2006

• Committee: Mary Trigg, Samira Kawash, Cynthia Daniels
• Post-MA Employment/Education: Career Coach, alyssabest.com Co-founder and contributor, LYJnow.com Career Center Staff, American University
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum: Building an Inclusive Movement: Young Women's Leadership and the Future of Reproductive Justice with Pro-Choice Public Education Project (NYC)

Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Alyssa Best focused her graduate work on reproductive politics, feminist activism, and young women's leadership. She incorporated her graduate training into her pedagogy as an Instructor of Shaping a Life, a first-year mission course at Douglass College. She also spent her graduate career working at the Institute for Women's Leadership at Rutgers, which fueled her passion for leadership development. She completed her practicum at the Pro-Choice Public Education Project in NYC, where she served as the Leadership Coordinator of a national young women's leadership council. She currently serves as a career coach for college women and young professionals with the ultimate goal of helping others find and sustain lifelong careers in the feminist movement. 

• Committee: Cynthia Daniels, Ethel Brooks, Susan Carroll
• Post-MA Employment/Education: Communications Manager, The White House Project, NYC
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum: Advocacy, the State, and the Politics of Contraception with NARAL Pro-Choice NY (NYC)

Lara Cassell is originally from Brooklyn, New York. She received dual Bachelor's degrees from Stony Brook University, where she completed majors in Women's Studies and Humanities as well as minors in Philosophy and Studio Art. During her tenure at Rutgers, Lara focused on the field of reproductive politics, including public policy, the political economy of access, and the theoretical frameworks employed by feminists, the state, and anti-"choice" activists in lobbying for, and enactment of, reproductive policy. Lara conducted her practicum in the public policy department of NARAL Pro-Choice NY.

• Committee: Mary Gossy, Joanna Regulska, Julie Livingston
• Post-MA Employment/Education: Head Teacher Pre-K 4, Saint Stephen of Hungary School, New York, NY
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum: Perspectives from the Bottom Up: The Lived Experiences of Grassroots Women's Activism in Africa with Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood

• Committee: Cheryl Clarke, Samira Kawash, Beth Hutchison
• Post-MA Employment/Education: Program Faculty, Women's and Gender Studies, The College of New Jersey
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum: Bending the Boundaries of Identity: Creating & Editing a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning/Queer Youth Anthology with the Office of Diverse Community Affairs (Rutgers University)

Jessie Gamblereceived her B.A. with Specialized Honors from Drew University in May 2003. She majored in Women’s Studies and minored in Economics. While at Rutgers, Jesse conducted her practicum on LGBT youth with Graduate Professor Cheryl Clarke.

• Committee: Mary Trigg, Joanna Regulska, Carlos Decena
• Post-MA Employment/Education: Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, West Virginia University
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum: Feminist Experiential Learning with Institute for Women's Leadership (Rutgers University)

Cynthia Gorman received a B.A. in Political Science from Bates College and an M.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University. While at Rutgers, Cynthia directed the Community Leadership Action and Service Project (CLASP) at the Institute for Women's Leadership, a program which she developed through her Master's practicum with the Institute. After completing her PhD in 2013, Cynthia worked as an Instructor of Leadership Studies at West Virginia University. Her research focuses on the gender politics of nationalisms, the geopolitical context of human rights discourse, refugee-asylum law in the post-Cold War era, and the development of gender-based persecution jurisprudence in the United States. Other interests include community-based activism and feminist pedagogies.

• Committee: Yana Rodgers, Cheryl Clarke, Evan Stark
• Post-MA Employment/Education: Doula, Birth Justice Project, Bay Area, CA Non-profit Consultant, San Francisco, CA
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum: Local, Global, or Virtual? Negotiating a Space In-Between for the Transnational Women's Human Rights Movement with International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (NYC)

Sarah's graduate work only galvanized her dedication to issues of gender-based violence. She has over ten years experience working to promote healthy and equitable communities, with emphasis on developing coordinated community response.

• Committee: Barbara Balliet, Ed Cohen, Harriet Davidson
• Post-MA Employment/Education: Assistant Principal, NYC Department of Education, Sunset Park High School, NYC
• Thesis/Practicum: Practicum: Media Literacy with Girls, Inc. (NYC)

Julie Miele came to Rutgers from Glendale, New York, where she has lived for most of her 28 years. She is a graduate of Hunter College of the City University of New York, where she earned a Bachelor of the Arts in English and Secondary Education in 1999. While at Hunter, Julie began her career as a teacher, tutoring at the college's Writing Center and instructing an undergraduate writing course. For the last five years, she has been a high school teacher in New York City teaching English Language Arts both to American students and to foreign students for whom English is a second language. Her professional goal is to combine her background in education with her interest in gender studies to teach others - particularly women - to read literature, to write, to think critically, to appreciate the history of women and to understand and overcome the challenges that women face today. Her interests include reading, writing, traveling, the media, and all things natural. Julie conducted her practicum at the Girls Inc Media Literacy Program in New York City.

• Committee: Mary Hawkesworth, Harriet Davidson, Elizabeth Grosz
• Thesis/Practicum: Thesis: Writing the Body in Literature and Art

In the spring of 2001 Elizabeth graduated from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington with a BA in Global Development Studies. Eager to apply a critical feminist lens to areas of inquiry imbued in analyses of commodification, power, and resistance, Elizabeth began work in the Women's and Gender Studies Department at Rutgers as a member of the first incoming class of Ph.D. students in the fall of 2002. Since then, Elizabeth decided to pursue an M.A. degree and received it in October. Her area of sustained study is the corporeality of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. She began field-work in Mexico in the summer of 2004 supported by a grant from the North American Mobility Project. She is deeply committed to contributing to feminist writings on embodiment, especially as they relate to theories of resistance and pedagogy. She has taught the W&GS undergraduate introductory course and a theory course. She is currently attempting to integrate her research interests and academic training with a career in radio journalism as a form of creative praxis. Elizabeth is the mother of a budding feminist; two-year-old River Woodruff.