Brown’s 100,000 person-strong network of alums spans continents, countries and professional fields. With the class of 2029 embarking on their Brown journey, The Herald spoke with alums pursuing careers ranging from voice acting to foreign diplomacy.
Laura Flores ’90, economics and international relations
Flores works at the United Nations and has served as director of the Americas division in the Department of Political Affairs for the past eight years.
During part of Flores’s time at Brown, Vartan Gregorian was serving as the University’s president.
“I remember one time, I ran into President Gregorian on campus,” she recalled. “I asked, ‘What time is it?’”
After Gregorian told her the time, he offered her the watch. Flores was touched by the gesture, she said. “It was not an expensive watch or anything, I just thought that was such a spontaneous, generous moment.”
The advice of Religious Studies Professor John Giles Milhaven has stuck with Flores throughout her post-graduate life: “You have a great mind — use it.”
“It was just such an empowering comment from a professor that I so admire growing up as a woman in the professional world,” she said. “That’s something that I keep very close to my heart.”
Stephanie Harris ’14, education
Harris is the co-dean of students and assistant director of the high school at the Dalton School in New York.
She fondly recalled the intellectual community she found at Brown. “I was around friends who were all studying completely different things, all coming from completely different backgrounds,” she said.
Harris enjoyed approaching topics from a variety of “academic and social perspectives and lenses in a way that felt fun, engaging and exciting.”
“I don’t think before or since I’ve had so much of my social fun be about thinking intellectually,” Harris said.
Lucy DeVito ’05, history of art and architecture
DeVito appeared in projects including Hulu’s original series “Deadbeat” and FX’s “Little Demon” before making her Broadway debut alongside her father, Danny DeVito, in “I Need That.” She currently works with her father and brother at their production company, Jersey Films Second Avenue.
DeVito said that living in Caswell Hall her sophomore year was a “special, formative time.” She made lifelong friends in the dorm, saying “I have just the most fond memories of sitting on the green outside of Caswell, eating cookies and talking about our futures or dreams.”
Brown’s Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies was also influential for DeVito. Despite graduating with an art history degree, she walked in the theatre arts department’s graduation ceremony. “I just have great memories of being there,” she said. It was a place where she felt comfortable “making mistakes, having laughs and just learning about who I was as an actor.”
Kevin Roose ’09.5, English
Roose wrote for New York Magazine before joining the New York Times in 2017, where he is an award-winning technology columnist and host of the podcast, “Hard Fork.” He is also the author of three books, including his most recent work, “Futureproof.”
While at Brown, Roose saw the advent of Facebook transform the social scene. “I wrote a paper for my first-year English seminar about this new, hot website we’d just gotten access to — TheFacebook — and how it was starting to change campus social life,” he said. “In retrospect, I probably should have bought stock.”
Adnan Aldabbagh ’25 GS, biological physics
After completing four years as an undergraduate student, Aldabbagh, a Syrian international student, is pursuing a Master of Arts in Teaching at Brown with plans to earn a doctorate.
“All the physicists from my year, we’d always hang out in the Barus and Holley old lobby, and we’d talk and maybe do homework together but mostly just hang out,” he said. He reflected on Friday hot chocolate nights at the physics Departmental Undergraduate Group. “Every single week at 5:30 p.m., I was there.”
Susan Bennett ’71, Classics: Greek and Latin
After starting out as a jingle singer, Bennett found her way to a decades-long career in voice acting. Bennett is best known for being the original voice of Siri, but has also recorded for other global organizations, including Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines and McDonald’s.
While at Brown, Bennett led the Chattertocks acapella group and performed in a band called Conglomerate. “In the summers, we drove to Newport every day,” she said. She remembers traveling to “play five hours and then drive back,” forging fast friendships in the process.
She also remembered Brown’s shift to an Open Curriculum. “I think it was a really brilliant thing,” she said. “You never know what you end up being good at.”
