The 50 for 50 Storytelling Project Dartmouth Alumni Relations

It's been six months since we were together in Hanover celebrating the 50th anniversary of coeducation.
And to keep the celebratory ball rolling, we have two new episodes of the 50 for 50 podcast—featuring interviews with 14 Dartmouth women. 

In part two, you'll hear from: 


Valerie Hartman ’85Lindley Shultz ’87Heid Erdrich ’86Crystal Crawford ’87Anne Schader ’87Rachel Bogardus Drew ’98Alexandra (Xander) Meise ’01Courtney Hall ’02   

It's been six months since we were together in Hanover celebrating the 50th anniversary of coeducation.
And to keep the celebratory ball rolling, we have two new episodes of the 50 for 50 podcast—featuring interviews with 14 Dartmouth women. 

In part one, you'll hear from: 


Kimberly Marable ’05Joan Marable ’76Amy Cammann Cholnoky ’77Ann Bagamery ’78Annie Kuster ’78 Milla Anderson ’19

Growing up in the village of Igiugig in the Bristol Bay region of southwestern Alaska, home to about 70 tribal members, Salmon was always the only student in her grade. She spent happy days at the feet of elders, soaking up language and traditions. Now, drawing on her many-faceted Dartmouth experience, she's documenting the history of her Native community and leading it into the future. 

As tribal council president, Salmon is helping to launch eco-friendly tribal businesses. She’s also fostering language restoration and overseeing the construction of a cultural center. “We're breaking the mold in every direction as a tribe, and it's so fascinating,” Salmon tells host Jennifer Avellino '89. “Dartmouth set me up for a lifetime, including serving as president of an entire nation. It is the smallest, probably, in the world, but at least it can serve as a model for possibilities.” 

"Gender, race, and Native American inclusion—they were all issues that we struggled with on campus in the mid to late 1980s, in part because the scars from the battles of the past hadn't yet healed."

As a writer and editor at The Dartmouth, Boykin reported on campus protests, among other wide-ranging topics. And while attending Harvard Law School, he became "an accidental activist." He later worked for presidential nominee Michael Dukakis and President Bill Clinton. Boykin is now a well-known national political commentator, TV and film producer, and a New York Times bestselling author.

Selassie Atadika ’98 has two lifelong passions: world travel and food.  
 
She honed in on those passions at Dartmouth, majoring in geography modified with environmental studies—while always maintaining her lifelong love of food. After graduation, she became a globe-trotting, internationally acclaimed chef renowned for her plant-based African recipes.  And spending a decade working for the United Nations, she became what she calls a "food ambassador."  
 
A founding member of Trio Toque, the first nomadic restaurant in Dakar, Senegal, Selassie went on to launch Midunu (which means, in Ewe, "let's eat”), a nomadic dining concept featuring what she calls New African Cuisine. When Covid temporarily closed the restaurant doors, she launched an offshoot, Midunu Chocolates. For Atadika, sustainably grown foods packed with bold flavors and exotic spices tells the story of an entire continent.  
 

Less than a decade after graduating from Dartmouth, where she majored in sociology and played on the varsity softball and baseball club teams, Bianca Smith joined the Red Sox as a minor league coach—the first Black woman in history to reach that goal. But Smith refuses to see herself as a trailblazer, insisting that she's just doing what her parents, also Dartmouth grads, advised. "Find what you're passionate about, what makes you wake up in the morning," they told her. So, after earning a dual degree in law and sports management from Case Western University, Smith interned for the Texas Rangers, and ended up becoming a role model for other Black women aspiring to high-level sports jobs. "But this is just the tip of the iceberg," she tells host Jennifer Avellino '89. "I still feel I haven't done enough."