She started out in a pre-med track; however, she soon found that chemistry was her strong suit. Longtime chemistry professor Laura Furge was a mentor for Wangtrakuldee, and someone she still keeps in touch with. “It all kind of came full circle to me at one point in graduate school—I went to a talk, and when I told Dr. Furge about it, she was like, ‘Oh yes, I worked with him in grad school.’ It was someone who had been a mentor to her.” 

Along with excelling in academics, Wangtrakuldee dominated the tennis courts. During her first year, K shared MIAA State Championship honors in women’s tennis with Albion, and Wangtrakuldee was named MIAA MVP. She was a captain of the team her junior and senior years, and earned All-MIAA First Team honors four years in a row. Her senior year, Coach Mark Murphy described Wangtrakuldee as “one of the best competitors that I have ever coached.” 

Studying abroad in Strasbourg, France, was another important experience for Wangtrakuldee. “While I actually came to the U.S. in 2004 as an exchange student from Thailand, this experience was much different, because I was able to experience it with my classmates and learn about a new culture and new language at the same time. It’s an experience I think of fondly and it’s helped me relate to people on a more global level.”

Her K experience strongly influenced Wangtrakuldee’s decision to go to graduate school. “As part of my senior project at K, I had an opportunity to work at Michigan State University on a project about cardiology drugs that involved organic synthesis. Just having that independent project experience, it really inspired me to continue on that path and get deeper into drug discovery research.”

She applied to several graduate schools before landing at Northern Illinois University. “Without that push for independent research, I think it would have been hard to see myself in graduate school, but K had trained me well, not only through that hands-on experience, but also the type of coursework and the knowledge of how to write a thesis.”

Wangtrakuldee says, “At K, things were difficult at times, because it was really challenging managing the trimester schedule and the short timelines that came with it. Sometimes I would question why certain things were important to do, or why we had to do them a certain way, but now I see that it taught me a broader perspective: to ask why, to do things better, to think of things differently, to create something new that is improving society. And I think it’s that mindset that has made me successful, more than being a scientist. I went on to do a postdoc at Penn, with a leading principal investigator in the field of drug discovery, before I pivoted my career. Yet it’s that questioning mindset that keeps me fresh as a business leader. My K education prepared me for that.” 

The agony was almost unimaginable. For generations, the people of sub-Saharan Africa were afflicted by a disease called riverblindness, or onchocerciasis, caused by a parasite transmitted by a blackfly. Villagers living near rivers, where the blackfly breeds, have long endured the horrible itching caused by the disease that would eventually lead to the loss of vision. 

Bruce Benton ’64 explains: “What happens is the fly lays its eggs along the banks of rivers, and so the disease is usually worst near the river. The fly transmits a parasite that develops into a worm about two-and-a-half feet long that lives in the body for 14 years. It produces millions and millions of microscopic worms. The worms cause this horrible, intense itching, and at the end stage of the disease, they go into the eyes. You get tunnel vision—and eventually—permanent blindness.”

For 20 years, Benton led two international programs at the World Bank—the Onchocerciasis Control Program (OCP) and the African Program for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), covering 31 African countries between them—to bring the disease under control. He documents the disease and the efforts to control its spread, if not yet eliminate it, in his new book, Riverblindness: Taming the Lion’s Stare (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).

“The book presents a complete story of the discovery of the disease and the effort to control it in Africa, going back as early as the late 1800s,” Benton says. “The effort to control it started in 1974 with an ambitious program that covered 11 countries in West Africa, where the disease was thought to be the worst in the world. It was launched by Robert McNamara, who was president of the World Bank at the time.” 

Benton says that it was during his study abroad experience at Kalamazoo College that he became interested in other cultures. Spurred to make a difference in the world beyond his personal borders, he earned his degree at K in history and economics. He earned graduate degrees at Johns Hopkins University and University of Michigan, then began a 40-year career focused on development assistance for Africa. 

Benton was responsible for commodity negotiations and the international development banks in the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury throughout the 1970s and advised Congress on foreign assistance before joining the World Bank in 1982. In his role at the World Bank, Benton mobilized financing for the program to end riverblindness, raising more than $750 million.

