The Legion Project

Anna Andresian

Anna Andresian taught middle and upper school Latin for 11 years before transitioning to a career as a software engineer in 2014. She holds a B.A. in Classics from Brown University and a M.St. in Latin & Greek Languages and Literature from the University of Oxford. She is the author of “Looking at Latin: A Grammar for Pre-College” and “Vocabula Picta: An Illustrated Latin Lexicon for the Modern World.” Her most recent Latin pedagogy project is Magistrula.com, a Latin grammar practice website. Anna currently lives in San Francisco and works as a software engineer at Altitude Learning.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Clement Wood

I earned an AB in Classics at Harvard, which gave me the opportunity to spend a transformative summer studying with Reginald Foster in Rome. That experience, along with my wonderful teachers and peers in the Classics Department, inspired me to continue my classical studies and teach. I earned an MSt at Oxford, taught Latin and Greek at The Marymount School of New York for two years, and then headed to graduate school at Princeton. I earned my PhD in Classics in 2018, with a dissertation on exemplarity in Tacitus.

I am now a Consultant in the New York office of Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm. Many skills I developed as a classicist and teacher have served me well in my new career: close reading, tracking down facts through research and developing an original thesis, communicating complex ideas succinctly, breaking down problems into a logical framework, and speaking in public. Like graduate school or teaching, management consulting demands constant on-the-job learning and pushes you to adapt to new challenges frequently.

Adriannne 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.

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: [email protected]
Office: Bobst Library

Kyle Johnson

Kyle Johnson works as a data scientist specializing in NLP. His Ph.D. was in Classics (NYU, 2012) and he continues to do NLP research in Ancient Greek and Latin. Kyle started and co-runs the Classical Language Toolkit, a software library for ancient languages. In 2017, he wrote "An Affable Guide to Leaving Classics".

Robert Koonce

For over a decade and a half I have worked as a fundraiser for a variety of institutions in the social service, cultural, and environmental sectors.  I have served as the senior fundraiser at two organizations over the past six years and have had oversight of communications and marketing for those organizations in both roles.

Mark Mash

Mark Mash is a public high school Latin teacher and independent scholar who lives and works in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. He earned his MA and PhD in Classics from UNC-Chapel Hill, and his BA in Classics from the University of Texas at Austin. He studied abroad in the summer programs of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the American Academy in Rome. For the past 16 years, Mark has taught Latin I-AP at Leesville Road High School in Wake County, the largest public school system in North Carolina and the 15th largest in the United States. In 2015, Mark was named his school's Teacher of the Year, and in 2016 he was named a Teacher of the Year finalist for the school system. In 2016-2017, he was appointed to the Superintendent's Teacher Advisory Council. Mark's current roles at Leesville Road High School include School Improvement Chair, Webmaster, Social Media Manager, Mentor Teacher, and member of the Instructional Leadership Team. He has published essays on Herodotus in a Routledge monograph (2016), Histos Supplement 6 (2017), and The Herodotus Encyclopedia (Wiley, forthcoming 2019). He regularly advises Classics graduate students who are considering teaching Latin in public high schools.

Sarah Nix

I graduated with a B.A. in Classics from St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. in Classics from Brown University. After graduation, I took a two-year position in the Department of Classics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. One of the most appealing aspects of this job was the chance to work with the MAT Latin students, to play a part in supporting Classics at the secondary level. My own years of public high school Latin had been formative ones: my teacher studied with Reginald Foster in the summers and imbued me with a passion for the language and for this place called Rome. During grad school, I had also taught a Latin class at Moses Brown School for a couple of years, which showed me the rewards of working with younger students. From UMass, I moved to Miss Hall’s School, where I currently teach Latin and Greek. Additionally, for the past ten years, I have spent much of the summer in Rome, teaching both undergraduate and high school students for programs through Brown University. This work, often in conjunction with art historians and archaeologists, has broadened my connections to the ancient world and, thus, my teaching.

I feel lucky, and privileged, to be able to live in the ancient world in my head all day long, together with students who are interested in the language, the literature, and the material culture of the Greeks and Romans. It’s gratifying and purposeful work: Classics gave me the ability to read carefully, to think and write critically; it opened up a multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary world, and these are gifts that I want to pass on to my students. For me, and for them, I hope, there is something so compelling about communicating with people who lived 2,000 years ago, and something so grounding in seeing the connections between the ancient world and our own. I am passionate about keeping Latin alive at the secondary level, and I see myself as part of the larger community of Classicists who are all working to ensure that our discipline remains a vital part of the educational system.

