NMH Magazine: Winter 2006

NMH Magazine : Winter 2006

Generation NMH

They’ve been called Generation X, Gen-Y, and the iGeneration. For the sake of clarity (and the respect they rightly deserve), let’s call them Generation NMH. They’re our youngest alumni, out 20 years or fewer, and they are making and marking their way in the world.

When Yasu Michino ’00 was a student at NMH, he dreamed of living in Paris, being fluent in French, and working as a designer in a fashion house. Four years later, he’s living his dream. After graduating from NYU, he crossed the Atlantic to enroll at Studio Berçot, a Paris fashion school where aspiring designers—stylistes—spend two years drawing collections and working at fashion houses while studying cutting, patternmaking, computer skills, and fabric composition.
So far Michino has interned at Sonia Rykiel, Givenchy, and Yves Saint Laurent. His specialty is leather goods and accessories—a practical choice given that handbags are the bread and butter of top fashion houses. While at Givenchy, Michino designed a handbag that was named after him. One of his dress designs appeared in the summer 2005 issue of the international magazine WAD. A crew from Sedna Films followed Michino around last year while making a documentary on Studio Berçot, and the film will air on France’s TV5 this year.
“The world of fashion is aggressive, but NMH taught me to be determined, take action, and speak out,” says Michino. “This can be an ugly business—yet I can forgive it all by just looking at a beautiful dress. Nothing matters anymore. That’s how strong beauty is.”

In 2005 Kate Brooks ’95 shot assignments in Japan, Thailand, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco, Germany, and the United Kingdom; one of her photos appeared in Time’s top 25 pictures of the year. She recently went to Saudi Arabia for a Smithsonian assignment, and she’s organizing an auction in Santa Fe to raise money for teaching photography to incarcerated juveniles. In May she’ll be exhibiting her photos in a museum of war photography in Dubrovnik, and she’s working on a book on Afghanistan.
A high-octane life is the norm for Brooks, who decided to become an international photojournalist after she took a photojournalism class at George Washington University and saw pictures documenting apartheid in South Africa. Fluent in Russian, she began freelancing in Russia and turned her attention to the grim conditions in its orphanages. Her photographs appeared in the Human Rights Watch report Abandoned to the State: Cruelty and Neglect in Russian Orphanages. Brooks, who’s based in Beirut, has worked extensively in the Middle East since 2001, chronicling its violent conflicts, political struggles, and the changing roles of Muslim women.
“I feel incredibly privileged to live the life that I do,” she says. “Being able to witness historic moments firsthand and help bring attention to the plight of people whose lives would otherwise go unnoticed is tremendously rewarding.”

If Blythe Cappello ’91 were to cast herself in a role, she’d play regional manager Michael Scott in NBC’s show The Office. “I too am equal parts power tripper/wannabe comedian/dork,” she confesses.
In real life she’s senior casting director at MTV, with shows such as Punk’d, Nick Cannon Presents Wild ’N Out, and the just-premiered Call to Greatness to her credit. Before that she was West Coast casting director at Spike TV—and before that, she cast about 40 films, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Anchorman, and Sweet Home, Alabama.
Cappello planned to be a news anchor but changed course during her senior year at the University of Southern California. Post-USC she apprenticed at the William Morris Agency, going from mailroom assistant to talent assistant to motion picture talent coordinator in three years. Next she teamed with casting director Jeanne McCarthy, experiencing supersonic career take-off after they cast Austin Powers 2.
Cappello, who acted in theatre at NMH, says, “The most important quality in being a good casting director is to love actors.” As for aspiring actors, she advises, “Be nice to everyone. You never know which assistants are going to be the head of a studio one day.”