“The idea was to not only control the disease, but then look at ways of promoting development in those areas where the disease was the worst and begin to increase agricultural production once the disease was brought under control,” Benton says. 

Because the black fly larvae hatch along riverbanks, where land is the richest for farming, people living there would move away to avoid the disease, but in so doing, lost their ability to live productively off the land. Poverty became a side effect of the disease, and conversely, eliminating the disease has raised the living standard of these communities. One analysis conducted by Benton and World Bank economist Aehyung Kim estimated that 1,199,000 cases of riverblindness were prevented by the Onchocerciasis Control Program over the span of 1974–2012, and as a result, the program added 13,091,991 years of productive labor to the rural economies of the 11 OCP countries. 

The World Bank created unique partnerships involving UN agencies, donors, NGOs, the pharmaceutical company, Merck, universities, African governments and the stricken communities themselves to effectively control the disease. Benton says a means to control it is now available as an oral medication called ivermectin, which reduces transmission by killing the microscopic worms in the body that cause intense itching and eventually blindness. It must be administered on an annual basis for at least 14 years —the lifespan of the adult worm, which ivermectin does not kill. The drug is also commonly used to treat other parasites in humans and animals, including heartworms in dogs. The Merck scientist who discovered ivermectin, Dr. William Campbell, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015.

“There were more than 100 partners involved, and they all pulled in the same direction,” Benton says. “We had a clear objective that everyone agreed upon and a strategy for achieving that objective that was clear and consistent over time.”

So many of these organizational skills—along with the desire to solve big problems and help people—Benton attributes to his formative years at Kalamazoo College. 

“I grew up in the Midwest—in Columbus, Ohio,” Benton says. “I really hadn’t been out of the Midwest much until I went to Aix-en-Provence in France for foreign study my junior year, which was 1962-63. It was a real eye-opener for me to live in another culture, live with a family, become fluent in French. I loved it.”

The world had suddenly grown bigger for the young Benton. Upon his return to Kalamazoo, Benton decided his next reach outward into the world would be through Peace Corps. Being fluent in French enabled him to travel to Africa, to regions where French was a predominant language. He traveled to Guinea, West Africa, where he taught English as a foreign language along with math and physical education. 

“That was again eye-opening,” he says. “I saw the need in sub-Saharan Africa, the poverty. These are wonderful people, but they needed to be supported. I concluded from that that I wanted to go on into economic development with a focus on Africa.”

When Benton began his career at the U.S. Department of Treasury and then the World Bank, he realized his goals to create a difference in Africa. 

“The Kalamazoo College education was ideal for this,” Benton says. “It was very rare for small liberal arts colleges to have foreign study programs in the mid-1960s, so I was very fortunate to wind up at Kalamazoo College and have that experience.”

Benton recalls that it was an issue of Newsweek magazine that was on the stands at the time that inspired him to take a closer look at Kalamazoo College. The issue listed Kalamazoo College among the top 10 small liberal arts colleges in the country. 

“I visited all of them,” Benton says. “I selected Kalamazoo because it was small, it was pretty, and I thought I could play football.” He laughs. “When I got there and started studies and tried out for the team, I realized I couldn’t do both. Just as well. Our class was the first to go overseas.”

Benton says he valued “the small classes, the ability to know your professors on a fairly intimate basis and be able to talk to them—that was really important—and a small student body so that you could get together, brainstorm, do things together. It made learning fun.”

On a trajectory from the small to the big, Benton now looks back on successful programs to gain control over onchocerciasis. Comparisons to the current worldwide pandemic of COVID-19 are not lost on him. 

“Both diseases are similar in that it’s impossible to keep them out of a country—COVID-19 due to international travel and riverblindness due to the long distance traveled by the blackfly vector. Consequently, go it alone, nationalist approaches are doomed to fail. Our interdependency precludes it. Multi-country collaboration is essential to bring both diseases under control. Fortunately, for riverblindness, this was understood from the very beginning and a regional approach focusing on intercountry, intersectoral partnership was adopted. That’s in large part why it worked. By contrast, we failed to do this with COVID-19 and have paid a heavy price, particularly in the United States.”