Emily Beugelmans

I earned a Bachelor's degree in Classical Civilization at the University of California, Los Angeles. I then spent a year at the University of Pennsylvania's post-baccalaureate program before matriculating to Vanderbilt University. I graduated with a Master's degree in Classics in the spring of 2013, and after spending a couple years at the University of Chicago in a doctoral program, I decided to take the leap and launch my alternative academic career. I'm currently working at a boutique lifestyle public relations agency in Oakland, CA where I'm enjoying using the analytical skills I developed in my academic career to build engaging press strategies for our clients. Public relations is one of the most humanistic fields in the business world. It boils down to understanding how people communicate and crafting a compelling narrative, both of which are fundamental to Classics. Also, the rigorous nature of studying Latin and Greek has some unexpected perks--once you've learned the Greek verb system, figuring out how to program spreadsheets is much less daunting! I still feel very connected to the discipline of Classics, and not just because I tutor Latin on the weekends. I've found that studying Classics has dramatically impacted the way I approach the world, both in my professional and personal life. As a Classicist, you have the privilege of preserving an important part of our collective history, and regardless of what you choose to do as a profession, you have helped keep that knowledge alive. I also think there's a profound sense of comfort that comes with seeing how your own life fits into the vast mosaic of human experience.

David Rowland

I earned a B.A. in Classics from Texas Tech University. Latin fascinated me from the first time I opened a copy of Wheelock's Latin, but I was hooked when I read my first pages of Cicero. Studying Classics left a deep impression because it helped explain so much of the world around me. Latin and Greek created a window into how language works that I had not appreciated previously through English. The ancient voices of poets and philosophers, clear and alive in their original tongues, added depth to how I viewed the world. I now work as a software developer with Cerner Corporation. My Classics education benefits me on the job every day. The combination of analytical and creative thinking required to create things with code is the same that is needed to translate a heavily inflected language. I also work on a team, and communicating clearly and simply about complexity can be the difference between hitting a deadline, and not. I would not be as effective at my job without my Classics education, and without Classics, I would not be as thoughtful about the life I have outside my job.

Raymond Kania

I studied classics at the University of Michigan and went on to the University of Chicago, where I earned a PhD in 2012 with a dissertation on the Eclogues (subsequently published as the book Virgil’s Eclogues and The Art of Fiction). I left Chicago for the San Francisco Bay Area and taught courses in UC Berkeley’s Departments of Classics and Rhetoric before taking up a three-year teaching fellowship at Stanford.

As my fellowship concluded, I looked for opportunities for an administrative career in higher education. I started working in external relations, which was an opportunity to do a lot of writing and editing as well as craft strategies for communicating about the purpose and value of the humanities—competencies I had developed over my years studying the classics and teaching. In my current position, I support efforts to recruit and retain faculty.

My daily activities no longer revolve around the Greeks and Romans, and I’m content with that. But I still regard my education and professional experiences in the classics as integral to who I am and how I live.

Patrick Lake

I received a B.A. in ancient Greek & Latin from Boston University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Fordham University. Upon finishing my coursework in graduate school, I took a position teaching Classics at The Hill School, a boarding school in Pennsylvania. Working at a boarding school like The Hill has allowed me to engage in the values which inform the study of the Classics in the fullest way possible: I live with my students, dine with them, coach them, and teach them in the classroom. Over lunch, we may debate to what extent the early government of the American Colonies reflected democratic Athens (this was our conversation just the other day!); on the playing fields, we work to realize the classical ideal of a sound mind in a sound body; in the classroom, we give life and breath to the languages and literature of the ancients. During my time teaching at the secondary level, I have remained engaged in the broader world of Classics by publishing regularly, serving on the board of CAAS, and traveling nationally and internationally to attend conferences, do research, and organize study tours for my students. Each spring, I take my upper form students abroad. Over the years, we have toured Italy, Turkey, Greece, France, and the UK. These trips offer a final capstone to their efforts in the classroom. Standing in Socrates’ Agora or Augustus’ Forum, my students take the final step in understanding and synthesizing their experience in the Classics.

Steven Stack

I received an A.B. in Classics (Henry Bean Scholar for Classical Studies) from the College of the Holy Cross, where I was also pre-med. Afterwards, I attended Ohio State University and obtained my M.D. and completed residency in Emergency Medicine. My career has included practicing emergency medicine and serving as Emergency Department Medical Director in Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Additionally, I have been very active in medical professional societies, this culminating in my election as the 170th President of the American Medical Association (AMA). During my extended medical education and early years in clinical practice, my study of Classics waned as a consequence of the long hours and limited time. However, in my mid-thirties I began reading classical historical fiction, which led to me reading more traditional Greek and Roman history books. Now that I am better acquainted than ever with classical history, I am mixing in some of the ancient authors themselves (in translation) and hope one day to restore my proficiency in Latin and/or Greek in order to enjoy these texts in the original language. In my medical leadership and health policy roles, I frequently engage with senior federal, state, and private industry leaders to improve health and health care delivery in our nation. My classical education has given me a rich foundation in humanism and behavioral precedents and patterns throughout classical antiquity. This perspective has been an invaluable resource, one that influences my thinking and choices on a regular basis. And—something that is of equal value—my sustained and deepening study of the classics has become a source of great personal enjoyment and comfort. In the Holy Cross library, there is inscribed a quotation from Cicero that reads “Haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant,” which loosely translates to, “Studying in youth sustains delight into old age.” I couldn’t agree more!

