The Legion Project

Camille Kramer

Camille A. Kramer earned her BA in Greek and Roman Classics with a minor in Ancient Greek and Latin from CUNY Brooklyn College. She later returned to graduate school as an adult for a MA in American Studies with a concentration in History from Fairfield University. Her classical studies included Italian, French, and German and although she never directly applied them to her career, the exposure to all the greatest thinkers and doers of antiquity guided her thinking and world view. She credits the classics for an intense training in critical thinking and for instilling the sense that we can all seek and find true happiness and beauty in our lives while trying to do good.

William Duffy

I received my Ph.D. in Classics from the University at Buffalo in 2011, specializing in Greek Epic and heroism. From 2011 to 2017, I was a non-tenure track faculty member at UT San Antonio. In 2017, I made the switch to administration, and started my current job as Faculty Fellow of Faculty Development at St. Philip’s College, one of the five Alamo Colleges.

My training in Classics taught me how to develop competency in a wide variety of fields quickly, and taught me critical thinking and research skills that I use daily. In my current position, I work with faculty members from across five colleges, so the ability to speak and work across disciplines that I developed as a Classicist comes into play almost daily. Helping my community colleges colleagues to be better teachers and scholars is quite rewarding, and I have access to entire schools in a way that I never had as an NTT professor. While I cannot say that I never miss being a Classics professor, my current occupation allows me to do many of the things that I loved in my past career, and several rewarding things that I could never have done if I had not switched directions.

Joseph Anthony Debono

Joseph Anthony Debono is a citizen of the EU member-state of Malta. He obtained his first degree, a B.A. (Hons.) in History, from the University of Malta in 1997. He followed it up with an M.A. in History from the same university. However, his greatest passion, from the moment he found a book on mythology at the age of seven, has always been Classics. In 2006, he took time out from his work in education to start a degree in Classics at the University of Malta. During the course of these studies, he won the Dean’s List prize for Excellence for his achievements in Classics, and later graduated with a summa cum laude (1st Class) degree in Classics in 2009. In the subsequent months, he set up the Malta Classics Association with other Classicists, and a couple of years later he founded the Classical Studies syllabus at Intermediate (post-secondary) Level in Malta. For many years, he taught History, IT, Latin, Classical Greek and Classical Studies at all levels from Middle School to the University of Malta. He has translated, written, and published numerous materials, mostly related to History and Classics. Since 2016, his attention has been increasingly attracted to cryptocurrencies and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), and he has been studying the field, carrying out research, writing, and speaking on these technologies ever since. Having acquired certification in Blockchain Business Strategy from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, he is pursuing further certification and qualifications related to this field. Apart from this, he is a Senior Advisor at a Maltese Corporate and Management services firm to which he provides consultancy and training in cryptocurrencies and DLT. While focused on DLT and related technologies, in his spare time he translates works from Ancient Greek and Roman authors into English. With a little more spare time at his disposal he also enjoys Classical Greek and Latin composition. Apart from his better half, Classics is the greatest passion of his life.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-anthony-debono-a2948914a/

Photo credit: Francesca Rizzo

Jennifer Nelson

Jennifer K. Nelson is the Reference Librarian for the Robbins Collection in Civil and Religious Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law. She holds an M. A. in Classics from the University of Kentucky (UK) and a Ph. D. in Classics from the University of Florida (UFL). While studying Classics at UK she obtained a concurrent Master’s degree in Library and Information Science with a view to pursuing a career as a librarian. Special collections librarianship, in a library focused on medieval Roman and canon law and the civil law tradition, has proven to be the ideal environment for her training as a Classicist, as she gets to interact with books written in Latin all day long! While already working as a librarian, she returned to school to pursue her Ph. D. in the UFL Department of Classics distance degree program. Following her interest in neo-Latin, early modern Italy, and early printed books, her dissertation is a translation of, and commentary on, Gian Vittorio Rossi’s 1637 Eudemiae libri VIII, a satirical novel whose fictional setting is 1st century AD Rome but is actually a mordent critique of Roman society under Pope Urban VIII.

Elina Salminen

I received a BA in Ancient Greek from the University of Helsinki and a PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I began applying for “alt-ac” positions even before my defense, and shortly after graduation began work as Activity Coordinator on a Mellon Foundation–funded pedagogical project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My career transition was greatly facilitated by an internship, pedagogical training, and part-time faculty development work I did during my PhD studies, as well as writing about and presenting on my own teaching experiences through various venues. I find it’s the general transferable skills that I use on a daily basis, but my archaeological background comes into play in a few different ways as well. I work on a humanities project with humanities faculty, and having an in-depth understanding of the academic ecosystem is very helpful; my PhD probably also gives me some “street cred” among faculty, as does having first-hand experience of university teaching. Archaeological projects are also collaborative and often involve complex documentation and logistics – all pertinent to coordinating projects. I gained much from the support, connections, and resources I received from various people during my job seeking, and I would be thrilled to pass it along, so please feel free to reach out to me. As a non-green card holder, I’m also happy to discuss the intricacies of transferring out of academia on a student/non-permanent visa.