Nevertheless, Benton is confident that the lessons learned from the riverblindness programs can have long-lasting impact on world-wide approaches to disease control. 

“There are a few things in the works,” he says. “Because this is the story behind the first effort to control a major neglected tropical disease, and it was very successful, there has been a lot of interest in the book. There’s a symposium in February 2021, sponsored by the Task Force for Global Health, an organization based in Atlanta that focuses on the world’s most intractable diseases. They are basing the symposium on the book and my findings on what worked in controlling this disease and the extent to which these lessons might be applied to other diseases. They will discuss the various themes of the book—partnership, the regional approach, achieving human and rural development through disease control, and the use of drug donations to address an endemic disease.”

Benton says other similar symposiums are also planned, including one upcoming at Johns Hopkins University and another at Georgetown University. 

“Lessons learned from our work with riverblindness can be applied to a broad range of global health programs to control and even eliminate diseases,” Benton says. “With similar approaches of collaboration between partners in government, in business, in health care, all working together toward one consistent and clear goal, we can show compassion to many of the poorest populations across the world.” 

Known for his creative approach to Spanish cuisine, Mullen got his career start in San Francisco, followed by stints at Tabla and Crudo restaurants in New York City. The lure of Spain drew him to San Sebastian, where he took a position at Mugaritz, known as one of the best restaurants in the world. He spent two years honing his knowledge and skills at Mugaritz, as well as at Abac and Alkima in Barcelona. 

When Mullen returned to New York, he helped open Boqueria, a tapas restaurant in the Flatiron district, and he was named New York magazine’s Best New Chef in 2007. In 2009, he gained national attention as one of three finalists on the second season of the Food Network’s The Next Iron Chef, where he impressed the judges with dishes like a Korean-spiced Reuben with short rib and kimchee, and pasta puttanesca with zucchini spaghetti. He has since been a judge on Beat Bobby Flay and Chopped.

Staying true to his passion for Spanish cooking, he opened Tertulia in New York in 2011. Tertulia was named one of the city’s top 10 new restaurants by New York magazine and The New York Times, and was a finalist for the James Beard Foundation award for Best New Restaurant. In 2012, Mullen was voted Chef of the Year in Time Out New York’s Food and Drink Awards, and he was a semi-finalist for the City’s Best Chef from the James Beard Foundation three years in a row. 

Yet even as his career was soaring and the accolades were rolling in, Mullen was privately dealing with a debilitating health crisis. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 2007, Mullen was playing through his pain and seeking traditional treatment from medical professionals to help him manage his condition. A near-death experience was a turning point: After a 106-degree fever caused his organs to begin shutting down, Mullen began to make major changes to his diet, and found that the right foods could ease the inflammation and reduce the headaches and pains. 

This new approach to food not only changed the way he ate, it changed the way he cooked for others, and he’s made it a mission to share what he’s learned with the world. In 2012, he published his first cookbook, Hero Food, followed by Real Food Heals in 2017. He has appeared on programs like the Today Show and CBS This Morning, has been featured in publications like the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and The Guardian, and has been a contributing writer to magazines like Men’s Journal. He has also been a regular contributor on Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle and wellness website Goop. 

We caught up with Mullen this winter to talk about his health and culinary journey, and the role K played in his path to becoming a celebrity chef. 

Seamus, what would you say your first food memory would be? 

That’s a good question! I guess they all sort of started around the same time, when I was three years old. I remember the smells of the kitchen from my grandmother cooking. I was too young to recognize what it was that she was cooking—I’m guessing it was probably soup, because she made a lot of soups—but I knew that the kitchen was a place where I wanted to hang out, because that’s where good things happen. 

You grew up on a farm in Vermont. What do you remember about that time? 

I have great memories of being in the garden. Picking produce, canning and pickling. And then some of the less romantic things, like plucking chicken feathers and butchering animals…things that were fascinating as a kid but definitely didn’t smell as good.