Mathew Levine

I received an A.B. in Classics from Harvard University. Afterwards, I spent a year teaching Latin before getting a law degree and then working as a mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer, an investment banker, and a financial journalist. I am currently a columnist at Bloomberg View, writing about the financial industry. Much of what I do is analyze arcane texts—court decisions, derivatives contracts, fraud settlements—and try to tease out something relevant, meaningful, or entertaining to share with my readers. (The classical parallels are obvious.) More generally, I try to situate the ephemera of the financial world in its broader human context, to explain not only how a trade or a deal or a fraud happened but also the human motivations behind it. Studying Classics helped with that, as it does sort of encourage one to take the long view, to think about institutions humanistically. I occasionally even find myself working ancient adages into my columns. For a while I adapted a mangled version of Cato's "Carthago delenda est" every day to call on the U.S. Treasury to issue premium bonds, though that didn't work. My Twitter bio—"I look things up"—is stolen from a story I once heard about how D.R. Shackleton-Bailey described the job of a classical philologist, and it describes the job of a financial columnist well enough too. Of course, since I make my living as a writer, I am grateful to my classical literary education for teaching me so much about style and precision, and also for allowing me a certain linguistic plasticity. Writing casually and conversationally on the Internet is somehow made easier by having read Cicero, though I wish I had kept up my Greek and Latin.

Wayne Rupp

I received a B.A. in Classical Civilizations and English Literature from Loyola University of New Orleans, an M.A. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Arizona, and a M.A. in Latin and a Ph.D. in Classics (with an emphasis in Classical Archaeology) from Florida State University. I am currently in my eighth year of teaching Latin (with a year of Ancient Greek and several years of English) at St. Mary’s Dominican High School in New Orleans, Louisiana. As the only Latin teacher at my school, I am still very much entrenched in Classics. I teach Latin I-IV, an AP class, and taught Greek for the first time last year. Through my job, I have had the opportunity to work with some incredibly intelligent young women. In fact, it was on account of their eagerness to take Greek that I braved teaching it, despite my previous fears. I will be teaching Greek again to a select group of seniors during the 2016-17 school year. Even my English classes have a large classical mythology component (the Iliad, Oedipus Rex, etc.) and include some Renaissance poetry (namely, Petrarch’s sonnets). In addition, my interest in mythology permeates nearly every aspect of my life—I am a gamer and science fiction/fantasy nerd, so I often spend my free time playing Dungeons and Dragons and board games. My two sons are following closely in my footsteps, with one planning on taking Latin this year.

Janet Megill

I earned a B.A. in Classics from the University of California at Berkeley, followed by one year of graduate work. During that time, I worked as a research assistant for a professor, which made me realize that I was more interested in research for the book than my own translation homework. Upon meeting a fellow student’s wife, who had just completed her Master’s in Library Science and was working as a librarian at the university, I started seriously considering librarianship as a career. I began my Master’s in Library Science at Berkeley the next fall. After finishing the program, I was fortunate enough to find a job as a reference librarian at one of California’s excellent community colleges, working with mostly first generation students in entry-level college classes that required general knowledge. My background in Classics has certainly given me a lot of general knowledge: I can spell anything thanks to many years of Latin and Greek; I know enough about the roots of scientific terms to be able to go immediately to the right subject reference books; my grammar is excellent; my knowledge of world history, art history, politics, and humanities stand me in good stead. I still enjoy reading Facebook posts by people inside and outside the field and thus learning how Classics enriches both our professional and personal lives. So yes, Classics also informs my personal life—not too long ago, my ten-year-old granddaughter called and asked me for three facts about Pandora for her fifth grade mythology project!

Amanda Leins

I received an M.A. in Classical Literature from the State University of New York, Buffalo. After leaving graduate school, I worked for four years as a Latin, History, and sometimes Anthropology teacher at an independent school just outside New York City. In 2012, I became a professional quilter, quilting being something I had time to learn and practice after graduate school. In the early 2000s—when the advent of blogs and online communities got a new group of quilters interested and excited after the revitalization of quilting in the 1970s—there was a lot of bickering about who came up with the designs between “modern” and “traditional” quilters. I found the dispute slightly silly because these designs have been around for thousands of years in mosaics and architecture, and this later became one of the premises of my work. Fast-forward about ten years, and I have set myself up with a longarm (a machine that I use to quilt the top, middle, and back of the fabric together) and my own business, Mandalei Quilts. I design and make quilts and patterns based on the classic principles of design from various places in the ancient world, and have written a book that came out last August called Wanderlust Quilts. There are ten projects, each based off my studies and experiences as a student of Greece and Rome, and it is meant to teach and engage. I love that my quilts are telling stories about the ancient world, and that people are inspired to make their own quilts that tell their own stories using the techniques I share. One of the quilts in the book, "Eggs and Darts," went on to win an award at a national show. I do try to keep up with new technologies and studies in Classics—I am really excited by the work of Sarah Parcak and dying to make a quilt based on some of those images!

