Matt Paxton ’97 helps downsizers and their families rediscover misplaced treasures in Legacy List With Matt Paxton, which premiered on public television in January. In it, downsizers create “legacy lists” of items they know exist somewhere in a house but that they can’t find. Paxton and a team of experts save those items before moving day. Each episode tells a different family’s story, interspersed with information about the items. NextAvenue.org said Paxton’s show is a cross between Antiques Roadshow and Finding Your Roots. Paxton hosted A&E’s Hoarders and understands the complicated relationships people have with possessions and one another. Legacy List takes a lighter look at what items are truly important, sometimes monetarily but always personally. … [Read more...]
Theater Alum Wins Scholarship
At New York’s Plaza hotel last November, Leslie Odom Jr. of Hamilton fame announced the six winners of the coveted Princess Grace Award in theater. Among them was Alicia Austin ’16. The scholarship will support Austin’s final year of graduate theater design studies at the Yale School of Drama. Yale nominated Austin for the honor, which provides professional support throughout the recipient’s career. The dozens of past recipients include actor and singer Odom, playwright Tony Kushner, Tony-award-winning theater director Anna D. Shapiro, and film director Jon M. Chu. The Princess Grace Foundation-USA identifies and assists emerging artists by awarding scholarships, apprenticeships, and fellowships. … [Read more...]
Becker Is a Facebook Superadmin
Dee Dee Weinstein Becker ’86, a Virginia Beach, Virginia-based marketing and PR specialist who owns consulting firm Becker Communications, has been named a Facebook “power administrator.” The designation grew from Becker’s experience as a Virginia Tech Hokie mom; her daughter is a 2018 graduate. Becker is lead admin for the group Virginia Tech Parents (16,500 members), moderator of Grown and Flown Parents (136,000 parents), and creator/admin of University Parent Group Admins (more than 300 admins representing more than 180 university parent groups). Facebook has twice invited her to speak on panels at communicators’ summits, one at its Menlo Park, California, headquarters and another in New York City. A psychology major in her Mary Washington days, Becker keeps in touch with classmates on the private Facebook group Our Mary Washington College Friends. … [Read more...]
Artist’s Solo New York Exhibit Defies Conventions
Visual artist Taylor Anton White ’18 had his first solo New York show earlier this year, with the exhibit Free_Hotdog.pdf running January through March at Monica King Contemporary in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. White’s works are “mixed-media compositions in the artist’s signature exuberant and multifaceted style,” the gallery said in a press release. In naming the exhibit an “editors pick,” Artnet News described White’s works as straddling “the disparate modes of communication that we rely on, with a healthy dose of humor that is just as cerebral as it is visually enticing.” White is an Iraq War veteran who served nine years in the Marine Corps before earning a Bachelor of Liberal Studies in studio art at Mary Washington. He lives and works in Richmond, Virginia. … [Read more...]
Marine Corps Led Alumna to Extraordinary Career
When Karen Laino Giannuzzi ’71 arrived at her office at Camp Lejeune in 1977, she found pink curtains hanging from the windows and a sign posted on her door: “Woman Commanding Officer – Do Not Use Bad Language.” Then a captain, she was taking her first command, Lejeune’s Headquarters and Service Company, 2nd Radio Battalion, Fleet Marine Forces Atlantic, at a time when there weren’t many women in the Marine Corps, let alone female officers. She could lose the froufrou décor, but it wasn’t uncommon for male colleagues to test how tough she was. Not long after she arrived, one young Marine thought it would be funny to drop his trousers in front of her. He did not enjoy the disciplinary process that followed, she said. “A lot of men hadn’t seen a woman Marine,” recalled Giannuzzi, who was the first female officer in the field of signals intelligence and electronic warfare. “I was first of a lot of things. Every time you went to a duty station, you might be the only woman there, … [Read more...]