Keith Whitaker

Keith is President of Wise Counsel Research, a think tank and consultancy focused on wealth and philanthropy. 

He has consulted for many years with leaders of enterprising families, helping them plan succession, develop next generation talent, and communicate around estate planning. His approach to consulting is informed by his classical education, particularly the Socratic question, "What is virtue?" Family Wealth Report named Keith the 2015 "outstanding contributor to wealth management thought-leadership."

Keith has served as a Managing Director at Wells Fargo Family Wealth, an adjunct professor of management at Vanderbilt University, an adjunct assistant professor of philosophy at Boston College, and a director of a private foundation. He was also a special assistant to the President of Boston University.

Keith’s writings and commentary have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Claremont Review of Books, and Philanthropy Magazine. His Wealth and the Will of God--which includes chapters on Aristotle and Aquinas, among others--appeared in 2010 from Indiana University Press. Keith is also co-author of The Cycle of the Gift (which looks at family giving through the lens of Marcel Maus and Fustel de Coulanges' studies of ancient societies), The Voice of the Rising Generation (which uses the journey of Telemachus to explore the challenges and opportunities facing heirs), Family Trusts, Complete Family Wealth, and Wealth of Wisdom: the Top 50 Questions Wealthy Families Ask, all of which have been published by Wiley / Bloomberg Press.

Keith holds a Ph.D. in Social Thought from the University of Chicago and a BA and MA in Classics and Philosophy from Boston University. He serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars, an organization devoted to intellectual freedom, the search for truth, and virtuous citizenship.

Tom Groves

Tom Groves studied classics and classical archaeology for may years, receiving a BA in Classics from Cornell University, an MA in classics from the University of Illinois, and an MA in classical archaeology from Princeton University. While at Princeton, he was the recipient of the John Williams White Fellowship at the American School in Athens and a Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. Tom spent several years as an archaeologist at the American Excavations at Morgantina in Sicily and is the co-author of Morgantina Studies II, The Coins (Princeton, 1989). Before transitioning to the world of business, he was visiting professor of art history at Rutgers. Tom has spent the last 25 years in advertising in New York City, beginning as a market researcher for such firms as J Walter Thompson and gradually moving up the ranks to hold key strategic planning positions at Cline Davis & Mann, Ogilvy Healthworld and, currently, Patients & Purpose, the largest consumer healthcare agency within the Omnicom Group. His specialization has been in customer insights, creative strategy, and brand planning.

Henry Whorwood

Mark Diller

I left the University of Chicago in 1997 with a Ph.D. in the history of religion, at a time when the humanities job market was pretty terrible, but I was able to leverage my degree into a position as Religion Editor at Britannica.com. Two years later my future wife and I headed to Seattle, where I embarked on a career as a writer, editor, and publisher of (mostly) digital content at a series of companies, large and small. I haven’t called on my background in religious studies in quite a while, but the writing and critical-thinking skills I developed in school have always been marketable, as is my ability to plan and complete complex projects with little to no managerial oversight. Today I’m in charge of social media strategy and content development for the Employer Brand Marketing team at T-Mobile, which calls on everything I’ve learned about effective communication and is a lot more experimental, fun, and fast-paced than website content ever was. Every now and then I wish I’d had the chance to show what I could do as a professor, but I have no regrets; writing my dissertation was a wonderful experience, my degree has opened doors for me, and I built skills and resources in school that have served me well in every job I’ve held since graduating.

Bruce Hedin

I am currently Principal Scientist at H5, a company that supports legal counsel in searching and analyzing large volumes of data. Within H5, my responsibilities include the design of the measurement protocols whereby we validate the quality of our results; beyond H5, I am engaged in initiatives seeking to advance principles for the ethical and scientifically sound adoption of advanced technologies in legal systems. To the latter end, I have contributed articles to publications such as Perspectives on Predictive Coding and Other Advanced Search and Review Technologies for the Legal Practitioner and The Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law. I am also a participant in the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law and the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems.

