Finding hope in hardship


Spencer, Zach, and Brock Greene ’77

Brock Greene ’77 has a new motto: get your head in the game. After both of his sons (with wife Pam Baskin) were diagnosed with the same type of brain tumor, Greene’s mission became “to do everything possible to help the boys.” Calling himself “the accidental fundraiser,” Greene dedicates his nights and weekends to raising funds and awareness of brain tumors, which affect 700,000 Americans.
    Greene’s sons have Oligodendroglioma brain tumors, or “Oligo” for short. Like most brain tumors, there is no known cure and, other than surgery, there are few treatment options.    
    At age 17, Spencer, the younger son, was about to start his senior year of high school in San Anselmo, Calif., in 2008 when he began having focal seizures in his right arm. An MRI revealed a lemon-sized mass on his left frontal lobe. A few days later, Spencer had surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible without endangering his speech or mobility.
    Two years later, on the first night of a family vacation, their older son, Zach, had a grand mal seizure. “I thought he was dying in my arms,” Brock said. An MRI revealed that Zach, too, had an Oligo in his left frontal lobe, and he soon underwent surgery.
    “To have both of my kids afflicted with something this serious was more than I could handle initially,” Greene confessed. He pulled himself together and took stock of the situation. Appalled to learn that “there was zero money going to [research for] Oligo brain tumors,” Greene said, he contacted the National Brain Tumor Society (NBTS) in 2011. The nonprofit organization agreed to start the first Oligo Research Fund if Greene agreed to lead the fundraising effort. The caveat: no research could begin until $300,000 was raised.
    “The first thing I did was send out a letter to all my friends and family,” explained Greene. “Most of my closest friends are from Colgate, and they gave generously — that was a big part of our early success.” He met the initial goal within eight months.
    Fundraising became a family affair, with Zach organizing an event at the boys’ high school and Spencer launching a Facebook event. Greene, a marketing professional, soon realized he needed to enlist the support of others. So, he fired up a nationwide campaign, launching OligoNation.com. The one constant has been the “unexpected and amazing support and generosity of people, even those I have never met,” Greene said.
    One of Greene’s primary frustrations is that fundraising for brain tumors is so low. In 2010, the Susan G. Komen foundation raised $420 million for breast cancer, whereas the largest brain tumor foundation, NBTS, raised $12 million. “Sixty percent of the people I talk to have a connection to this disease, so the opportunity to galvanize support is there,” Greene said.
    At press time, $900,000 had been raised for the Oligo Research Fund. Initial grants — for the first research into Oligo in at least five years — will be awarded in March. In October, the Greene family received the Community Leadership award at the National Brain Tumor Society Summit.
    As for Greene’s sons, Spencer, now a third-year at Denison University, is on chemotherapy for the second time in three years. Despite the challenges, Spencer continues to thrive and “is my hero,” Greene said.
    Zachary started his PhD in astrophysics at Columbia in the fall, following in the footsteps of his grandfather Braddock ’43, a Phi Beta Kappa physics major. Right now, Zachary is healthy, but the family is aware that his tumor may grow back.
    “The kids are great — I mean, their health is not great,” Greene said, “but they look and act normal, live full lives, play sports, and have girlfriends.
    “My deepest fear is that I will fail my kids in their hour of need, and that’s what drives me,” he admitted. “I’m 57, but I feel 27, because I’m working that hard, like I did early in my career to get ahead. It’s invigorating, but a little overwhelming, too.”
    Greene invites anyone who has ideas to offer or has been affected by brain tumors to contact him at brockg@comcast.net.

