Theme: Turn on the Light

We're shedding light on the topics that don't always get the attention they deserve.

1108 Park Street
Roberts Theatre
Grinnell, Iowa, 50112
United States

Adam Lange

Lawyer

Adam '11 graduate of Grinnell and the oldest of three children, all first-generation college students and Grinnell graduates. While attending Grinnell, Adam majored in Political Science and Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies, captained the Mock Trial program, and studied off campus at Grinnell-in-Washington including an internship with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Adam presently works for Gitlin, Horn & Van de Kieft LLP where his current work is primarily focused on litigation on behalf of deaf and hard of hearing individuals across New York City. This includes cases of alleged discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the New York State Human Rights Law, and the New York City Human Rights Law where deaf individuals contend they were denied American Sign Language interpreters or other aids in a number of settings including police services, hospital admissions, and various city and related agencies including homeless shelters.

Béalleka (No last name)

Writer, Artist

Writer, artist, and “recovering academic,” Writer, artist, and “recovering academic,” Béalleka left a decade-long, tenure-track teaching career as a professor of literature and cultural studies in 2015. A graduate of UT-Austin’s postcolonial literature and theory program, Kenyan-native Béalleka–then known as Lynn Makau–specialized in contemporary, fictional representations of American slavery; queer theory; and transnational feminisms. Her ongoing recovery has taken several turns, including a transcendent encounter that resulted in claiming (not changing) her name. A visibly raced and gendered veteran storyteller in Portland, Oregon–the whitest urban center in the U.S.–Béalleka also facilitates “Self-Care as Resistance,” or SCARS.

Jen Jacobsen

Assistant Dean Students & Director of Wellness & Prevention

Jen Jacobsen is a longtime college coach-turned-director of wellness & prevention at Grinnell College, which is the perfect role for a liberal arts graduate with an MPH. Her work blends research and practice while it spans topics as diverse as alcohol, sexual respect, active bystanderism, sleep, and social norms. She’s fortunate to spend much of her time mentoring students in helping other students. A consistent thread though all of what she does is that the words we choose matter.

Jody Haymond

Education

Jody Haymond ’67 was born in Ogden, Utah as the only member of her family who had hearing. Jody received her BA in American Studies, Grinnell College, and completed a two-year master’s program in Speech and Hearing at Washington University. She accepted a position in the Mayo Audiology/ENT Department with their team, involved in FDA Trials with the first available cochlear implants,1981. She served as the "education specialist” on the team and did all the rehabilitation for those adult patients who received cochlear implants at Mayo Clinic until winter of 1990, the year cochlear implantation was approved for children. She helped facilitate the beginning of a cochlear implant program for children, and served as Team Coordinator until their move to Houston in late 1996. In Houston, she was asked to create a comprehensive Cochlear Implant Program for children at Texas Children’s Hospital and served as Education Specialist and Coordinator of the Team for 10 years until fall of 2011.

Kenji Yoshino

Entrepreneur

Kenji Yoshino ‘11 graduated from Grinnell with a chemistry degree. In the summer after his senior year, he designed Try This at Home!, a series of informal science education presentations funded through the Sarah Boyer ‘08 Community Service Fellowship. That experience as well as his Fifth-Year Technical Internship with the Department of Theatre and Dance helped make a doctorate-free future a recognizable possibility. While completing a post-baccalaureate fellowship tutoring at Grinnell’s Science Learning Center, Yoshino created the device that would become the seed of his current entrepreneurial venture. Billed as the $10 Smartphone Microscope, Yoshino’s invention transformed any smartphone into a digital microscope using only $10 of materials from a hardware store (Ace Hardware in Grinnell, in the case of the very first model). In 2015, he returned to Hamilton, NY to use his smartphone microscope as the centerpiece of a small business focused on educational outreach in area schools.

Lucinda Ellert

Music Director

Lucinda Ellert has established herself as a music director known her for flexibility, reliability, clarity, and artistic sensibility. A graduate of Grinnell College (1976, Bachelor of Theatre Arts) and New England Conservatory (M.Mus.Ed. 1996, M.Mus. Jazz Arranging in 1988), her musical roots are in the Traditional Jazz scenes of Denver and Boston, first as a ragtime pianist, then as a music director of small and large group early jazz ensembles. She made her name throughout the Boston area for her jazz dance band, Happy Feet Dance Orchestra, as leader and arranger for 20 years. A long-time member on the New England Touring Roster, Happy Feet has produced three albums: Lucinda Ellert and Her Happy Feet, Hop Off, and The River and Me. In her spare time, Ellert with her husband, trombonist Daniel Walker, is restoring a historic homestead. – the site of the first 1747 sawmill in the area. They have a micro-farm, growing all their produce as well as apples, blackberries and hops.

Sam Offenberg

Education

Sam was born and raised in the northern suburbs of Chicago. He attended Grinnell College, receiving a bachelor of arts in political science in 2014. Sam’s first job in education was in St. Paul working as a special education aide serving predominantly immigrant and minority families. Next, was a commitment to teach for two years in Oakland public schools and an open mind to stick around the classroom for the long haul. While earning a “clear” special education teaching credential at night, Sam taught Special Education math, science and life skills classes for a year before working as a resource specialist for two years in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland. Both positions were at the middle school level, an age group Sam feels incredibly strong about given their fresh insight and opportunity to be positively influenced as they reach young adulthood. This year Sam accepted a new opportunity with Oakland Unified, trading his caseload of 35 students to serve as an instructional coach.