While the distance from the ancient world to AI may seem great, my path from Classics (B.A., Cornell University; Ph.D., Stanford University) to my current work was actually straightforward. My dissertation was on a question regarding the phonology of Ancient Greek. Addressing that question adequately required a grounding in both linguistics and statistics, two fields of expertise that are in high demand in the AI industry. Upon completion of my degree, seeking to develop and apply these skills further, I found work with a startup developing natural language processing technology, and from there proceeded in my career outside academia.

While an interest in linguistics and statistics served as the bridge from academic research in Classics to the design and testing of AI-enabled technologies, I have found my training in Classics, more broadly, to be an asset on which I frequently draw. Whether it is addressing basic questions of definition and classification or seeking principles that will ensure that AI-enabled systems are designed and deployed in a way that protects and advances human well-being, we have much to learn from ancient philosophy. Classics also serves as robust preparation for addressing problems that require multidisciplinary solutions. In short, I have found that a background in Classics continues to be a unique and valuable asset well beyond the academy.

John Dvor

John Dvor is an investor, entrepreneur, and operating executive, focused on triple bottom line organizations. He serves as Head of Corporate Development for 3BL Media, the leading Sustainability/CSR/ESG Media Platform, partnering with 1000+ global organizations and 70% of the Fortune 500 for distribution, editorial and executive education services. 

Previously, he founded Tufts Health Ventures, the direct investment division for Tufts Health Plan, a $5B revenue healthcare company, executing venture capital investments, mergers and acquisitions. Past investment and operating roles were at Otsuki Capital, ReMed Life Sciences (Co-Founder, Acquired), iRobot, Aga Khan Development Fund, Millhouse Capital, and Cambridge Executive Academy (Co-Founder, Acquired). His work has been covered in the Financial Times, Mainichi Shimbun, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Triple Pundit.

Mr. Dvor graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor's Degree, Cum Laude in Classics, and served as a Fellow at the Social Enterprise Lab at the Kennedy School of Government. Prior to his career in business, he served in the US Marine Corps as US Secret Service Attaché for The White House on 30+ Global Advance Presidential Travel Missions. President Bill Clinton awarded him Presidential Service Badge #17996. John Dvor is also the author of the article Semper Fidelis: How Classics can Help Veterans.

He serves on the Boards of the Association for Corporate Growth, Boston Chapter, Chair of the Family Office Committee, and the Warrior Scholar Project, a national organization assisting veterans with career transition. An avid environmentalist, he owns an organic farm in rural Massachusetts.

Albertus Horsting

I received my BA from the University of Chicago and my Ph.D. from from the University of Notre Dame. I spent the last two years of my doctoral studies in Italy, first as a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome and then as a visiting researcher at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. I then taught for two years at Harvard, where I held the position of College Fellow in Late and Medieval Latin. My research focused on the textual criticism of early Christian literature, and I published a critical edition of the epigrams of Prosper of Aquitaine. As I was wrapping up work on my edition and thinking about what to do next, I realized that I was dreading the prospect of the next project and the possibility of spending another few years in isolation in some lonely archive. I decided to make a change and enrolled at Yale Law School. To my surprise, I was particularly drawn to transactional law, and especially mergers and acquisitions. I graduated in May 2018 and am now a corporate associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York City. There’s obviously a great fissure between my academic pursuits and my new profession, but I am especially grateful for certain intellectual habits I think I acquired in my studies. In particular, attempting to make sense of the ancient world requires both a rigorous accounting of what is known and unknown and a sympathetic imagination to try and weave a coherent whole out of incomplete and contradictory accounts. Both have their place for the person attempting to understand a large business entity from its public filings. And I shouldn’t fail to add what a joy it has been to return the classics to the realm of leisure: rereading my favorites—Homer and Horace, Prudentius and Augustine—on my morning commute and outside the context of preparing for a lecture or writing an article has reminded me of how much delight I derive from them. Perhaps that, more than any utilitarian purpose, is why I am glad for the unorthodox path I took to legal practice.

Rebecca Miller Brown

As Assistant Director, Graduate Student Programming, at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, Rebecca plays a key role in training and mentoring departmental pedagogy fellows as well as other graduate student teachers. Additionally, she facilitates the development and integration of all Bok programming for graduate students, including seminars, workshops, consultations, and further resources.

Prior to joining the Bok Center, Rebecca served as an Instructional Technologist in Academic Technology at Harvard, where she worked with faculty and graduate student teachers on the thoughtful and effective integration of educational technologies into their courses. She earned her PhD in Classical Philology at Harvard University, as well as her MA from the University of Oxford and BA from Georgetown University, both in the Classics.