— Aleta Mayne


Providing a CURE in Addis Ababa


Dr. Eric Gokcen ’84 with Workitu Debebe, his Ethiopian patient who had a “parasitic twin”
(photo by Betty Teshome)

Last July, orthopedic surgeon Eric Gokcen ’84 performed a groundbreaking eight-hour surgery. His 17-year-old Ethiopian patient, Workitu Debebe, had a “parasitic twin” — a condition where a person has extra limbs, but no attached head or viable body.
    “It happens about 1 in 10 million live births, making it exceedingly rare,” said Gokcen, who oversees the medical program at CURE International’s hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A nonprofit organization, CURE provides medical treatment for adults and children in developing countries with limited access to health care.
    Gokcen performs six to eight surgeries a day, fixing deformities such as clubfeet, bowed legs, and cleft palates. “The kids who have deformities, particularly in the developing world, [live in] what is called a ‘shame culture,’” he explained. “They feel shameful not only because [they are abused] in different ways, but also because they bring shame on their own family.” After their surgeries, his patients’ lives are forever changed — enabling them to be socially accepted by their peers.
    Early in his career, Gokcen made short-term medical trips to various international locations. Later, he met an American general surgeon who was practicing in Russia, and the duo began servicing remote areas in Russia and the Arctic. Because both of those locations lacked the technology that Gokcen needed for his intended focus on orthopedic surgery, he began looking into opportunities in remote locations that have access to hospitals. The chance presented itself when a friend turned Gokcen onto CURE.
    After spending a few years learning about CURE and speaking to its medical personnel, Gokcen signed a two-year contract and moved his family to Africa, where he could practice at a CURE hospital in Kenya. Within the first year of treating and improving the lives of his Kenyan patients, Gokcen realized, “This is what I was made to do.”
    Gokcen and his family moved to Ethiopia, where he became the medical director of the Addis Ababa hospital in 2008. Although he knows a few words in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, his staff of bilingual nurses translates for him when he discusses surgical procedures with his patients.
    The story of Workitu, and how Gokcen and CURE made her surgery possible, was filmed by the Discovery Channel this past summer and will appear on the TLC channel in the spring. As a result of his surgery, and by recommendation of the president and prime minister of Ethiopia, Gokcen was awarded a Certificate of Honor from the Ethiopian Parliament in July. Subsequently, “the president of Ethiopia invited me to the palace and asked me to see him as a patient,” said Gokcen.
    Regardless of the status or age of Gokcen’s patients, he gets the most gratification out of helping transform a person’s life. “The most rewarding [aspect of my job] is when a kid who has been abused and ashamed changes; when they come give me a big hug, I see such a dramatic change in their countenance,” he said. “I never get tired of that.”

— Natalie Sportelli ’15


From the Amazon Rainforest



Harpy eagles, jaguarundi cats, and pink dolphins, oh my! Last summer, Peggy Ward ’88, who leads sustainability strategy efforts for Kimberly-Clark Corporation in Neenah, Wis., was one of 10 sustainability professionals chosen from a highly competitive field for a leadership development program in the Amazon Rainforest. With world-renowned ecologist Thomas Lovejoy as guide, the experience was meant to deepen the professionals’ understanding of their companies’ impacts on the environment and to generate creative ideas for corporate sustainability practices.
    Besides the experience of sleeping in hammocks at “Camp 41,” an off-the-grid research camp 100 kilometers into primary forest, the team came face to face with rare animals and plants on their treks. Ward said she was able to gain insight on the ecosystems, alternative fibers, and deforestation issues relevant to her company’s business. And now, she can lay claim to being one of “only about 2,000 people who have ever seen a harpy eagle,” she said.
    Among her biggest takeaways, Ward said, were “that businesses need to value natural resources much in the same way they do shareholders, and that we are at a tipping point. Many studies have shown that a threshold for the Amazon to maintain itself is being reached. Currently, about 81 percent of the Amazon remains, and studies have predicted that there is a 20 percent threshold where the Amazon will not be able to regenerate.”
    Ward blogged about the experience at http://www.kimberly-clark.com/newsroom/latest_news_events/feature_stories/AmazonJournal1.aspx.


