Class of 2013
Jessye Kass has a consulting and coaching practice, providing burnout and leadership coaching, change-management consulting, and experiential-learning training programs on compassionate leadership and boundary setting in the workplace. During the practice’s first year, she trained more than 60 leaders.
HERITAGE IN SONG: Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/composer Yoni Battat ’13 explores his Arab-Jewish identity through music. After receiving a new fellowship from Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston and the Jewish Arts Collaborative last year, he wrote and produced a forthcoming album, “Fragments,” that blends traditional Arab musical forms with lyrics in Arabic, Hebrew, Yiddish and English. Battat is also touring nationally with the Tony Award-winning musical “The Band’s Visit.”
TRUTH AND JUSTICE: Delande Justinvil ’13 stands up for the forgotten. Through a Peter S. Buck Smithsonian Fellowship, the bioarchaeologist is in the midst of excavating an unmarked African American burial ground in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The hastily dug, chaotic gravesite is evidence of how entrenched racism was in the mid-Atlantic in the 19th century, says Justinvil, who advocates for the ethical handling and repatriation of African American remains.