What brought you to Kalamazoo College?

My senior year of high school I was an exchange student in Spain. I was not the best high school student—I was really good at the things that I was interested in, less so the things that challenged me, like math and science, which is ironic because I’m fascinated by science now. I was really good at languages. When I was in middle school, I had a great Spanish teacher and she set me on the path of really exploring Spanish language and culture. In high school, my advisor suggested that I do my senior year abroad, so I went to Spain and I went through the entire college application process from abroad. I had no idea where I wanted to go. My college advisor knew about the K-Plan and he knew that K had really good language and exchange programs, and he thought that it would be a good place for me. So, I actually went to K without ever having been to Michigan in my life. I think since I was living in Spain, I had already started to feel disconnected from the rest of my class and I wanted to go someplace totally new and different where I didn’t know anyone. I also knew I wanted to be able to return to living and studying abroad, and K afforded me the opportunity to do that.

What did your K-Plan look like?

I was a Spanish major, and I minored in religious studies. I was able to study abroad in Spain, and I also did my sophomore career quarter in Costa Rica, where I had an internship with an English language newspaper. My brother was actually working there as well and he helped me get the position. We lived together and had a lot of great adventures over those few months. 

In Spain, cooking with my host mother was a highlight for me. I did a lot of hiking and explored parts of the country I hadn’t been in before. I really developed a fondness for southern Spain and the food and culture. I was into Spanish literature and history even before going to college—going back to this place that I was so enamored with was really cool. 

I didn’t have a lot of time for extracurriculars, because I had an off-campus job working at this little place called the International Café, which was just off of Western Michigan University’s campus. I worked pretty much every day after class, and there was a woman who was a chef there—she was French, and her name was Kiki and she was the first person who really taught me how to hold a knife. I’d been cooking my whole childhood, but she definitely taught me the fundamentals. 

How did the experiences that you had at K shape you or help you later in your career?

Obviously, the emphasis on travel, on experiencing new cultures. That was really important to me. And having small class sizes. One of the great things about having small classes is that you do develop personal relationships with your professors, which I think is often missed in bigger schools, and it definitely fostered the level of curiosity that has carried over into my professional career. You can’t disappear into the fabric in a small classroom, so there’s a lot of pressure to actually participate—to have an opinion, to think critically and to learn to formulate an argument. I have a sense that I would have kind of disappeared and gotten lost in a bigger school, and I think my K experience really did help me as I went into my professional career, to ask a lot of questions and be curious, and also to understand that I could be empowered to be my own teacher.

How did you get into cooking professionally?

I’ve always loved cooking for people, and a degree in Spanish language and literature only gets you so far unless you’re staying in academia, and I didn’t really want to do that. I got out of school and I had to make ends meet, and I knew how to cook. I didn’t really think of it as a career until my grandmother took me on a wine tasting trip to Sonoma as a late graduation present, and she said, “Cooking is what you love doing. You’re happiest when you’re doing it.” Even then I was very, very reticent to throw myself into that life. This was before there were entire channels dedicated to food shows, and the only chefs who had careers that people knew about were Jaques Pépin and Julia Child on PBS. It wasn’t until later, after the beginning of my career, that the food world really exploded and chefs came out from behind the kitchen. But the work was pretty brutal when I started. 

What did being on a competitive cooking show teach you about yourself as a chef?

Well, it was interesting because I was an athlete when I was younger and I played competitive sports. And it was the first time I’d ever cooked in an environment that really reminded me of that. But I think more than anything, the thing I learned to do through the filming of that program, was this survival mechanism of having to think on your feet and react quickly. You see and hear these ingredients that you have to work with, or this theme you need to convey, and you’ve got a set amount of time—it really forces you to take a moment and assess and react quickly. And if you get paralyzed, you’re screwed. You can’t overthink it. And I think that’s where I really did well. Unfortunately, toward the end of the season, I had a really bad flare up of my arthritis, and I was very sick. When I got eliminated, it was bittersweet, because the producers said I could have won the show. But I realized on Iron Chef that sometimes the simplest path is the best path. I learned the importance of doing something in a straightforward way, and executing it really, really well. 

