Where Are They Now?

In this new, ongoing column called "Where Are They Now?" we will look at what’s happened to folks who were written about in past issues of the Bulletin. In the inaugural column, we go back to "All In The Family," a feature story about what life is like when adults go back to school, which ran in the winter/ spring 1998 issue.

Barbara Frank MPA 1998 and her partner Myra Hindus bought a house in Jamaica Plain, the Boston neighborhood where the couple lived while at Harvard. Frank became director of state health policy at the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute and began working as a health care consumer advocate, pushing for better working conditions for low-wage, direct-care workers in nursing homes and home health care. Hindus is working as director of the Diversity Coalition of Massachusetts Legal Services. "The transition we started in July 1997," says Frank, "has been completed. No more commuting and no need to e-mail to stay connected."

The Solimans moved back to the Philippines. During their first month home, the family adjusted to the effects of El Niño and "the rough and tumble world of Philippine politics." Part of their transition back, say the pair of MPA 1998 graduates, involved adjusting to things they had taken for granted in the United States — strong running water, hot and cold showers, and 200 choices of shampoos. After trading backpack for briefcase, Hector Soliman began working as a partner in a law firm and as part of a consulting team headed by his former boss, the secretary of agrarian reform. Dinky Corazon- Soliman went back to her former job as the head of an NGO for training in community organizing. Daughter, Marikit, 12, began the sixth grade. Older brother, Dino, turned 14 and is in his second year of high school.

Samhari Baswedan MPA 1998 and his wife, Ella, moved back to Indonesia. Samhari, a medical doctor, spent two weeks in June in East Timor preparing for the "Day of Tranquillity." This one-day truce from fighting and violence was a way for medical staff to visit the island and administer health services and immunizations to Timorese children. East Timor has been a battleground ever since the island territory was seized by force from Portugal in 1975 by the Indonesian government. At press time, a week after 79 percent of East Timorese voted in favor of independence from Indonesia, violence had erupted and martial law was imposed.

As for Shafi Nujidat MPA 1998, the final alumni featured in "A Family Affair," tracking him down proved to be difficult (one of the unfortunate realities of international communication). A Kennedy School administrator, however, believes that Nujidat moved back to Israel with his wife and three children and lives in Arab Nujidat, a village named after his family.