{"id":6803,"date":"2016-05-26T10:36:47","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T14:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/?p=6803"},"modified":"2016-05-26T10:36:47","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T14:36:47","slug":"alumnae-profiles-spring-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/alumnae-profiles-spring-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumnae Profiles – Spring 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Betsy Carr \u201968 and Jennifer Boysko \u201989<\/h3>\n
\"Betsy

Betsy Carr ’68 with Mercury Hipp ’15, who was serving as an intern in January 2014. To the left of Carr is former intern Kelsey DeForest ’13, who worked in Carr’s office after graduation.<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2009, Betsy Carr \u201968 became the first Hollins alumna to be elected to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates. Jennifer Boysko \u201989 followed in her footsteps. Voters in the 86th district, which encompasses sections of Fairfax and Loudoun counties, elected her as a delegate last fall.<\/p>\n

On Boysko\u2019s first official day in the Virginia Capitol, Carr, who represents\u00a0parts of the City of Richmond and the County of Chesterfield, presented her with a Hollins pennant. Boysko considers herself lucky to have had an immediate connection with a more experienced peer.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s someone who\u2019s a steady, thoughtful, calm person who I love to go to for advice about how to handle things,\u201d Boysko says.<\/p>\n

Carr, who majored in English at Hollins, didn\u2019t take a direct route to her political career. Working as outreach director at Richmond\u2019s St. Paul\u2019s Episcopal Church, Carr was a founder of the Micah Initiative, a program that organizes members of congregations to mentor, tutor, and volunteer with students in public schools.<\/p>\n

Being a familiar face at area schools came in handy in the spring of 2006, when a member of the Richmond School Board resigned after being caught with three joints in his luggage. Carr was tapped to finish his term. She enjoyed the work so much, she ran for the seat the following November and won.<\/p>\n

When a 33-year incumbent for the 69th District representative in the House of Delegates stepped down, Carr threw her hat in the ring. \u201cYou learn all you can locally, then you can take that knowledge to serve the people on a different level,” she says.<\/p>\n

Carr feels she\u2019s making a difference in her seat and has no D.C. political aspirations. \u201cI\u2019m intent on doing what I\u2019m doing here,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"Boysko\"

Boysko<\/p><\/div>\n

Boysko majored in psychology and French at Hollins, but found herself in politics immediately after graduation, working in the U.S. Senate office of Richard Shelby from her home state of Alabama. Later she took a job at a D.C. government-relations firm as a legislative assistant.<\/p>\n

Boysko later paused her career to be a stay-at-home mom to her two daughters, but stayed busy volunteering for Democratic campaigns. She was Virginia director for the 2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean when her girls were in elementary school. \u201cThey came with me everywhere,\u201d she says. \u201cThey went to fundraisers. We did door-to-door together.”\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2008, Boysko took a job as a liaison to the town of Herndon for a member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. \u201cI would see where we weren\u2019t getting resources to help people who desperately needed it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Over the years, Boysko had grown increasingly frustrated by the politics of Tom Rust, the representative for the House of Delegates in her district. In 2013 she ran against him, losing by 32 votes. When Rust\u2019s retirement created an open seat in 2016, Boysko ran again and won. She credits EMILY’s List\u2014founded by Ellen Malcolm \u201969\u2014with providing financial and logistical help in both of her elections. \u201cI\u2019m a big fan,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Boysko isn\u2019t sure what her political future holds. \u201cI want to get through this first full term, and then figure it out,\u201d she says. \u201cI would like to be able to serve for a long time if I feel like I\u2019m being effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photos by Sharon Meador<\/em><\/p>\n

\"divider\"Brinton Lykes \u201970<\/h3>\n
\"Brinton

Lykes<\/p><\/div>\n

Brinton Lykes had a good reason for not making it to the 2015 reunion to accept the prestigious Hollins’ Distinguished Alumnae Award.<\/p>\n

In May of that year, Lykes had joined feminist icon Gloria Steinem and two Nobel Peace laureates as part of a faction of 30 international activists who crossed the demilitarized zone dividing South and North Korea as a symbolic gesture of peace.<\/p>\n

The activists, who named their group Women Cross DMZ, spent several days visiting North Korea before undertaking the crossing. Lykes, associate director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice and professor of community cultural psychology at Boston College, found she was less shocked by the country\u2019s political climate than some of the other women in the group because of what she experienced as an 18-year-old traveling to the former Soviet Republic of Russia during the summer of the year she spent at Hollins Abroad\u2013Paris.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were both countries that were highly hierarchal and organized and disciplined,\u201d she says. \u201cSo your time was not your own, meaning you couldn\u2019t just wander around and look at things, but you were invited to go to certain places and to be with certain people.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the trip, Women Cross DMZ selected Lykes to serve as a member of the executive committee, which works to keep the group moving closer to its goal of \u201cdeepening relations\u201d between North and South Korea.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a very tiny, tiny piece in a much, much bigger struggle,\u201d Lykes says of the efforts of the peace activists. \u201cI absolutely think it\u2019s critical for women to be involved in these processes because I think our own experiences offer us different opportunities than men have.\u201d<\/p>\n

After receiving a master\u2019s degree from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in community and social psychology from Boston College, Lykes focused her research on such subjects as human rights policy and mental health interventions, participatory action research, and psychosocial effects of state-sponsored terror and organized violence.<\/p>\n

Lykes\u2019 humanitarian efforts and scholarship were recognized in April when she finally was able to accept the Distinguished Alumnae Award at a Hollins event in Boston. The prize recognizes alumnae who\u2019ve brought distinction to themselves and to the school \u201cthrough broad and inspiring personal or career achievements.\u201d It\u2019s been awarded to a diverse group of alumnae, including conservationists, scientists, artists and leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s humbling to recognize how many people in the world are working to improve our quality of life and to redress injustices and inequalities,\u201d Lykes says of joining this impressive league of women.<\/p>\n

Alumnae profiles by Beth JoJack \u201998 <\/strong><\/p>\n

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Betsy Carr \u201968 and Jennifer Boysko \u201989 In 2009, Betsy Carr \u201968 became the first Hollins alumna to be elected to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates. Jennifer Boysko \u201989 followed in her footsteps. Voters in the 86th district, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-6803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web_only","tag-spring-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6803"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6808,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6803\/revisions\/6808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}