Super dedicated
Parents’ efforts spur progress for rare disease
For eight long years, David ’89 and Wendy Becker Feldman couldn’t sleep through the night. Their first son, Jonah, had been born with a rare disorder — glycogen storage disease (GSD) type 1a — that disrupts his metabolism. The sleep-deprived parents had to feed Jonah a cornstarch and formula mixture through a tube in his stomach every few hours around the clock.
    “Because his body can’t make his own blood sugar, he would have a seizure or die,” said David. “There’s no buffer.”
    The Scene first wrote about the Feldmans’ efforts to aid their son by creating the nonprofit Children’s Fund for Glycogen Storage Disease Research, Inc. back in 2004 — and much has happened since. Raising more than $5 million in 10 years, the fund (www.cureGSD.org) has helped develop a product with the potential of not only helping the roughly 70,000 people with GSD who are dependent on cornstarch supplements, but also athletes and those with diabetes or weight issues.
    The product is a modified form of cornstarch that allows GSD patients to get through the night on one dose. The “super starch” was invented by a chemist in Scotland, whom David found online and then met in 2006. Vitaflo, now owned by Nestle, had already bought the rights to sell super starch for medical use, but it wasn’t on the market yet. To speed the product’s development along, the Children’s Fund paid for testing of the product’s dosage, efficacy, and safety.
    In 2008, David and a biotech professional co-founded a for-profit venture with the goal of speeding a cure for GSD. In 2009, the firm split in two: GlyGenix Therapeutics, Inc., which works on treating and curing GSD, and the UCAN Company, which has the rights to sell super starch for consumer nutrition.
    UCAN launched a powdered drink mix for athletes in 2010. Praise from elite competitors includes American marathoner Meb Keflezighi, an Olympic silver medalist: “Since I’ve been using Generation UCAN for my workouts, I’ve noticed improvements in both my performance and metabolic state,” he said on the company’s website. UCAN is exploring the use of the drink mix for diabetes and weight control.
    Nestle’s super starch product was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2012 and is sold as a medical food for GSD called Glycosade.
    Jonah has used the super starch from his dad’s UCAN company since 2010, providing 7.5 hours of sleep at night for his parents, which David called “life changing.” The family has grown to include three more sons, a 9-year-old and 4-year-old twins, who don’t have the genetic disease.
    Meanwhile, research toward a cure is promising. The foundation has supported gene therapy experiments that have cured mice and dogs with GSD, putting the work on a path toward human clinical trials within the next three years.
    Among the supporters of David’s work are his brother, Jonny Feldman ’90, and their father, Barry Feldman ’62. The three Feldmans have an orthodontic practice together in Cheshire, Conn. Barry and Jonny have helped the foundation and both companies through investing, fundraising, marketing, and sales, although they don’t hold official roles. David is the chief operating officer of GlyGenix and the only Feldman involved day to day.
    “It’s been amazing,” said Barry. “I never thought this would go as far as it has gone.” He marvels that the product might not have gotten to market if not for Jonah and the foundation that resulted.
    Now 11, Jonah is a bit short for his age, can’t eat sugar, and still needs cornstarch feedings every three hours during the day. (He uses super starch only at bedtime; they are still working on a daytime dosage that would be best for him.) But he also skis, swims, and plays baseball and ice hockey.
    David hopes to be able to send Jonah to college without worrying whether he’s had his latest dose of cornstarch.
    “There are still a lot of hurdles toward a cure,” said David. But he has great hope. “That light at the end of the tunnel flickers less.”

— Chris Swingle


Closing the gap through technology and communications
“I’m not a computer geek,” joked Nicol Turner-Lee ’90. “I took a computer science class in college, and when that class was over, I thought, ‘I’m done — I’m a true sociologist.’”
    Despite her initial aversion to computers, Turner-Lee has come to realize the opportunities that technology can provide. In fact, she is now at the forefront of helping communities of color on both the consumer and professional sides of telecommunications. Recently voted one of the 60 most inspiring women in media by the Alliance for Women in Media, she is settling into her role as president and CEO of the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC).

