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Social Issues

After earning her performance studies master's degree, actor and writer Ashley Nicole Black ’08 MS became a TV star. She hopes her career sets an example for other diverse voices.

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Northwestern alumna Jolene Loetscher ’01, namesake of South Dakota's Jolene's Law, spearheaded a campaign to end child sexual abuse in South Dakota. Loetscher, a former TV reporter and CEO of Mud Mile Communications, was named a 2019 Presidential Leadership Scholar.

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Villy Wang ’90 JD founded the Bayview-Hunters Point Center for Arts and Technology (BAYCAT), a nonprofit social enterprise in San Francisco that helps young people from low-income communities capture and tell untold stories and create social change.

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After overcoming adversity in her own life, Jade Maze ’08 MMus is mentoring promising musicians at the Merit School of Music, a community music school in Chicago that serves talented youth in its tuition-free college-prep conservatory.

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Pulitzer Prize–winning author and Northwestern professor of English Natasha Trethewey’s beloved mother died decades ago, and yet her grave, down in Mississippi, remains unmarked by a headstone. The reasons for this are varied and complicated, and they speak to the essence of Trethewey, one of the most acclaimed poets of our time.

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The chipmunks were giving Hank Adams ’99 MBA a headache, tearing up the garden in his Evanston backyard. So he started looking for an indoor alternative but was not impressed by the options.

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Northwestern alumna Karen DeCrow led the National Organization for Women in the mid-1970s, when she campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, defended Title IX and ran the first Take Back the Night march.

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What did you learn about the Central District from producing and directing “On the Brink”?I was struck by the intense feelings of trauma, tragedy, and loss that residents in the Central District are feeling while the city is experiencing an economic boom. I lived in Seattle for 10 years before my work with Seattle Growth Podcast opened my eyes to a rich history that’s in danger of becoming history forever.

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Lori Post, an architect of the prototype for the patient protections section of the Affordable Care Act, says the creation of a federal universal background check is imperative to stop mass shootings because a patchwork of federal and state laws has created loopholes.

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Northwestern professors weigh in on how parenthood has changed in the past generation — and the advantages and drawbacks of 21st-century parenting.

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