Tell us about your health journey. 

I started having health issues in college, where I would get these terrible acute attacks on my shoulders. I remember at one point I went to Western’s health center and they thought I had a torn rotator cuff or something, so I did physical therapy, because I thought it was an injury. As I got into my 20s, it became more and more frequent and I started to feel pretty rundown and exhausted, but I associated that with working a lot and with the industry that I was in. By the time I hit 30, it was really clear there was something wrong. I had a lot of swelling. I started gaining weight. I felt lethargic all the time and I was constantly in aches and pains. When I was eventually diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, that’s when I kind of felt like, oh, now this makes sense.

My doctors put me on a treatment plan and said I could take certain meds and I would be functionally okay, but it was a disease I was going to have to live with for the rest of my life, and I sort of resigned myself to that. Then I had a very severe near-death experience in 2012. That’s when it became really clear to me that if I didn’t make some serious changes in the way that I was living my life and really take my health seriously, that I wasn’t going to be around for long. So that was really the turning point for me.

How did that change your approach to food and to cooking?

Well, initially it didn’t. When I was first diagnosed, I had the notion that there was a correlation between food and health, but at the time, very few people were really diving deep into the idea of food as medicine—particularly in conventional medicine. I would bring it up to my doctor all the time and ask him if he thought that the food choices I was making were impacting the disease. He just kept saying, “Well, there’s no clinical evidence to suggest that there’s a direct correlation between food and disease,” which is funny to say now, because not even 10 years later, everyone understands that there’s a relationship. I was just told that “a calorie is a calorie, make sure you’re eating healthily” with no explanation as to what that actually meant. 

Once it became clear I was going to be on that journey on my own, I became curious: If I eliminate this or I eliminate that, or try this or that, how do I feel? The problem was that in my mid 30s, I was so sick that just making a few changes in my diet had no significant impact. Now I know, as someone who’s hyper attuned to the ways food impacts how I feel, that it really does take a week, two weeks, three weeks of being really, really disciplined about a change before you can actually notice a difference. If you have underlying health issues, it may take much longer. I was used to being in the mode of, I’m having a flare up, I can take some pain meds and muscle through it. I was just as guilty as all of us are of wanting results right away, versus adjusting how I’m eating and seeing how I feel in six weeks. But now when I have a headache, I drink water rather than taking Tylenol and 99% of the time, that’s the solution. Once it became clear that I had to make long term changes, that’s when I started to address the way that I cook and really think about ingredients. 

I made major changes—for example, I replaced all of my cooking oils with olive oil. That was a fundamental change. The more research I did on seed-based oils and vegetable oils, the more I learned that they’re highly toxic and unfortunately, those are what most people cook with. I took all sugar out of my diet, and a big part of it was understanding where sugar lives. I didn’t think I was eating a ton of sugar because I didn’t really eat desserts. I didn’t understand that carbohydrates behave just like sugar, and when you’re eating a ton of refined carbohydrates, your body is going through the same process of breaking it down through insulin to be able to convert it into glycogen. The more I started to understand the science of what happens once food goes into the body, it started to inform the decisions I was making around how I cooked. And that changed how I cooked in the restaurants. It changed how I cooked at home. And, you know, I’ve eaten this way for nearly 10 years and it’s had a dramatic impact on my health. I feel so much better now. I can’t imagine feeling like I used to feel.

I read that you focus on three pillars: nourish, move and recover. What do these three pillars mean to you?

The human body is really good at doing whatever we ask the human body to do. So, if you ask it to sit on the couch and take medicine and eat potato chips, it gets really good at doing that. But if you ask it to move, it gets really good at that, too. If you’ve ever had a big day of skiing or hiking—you know that feeling when you get home and you have such incredible sleep? You support good movement with good nutrition, and then you support it again with good recovery. Those three elements work hand in hand. Recovery is fundamental for a number of reasons—on a cellular level, we go through something called autophagy, which is when our bodies are clearing out damaged cells, and that happens when we rest and recover. Hydration is an important part of that; sleep is a really important part of that; stress modulation is an important part of that. Recovery is sort of the next frontier—people are now really starting to understand the importance of recovery and different techniques for improving it. 