Megan Daly

While finishing my Ph.D. in Classics at the University of Florida in 2013, I became more curious about academic spaces outside of the traditional university classroom. My love for museums and libraries was one of the things that led me to the study of Classics in the first place, so after graduation I took more classes, but in Museum Studies and Library and Information Sciences. While teaching as an adjunct professor I began working on grant projects with museum and library collections to gain experience and make connections in these other areas. One of these projects involved working with a collection of Latin and Greek rare books, and this is how I really got my start in librarianship. My work eventually led me to my current position as a Specialist Librarian in Classics, Philosophy, and Religion. It is a dream job for me. I still get to teach and do my own research, but I also get to engage in a wide variety of other creative projects and I play a large role in facilitating the research of others, both inside and outside of Classics and from the first-year undergraduates to the full Professors. Every day is different and holds unexpected opportunities. Although I still had a lot to learn after my Ph.D. and I encountered challenges while transitioning into a new type of work from a purely academic background, it was certainly worth the extra effort. I am eager to help others as they make similar transitions.

Matthew Pincus

I have a BA in classics from Columbia, which I received in 1993. In 2003 I received a PhD from U.C. Berkeley in Classics. I wrote a dissertation on Roman elegy (particularly Propertius). I taught for two years after receiving my PhD, for one year at Cornell University, where I was a visiting fellow in the Society for the Humanities, and for one year as an adjunct and visiting scholar at Columbia. After that, I worked for a year as a management consultant, where I specialized in insurance. I then went to law school. After law school, I served as a law clerk for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and joined Debevoise & Plimpton. I am currently an associate attorney in the tax department at the London office of Debevoise. My years as a close reader of Roman poetry have undoubtedly made me a better attorney (and reading the Internal Revenue Code is not dissimilar to reading ancient poetry – the closer you read it, the less sense it makes). For me, the skills I learned in graduate school in terms of reading closely, writing clearly and articulating coherent arguments, have helped me in my career. The pedagogy training I received at Berkeley is consistently useful in explaining complicated issues to clients.

Anna Andresian

After earning a B.A. in Classics from Brown University in 2000, I started my career as a middle and upper school Latin teacher. I taught for four years at the Rocky Hill School in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, then headed to the University of Oxford, where I earned a M.St. in Latin & Greek Languages and Literature in 2005. I taught at the Sage Ridge School in Reno, Nevada from 2006-2011, then moved to Denver, Colorado for a year and taught at Regis Jesuit High School. I spent the summer of 2012 teaching for Paideia's Living Latin in Rome program, then landed at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey for what turned out to be my last year as a classroom Latin teacher. In the winter of 2012/2013, two senior boys taught an after-school programming class, which I attended as their student. I became completely addicted to programming and started working on a web app (www.magistrula.com) to help my students practice grammar for my classes. I was completely thrilled by the experience of using code to create pedagogical resources, and at the end of that year I decided to pursue a career in education technology. After spending three months at the Recurse Center in New York City, I started my first tech job at Amplify in 2014. A year and a half later, I moved to San Francisco and now work as a frontend engineer at AltSchool. My experience as a Latin teacher challenged me to come up with a position on why Latin is worth learning, and reflecting on that question shaped my perspective on why anything is worth learning. Learning is about experiencing elegance in the world around us, perceiving and uncovering and nurturing our strength as interconnected individuals, seeing patterns and wholeness and resonance in people and things that exist far apart from each other in time, space, or perspective. The particular things I've learned and thought and wondered in my experience as a classicist have shaped my sense of the world, and I'm grateful that I will have that forever even though Classics is no longer my profession!

David Engel

I earned my Classics Ph.D. from Berkeley. In 2002 I quit my tenure track job to pursue my lifelong dream of accepting whatever work the temp agencies were offering. A temp gig eventually led to an entry-level bank job. I worked my way up from there. Today I’m a Senior Vice President - Investment Officer, Financial Advisor, and Certified Financial Planner™ professional at a big financial services firm. The transition from Ivory Tower to Wall Street felt organic to me, step-by-step, although prospective hirers occasionally needed some persuading. The hardest job to land was that first one. As to the utility of my prior career, I’m quick to admit that my job seldom requires me to recite Virgil or Plato. (Sometimes I still do, though, to show off.) What went into acquiring Greek and Latin—rigor, memorization, adaptability, discernment, the mastery of arcane facts and rules, the self-imposed sedulousness—they all have a place in investment planning, risk management, sales, client service, and investment management. They help me every day in my current job.

Adrianne E. Pierce

I received a BA in Classics from Swarthmore College and an MA and PhD in Classics from Johns Hopkins University. During grad school at JHU, I taught there and at Loyola University in Baltimore.

