Class Notes

As you read this our fifteenth reunion is around the corner! I hope many of you are planning to come to Fredericksburg in May to not only reminisce and catch up with old friends, but to see what’s new. Not having been to campus since our tenth reunion, I have a feeling the place has changed a lot since then. I’m really excited to see you there.

Once in a while we hear from a classmate that we haven’t heard much news of since we graduated. Such is the case this issue. Jessica Folkerts writes that after she left Mary Wash, she worked in the environmental policy/advocacy field before going on to get her master’s degree in Global Health Policy at GWU. She worked full time in the fundraising department at GWU while taking night classes, so it took about four years to finish. She then went on to work at USAID in maternal and child health for six months. In late 2007, she ‘pretty much burned out’ in D.C. and decided to move to Boulder, Colorado, where she helped develop two charitable organizations – one focused on environmental policy and advocacy, and the other on mentoring and empowering at-risk youth. She also discovered her adventurous side in Colorado; she took up rock climbing, whitewater rafting and skiing, and spent time summiting 14ers (14,000-ft mountains), running and practicing yoga.

When she reached 31, Jessica decided to travel. She left the States in November 2009 and took off on a solo trip around the world. She spent five months surfing, caving, kayaking and climbing, and made a wide range of diverse friends…from an Italian model to a Vanuatuan village chief. She had countless unforgettable experiences, from sailing a traditional Waka (a Polynesian oceanic sailing vessel) with a crew of Vanuatuan and Maori men on the Pacific Ocean, to spending four days in a silent meditation retreat, and from living in a tent in a field with a horse for two months in New Zealand to cooking on an organic farm and bathing elephants on an elephant sanctuary in Thailand.

When she ran out of time and money, Jessica came to England to see her birthplace and to see about a Cornishman she met while in Australia (he was her surf instructor.) Born in England and raised in the States, Jessica enjoys dual nationality so she can live and work in Europe without a visa. She ended up living by the sea in a tiny village in North Cornwall for four and a half years. She worked as a bartender in the local pub for two years, and then found a job working in marketing and PR for a local, family-owned business. While in Cornwall she continued to hike, run, practice yoga and attempt to surf. She even took up skateboarding and was the singer in a rockabilly pub band. Jessica loved life in Cornwall, but it was too isolated and she wanted to focus on my career again. Which brings us to the present: Jessica just moved to Cambridge, England, and started a new position at a creative marketing/advertising agency called Honest Ideas. Eventually though, Jessica wants to become a yoga instructor and run her own studio.