Ultimately, those three things together—nourish, move, recover—are essential to having a strong immune system and to being healthy. I call it a three-legged stool, and if you pull any of those legs out, the stool will eventually collapse.

Can you share a few ingredients that you consider essential to a healthy, delicious diet?

Without a doubt, the first thing I always suggest is replacing so-called vegetable oils with good quality, extra virgin olive oil. Cooking with real, whole foods, cooking seasonally and from scratch. A good piece of naturally pasture-raised meat, seasoned with salt and pepper, pan roasted with olive oil and served with gently sauteed vegetables and a sprinkling of fresh herbs. It doesn’t need to be complicated. 

To try some of Mullen’s recipes, check out his recipe blog at seamusmullen.com. 

1968

Michael Mertaugh writes, “In 1966, Kalamazoo College sent its first group of foreign study students to the University of Clermont-Ferrand—the first class to attend in that foreign study location. We traveled to Le Havre from New York late in September, 1966, on the German liner, the Europa, and stopped briefly in Paris before taking the train to Vichy, where we did a one-month stage at the Centre Audiovisuel de Langues Modernes (CAVILAM) before going on to Clermont-Ferrand at the end of October. Most of our group of 22 students (first photo) stayed in the student dorms in the Cité Universitaire; a few stayed in private accommodations off campus. 

“In October of 2019, three students from our group returned to Vichy and Clermont-Ferrand to revisit that experience: Tom Barber, Elisabeth Jefferis Bartlett and myself—all members of the Class of 1968. In Vichy, we visited the City Hall where we and other CAVILAM students had attended a reception in our honor, and met with one of our CAVILAM professors, Gaston Schott (second photo). Vichy looked much the same, except that there were far fewer visitors who were taking the cure at the various spas. In Clermont-Ferrand, we visited the university, had lunch in the cafeteria at the Cité Universitaire (third photo) and explored downtown (fourth photo). The university and the town looked much spiffier than they did in our student days. The food in the cafeteria was vastly improved, and choices for the day were even posted on a digital screen in the hall. We propose to do another reunion of our foreign study group in Paris, Vichy and Clermont-Ferrand when we are all free to travel again—hopefully, with a larger group of students from our class.”

1970

Helen Tatro Rietz was recently accepted in two additional art galleries. Her works are now showing at the Art Spirit Gallery in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and at River’s Edge Gallery in Kerrville, Texas. Helen is now represented by a total of six galleries.

1973

John Deupree has published the novella Bougainvillea (Fieldspring Press, 2020), a mystical tale that follows a lone traveler, Joseph, who comes upon a cottage in a place with no sounds and no wind. Invited to join the three siblings who dwell there, he is asked each night to share a story. As the stories unfold, the siblings help him accept their meaning, allowing him to continue onward to the place where footprints lead backward into the sea. With its enchanting story and compelling prose, one reviewer described it as a “well-written and beautiful read that keeps mesmerizing its readers from page to page.”

1978

Richard A. Bitzinger is semi-retired after a long career as a defense analyst. After graduating from K, he earned a master’s degree from the Monterey (now Middlebury) Institute of International Studies. Since then, he worked for the CIA, the RAND Corporation, the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Since 2006, he has been a senior fellow with the Military Transformations Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. His career has focused mainly on issues relating to the international arms industry and to defense and security in the Asia-Pacific region. He is the author of several books, journal articles and research monographs. His publications include Arming Asia: Technonationalism and Its Impact on Local Defense Industries, Towards a Brave New Arms Industry? and Emerging Critical Technologies and Security in the Asia Pacific. His articles have appeared in International Security, Orbis, China Quarterly and Survival. He was the recipient of several awards and unit citations while in government service. He currently divides his time between Singapore and Michigan, and until the COVID pandemic kicked in, liked to spend his downtime travelling and visiting his grandchildren. Like everyone else in academia (or so it seems), he is currently writing a novel.