Ben Clarke ’97 has always been a conservative kind of guy. In kindergarten he insisted on wearing gray slacks and a button-down shirt. Now, as a speechwriter for senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, he’s crafting speeches for one of the GOP’s most powerful figures.
Clarke, an avid debater and politicker at NMH, studied political science at Skidmore, then spent four years as a communication strategist for the Republican political consulting firm Luntz Research. There he learned the power of well-chosen words (Luntz coined such emotionally loaded terms as “death tax” and “partial-birth abortion”) in selling political policies.
As a rookie speechwriter, he’s composed about 15 speeches for Senator Frist; the first was highly instructive. “I went to Michigan with the senator and saw him deliver one of the first speeches I’d worked on. It was rough—too long, too verbose—and totally my fault. You quickly learn the importance of writing speeches as they’ll be heard, not read.”
While Clarke is proud of his speechwriting achievements, there’s one thing he’s prouder of: “Escaping the Mount Hermon chapel stage unharmed after debating on behalf of Bob Dole at a campus meeting during the ’96 election.”

Sophie Middlebrook ’94 frequents cemeteries and tombs—but it’s purely professional. An architectural conservator and historic preservation consultant, she works for Jablonski Berkowitz Conservation in New York City. Recent preservation projects include Newark Penn Station, three Manhattan cemeteries, and Trinity Church.
A year after she graduated from Wesleyan, Middlebrook volunteered to work with a stonemason on an emergency conservation project for a small church in France. She loved the work so much she decided to do it for a living. After interning with the Historic District Landmarks Commission in New Orleans, she earned a master’s in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania. During the summers she helped preserve markers in one of New Orleans’ historic aboveground cemeteries, worked on King Midas’s tomb in Turkey, and conserved Pueblo cliff dwellings in Bandelier National Monument—a project that involved scaling a valley wall daily to reach the site.
Middlebrook usually has five to ten projects going at once, and her work is a mix of hands-on labor, problem solving, research, and writing. “Funnily enough, my NMH English classes helped me learn to read critically—and now I ‘read’ buildings every day,” she says. “I also get dirty every day at work. Work job at NMH helped me embrace that.”

Jamila Patten ’99 had no idea how much her life would change when she traveled to the Dominican Republic on an NMH study abroad program. Each student had to spend a weekend with a Peace Corps volunteer; for Patten, the challenges and joys of the work were instantly apparent. She knew that’s where her future lay.
    Patten went on to the University of Pennsylvania, where she perfected her Spanish and returned to the Dominican Republic for a year of study. During her senior year at UPenn, she applied to the Peace Corps and was assigned to the eastern Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, where she’s
a health development volunteer specializing in HIV/AIDS.
    On any given day she might be teaching life skills at a primary school, conducting HIV/AIDS workshops, or training health care workers at a health clinic. Her schedule invariably accelerates after World AIDS Day rolls around on December 1. Meanwhile the island has become home: she’s a fan of fish cakes (fried dough mixed with saltfish) and soca music, and has grown used to the wild roosters crowing outside her bedroom window.
    When she leaves the Peace Corps this February, her next step is law school, with an emphasis on human rights and public health law. Asked how she’s changed since joining the Peace Corps,
she says, “How have I not?”

Call him a seer in the world of sports—or just call him a sports-marketing genius. Eight years ago Peter Carlisle ’87 gave up lawyering for sports management, recruiting extreme athletes when the field was barely burgeoning. His agency, Carlisle Sports Management, grossed sales of nearly $1 million in 2001; that year the mega-successful sports agency Octagon Worldwide bought him out.
Now he’s director of Octagon’s Olympic and action sports division, where he represents a pantheon of the world’s top athletes, including eight-time Olympic swimming medalist Michael Phelps and snowboarding gold medalists Kelly Clark and Ross Powers. Carlisle has created lucrative partnerships between his clients and corporations such as Coca-Cola, VISA, and AT&T. As a sports-marketing authority he’s appeared on ESPN, Today, and other national media programs. On top of all that, he teaches sports law at the University of New Hampshire.
With the 2006 Winter Olympic Games at hand, a few phenomenal athletes like speed skater Shani Davis and snowboarders Seth Wescott and Gretchen Bleiler will soon become household words. You can bet Peter Carlisle saw—and signed—them long before the rest of us were watching.