Alumni

Twenty-five years ago, Sung-Joo Kim ’81 began building a fashion empire. This year, Charles Hay, the British ambassador to South Korea, stopped by her office in Seoul to share some unlikely news: Queen Elizabeth II had chosen Kim to become an honorary officer of the Order of the British Empire. She would be the first Korean woman ever to receive this award.

Growing up female in this country can mean facing obstacles and disadvantages ranging from domestic violence to unplanned pregnancies to limited employment opportunities. Many of these problems are compounded for girls and women of color. Kim Leary ’82 has spent two years working with the Obama administration to find solutions.

Wherever humans exist, so does trash. What varies from place to place is how individuals, companies and governments manage that garbage. David Berón Echavarría ’15 is spending a year traveling the world on a Watson Fellowship, studying international methods of waste management.

Whether or not you’ve formally studied modern philosophy, you’ve probably heard of René Descartes, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But even if you have studied it, you might not know about Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Émilie Du Châtelet and Damaris Masham. At Duke University, Beatriz Wallace ’04 has helped to build a website to draw attention to these long-overlooked female philosophers of 17th- and 18th-century Europe.