Alumni Volunteers

Summer 2025 Alumni Volunteers

Abby Easton – 2016

My name is Abigail (Abby) Easton (she/her). I graduated class of 2016, majoring in American Studies and concentrating in Educational Studies, African/African American Studies, and (almost but not quite) American Music. At Carleton, I was involved in music (student bands and jazz ensemble), Women Circle (CCCE volunteer program at Northfield Middle School), KRLX most terms, Late Night Trivia, and intramural softball. I’ve lived in Brooklyn, New York since graduating 9 years ago. Right after Carleton, I worked at StoryCorps, an oral history non-profit in various roles including helping managing their 30-lesson social emotional learning curriculum for middle/high school students. I was also an educator through the Brooklyn Historical Society, an executive functioning and writing tutor for mostly students with ADHD, and was a host at a music venue called City Winery (did a lot of different jobs!). From 2018-2022 I was a Community School Director at a 6-12th public school in the South Bronx. In that role, I sat on the school leadership team with the Principal and Assistant Principal to program arts and enrichment opportunities, organize mental health resources, create family engagement opportunities, and more. I was also in charge of most of about $500k of the school’s budget. Then from 2022-2024, I went back to school full-time to get my Masters degree in social work at Hunter College Silberman School of Social Work in East Harlem. For (almost) the past year, I’ve been a social worker at the Red Hook Community Justice Center, a problem-solving court in Brooklyn, NY. (one of the early models for court reform in the U.S.!!) In my free time I love to go to my ceramics studio, read, watch Survivor, and hang out with pals. I look forward to meeting you all and telling you about my experience at Carleton and how it still informs the work I do today!

Adam Hruby – 2020

I’m currently a PhD student at the University of Southern California in the Biology of Aging program. At Carleton, I majored in Biology with minors in Biochemistry and Neuroscience. I enjoyed the fact that Carleton had me exploring so many different areas, particularly the language department. I made friends I still talk with today in the Japanese language department. After graduating Carleton, I was a lab technician in the Passos and Jurk labs at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN where I gained my first real experience working in a biology lab focused on aging. After two years, I joined the current PhD program at USC.

Alex Cardenas – 2020

I am a 2020 graduate originally from Los Angeles. I first heard of CUBE in 2016 – the summer before my first year at Carleton then was fortunate enough to work for the CUBE program the next two summers. After graduation, I spent 2 years working for Carleton Admissions and I now work at St. Olaf College as a Technical Analyst within their IT department.

Brittany Brookner – 2018

My name is Brittany Brookner ’18 (she/her) and I am currently a resident at the University of Pennsylvania training to be an Interventional Radiologist. I absolutely loved my time at Carleton — whether it was playing rugby, exploring the arboretum, hanging out on 4th libe, or wandering through Northfield, my four years at Carleton were filled with a phenomenal education, innumerable laughs, and many incredible experiences. Since graduating from college, I spent two years working at the NIH performing clinical research in pediatric endocrinology prior to attending Georgetown University School of Medicine. I finished my surgical intern year at the University of Washington prior to heading back to the east coast to finish my residency in Interventional Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Carey Tinkelenberg – 2005

I am the Founding Owner, Director, and Head Coach of the Northfield Skating School. I am also a coach developer for the International Skating Union and lead coach training and leadership consulting work worldwide. Carleton gave the me foundation through both my Psychology degree, network, and liberal arts experience to pursue an entrepreneurial lifestyle that integrates my passions and profession.

Connor Webber – 2018

I have been an attorney with the Tennessee Innocence Project since 2022. After graduating Carleton in 2018, I attended Vanderbilt University Law School and practiced insurance litigation briefly before transitioning to innocence work. I am endlessly appreciative and grateful for my time at Carleton building lifelong friendships and connections that have set me up for success in my early career.

Cooper Kohlman – 2020

My name is Cooper, class of ’20. I come from a small town in central Wisconsin. As a kid, I anticipated going to a larger state university, but that all changed when I learned about Carleton. When I was touring colleges, I was impressed with how knowledgeable, engaged, and articulate students at Carleton were. I knew I wanted to be like them. One of my favorite parts about going to Carleton was the small, intimate class sizes. It’s hard to understate how beneficial this is– your engagement with the material, the professor, and your classmates is much improved compared to being an anonymous face in a massive lecture hall. As an outdoorsman, I also loved Carleton’s beautiful arboretum.

