Our Place in Walla Walla #5: Local Alumni
By Noah Leavitt, College Liaison for Community Affairs
Our Place is filled with Our People.
Last week, campus was filled with alumni, back to celebrate the myriad ways that Whitman helped prepare them to launch into personal and professional life trajectories. (One of those alumni who literally “launched” was astronaut and educator Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger ’97 who spoke on an extraordinary panel Friday afternoon about Finding Success and Purpose in a Changing World)
Students: inspiring alumni are all around us, every day. Indeed, you could not live in a better place to get to know community leaders who want to support your goals and aspirations than Walla Walla, because many of these leaders are our alumni.
To use a seasonally-familiar term, one of the “treats” of getting involved in the Walla Walla community is getting to meet, appreciate, learn from and celebrate the many Whitman grads who are creating positive change. At the recent Connections Conference, the five current students who participated spent the day alongside graduates Devon Player ’23, Laura Prado ’09, Crystal Chi ’14, Kanesha Johnson ’23, Dick Simon ’72, Victoria Lidzbarski ’05 and others. (You may see Devon on some of the wonderful new banners around campus.) Nearly any large community event, especially when it is focused on supporting marginalized peoples and caring for our compromised ecosystem, will have Whitties involved.
Last week, some of us in the Career and Community Engagement Center spent a few minutes recalling alumni we’ve been in touch with in town just over the past year. As a few examples of this wider participation in the professional world, we noted that local alumni work in City government (Preston Fredrickson ’02 and Tim Donaldson ’84), the nonprofit sector (Nina Buty ’97 and Anne-Marie Zell Schwerin ’85), wine (Devyani Gupta ’15 and Ashley Trout ’03), K–12 education (Jose Beleche ’14 and Christy Krutulis ’92 and Ben Van Donge ’09), law (Sandy Garcia ’08), philanthropy (Julia Leavitt ’09 and Jessica Cook ’00), agricultural innovation (Riley Clubb ’09), media (Sarah Koenigsberg ’02), the arts (Kate Morrison ’95), human resources (Margarita Banderas ’05) and banking (John Cunnison ’95).
Our local alumni are connected to wonderful organizations and businesses and brands: 35th and Butter owner Ben Leitch ’1; Kate Millgard ’94 of Northwestern Mutual; and others at Baker Boyer: Elizabeth Humphrey ’93, Cana Baez ’21, Kain Evans ’93, Rosendo Guizar ’94; Ingeniux software engineer Laska Fitzhugh ’21; Robin Flint ’02 at Key Tech; Chris Garratt ’00 at Metis investment bank.
Again, this is just a sampling. According to recent college records, there are more than 650 Whitman alumni living in Walla Walla and the surrounding area, with class years ranging from 1944 to 2023. That’s a lot of people you can meet for coffee without even having to get into a car!
One of our grads, Kate Kunkel-Patterson ’13, just won a significant Whitman College award for work she’s done in her role as Ranger at the Whitman Mission National Historic Site to more accurately tell stories of when the indigenous peoples of this region welcomed Marcus and Narcissa Whitman to this valley and how the Whitmans broke that trust. In addition, Kate was honored for “teaching students how to apply for internships and post-graduate jobs not just with the National Park Service but with the entire federal government through the USAJOBS portal.”
This is such an important point—not only do our local graduates make things happen—they also create openings for current students to contribute to the evolution of the community. My CCEC colleague Nadine Stecklein, Whitman’s Assistant Director of Internship Programs, shared that just in the past year we’ve had examples of this including
- Summer of 2023 Leah Wilson-Velasco ’03 supervised Andrew Hanson ’24 at the Walla Walla Symphony
- Summer of 2023 Jennifer Northam ’91 supervised Aziz Sahbazovic ’24 at the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival
- Daniel Forbes ’93 is supervising Quinn Jurek’ 25 at the The Museum of Unnatural History this Fall.
The benefits to students of having so many alumni nearby cannot be overstated. Jonathan Simons, Whitman’s Assistant Director for Career Mentoring Programs, told me, “students get the most out of their college experience when, in addition to academic exploration, they take advantage of opportunities to see examples of what they are learning applied in the world around them. We are fortunate to have amazing alumni in our local community who have taken what they learned here at Whitman to make an impact in their respective fields. In seeking to connect with local alumni, students will find new sources of ideas, advice, and mentorship that will make their experience as students richer, and help them to better prepare for life after Whitman.”
Danielle Garbe Reser ’97, CEO of the Blue Mountain Action Council, who has generously mentored so many Whitties over the years built on this idea, commented:
“Whitman alumni are making a huge difference in this community across every industry, from business, to government, to nonprofits. Don’t hesitate to reach out to alumni and ask for a phone call or coffee to learn more about their jobs or ways to get involved in the community. Many of us got to where we are in our careers because other Whitman alumni helped us along the way, so we are happy to repay the generosity that made a difference in our lives by meeting with current students and sharing our stories and insights.”
Finally, I invite you to think about whether you might want to join our community of local alumni in the coming years. Yesterday, in an interview with the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, one of the candidates for Commissioner of the Port of Walla Walla (our local economy development entity), shared this vision:
“I see graduates building their careers here: as water and environmental technicians from Walla Walla Community College; computer scientists, economists, and environmentalists from Whitman College; and engineers and business managers from Walla Walla University. With broad community support behind a vision for the Walla Walla Valley and a fresh Port Comprehensive Plan focusing on good-fit economic development, we can create a strong and growing economy, preserve the Valley’s character, and create prosperity for everyone in Walla Walla County …”
Students, consider staying in or returning to Walla Walla after you graduate. You can have a satisfying life, do important work and be part of a force for good in this unique place. And, even if you decide you want to live somewhere else, spend some of your four years interacting with the former Whitman students who are all around you. Priceless!