Shows
Roads TakenSkills for the Future: Kira Lawrence (redux)When we last spoke with Kira Lawrence, more than two years ago, she was taking a sabbatical from her tenured faculty position to work within New Jersey's Division of Clean Energy at the state’s Board of Public Utilities to try to make more direct impact on the climate crisis. Her time there made her think at length about how to best leverage her time and expertise and realized that—right now—she needs to be outside academia to have a chance to making the immediate impact she seeks. What she learns now about the skills necessary in the future...2024-08-1234 min
Roads TakenSeason Ten: Not Exactly Beach ReadsRoads Taken with Leslie Jennings Rowley will be returning for an all new season this summer— but don’t expect frothy beach-read material. We’re getting into the heavy stuff of the current moment—the opioid epidemic, higher education, the climate crisis and scariest of all, online dating. As in all our previous seasons, we will talk with new guests—all a quarter-century-plus after college—about who they were as they graduated, who they thought they’d become, and how they’ve traveled down various roads to get where they are today. But this time, interspersed with those new voices, we will...2024-07-2201 min
Roads TakenEnvironmental Lobby: Tiernan Sittenfeld on building coalitions and finding one’s voiceGuest Tiernan Sittenfeld had glimpses in high school of not only the grandeur of America's landscapes but also the degradation that was happening within them when she saw clear cuts up close. She was drawn to understand how we can best conserve these lands and the communities linked to them and took advantage of the first opportunity to earn an Environmental Studies certificate in college and take an international study program in Kenya. Those experiences, and a term spent working on a state senate race, made her see the overlap between conservation and politics.She began her ca...2022-10-0327 min
Roads TakenBetter Environments: Kira Lawrence on finding strength in difference and leaving the world betterGuest Kira Lawrence felt, in high school, that she was considered odd by the academic kids because she was a “jock” and wasn’t quite a mainstream athlete because she was a “brain.” In college she felt accepted for both of those identities in a place that had lots of people who were both. But, in realizing she was gay, she gained a whole new perspective on what it meant to feel “othered.” While initially frustrating, she contends that that perspective has infused her personal and professional passions with a fight for more equality.At a time when mainstream...2022-05-1639 min