I am currently Head of Classics and Allstrom Chair in Foreign Affairs at Hackley School in Tarrytown, NY. I have always loved teaching, especially Classical literature, and I am thrilled that there are still students interested in studying Latin, Greek, and all the other fields encompassed by the Classics. I am fortunate this year to be teaching not only the AP Vergil and Caesar course, but also Elementary Greek; I also have two independent studies in which I have been reading Horace, Catullus, and now, for the first time in my Classics career, Vitruvius, whom I am really enjoying. One of the aspects which makes my current job, which I have held for 23 years, so appealing is the opportunity to teach the students when they are just starting out in 6^th grade and then to meet them again in the high school and see the students they have become.

I still enjoy reading novels set in the ancient world, particularly those by Lindsey Davis and Robert Harris. Once a Classics geek, always a Classics geek.

Deborah Fryer

I started learning Latin in 10th grade. I loved it because it was challenging, and I love a good challenge. It felt so mysterious and cryptic. And when I cracked that secret code, it filled me with such joy. I remember vividly the first time I was able to read and understand Ovid's Metamorphoses. I was 15, and I was so moved by the myths that I cried. The cadence of the verses, the haunting visual images, the heart-breakingly beautiful metaphors filled me with awe. I threw myself headlong into the Classics. I dropped out of high school and moved to a Greek island, where I became a weaver's apprentice. The day I arrived, I spoke Ancient Greek to the cab driver. He wondered where I had learned such archaic vocabulary. I went on to study Classics in college (Oberlin) and then to earn Masters Degrees in Classics (from Columbia and Princeton) and a PhD in Classics and Comparative Literature from Princeton.

After graduate school, I followed my passion for languages, mythology and studying other cultures, into the field of filmmaking, where I worked as an Associate and Field Producer for NOVA, Frontline, PBS, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, Turner Broadcasting, American Experience, National Audubon Society, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. In 1999, I began producing, directing, and writing films for the History Channel, MSNBC, Warren Miller Films, and HGTV. In 2004, I founded LILA FILMS, a full-service video production company in Boulder, Colorado. LILA FILMS specializes in telling stories about the interconnectedness between people, public health, and the environment. I have filmed in in Peru, Mali, Kenya, Tanzania, Panama, Mexico, Israel, Turkey, Italy, India, Bali, Thailand, Belize, England, as well as throughout the United States. I have filmed in countries without electricity and running water and in high tech operating rooms, in prisons, classrooms, laboratories, and community gardens. Wherever the story is, I will follow it. My independent film SHAKEN: Journey into the Mind of a Parkinson’s Patient was broadcast on public television to millions of viewers and won numerous awards, including the 2007 Humanitarian Award, two Telly Awards and a CINE Golden Eagle Award.

I am grateful for the solid foundation that studying the Classics has given me. It's like a skeleton key that opens every door. I use my Classics education every day in my work as a filmmaker--and I also used it daily in the two-year stint I spent getting a post-baccaluareate pre-medical degree (mostly for the vocabulary, which was the easiest part for me). Whether I'm researching a story or interviewing experts about a wide range of subjects, speaking a foreign language, writing a script or editing a film with layers of metaphor, I feel like I am always drawing on those skills I learned as a young student. Making a film is a lot like translating a text. At first, it seems impossible, impenetrable. You get a few of the pieces in place, then you get the gist of the whole, and soon, after staring at it long enough, the whole timeline comes together and there's a wonderful story there, just waiting to be revealed. You patiently move between the subtle details of every word/frame and zoom out to the greater context of the whole. You feel the rhythm, the pacing, the emotion, the cadence. And then miraculously, something magical pops out before your eyes that was there all along, just waiting for you.

John Michael Kearns

In my role as director of change management for the Minnesota State system, my primary focus for the next five years will be helping individuals at our 37 state colleges and universities make the transition from a 20 year-old record system to a modern, unified administrative technology system. The goal is to  improve the student experience and streamlines enterprise-wide business processes in student services, finance, and human resources.

I’ve been told my CV paints a picture of someone with three careers running simultaneously on parallel tracks – professor, administrator, professional writer. It’s an abnormal career path that started out normally enough with a doctorate in Classics from UCLA and a tenure track job in a Classics Department. But the junior professor I was in 1992 would be astonished to learn his future: that by 2018, his career would take him far from his academic home. He would earn the rank of professor in Humanities, not Classics; serve in leadership positions such as dean and vice president overseeing academic and student affairs; become a ghostwriter for higher education executives; and write produced/published plays about personal identity in multilingual, multicultural, and multiracial environments.