After Carleton, I worked in the environmental field, and then went to law school, graduating in 2024. During law school I tried out a variety of practice areas, including an environmental nonprofit and a small-town general practice firm. Currently, I am an associate attorney at a medium sized firms in a smaller town in Wisconsin right outside the Twin Cities metro, practicing mostly civil litigation.

Devin Tomson-Moylan – 2015

At Carleton, I studied economics and greatly enjoyed my time abroad through two fellowships in Japan and Wales and three Carleton OCS programs in Europe and Bangladesh. I played varsity soccer and appreciate the quality and curiosity of the people–students, alumni, staff, and faculty–that make Carleton so special. I’ve enjoyed living with, working alongside, mentoring, and seeking advice from many Carls in my time since graduation. I currently work at a small startup for electric vehicle charging.

Drewallyn Riley – 2005

My name is Drewallyn (pronounced Drew-Allen), and I was born and raised in Missoula, Montana. I attended Carleton from 2001-2005, where I became a SOAN major after falling in love with classes taught by Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg and others. I realized that through anthropology I could combine my two greatest passions – experiencing and learning about new cultures, and supporting access to sexual and reproductive health. The theory and methods – including qualitative and quantitative skills – taught in the SOAN classes were my introduction to understanding how these methodologies could be used to improve public health programs in diverse cultural settings.

After Carleton I taught English in Seoul, South Korea for a year and traveled throughout SE Asia) before moving to Ann Arbor, MI to complete a Master’s in Public Health in the area of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan. There, I focused on the areas of maternal health and HIV/AIDS. During this time, I was able to travel to and study maternal health in Ghana, China and Senegal.

After graduating with my MPH in 2009, I began a two-year fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta as a Global HIV Prevention fellow. There I coordinated the scaling up of an HIV prevention intervention designed to promote positive parenting and effective parent-child communication about sexuality and sexual risk reduction for parents of 9-12-year-olds. My job entailed providing technical assistance to non-governmental and community-based organizations in the eight countries in Africa where the program was being implemented and included traveling 4-6 times a year to these countries. I then was hired as a contractor to stay at the CDC for another year and a half, working on the same program.

I moved to Chapel Hill, NC in May 2013 to begin a new job at Ipas. Ipas is a global nongovernmental organization dedicated to ending preventable deaths and disabilities from unsafe abortion. As the Youth Advisor for the East Africa region, I worked to enhance the ability for young women in Kenya, Zambia and Ethiopia to access safe abortion and prevent unwanted pregnancy. I continued to travel 4-6 times a year to the African continent to provide technical assistance to the projects there.

In October 2015 I moved to Portland, OR to be closer to my sister and Montana roots. I began working at the Oregon Health Authority in the Maternal and Child Health section as the Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Coordinator for the federally-funded Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program to support pregnant or parenting families with young children ages 0-3 years. The program provides home visits by a nurse or social worker to pregnant people and families, giving them resources and skills to support them to improve their family’s health and provide better opportunities for their children. My role as the Continuous Quality Improvement Coordinator was to provide support to the local agencies that implement this program, by using quantitative and qualitative data to identify where they are doing well and where they can improve and to tell the story of home visiting.

After 5 years at OHA, I moved on to my current positions at Education Development Center. EDC is based in Boston, and I work from home here in Portland. I split my time supporting projects in the international and domestic side. On the domestic side, I am a data and CQI technical assistance (TA) specialist for the same federal program (MIECHV) I supported in Oregon. Only now, I provide TA to multiple states that are implementing this program, including the folks who are in the position I used to have in Oregon. In this role, I support states to use their data to identify where they are doing a great job, and where there are opportunities to improve the work they are doing to support families with young children. On the international side, I am a sexual and reproductive health (SRH) technical advisor to USAID-funded projects in South Sudan and Liberia, where I developed and support the implementation of a SRH curriculum taught to out-of-school youth ages 15-29 years.

