Alumni in Action

As a young girl, Lauren Russell raised $20 for a children's hospital at her lemonade stand in Newport News. Fast forward to more recently, Russell (MPP '17) helped to raise more than $50,000 for the Batten School in her role as a member of the Executive Committee of the Batten Alumni Advisory Board.

Xiao Wang (MPP '09) an assistant professor at the Law School and Batten School and an expert on the U.S. Constitution, spoke at this week's "Batten Hour" about the implications of citizen-driven initiatives in response to unpopular rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nora Neus (MPP '16), a Batten alumna and Emmy-nominated producer and journalist at CNN, conducted a haunting interview with a student survivor of the Uvalde massacre that made its way into the national debate.

Batten alum Maureen Coffey (MPP '21), a policy analyst on the early childhood policy team at Center for American Progress, says that lack of affordable child care costs families, employers and the entire economy. In an op-ed for MarketWatch, Coffey and co-author Hailey Gibbs outline how a comprehensive national approach could solve the problem.

The Batten alum and former captain of the UVA women’s volleyball team is not afraid to discuss moments of deep uncertainty in her flourishing law career — and she encourages current students to go easy on themselves.

Fewer Americans are donating to charity, but those who do give are more generous. Batten alum Chris Woodfolk (BA ’20) shares philanthropic trends for 2021 and offers a few tips in the new year.

Batten alum Monica Logothetis (MPP '09), co-founder of DreamWakers, developed an innovative program called Jail to Jobs to address the problem of high recidivism in the United States.

Dana Laurens (MPP ’10) knows firsthand how much good schools matter. When she was a child, she and her parents immigrated from Trinidad so she could get a better education, and she became the first in her family to go to college. This year, she was named to Washingtonian magazine’s Most Influential People list.

Batten alum Cameron Haddad (MPP ’20) takes a closer look at everything from health care in South Africa to children’s welfare in Tajikistan, with a core maxim in mind: Remember the people on the other side of the numbers.

In her graduation poem – read at Sunday’s ceremony – Hannah Semmes (BA '20) said maybe she would have taken that last walk around Grounds, gone to that dinner, asked out that boy, gone to that party if she knew we were leaving so soon.

The same intellectual drive that has enabled Batten alum Malcolm Brogdon (MPP '16) to raise his game on the court motivates him to learn about—and uphold—his family's legacy of activism. In an article for Sports Illustrated, Batten's Gerry Warburg talks about Brogdon's dedication as a student.

Former UVA basketball star and Batten alum Malcolm Brogdon was awarded the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award, an honor presented annually by the Professional Basketball Writers Association to an individual who shows outstanding service and dedication to their community.