Previous Issues

Alumna, river activist, completes 8-day journey down  Alaska's Copper River

Amy Souers ’97, Web editor for  American Rivers, an on-line community of river activists, has completed an eight-day journey down Alaska’s Copper River and has posted daily dispatches from the trip on the organization’s Web site. She notes that she “reported on the river, its famous wild salmon runs, grizzly bears, glaciers and icebergs.” Her reports may be viewed at www.amrivers.org/feature/copperriver.htm.    Some sample topics include “Against the wind,” “Cow parsnip and the crumbling cabin,” and “Bears…rapids… The Center of the Universe.” At Trinity, Souers was an English major and a writing associate in the College’s writing center.    “I’m happy to be using the skills I learned at Trinity in the real world,” she says.

SUCCEEDING		Howard Sherman '78
		Internet VP volunteers to help N.Y  Fire Department

While Howard Sherman ’78 claims he is not the type of person one would want running into a burning building, the About.com vice president was so moved by the events of September 11 that he found a way to help the families of firefighters who lost their lives doing just that.       

Sherman, a New York City native who befriended several members of the city’s fire department years earlier during his six-year tenure in government relations and business development for the New York Port Authority, called a friend of his in the department and said he would do anything they needed him do.

Giving his time for a personal cause

So began a three-month residency at the department, during which time Sherman, who was granted a leave of absence from his job, set to work devising a fair and mathematical method of distributing the thousands of toys, concert tickets, and other gifts that poured into the department, intended for families of the deceased. Sherman, an English major who worked at the Hartford Courant for seven years after graduating from Trinity, also put his writing skills to work, penning obituaries and writing congressional and senate testimony for members of the fire department asking for more money for disaster relief.

“I, like everybody else, felt helpless,” says Sherman. “Fortunately these were projects that I was able to sink my teeth into, and it made me feel that I could help people, in some small way, handle their grief.” Sherman returned to his job at About.com, a major news, information, and human-interest Web site, in mid-November, but left the fire department with a system of spreadsheets so they can continue his work. He also laid the groundwork for a computer network designed to facilitate the department’s distribution of important information to the families of deceased firefighters.

“About.com has been really generous in letting me do this,” Sherman says. “When I came back, it was really gratifying that they understood that this was important to me personally.”

A journalist drawn to the Internet

Sherman’s interest in the Internet was piqued with his first exposure to text-based information sites called gophers—the predecessors to today’s Internet.

“I really became fascinated with the Internet and the power it has as a form of communication,” he says. “One of the things that attracted me to About.com was to try to take a pretty complicated thing—the Internet—and put a human face on it, and help people find the best content for their needs.” Sherman says his passion for journalism has come full circle in his current position as vice president of content at About.com.

 Sherman, who, in addition to his Trinity degree, holds an MBA from New York University, says his liberal arts background “did a lot of things that still stand in good stead” in his current field. 

“It taught me to be inquisitive, and it helped me to be flexible in my thinking,” he says. “If you can learn how to communicate with people in a business environment, that’s really half the battle, and there’s really nothing better than a liberal arts education to teach you to do that. 

“I also began to understand that you’re generally part of a larger community no matter where you are and it’s probably most gratifying when you contribute to that community in some way.”

To that end, Sherman says he hopes to continue his work with the New York City Fire Department. “On a personal level, I’ve come to understand that, in addition to what I do for a living, I need to be involved in something that’s bigger than myself,” he says.

              –Michael Bradley