Hal Beresford – 2006

Hi everyone! My name is Hal. I graduated in 2006 back when Carls were listening to the Postal Service, watching Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and 1-7 years away from getting their first smartphone. At Carleton, I majored in math and appreciated the chance to try new things and make a lot of new friends, especially the year when I lived at Goodhue. I still like to try new things. Last year, I joined a local Japanese language learning group as a hobby. For work I do finance at P&G, the big consumer goods company based in Cincinnati, where finance managers get to rotate to a new kind of role every 2-3 years. Over time, that means you get to try a lot of different kinds of work. Before P&G, I had multiple careers (math teacher, data analytics guy, consultant) in multiple sectors (government, nonprofit, for profit) while retooling a few times (four pivots including two masters degrees). One of my core career beliefs is that everyone including ME and YOU and ALL YOUR FRIENDS is a career strategist because even avoiding choosing a strategy is choosing a strategy i.e., a where to play/how to win. As such, you might as well be the one to make your own choice and not leave something so personally time consuming up to chance or somebody else. Another of my core career beliefs is that choosing a strategy has to be experiential because that is the only way to know if it will work for you or not. What do you think of those ideas? Resonate or not? What other questions come to mind? Hope to talk with you soon, and congratulations on your start at Carleton!

Hudson Kingston – 2005

At Carleton I was a French and English Literature major and I participated in track and cross country intermittently. I also did a foreign study in Paris and one in Ireland, both of which were fantastic programs and learning opportunities. I was a Larson International Fellow, meaning I returned to France and apprenticed as a baker one summer with support from a Carleton fellowship program. I also had numerous radio shows and participated in student government. I had on and off-campus jobs as well. Today I’m an environmental lawyer (and part-time baker), having gone on to law school — both in Iowa and abroad. I live in northern Minnesota and advocate on behalf of rural environmental causes. Prior to this job I had several positions in Washington DC and St. Paul, MN in environmental/consumer protection/corporate and government accountability legal fields.

Kellen Dorchen – 2020

At Carleton, I studied computer science and art history. After Carleton, I went to RIT for a masters in computer science. Now, I work as a software engineer at The MITRE Corporation.

Pedro Girardi – 2019

I am originally from Brazil. At Carleton I really appreciated having the opportunity to study a variety of majors and live in a communal setting. After Carleton I worked at BCG in the US as a consultant and then in corporate strategy roles in Germany. I am currently a freelance commercial strategy consultant based in Italy.

Sarah Besse – 2012

I graduated from Carleton in 2012 with a history major. At Carleton I enjoyed making friends and being part of a community of curious people, the dedicated professors, participating in various groups such as club tennis, teaching ice skating, and my summer working on the arb crew.

My career path in the field of experiential education has been winding, with twists and turns that I could not have expected when I was in college. I moved to Boston after graduation to do a teacher residency program, but ended up dropping out and teaching at a Montessori preschool instead. Then I taught boat building to 5th graders at a Boston public school, got my masters in early education, and started pursuing a career at a public Montessori school, but ended up changing direction and founding the nonprofit Boston Outdoor Preschool Network (BOPN). When I told people my plan to open an all-outdoor nature preschool some people could not imagine it, but we I did it and opened in September 2019.

I founded BOPN because I believe that nature and play are essential for children, and my gift is to turn ideas into reality. BOPN now serves 200 families each year across the Boston area. We bring families together in community and give children a joyfully muddy childhood under the loving guidance of dedicated teachers. Our goals are to promote children’s physical and mental health, encourage environmental stewardship, and to develop habits of mind such as curiosity, initiative, persistence, creativity, problem-solving, and responsibility.

Spencer Wigmore – 2011

I am currently the Patrick and Aimee Butler Associate Curator of American Paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Previously I was Curator of Fine Art at the Minnesota Historical Society and before that Associate Curator at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. I earned my MA and PhD in art history at the University of Delaware.

I am an art historian by accident. As a senior in high school, art history was the only AP class that fit my schedule. At the time, I had no interest in the topic; however, within just a few weeks of starting the class, I knew it was what I would want to study when I got to Carleton. When I arrived, I was fortunate to have a great community of faculty who supported my growing interests throughout my four years at Carleton and beyond.

Most of my classmates discovered their academic passions during their coursework. So I think I was somewhat rare in that I came into Carleton knowing exactly what I wanted to study. Even so, my academic life was shaped by interdisciplinary experiences across multiple departments, including Computer Science, Geology, and English.