Alumni

Gregory Heller ’04, CEO of American Communities Trust (ACT), was named Urban Innovator of the Week on Feb. 15, by Urban Innovation Exchange (UIX), an initiative to advance urban improvement and highlight those who are on the leading edge of this movement. Begun in 2012 as a three-year project in Detroit and funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, UIX is now showcasing talented people from all over the country who are transforming the cities and neighborhoods in which they live.

As head of ACT, Heller, who has spent more than 10 years in community development in Philadelphia, helps nonprofits build and finance social impact real estate—projects that improve the quality of life, particularly in low-income areas, by providing needed services and offering desirable real estate for new businesses and residents.

In a TEDx talk given last June in Philadelphia, “How To Set up Social Impact Real Estate,” he explained the impetus behind his work: “Our cities and our communities are defined by the interaction of people and places… but who shapes the built environment around us?” he asks. “We walk around our cities and we say, ‘Oh, look, they’re building that new project over there,’ or ‘Why haven’t they built anything here yet?’ Who are they? Why is it ‘they’ and not we? Too often developers in low income neighborhoods have profit rather than the community’s best interest…I believe that [social impact real estate projects] s are critical to the future of our cities, our communities and ultimately our society.”

by Cynthia Rockwell • February 29, 2016

Our alumnus Philip Boehm ’80 has been awarded the Kurt and Helen Wolff Translation Prize for his translation of Gregor von Rezzori’s An Ermine in Czernopol, published in 2012 by the New York Review of Books. The award will be conferred by the German Consul General on June 3 in Chicago; Krishna Winston will be delivering the laudatio.

Earlier this year Philip Boehm has also been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship to assist in his work as a dramatist and translator.

“I am continually struck by new overlaps between staging drama and translating prose. In both cases I first listen to the original voice or voices before attempting any re-creation, and my experience working with actors has taught me the importance of keeping a text alive, and of preserving its energy as it travels from one culture to another, whether on the page or in the theater. It is this fundamental awe of language that steers me from one project to the next.”

Jason Kavett ‘09 and Andrew Kirwin ‘09, who graduated with a major in German and COL last year, are going to pursue their careers in German Studies as graduate students at Yale University. After having received offers from prestigious German programs at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Berkeley, Hopkins or the University of Chicago, both Jason and Andrew decided to stay close to their Alma Mater in Middletown (although, the excellence of Yale’s German Department might also have influenced their decision).

Congratulations to Jason and Andrew!