1987

Kevin Benham has been awarded the Prince Charitable Trusts/Kate Lancaster Brewster Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture by the American Academy in Rome (AAR). Fellowships were awarded to 22 Americans and two Italian artists and scholars, who will each receive a stipend, workspace and room and board for a period of four to seven months at the Academy’s campus in Rome. Rome Prize winners are selected annually by independent juries of distinguished artists and scholars through a national competition. Kevin will research herd migrations in Italy and reevaluate transhumance through a contemporary ecological and urban lens by deploying a series of landscape interventions integrating rural elements (sheep or other herbivores) into the urban environment. Kevin holds the Jon Emerson/Wayne Womack Design Professorship at the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture at Louisiana State University. 

1988

Silence Therapeutics announced the appointment of Craig Tooman as the company’s chief financial officer (CFO) and member of the executive leadership team. Silence Therapeutics is a leader in the discovery, development and delivery of novel short interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) therapeutics for the treatment of diseases with significant unmet medical need. Craig has a successful career in the biopharmaceutical industry spanning more than 30 years, including 15 years of experience as a public company CFO. Most recently, he was CFO and COO at Vyome Therapeutics, and prior to this was CFO and then CEO of Aratana Therapeutics. Before Aratana, he was the CFO of Enzon Pharmaceuticals until its acquisition by Sigma Tau, and prior to that led the $1.1 billion M&A initiative and integration of ILEX Oncology and Genzyme Corporation. He also held key positions at Pharmacia and Upjohn. Craig currently serves on the supervisory board and audit committee of CureVac. Craig earned his bachelor’s in economics from K and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.

1994

In her new book Gray to Green Communities: A Call to Action on the Housing and Climate Crises (Island Press, 2021), Dana Bourland argues that we need to move away from current housing models—which contribute significantly to a changing climate and put the physical and financial health of residents at risk—to a green model, which considers the health and well-being of residents, their communities and the planet. She demonstrates that we do not have to choose between protecting our planet and providing housing affordable to all. Dana draws from her experience leading the Green Communities Program at Enterprise Community Partners, a national community development intermediary. Her work resulted in the first standard for green affordable housing which was designed to deliver measurable health, economic and environmental benefits. CNN commentator Van Jones noted, “Dana Bourland shows us how a smart approach to climate, housing and social policy can result in a stronger economy and healthier citizens. Communities that were locked out of the last century’s pollution-based economy need to be locked into the new clean and green economy. Gray to Green Communities is a must-read for anyone who cares about an inclusive, green path forward.”

Equillium, Inc. a clinical-stage biotechnology company, announced that Dr. Y. Katherine Xu has been appointed to Equillium’s board of directors. Katherine is a partner at Decheng Capital and has been with the firm since May 2019. Prior to joining Decheng, she was partner, senior biotechnology analyst and co-group head of the Biopharmaceutical Equity Research team at William Blair & Company based in New York. Prior to William Blair, she was senior vice president and senior biotechnology analyst at Wedbush Securities, vice president and senior biotechnology analyst at Credit Suisse and senior biotechnology analyst at Pacific Growth Equities. Before her move to equity research, Katherine was vice president of investment banking at Petkevich & Partners, a boutique investment banking firm in San Francisco focused on the life sciences industry. She serves on the board of directors for the 1990 Institute and the Overseas Young Chinese Forum, two China-related non-profit organizations. Katherine holds a Ph.D. in developmental biology and a Ph.D. minor in engineering-economic systems and operations research from Stanford University Schools of Medicine and Engineering, respectively. She attended Peking University in Beijing before transferring to K in her junior year, where she earned her B.A. with honors.