(photo by Luis Martin Creative)

    In the late nineties, while earning her doctorate in sociology at Northwestern University with a focus on organizational and community development, Turner-Lee volunteered at a housing development. The children she was tutoring, Turner-Lee said, “didn’t have the tools that they needed to do their homework, and the Internet wasn’t widely available to low-income people.” So she bought five new computers and started a tech center. “These kids had never left their neighborhoods,” she said. “The Internet opened up the opportunity to see what the world looked like.”
     Over 10 years, her nonprofit organization, the Neighborhood Technology Resource Center, grew to more than 300 computers in five centers across Chicago that helped low-income families learn basic word processing, taught young people graphic and visual arts and media, and engaged senior citizens. Considering these technology centers as “her way to give back,” Turner-Lee supported herself through diversity consulting for Fortune 500 companies and writing.
    Eventually, she joined a start-up digital advocacy nonprofit called One Economy. There, she expanded an initiative where low-income teens learn how to combine technology skills with community service, and rose to the rank of senior vice president of external affairs.
    After eight years with One Economy, Turner-Lee was recruited to become the first director of the media and technology institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C. One of her biggest achievements there was developing the first national minority broadband adoption study showing the behaviors of people of color and low-income populations who were using the Internet to secure educational opportunities, employment, health care, and more. As she put it, “Technology could be one of the tipping points for some of the inequalities with lack of access to information, ownership, and the creation of content.”
    Turner-Lee got the offer to join NAMIC last spring. “I realized that I love technology and the telecommunications field,” she said. “I had spent so much time creating a level playing field and understanding the attitudes and behaviors of consumers that it was a great time to lead an industry association focused on corporate diversity and inclusion.”
    Through professional development and educational opportunities, NAMIC aims “to educate, empower, and advance the issues of [media and communications] professionals to ensure a more inclusive work environment as well as to increase diversity within the pipeline of new leaders,” Turner-Lee explained. “We’re focused on enhancing our program offerings, and being more attentive to how diversity is represented on and off screen. We are also ensuring that there is a talent pool that understands how digital is impacting how our consumers are interacting with content.”
    With more than 3,000 active members and 16 national chapters, Turner-Lee sees her job as ensuring that NAMIC membership is worth the investment, meeting the needs of NAMIC’s industry partners, and identifying new partners.
    Currently, Turner-Lee serves on the FCC’s digital advisory committee and chairs its subcommittee on the use of wireless technologies by communities of color; she is also on the boards of the Alliance for Women in Media and the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. Twice appointed a Time Warner Cable Research Fellow, she was recently featured in Savoy magazine as one of game changers in the media field.
    “When I look at the advancement in technology from when I started my first computer center, I am just amazed,” she said. “I honestly can’t wait to see what’s next.”

— Aleta Mayne


The no “yuck” zone

Melissa Connell Graham ’91 (center) with her son, Thor, and a guest at the Corks & Crayons fundraiser for Purple Asparagus, her nonprofit dedicated to helping Chicago-area children, families, and the community learn about eating that’s good for the body and the planet. (Photo by TK Photography Chicago)

