WIN members Sonya Wakil ’79, Bethann Horey ’84 didn’t know each other before joining the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences (DIBS) advisory board. Yet the work being conducted there resonated immediately with Bethann, who has expertise working with children with autism, and Sonya, a double board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist. And it brought them…

Grace Ku was a first-year student when friends set her up on a blind date with Ken Lee, who was a graduate student. Her friends had good instincts: Grace ‘79 and Ken ‘74 fell in love, got married, and went on to successful careers; Grace as executive director at the National Park Trust and Ken…

When Phyllis Leppert was a nursing student in the late 1950s, she learned that infant and maternal mortality rates were a bellwether indicator of a nation’s health. More than half a century later, the United States appears to be on life support, with the highest maternal death rate of any developed country. Between 2019 and…

When Elizabeth Harden entered Duke School of Medicine in 1974, only 22 percent of medical school students in the U.S. were women. At some schools, women applicants were discouraged from pursuing a career in medicine, because it was assumed they couldn’t keep up, or would leave the profession once married. Harden found no such attitudes…

Spend one minute with Lisa Borders ’79 and you’ll see the immense charm, humility, wit and decision-making that make her leadership a tour de force in the public sector and in the business world. Spend another, and you’ll soon be uplifted by your own inner bravery, ready to clear big hurdles and accomplish lofty goals.

Isela Bahena M.B.A.’04 has dedicated much of her giving to Duke to providing equitable access to education for students at The Fuqua School of Business. She believes that now is the time for women to show their economic power with philanthropy.

As the parent of a college-aged daughter, I’ve watched how academic decisions that first- or second-year students make can open — or close — certain professional paths.

Early in my career, after being at Deloitte only a few years, I began to realize that being involved in the local community was an important part of building a professional network. So I joined the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, which awards grants to local nonprofit organizations.

I hope that Duke can continue to nurture the concept of cross-disciplinary collaboration in the quest to solve critical local, national, and global problems. This innovative approach, when coupled with “outrageous ambitions,” will lead to successes that could not be achieved in other ways.

As a young person, I participated in and supported organizations focused on ending the apartheid regime in South Africa, and I organized the fundraising effort of a student organization in my high school to sponsor a child in Burkina Faso.