With a new chapter, a story begins

No Strings Attached, Emory's all-male student a capella group performed several numbers at the kickoff event for the Westchester-Fairfield Chapter of the EAA. Larry Nadel and Wendy Rosenberg-Nadel 82C hosted the event at their home, September 29.

Photo by Annemarie Poyo Furlong 89C

If you stand on the right bluff at the right time overlooking the Hudson River in Westchester County, New York, the view looking southward is breathtaking. The skyscrapers of Manhattan pepper the background, almost close enough to touch.

Yet all around is a pastoral paradise—trees everywhere and homes that look like they leapt off a postcard. Below, when the sunlight hits it right, the waters of the Hudson River glitter.

New York's Westchester and Connecticut's Fairfield counties are just a short drive from New York City, but at times they can feel a million miles away.

The area is crisscrossed by lush green fields and winding roads and dotted with quaint colonial towns, suburban bedroom communities, and the occasional blue-collar neighborhood.

Westchester and Fairfield counties are also home to a large number of Emory alumni. A group of those alumni have led the way and created a new regional chapter for the area.

“Many people from this area work in the city and come home to the suburbs,” said Wendy Rosenberg-Nadel 82C, who hosted a kickoff party for the Westchester-Fairfield Chapter at her home in Bedford, NY on September 29. “This is a huge area and the lifestyle is very different. It's urban vs. suburban living. We're in the city all the time, but we might not go there for an Emory lecture or social event.”

Regional chapters are the backbone of the Emory Alumni Association's (EAA) efforts to link volunteer leaders around the country (and in some cases the world) not only with the Emory campus but also with fellow alumni in their area. Currently, the EAA sponsors nearly 30 regional chapters around the county. And alumni are leading the way to create new ones every day in cities like Seattle, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Albuquerque, and Tallahassee.

The Westchester-Fairfield Chapter has only been together for a few months, but already is it moving forward very quickly.

Yonkers, located in the southern part of Westchester County, is hosting one of 32 Emory Cares International Service Day projects with Alisa Kesten 77C serving as coordinator. Alumni Admission Network activities will be led by David Becker 82C 85L. Emily Guthman 99C will be the lead for Young Alumni activities, and the EAA's Book Award program attracted several volunteers (Nadel in Westchester County and Karen and Jesse Dunbar 93L in Fairfield County). Efforts also are under way to invite a faculty speaker to the region as well as to plan other social and professional activities.

The chapter kickoff event brought together more than 100 members of the Emory community in Westchester and Fairfield counties. President Jim Wagner and his wife Debbie were among the guests, as were several members of No Strings Attached, Emory's all-male student a cappella group. No Strings performed several songs including Emory's alma mater (with the high notes sung flawlessly by President Wagner himself). The singers' presence allowed alumni to mix and mingle with current Emory students.

Wagner spoke for about 25 minutes and wrapped his discussion with a call for the Emory community to discuss everything—even uncomfortable subjects—openly and honestly. “We think alumni can help us model this, and we'd like alumni to help us more,” he said. “We are eager to see our alumni re-engaged with Emory and we'd like to see our alumni re-engaged with each other. And this new alumni chapter is going exactly in the right direction.”

“I'm very excited about the direction of the University,” Nadel said. “President Wagner is the perfect leader at the perfect time for many great things to happen. I think that with hundreds or thousands of alumni engaged with the University in a positive way there is going to me more work getting done, more chapters being formed, more attention being paid and more money being given to the University. This is a time of major growth at Emory, and I'm very happy to be involved.”— Eric Rangus