Paul Roth

I received a B.A. in Classics from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Ancient Greek from Bryn Mawr College. Afterwards, I taught Classics for six years: at Colorado College, Bowdoin College, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I moved to New Zealand in 1986 and earned a law degree. I am now a Professor of Law at the University of Otago, specializing in employment, privacy, and international human rights law. I also practiced law part-time as a barrister for many years. In my second career, I have been empowered to help people through a variety of interesting work for many different clients, including labor unions, government, the European Union, APEC, and the United Nations. For example, I was on a team that drafted new labor laws for Liberia. While I loved Classics, I feel that law is more directly relevant to the current world. Law can also be quite exciting, as when one cross-examines a witness or argues an appeal case before several judges. In retrospect, Classics focused my life inwards, whereas law has had the opposite effect. However, the skills that I picked up in Classics have served me well in my law career, particularly historical perspective, patience, and the ability to analyze language closely. Many people think that knowledge of Latin is an advantage when it comes to law, but this is not really so aside from learning a few Latin tags. If anything, I get bemused looks when I inadvertently pronounce Latin correctly (lawyers absolutely massacre Latin). I have never regretted changing careers, and I feel lucky to have had two of them. I retain my interest in Classics and still enjoy it as a leisure time activity.

Catherine Mardula

I have a B.A. in Classics from Brown University and an M.A. in Classics from the University of Chicago. Since leaving graduate school, I have been working on a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois. At academic and special collections libraries, having a background in one or more fields beyond librarianship is a great professional asset. Studying Classics has given me the language skills I need to work with medieval manuscripts, the research skills I need to help graduate students with their projects, and the general humanities background I need to support coworkers in a variety of fields. So far, I have really enjoyed the interdisciplinary, collaborative nature of librarianship; I am looking forward to continuing to specialize in my field while helping others along the same path and bringing all of their exciting ideas to light.

Katie Lamb

I received a B.A. in Classics and Comparative Literature from Brown University. I also have an M.A. from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto and an M.S.W. (Master of Social Work) from Wayne State University. My current job is Volunteer & Intern Program Manager at HAVEN in Pontiac, Michigan. HAVEN is Oakland County's only comprehensive program for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Before that I taught Latin, coached volleyball, and was a house advisor at Cranbrook Schools in Michigan (while going to school myself part-time!). I always explain to people that studying Latin and Greek is more about learning complex systems than it is about utilizing the actual languages. However, I do find that my knowledge of Classics comes in handy at the most random times. Two years of Ancient Greek inspired me to take Modern Greek, which in turn brought some great opportunities to work as an RA with a summer program in Greece. I still tutor a few high school students in Latin and Modern Greek, even with a full-time job in social work. I love the balance of being able to pursue multiple passions at the same time. I do feel relatively connected to Classics—I have had many great mentors who continue to stay in touch and enjoy a solid Facebook network—and I am a huge fan of people having a broader understanding of potential applications of Classics in today's world.

Graziano Curri

I earned a B.A. in Classics and an M.A. in Ancient Philology and Literature and History of Art from the Università de Salento. I also have an International Master in Business Administration from LUISS Business School. I have been an intern at the Capitoline Museums, where I conducted statistical research, an Area Coordinator for Sovvenire, a magazine for those who support the clergy, and an independent advisor on restoration projects in Rome. I am now the President and Treasurer at Ligamina, Inc., a nonprofit organization based in the United States that focuses on fundraising to support restoration and educational projects in the historical center of Rome, with a particular interest in the preservation of churches. We are currently working on restoring paintings in Santa Maria in Monticelli, Santa Margherita in Trastevere, and San Giovanni Battista dei Fiorentini. We believe that restoration is not only an activity aimed at the mere conservation of an art object, but also an occasion to weave networks and ties (ligamina, in Latin) of values which go beyond materiality and elevate the spirit. We also want to create sensible links between different actors involved in restoration such as scholars, restorers, and benefactors to acquire the material instruments capable of sustaining conservation projects in Rome, and educate new generations in beauty itself. I believe that my classical education empowered my independence and opened my mind, which has been fundamental to the work I do today.