The Low Down

The Cagliari Opera House, one of Italy's most renowned opera companies, presented the first modern rendering of the opera in the Rotunda of Columbia's Low Library. In this episode, The Low Down's Acacia O'Connor takes you on a trip to the opera with the works of Lorenzo Da Ponte, the author of Mozart’s most important opera librettos, and the first professor of Italian at Columbia.

On the latest edition of The Low Down podcast, Columbia University's Acacia O'Connor spoke with everyone's favorite chef, Michael DeMartino of Columbia Dining, about his cooking beginnings, what he loves about his job, what his last meal would be, and the special thing he does for students during his impressive commute.

     Minah Kim '17SEAS                        Erin Vaughn '19CC                    Rebecca Murray '18SEAS                 Colette McCullagh '17SEAS

In this episode of The Future Is..., we hear from some young Columbians—a group of students (and some now young alumni) who together lead the Columbia chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).

Minah Kim '17SEAS, Colette McCullagh '17SEAS, Rebecca Murray '18SEAS, and Erin Vaughn '18CC talk about their work on campus, what engineers watch on Netflix, and the head start they have on mentorship.

The secret to their success? Even their free time is useful: these girls' idea of a fun time is taking free classes on iTunes U!

SWE is an international organization with professional and collegiate chapters around the world. The student chapter at Columbia provides professional development opportunities, serves as a support group for women engineers on campus, and conducts community outreach to introduce local high school and middle students to engineering. Learn more about SWE on their website and Facebook page.

"The Future Is..." is a mini-series all about Columbia alumnae who are the leaders of today and creators of tomorrow. This podcast is produced by Shanna Crumley '18SIPA and the Columbia Alumni Association. 

When seventeen-year-old Julia Bacha '03GS arrived at Columbia, she had no idea that she would become a filmmaker, much less one far away in the Middle East. Yet that's how Bacha works best: by following her instincts. That journalistic instinct is what led her on a journey from studying Middle Eastern history at Columbia to advocating for justice as an award-winning documentary filmmaker.

Bacha has served 12 years as the creative director at Just Vision, a nonprofit that documents the work of Israelis and Palestinians using nonviolent resistance to the occupation to bring freedom, dignity, and equality to both societies. As part of her advocacy, she has also given two TED talks about women and nonviolence in conflict and shown her work at the Sundance, Berlin, and Tribeca film festivals.

Bacha's work has been profiled by BBC, HBO, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, and The Economist, and screened at widely diverse settings, from Palestinian refugee camps and villages to the halls of the American Congress and European Parliament. Her TED talk, "Pay Attention to Nonviolence," was selected as one of the best talks of 2011 by TED curators and has been viewed by over half a million people.

In this episode, we'll hear from a recent graduate who has been a champion of human rights and underrepresented groups since her time as a student leader on campus. I called Ayushi Roy '14CC in Oakland, CA, to hear about her work in public policy and her transition to graduate school at MIT this fall.

Ayushi graduated from Columbia College in 2014 with degrees in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, and Human Rights. She was active on and off campus around issues of migration and gender, working with the Intercultural Resource Center, the Columbia Political Review, and student-led Title IX groups, among others. After graduating, Ayushi stayed in New York for a year to work on her social venture, a sexual violence text-based hotline that won the first the Columbia Innovation Award.

She went on to serve as a Coro Fellow in Public Policy in San Francisco before transitioning to Oakland City Hall's first Civic Design Lab. She is beginning a master’s program in Urban Policy at MIT this fall

To learn more about sexual violence response and mental health at Columbia, visit health.columbia.edu.

A self-described "climate activist," Nicole Crescimanno '11GSAS is a bridge between climate science researchers and the rest of us. As the program coordinator for Climate Science Awareness and Solutions at Columbia's Earth Institute, she works for the experts, translating their scary science into something we can understand and do something about.

Crescimanno obtained an MA in Climate and Society from Columbia before joining the Earth Institute in 2014. She currently co-chairs the NYC chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby and advocates for a carbon fee and dividend.

For more information about the Earth Institute, visit csas.ei.columbia.edu. To see a TED talk by Dr. James Hansen, visit ted.com. To see Crescimanno’s portfolio, visit nicolecrescimanno.com. To see the young people at the forefront of climate solutions, visit climatecountdown.org, a project that Nicole co-produced.

A'Lelia Bundles' story is one of timing and changing tides. Bundles, a 1976 Journalism School alumna, comes from a long line of successful, well-known women, including one of the first African American self-made millionaires and a Harlem Renaissance darling. But rather than go into the family business, Bundles took her own path—in 1960, she discovered her calling as a writer at the ripe old age of eight, during an era of big changes. 

For our first episode in the The Future Is... mini-series, we're honored to feature Bundles, a University Trustee, veteran journalist, and author. 

She spent over 30 years as a producer and executive for NBC News and ABC News. She's currently writing her fifth book, The Joy Goddess of Harlem: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, which will be released in the next couple of years. The biography that Bundles wrote about her great-great-grandmother, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, was recently optioned for a television series featuring Oscar award-winner, Octavia Spencer, in the lead role.  

In addition to writing, Bundles is active as the chairman of the board of the National Archives Foundation and the president of her family's historical archives. She serves on the advisory boards of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study's Schlesinger Library at Harvard and the March on Washington Film Festival. 

Bundles has delivered keynote addresses and served as master of ceremonies at dozens of events, book festivals, and conferences at Harvard, London City Hall, the National Archives, and more, and on all the major television and radio networks, including ABC, NBC, CBS, BBC, PBS, and NPR.

For more information about Bundles' career and writing, visit http://www.aleliabundles.com. 

You know we love highlighting inspiring alumni -- and this time, we’re focusing specifically on Columbia women who are at the top of their game, the leaders of today and tomorrow. That’s why we’re excited to share The Future Is… a podcast mini-series featuring interviews with alumnae who are the leaders of today and the creators of tomorrow.

We’ve curated a list of incredible women doing incredible things: you’ll hear from an award-winning filmmaker with two TED talks under her belt, from an artist-turned-climate "strategist," and four voices of the future, the top women in engineering on campus.

This podcast mini-series is produced by Shanna Crumley '18SIPA, our digital initiatives intern and a second-year graduate student in international affairs at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. Here are her thoughts on this mini-series: 

"As a current graduate student at Columbia, I’m always keeping an eye out for great role models and stories that I can relate to as I start my career. As a woman, especially, I look for other women whose experiences can help me navigate the nuances of modern womanhood.

For this mini-series, I had the chance to look for women who are innovators, creating the future in a variety of fields like climate change, computer science and journalism. I found women doing cool things, and then I asked them about their work, their thoughts on their fields and what inspires them. And I promised one thing:  I WILL NOT ask podcast guests what they’re wearing; I WILL ask about their ideas, opinions, jobs, plans and what makes them tick."

Stay tuned for the first episode next week on here on the blog, Soundcloud, or iTunes. 

You may have noticed that we’ve been digging into our archives a lot. To be fair, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on at Columbia and we want to revisit some talks that haven’t gotten a lot of attention lately. One of those talks was with Columbia physicist Brian Greene. In 2014 he sat down with the writer, and award-winning TV correspondent, Gideon Yago '00CC to talk about World Science U, Columbia's Science Initiative, and some of his out-of-this-world ideas.