Melissa Graham’s 9-year-old son, Thor, knows he’s lucky to have a chef for a mom — for the most part. One night, Thor wanted deep-dish pizza, a culinary staple of their home city of Chicago. But it wasn’t because of the huge amounts of cheese or the crust: “It has more tomato sauce,” Graham explained. So she made him a special pizza with lots of tomato sauce (“not chunky”) with Swiss chard.
    “I think some days he’d like the mom who just serves chicken fingers,” said Graham ’91, but “it turned out he really liked [the unusual pizza].”
    Thor calls himself his mother’s “test monkey” — he doesn’t love everything she makes, but that’s OK. “If our kids like 100 percent of what they’re trying, we’re not doing our jobs,” Graham said, citing studies that reveal it can take up to 20 tries for kids to decide that they like something, “especially when it’s unfamiliar, or not immediately sweet, salty, or fatty tasting.” Graham has become known as an expert in children’s nutrition as “head spear” and the only full-time employee (for now) of her nonprofit Purple Asparagus. Her approach to developing recipes for children is “mainly trial and error,” Graham said, and Thor is enthusiastically part of the research. What he likes, Graham takes into work.
    She and several steady volunteers go into Chicago schools to teach children in grades K through 3 about healthy eating, while also making it fun for them. Her efforts have earned her the Chicago Tribune’s 2011 Good Eating Award and the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ 2012 Culinary Youth Advocate award.
    Last year, Graham visited 18 schools on a monthly basis. The first half of each class is an exploration where kids will taste, smell, and feel whatever highlighted ingredient they’re working with, from tomatoes to herbs to apples.
    “We describe our class as a no ‘yuck’ zone,” Graham said — there’s “lots of discussion” about the food. The students don’t have to like it; but, she explained, “we ask them to use polite words and think about why they don’t like something, as opposed to just making an immediate reaction.” The students also get a cooking lesson, making recipes such as a sundae made with mint, honey, orange juice, mandarin orange segments, and vanilla yogurt.
    Graham founded Purple Asparagus in 2005 as a side project. She had recently left her job as an associate at the law firm where her husband, Michael, is a partner, to run her own catering company focusing on using local and sustainable foods. But Purple Asparagus just kept growing, so in 2011, Graham shut down the business to focus more on her nonprofit, which had grown to putting on about 12 to 20 events a month, with some 250 volunteers.
    She has since led programs associated with the Obama administration’s Let’s Move initiative, including the Chefs Move to Schools campaign, which places local chefs in schools to incorporate healthy food into meals. (Graham had met Michelle Obama, one of the country’s most visible opponents of childhood obesity, when she catered a dinner party for the first lady in 2007.)
    “Our goal is to get kids excited about fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Graham — who also blogs at Delicious Nutritious Adventures, as the Sustainable Cook on The Local Beet, and on Williams-Sonoma’s Blender blog. “We don’t just talk about food being healthy or not healthy.” She wants children to learn “what’s interesting about it, why is it that certain cultures eat certain things, what do they eat and how does it grow, and what foods are related to one another.” These lessons, she said, turn the food itself “into experiences that kids can relate to.”

— Ruthie Kott ’05


In the know: How to be a locavore


Hamilton’s farmers’ market (photo by Andrew Daddio)

Both Frank Barrie ’72 and Colgate sociology professor Chris Henke consider themselves “locavores” — actively striving to consume and buy food locally. Barrie and Henke teamed up for a presentation during Reunion Weekend 2012 to share their tips and tricks of the trade. A lawyer-turned–food enthusiast, Barrie has tended his backyard garden for more than 30 years. A longtime member of the Honest Weight Food Co-op in Albany, N.Y., he also runs a website providing recipes, informative articles, and resources for aspiring locavores. Meanwhile, Henke offers a highly sought-after course called Food, which has a service-learning component at local farms. Henke is also the faculty adviser for Colgate’s community garden — where student interns cultivate produce to donate to the local food cupboard, sell at the Hamilton farmers’ market, and supplement Frank Dining Hall’s menu.
    Barrie and Henke share their tips:

1. Join a CSA. Participate in community-supported agriculture (CSA) by buying a share in a local farm. As a member of a CSA, you not only receive a portion of the farmer’s crop, but you also develop a relationship with your grower and have a hand in deciding growing practices.

2. Shop at your local farmers’ market. The transportation and environmental costs of buying food in the supermarket are extremely high. To shrink your carbon footprint, pick up produce and other goodies at a farmers’ market in your area. Farmers’ markets bring the community together by enabling consumers to support local farms and small businesses. Customers who buy locally are also able to have a dialogue directly with the growers and learn more about the food they are purchasing.

3. Establish a community garden. Clear a patch of land that is central to your community and work together to break ground. The experience of planting crops with your friends and neighbors forges stronger relationships and ultimately puts homegrown food on your table.

4. Preserve your produce.  Learn how to can, preserve, or freeze foods that you can use in times of the year when produce is not locally in season. Look for local cooperative extension offices that offer courses in canning and preserving.