No matter which of my parallel tracks I am working in, Classics provides amazing models. As a playwright, I have been inspired by (and stole from) Homer’s Iliad and Ovid’s Ars Amatoria. As a dean, I used Agamemnon as a role model for how not to manage faculty who insist that they are equals rather than subordinates. As an academic vice president, I had the multidisciplinary nature of Classics – languages, literary genres, history, culture, epistemology – to thank for my ability to digest complex information about fields far beyond Humanities: Nursing and Business and Oceanography and dozens more. As a speech writer, I have Demosthenes and Cicero to inspire me. 

The Legion Project proves that classicists are everywhere. We’re not quite running the British Empire anymore, but we’re in every form of human endeavor in addition to serving as college and university faculty. I’m no exception.

Jon-David Hague

Public high school in Louisiana may not seem a place to spark a love of Latin and Greek, but it did just that for me. And it likely won’t be a surprise that who teaches you Latin and Greek at the start matters for how far you’ll go with it. Lucky for me, I had great ones. Three years of Latin and one year of Greek in high school planted all the seeds needed for a double major in Greek and Latin at Luther College in Decorah, IA, where I read broadly among the corpus but took keenly to Aristophanes. From the cornfields of Iowa I headed not West, not yet, but East to Boston University where I matriculated through their post-baccalaureate PhD program focusing on ancient drama and especially comedy and Aristophanes, working there with Jeffrey Henderson. I taught for a stint at Austin College in Sherman, TX but having finished writing my dissertation in Berkeley, CA, I felt a pull to return. There I began a career in college textbook publishing that would span 15 years. A classics training and the PhD positioned me well to work with authors in a variety of disciplines, guiding their writing in a such a way that both appealed to the broadest audience and drove the business plans of the companies I worked for, like McGraw-Hill and Cengage. At BU, I remember Meyer Reinhold telling me once, one day working with him at the Institute for the Classical Tradition, that “classicists must know everything from the primordial slime to Constantine!” And so we do, I think, and then some. I am now VP of Solutions for a learning technology startup, called Cerego, in San Francisco. Whereas we hear often how AI and machine learning will replace many human jobs in the near future, classicists wield an important weapon of breadth and scope of the human condition, allowing them to negotiate that human space and build from it in a way passing the Turing Test will never do.

Roman Ivanov

I received a BA in Classical Studies from the University of Tel Aviv, Israel in 2001 and a PhD in Classical Philology from Cornell University in 2010. After receiving my PhD, I taught for a year at Cornell and then went to law school at McGill University. I graduated from the Faculty of Law at McGill in 2015 with a dual degree in common and civil law. Since then I have been practicing law in Ontario, Canada. Currently I am a land-use and development lawyer with the City of Toronto. Although the days of writing academic articles and teaching classics now seem a lifetime ago, I continue to maintain a keen interest in ancient culture, history and philosophy. Today I find myself parsing statutes, rather than Greek poets, yet I look back at my training as a classicist with fondness and gratitude for giving me the skill sets necessary to become an accomplished professional.

Sue Mizera

I received my Masters in Classics from Washington University and my Ph.D. from Princeton in 1984. After an intensive course for Ph.Ds in Business that summer at NYU, I joined Benton & Bowles by year’s end, thus beginning my professional career in what was then called advertising. By spring 1986, I joined Young & Rubicam, where I stayed for the next 30 years, 5 in New York and 25 in Geneva, Switzerland. Initially in planning and research, I evolved these disciplines into Young & Rubicam Business Consultants, a unique branding division within Y&R Europe. Clients have included Microsoft Business Dynamics (multiple projects), DuPont (multiple divisions), Medtronic, Caterpillar, Siminn (Iceland Telecom) and Areva as well as numerous UN/NGOs and non-profits, e.g., World Economic Forum. I developed courses in branding and marketing for Webster University in Geneva, where I taught for ten years. I won two WPP Atticus Awards, which are global recognition for papers in international marketing and brand management.

In the last three years, together with my partner, James Risch, we have created TorchFish Sàrl, a strategic branding, marketing and communications consultancy, grounded in proprietary approaches to brand- and business-building. Our clients continue to number large multinationals (Dentsply Sirona Endodontics) and UN/NGOs (IOE, International Organisation of Employers), while we have added work with SMEs and start ups. These include over 50 of some the most innovative start ups in Europe in incubators at the EU, EPFL and Geneva-based hubs. We continue to publish articles in marketing and branding journals, and to serve on the editorial boards of these journals.

