Author: Milton Magazine

Omayra Ortega ’96 was already interested in pursuing a graduate degree in mathematics when she heard an alarming statistic: Fewer than 1 percent of all math Ph.D.s in a given year were awarded to Latinas. “The same low numbers were true for black women, and even if you didn’t restrict it to gender, the number was 1 or 2 percent beyond that. It was really eye-opening for me,” she says. “Before then, I naively believed in the general benevolence of the world and that equality reigned everywhere. I decided I needed to get my Ph.D.” The statistics came from...

By the time a client meets Cristina Rodrigues ’06, there is usually a long trail of adversity behind them. “More often than not, when someone is at the door of criminal court, there’s a story of a separate missed opportunity to intervene in their life,” she explains. “So for me, justice in the criminal setting is only possible with continued and increased investments in our shared responsibility for meaningful public education, affordable housing, health care — particularly mental health care — and trauma response in communities with high rates of violent crime.” Cristina is an attorney with the Committee for Public Counsel Services...

Civil rights lawyer Philip Tegeler ’73 works to ensure greater access to better housing and education for all citizens. On a busy street in downtown Washington, D.C. — just minutes from the White House and a short ride down Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S. Capitol — Phil Tegeler spends his days — as he has throughout his career — defending the rights of low-income families to better housing and education. From his early work at the American Civil Liberties Union in Connecticut, where he litigated a wide variety of civil rights cases, including a landmark school desegregation case in the Hartford area, to today, when he serves...

As an international relations major at Tufts University, Omar Longus ’04 had clear and ambitious goals. He wanted to be a foreign service officer and work for the U.S. State Department, serving his country and making a difference in the world. After Tufts, his next step would be to attend law or business school. But during his senior year, his father passed away, which was challenging. Two years later, his brother died unexpectedly. Omar was unmoored by those losses. “It just threw all my plans for a loop,” says Omar, who returned to his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts, after...

Scott Parkin ’65 wants greater attention paid to solving the problems of the country’s aging population. After more than three decades advocating for the nation’s elderly, Scott Parkin believes that although progress has been made around aging issues, much more needs to be done. “It’s really pretty scary,” says Scott, who spent much of his career at nonprofit organizations helping educate seniors about their benefits and advocating for greater elderly protections and funding for essential programs. The facts bear out his concern: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual income of households led by individuals 65...