5. Learn more. Discover book reviews and articles online — one resource is Barrie’s website, knowwhereyourfoodcomesfrom.com — and keep up with new, creative ideas for eating and buying locally.

What do you know? If you’re an expert in an area or avocation and would like to share your sage advice, e-mail scene@colgate.edu or write to the Colgate Scene, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346.


Expedition Arctic Row


Paul Ridley ’05 (center, blue bandanna) and his Arctic Row teammates with native Alaskans

The epitome of culture shock: concluding 41 days in a rowboat, dancing with Eskimos in a native Alaskan village, and walking through Grand Central Station — all within 30 hours. That was how August 26 played out for Paul Ridley ’05, who completed a first-of-its-kind rowing expedition with three other men.
    That afternoon, Team Arctic Row had pulled into a rocky beach on Point Hope, Alaska, and set a number of ocean-rowing records. They had shoved off of the shores of Inuvik, Canada, on July 17 to embark on the first nonstop, unsupported row across the Arctic Ocean. The team’s intended destination was Provideniya, Russia, a 1,300-mile distance that they hoped to cross in approximately 30 days. However, some very serious, unforeseen circumstances threatened not only the completion of the expedition, but also the men’s safety.
    For one, “it turned out that this summer was the most unusual year weatherwise that anyone can remember,” Ridley said, based on conversations they had with town elders in Alaska and nationally published commentary by scientists. Shortly after reaching the halfway point, Ridley and his teammates were forced to hunker down in a lagoon near Barrow, Alaska, for seven days due to a weather pattern that the New York Times described as a “powerful and rare summer storm, which is churning the Arctic Ocean’s already thin and reduced sea ice cover.” The weather didn’t let up there. Several days after they rowed away from Barrow, another storm tied them up in Point Lay, Alaska, for three days. Then, a third storm hit them in Point Hope, where they anchored for six days.
    Supplies were low and reality was setting in. The team had been rationing their food since the first storm, going from eating three meals and several snacks a day to only half a candy bar for breakfast, the other half for lunch, and one hot meal at night. Time was also running out — their visas and sailing permissions for Russia were set to expire soon.
    When Ridley and his teammates got word from their sponsor Weather Routing Inc. that the forecast looked dire, reaching Russia no longer seemed like a reasonable — or responsible — goal. “They said that unless we were going to be there a couple more weeks, we weren’t going to be able to move,” Ridley explained. “The weather report and the looming fall storm season made it clear to us that, unfortunately, we weren’t going to be able to go any farther.”
    After rowing more than 1,000 miles, the team had to end their journey. They headed toward the nearest town, Point Hope, where they were greeted by the native Tikigaq townspeople with a celebration, a feast of whale meat (a main part of the local diet), and warm beds.
     Having earned the title of the youngest American to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, Ridley isn’t a first-timer when it comes to dangerous expeditions. For his 2009 Row for Hope, Ridley raised $150,000 toward cancer research in honor of his mother. During this summer’s row, Ridley and his teammates helped two University of Alaska-Fairbanks professors conduct research to shed light on the Arctic ecosystem.
    Ridley and his teammates didn’t reveal all of their harrowing events in their daily blog, for fear of worrying their readership of family, friends, and well-wishers. But, they have more than 30 hours of the expedition on film and are currently shopping it to investors and production houses.
    “We were initially worried that the film would be boring — just showing a lot of rowing — but the simple way to say it is, it’s going to be worth watching,” Ridley said. More information on the upcoming film can be found at www.intothinice.com.

— Aleta Mayne

Colgate friends sparked good times in Newport, R.I., in August. L to R: Catherine Mendola ’09, Dave Eng ’10, Leighann Kimber ’10, Audrey Hoiles ’11, Karl Fries ’10, Dan Hubbard ’09, Alex Jonas ’10, Claire Watts ’10, Matt Muskin ’10; Sitting: Tana Brown ’10, Joe McGovern ’10. (Photo by Gordie Brummer ’10)