While I have not formally worked one day of my professional career in Classics, I feel I never left the discipline. Classics gets into your soul, and maybe is your soul. Classics forms your life view and values in the individual, knowledge, progress and science (Plato to NATO). Classics fosters continuous learning and excellence (arete) and ensures you will adapt and change in its pursuit (polytropos). Classics points the way to a happy, fulfilled and super-cool life (megalopsychos). Writing, precision, thinking, going ever deeper, coming to the essence, the pure, the truth — you learn this is the natural course. (Was truth there all along?) Words, ah words, who can resist them? Their networks of modern expansion, their core IE roots? DNA before DNA. The sheer rigours alone of mastering Greek and Latin reveal you can probably master anything if you try hard enough (pathei mathos, gnothi seauton.)

Brand in particular is my passion, but what is a brand if it is not myth itself? A key aspect of brand is personality, which we define as one of 12 archetypes, from Sage to Jester to Warrior to Earth Mother, all creations of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Among the first Western brands I cite are the warriors’ individually-defining shields in the Iliad. The effect of branding I have always described in philosophical terms that I borrowed (heavily) from the classically-trained Walter Pater. As Pater talks of the effects of art, I suggest that so too, brands should "rouse, startle and shape new thinking, attitudes and behaviors; ignite organizations with the power of their ethos and courage; stir audiences to sharper, more eager engagement because of their convictions; help shape the communities and cultures they operate in and make a statement about the human potential they impact.” Classics forever primes you to seek out and follow the beautiful. 

Occasionally you’re asked, What are the books that have most affected your life, and try as I might to find something modern, I return to the canon: Homer, Hesiod, the pre-Socratics, Plato and Aristotle, the tragedians, Herodotus and Thucydides; Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace and Ovid. I remember each course, each professor, each class. Soaring. Thrilling.

Andrew Lear

I received a B.A. in English from Harvard University, an M.A. in Creative Writing from the City University of New York, an M.A. in Classics from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduate school, I was a Mellon Fellow at the Columbia University Society of Fellows and a Visiting Assistant Professor at four places: Florida State University, DePauw University, Pomona College, and New York University. A couple of years ago, I founded a tour company called Oscar Wilde Tours (oscarwildetours.com) that does gay history tours—local tours in New York City and multi-day tours in Europe. My tours are about the history of sexuality, the study of which started with Ancient Greece and still depends on it. Most of my tours either focus on or include classical elements. Unsurprisingly, the tours of Greece and Italy focus on ancient sexualities (as well as those of the Renaissance in Italy), but many of the other tours include at least one museum with important classical erotica (the Louvre, the British Museum, etc.). I am also developing a BBC series on gay history, in which the classics will play an important role. I am still quite connected to the discipline: an article of mine recently came out in a Routledge multi-author, I have a contract for my next book (although having left academia I am not sure I will ever find the time to write it!), I am reviewing books for Journal of Hellenic Studies and Classical World, and I am giving a talk at the Archaeological Institute of America. Although it has not always been easy, many major scholars supported me through the years and remain good friends of mine.

W. Gerald Heverly

W. Gerald (Jerry) Heverly is the subject specialist at Bobst Library for classics, Hellenic Studies, and philosophy. He has been at NYU since 2002 and holds an MLS and a PhD (dissertation: Neglected Warnings in the Iliad: A Study in Characterization) from the University of Pittsburgh, an MA from the University of Toronto, and a BA from Penn State. He is mainly interested in early Greek epic, focusing on story patterns and elements derived from folklore. Other interests include ancient political philosophy, Roman oratory, and the history of the book. He has served on the APA/SCS’s Development Committee and as chair of an affiliated group, The Forum for Classics, Libraries, and Scholarly Communication. In addition, he is the archivist for the Classical Association of the Atlantic States. As an adjunct instructor for Long Island University, he helps train graduate students preparing to enter the library profession.

E-mail: gerald.heverly@nyu.edu
Office: Bobst Library

Sarah Ruden

I received a B.A. in Classics from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Classics from Harvard University. I currently work as a freelance writer, journalist, and translator. Previously, I was a lecturer in Classics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, a tutor for the South African Education and Environment Project (an education-enrichment nonprofit in Cape Town), a communications director for a medical informatics firm, an in-house writer for an NGO, a copyeditor, a creative writing teacher, an online writing coach, an editor, and an investigative reporter stringer. All that was part-time, as my real calling was always to write. A collection of my poetry, Other Places, won the South African Central News Agency Literary Award, and my poems appear in The National Review and religious periodicals. I made use of my experience in publishing several book-length translations of pagan literature to write Paul among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time. A new translation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, a Classical Greek tragedy trilogy, is forthcoming soon from The Modern Library. Augustine’s Confessions: A New Translation and The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible will both appear in 2017. I was a scholar in residence for three years at Yale Divinity School and a Guggenheim fellow, and I am now a visiting scholar at Brown University. Classics is absolutely essential to my work. My knowledge of Greek allowed to read the original New Testament, and that got me started as a critic of scripture translation. My Classics background allows me to speak with almost unique authority on all kinds of religious, cultural, and political questions—especially now during this crisis of worldwide religious radicalism.