1997

Dr. Angela (Pratt) Geffre has joined Sun Capital Partners, Inc. as chief human resources officer. Sun Capital is a leading private investment firm focused on investing in market-leading companies. Angela joins the firm from Jones Lang LaSalle in Chicago, where she served as global head of talent. She has more than 16 years of experience in leadership positions at Fortune 500 companies, focusing on talent management, recruiting, assessment, talent analytics and leadership development. Previously she was director of human resources at the Kellogg Company, where she led HR for businesses in North America and Europe. She started her career at Procter & Gamble as a manager in Global Talent and later became a human resources business partner for the Gillette business. After graduating from K, Angela earned a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Wayne State University.

1998

Governor Gretchen Whitmer appointed Brom Stibitz to serve as the director of the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget. Brom has served as acting director for the department and chief information officer for the state since March 2020. Brom has served as the chief deputy director of DTMB since 2015, where he has been head of operations for the agency of nearly 3,000 employees, providing information technology and business and administrative services to Michigan’s residents, state agencies and state employees. Prior to his role at DTMB, Brom served in leadership roles at the Michigan Department of Treasury and the Michigan Legislature. Brom holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from K and a master’s degree in public administration from Northern Michigan University. He and his wife, Youngsook, have three children.

1999

Amy Darrow has received her neonatal therapist certification, one of approximately 500 professionals around the world to have achieved this certification since it was established in 2016. Amy works with high-risk infants and their families in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. As an NICU physical therapist, she helps address sensory needs, positioning, motor development and family education to help families have a greater understanding of their baby’s developmental strengths and needs.

2002

Dr. Stephanie Bonne, M.D., FACS, was recently promoted to associate professor of surgery of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and was named the trauma medical director at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. She is also a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar, awarded for her work in gun violence prevention, hospital-based violence intervention, trauma-informed care and medical legal partnerships. She participates and has leadership roles in a number of trauma surgery and women’s surgical organizations. She recently published a book, entitled Why We Are Losing the War on Gun Violence in the United States. Stephanie lives in Westfield, New Jersey, with her husband, Jeremy Roe, and their three children.

2005

CPT. Daniel Kovacs returned home after a year in Poland as the commander of the 724th Transportation Company (US Army Reserves). He lives in Chicago where he is a high school history teacher in Chicago Public Schools.

2006

Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani welcomed Timothy R. Herman as a partner in the firm’s Chicago office, where he joined the firm’s commercial litigation, class action and employment law practice groups. Herman joined the firm from Clark Hill PLC in Chicago. Timothy is an experienced litigator and focuses his practice on business litigation and employment disputes. He has been recognized by Illinois Super Lawyers as a “Rising Star” in business litigation from 2016–2020. He is a member of the Chicago Bar Association’s Judicial Evaluation Committee and was part of the CBA’s 2016 inaugural Leadership Institute composed of 18 lawyers from various law firms and corporate legal departments in the Chicago area. He graduated as the valedictorian of his class at the John Marshall Law School in 2010.

2007

Burris Law, PLLC welcomed Julie Zamler to its team of patent attorneys. Formerly a paralegal at the firm, Julie focuses in patent preparation and prosecution. She has previous industry experience working for a contract research organization in the biopharmaceutical field. She received her J.D. and Master of Laws from Western Michigan University Cooley Law School.

2013 and 2014

Joshua M. Abbott ’13 and Allison M. Tinsey ’14 got engaged on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in late November 2020. The couple met at K when Josh was a member of the student government and Allison was an editor of The Index. After K, Josh pursued a Ph.D. in structural biology and biochemistry at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus. Josh successfully defended his thesis in March 2020 and now works as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health. Allison attended the University of Richmond School of Law and graduated in 2018. She currently works in the U.S. Senate as a policy counsel. Josh and Allison live in the Washington, D.C., suburbs with their black lab, Bo, and black cat, Blaise.

2017

Royal Oak, Michigan-based Howard & Howard has welcomed Brett G. Garwood to the firm. Brett began his career with the firm as a 2019 summer associate and will practice out of the Royal Oak office. Brett concentrates his practice in business and corporate law. He assists on a variety of matters involving business transactions and develops solutions to support clients’ diverse and ever-changing needs. Brett earned his J.D. from Wayne State University Law School in 2020.

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