Tammy Jo Eckhart

I received a BA from Drake University in 1992 with an Individualized Major of Ancient Greek and Roman Civilizations with a certificate in Women Studies. I then got a MA from Columbia University in Greek History before going to Indiana University where I earned my PhD in Ancient History with minors in Folklore and Women's History at the end of 2007. Everyone in my department and my family thought I'd get a tenure track job right away but after a decent first year on the job market, jobs in my field disappeared. By 2009, I turned from academia toward full-time writing since I'd had a handful of fiction books published by then and I began a blog called The Chocolate Cult where I investigated all things related to chocolate (a long time love of mine). But I missed teaching so, later that same year, I joined an educational docenting program at the university museum where I am still volunteering today. Over these years I've continued writing and being published; though, honestly, it is a rare author who can make a full living that way — but I have a supportive family that allows me to follow my bliss, so to speak. I returned to Indiana University for the 2012/13 academic year to teach two courses and I loved the teaching but they didn't need me after that. My readers often ask me if I am a historian or a socialist because of my world-crafting, so I do put my training and knowledge to use. I expanded my use of my historical training starting in 2017 when I began writing a bi-weekly historical column for a local socio-political group I joined. Very recently, in February 2019, I've joined the Rome Reborn group as their content writer and online community liaison, a job where I use my historical training, my networking skills as writer, and get paid for it as well.

Colleen Rice

I graduated from Colgate University with a B.A. in Classics and from the University of Wisconsin with a Ph.D. in Classics. Since graduating, I have been teaching Latin for Oak Meadow, a progressive, distance learning school based in Brattleboro, Vermont. I teach Latin to incredible students from around the world. I work with each student individually, providing support and evaluating their work as they make their way through their Latin courses. People often ask me how I came to study Classics in college and the truth is that I have been fascinated by ancient civilizations since I was a kid. In high school and college, I was fortunate to have Latin teachers who mentored me and fostered my love for Latin language and Roman culture. I love teaching Classics to young people because I am able to spark the same wonder about the ancient world. I am now working on my MAT at Clarkson University where I will earn my teaching certification in Latin in hopes of having the opportunity to teach at one of many public high schools in desperate need of Latin teachers.

Naomi Ceder

For my BA I did a double major in Latin and Greek at the University or Nebraska in late 70's. I then did a PhD in Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to the range of Latin and Greek texts, I also studied Sanskrit, Egyptian, and Indo-European linguistics. I finished my degree in the mid-80's and taught classical Greek, Latin, and classical civilization at schools in Dallas, TX, Athens, Greece, and Fort Wayne, IN. By the 90's the rise of technology and my natural tendency to tinker soon had me repairing computers, writing code, and teaching programming full time. Eventually I left education and moved to business, leading teams creating code and systems to get new businesses started or to streamline processes for existing ones. Through all of that, having earned a Classics PhD has served me in several ways. For one thing, my fascination with ancient languages has given real depth and support as I've picked up various programming languages; I was comfortable with the effort needed to understand difficult problems and texts; and having some understanding of the development of cultures and technologies in antiquity gives me useful perspectives in navigating today's technical churn. As a Python specialist, I'm the author of The Quick Python Book, which gets praise for being very readable (no doubt thanks in part to hours spent with Quintillian, Cicero, and Demosthenes) and I currently serve as the Chair of the Python Software Foundation, a leadership role where the collective wisdom of the past is always a help.

Kyle Johnson

I received a B.A. from Reed College and a Ph.D. from New York University. At each institution, I was fortunate to find mentors who shared a conviction in the importance of the discipline and broadened my vision of what it is capable. Upon graduation, I was inspired to found the Classical Language Toolkit, an open source software library which brings AI tools to the Classical world—beyond that of just the Greeks and Romans and reaching the expanse of ancient Eurasia. I have since made my career merging philology with computer science. Professionally, I am a Data Scientist specializing in several branches of Artificial Intelligence, namely Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. In my work as a programmer, researcher of human thought, and as a leader in the workplace, I leverage the skills I developed while studying the classics. At its best, Classics encourages precision of language, clarity of thought, inductive reasoning, and cosmopolitan ethics. As a melding of the sciences and humanities, my studies prepared me for work environments to which the distinction is foreign. Classics is the Ur–discipline. We do well to keep this in mind, as there are few intellectual pursuits which do not have their origin in the study of Classical antiquity. If this is the case, then Classicists should not shy from a multidisciplinary world.