Lauren Coape-Arnold ’06 is the Global Head of Citizenship at Apollo Global Management (“Apollo”) and the Executive Director of the Apollo Opportunity Foundation (“Foundation”). At Apollo, she develops and executes a comprehensive Citizenship program focused on philanthropy, volunteerism, and employee engagement. At the Foundation, she oversees the launch, creation, and growth of a strategy to invest over $100 million over the next decade to expand opportunity. Through both efforts, Lauren contributes to advancing Expanding Opportunity, the firm’s intentional, programmatic effort to broaden its pipeline and diversify the financial services ecosystem.
Prior to joining Apollo in 2019, Lauren was a Managing Director and Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Guggenheim Partners, a Foundation Officer at Two Sigma, and the Director of the Maverick Capital Foundation. Before transitioning into the social sector, Lauren was an associate in Maverick Capital’s Investor Relations department and an investment banking analyst at Lehman Brothers.
Lauren was named a Women We Admire “Top 50 Women Leaders of New York City” (2024), a New York Business Journal “Woman of Influence” (2016), and a City & State “Responsible 100” (2017); she is a graduate of Echoing Green’s Direct Impact experiential leadership program. Lauren currently serves on Amherst College’s Executive Committee of the Society of the Alumni.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in Psychology and French from Amherst College – where she was captain of the Women’s Varsity Squash team and a member of the Women’s Varsity Soccer team – and a Master of Business Administration from the Yale School of Management.
How do you use your liberal arts education in the work you do today?
I work at the intersection of multiple sectors and have to adopt many different perspectives to be effective in my role. I believe the breadth of Amherst’s liberal arts education prepared me well for this career, as I am able to adapt and think critically about the issues, and develop thoughtful responses and initiatives in response. The strong research and writing habits I honed at Amherst also helped me in building persuasive messaging and influencing others.
Chelsea Tejada ’14 (she/her) is a Staff Attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Reproductive Freedom Project, where she works to protect and expand access to reproductive health care, including abortion, contraception, and birthing services, through impact litigation in state and federal courts.
She has previously served as counsel in a variety of abortion rights lawsuits, including challenges to Kentucky’s total abortion ban, Guam’s telemedicine ban, and Texas’s SB8 bounty-hunter law. Some of her current litigation includes a challenge under Nevada’s Equal Rights Amendment to the state’s ban on Medicaid funding for abortion, a challenge under Ohio’s new Reproductive Freedom Amendment to the state’s onerous fetal tissue disposal requirements, and a challenge to Alabama’s limitations on midwife-led birthing services in freestanding birth centers.
Chelsea holds a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Languages/Civilizations and Women’s & Gender Studies from Amherst College and a Doctor of Jurisprudence in Law from Boston University School of Law.
How do you use your liberal arts education in the work you do today?
While at Amherst, I double majored in Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies (SWAGs) and Asian Languages and Civilizations. At the time, everyone around me thought that learning Chinese was a smart move that would help me in the job market. Almost no one thought the same about my SWAGs major. But the SWAGs courses I took, including many cross-listed with my other major, helped shape me into a critical thinker and feminist who approaches issues with nuance and empathy. The plethora of reading and writing also provided a pivotal foundation for learning legal research and writing in law school. There is no doubt that both of my majors helped move me toward being the reproductive rights advocate I am today.
Matthew Bires ’07 is the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of A24, the global entertainment studio behind films like Everything Everywhere All at Once, Uncut Gems, and Moonlight, and television shows Beef and Euphoria. Prior to starting A24, Matthew began his career as an investment professional at Guggenheim Partners. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish from Amherst College.
Mabel Lajes-Guiteras ’99 has over 25 years of education experience with an unwavering focus on working with traditionally underserved communities. As a first-generation college student of color, she is committed to ensuring all students have access to excellent education, believing that access to education and other opportunities remains a critical issue in the country. Currently, she is Vice President of the Seed team at the Charter School Growth Fund, where she identifies and supports school leaders in the early stages of creating, expanding, or replicating high-performing schools. She also leads an investment work stream that has resulted in over $50 million in grants to schools over the last four years.
Previously, Mabel was the Senior Leader at TenSquare, partnering with school leaders and boards nationwide to improve performance in academics, leadership, and school culture. She was also the founding principal of Bedford Stuyvesant Collegiate Charter School, which, under her leadership, earned an A rating on the NYC report card annually, and students outperformed city, district, and state averages on state exams. With over 10 years of experience teaching Head Start through college students in a variety of settings, including several founding teams, her students consistently ranked in the top 5 statewide on performance metrics.
Mabel holds a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude with distinction, in Psychology and Theater & Dance from Amherst College, a Master of Arts in Educational Theater and English Education from New York University, a Principal Administrative Certification in school leadership from Boston University, and an Executive Certificate in Nonprofit Leadership and Financial Management from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She is also a Pahara Institute fellow.
Was there an “aha” or “eureka” moment at Amherst after which you knew the career to pursue?
If it were only so simple! When I graduated in the ’90s, everyone was getting consulting jobs and receiving signing bonuses. I was so perplexed. What did a 21-year-old have to consult about? I sat down and began to think about the activities that brought me the most joy while at Amherst. Every single time, it came down to leading, teaching, and working with young people. I then began to investigate education as an option. Ironically, I became an educational consultant after 15 years in education to support schools across the country.
Jenna Collins ’08 (she/her) is the director of supervision and professional development at Community Legal Services (CLS) and an attorney in the housing unit. In her role, she oversees and supports CLS’s supervision and training systems to ensure all staff have access to excellent supervision and training necessary to provide high-quality representation and advocacy for CLS and their clients.
Previously, Jenna was a supervising attorney and a Harvard Fellow in CLS’s housing unit and a member of the energy unit working on Pennsylvania utility policy and providing direct representation on utility issues. Before returning to CLS, she spent five years at the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania as their housing attorney and was a visiting professor in Drexel’s Community Lawyering Clinic. Jenna has extensive expertise in subsidized housing and has focused her housing policy work on the intersection of housing and domestic and sexual violence, as well as housing and racial justice. Her other advocacy work is centered around equitable supervision and professional development in the legal and non-profit sectors.
Jenna received her Doctor of Jurisprudence in Law from Harvard University Law School and her Bachelor of Arts with honors from Amherst College.
How do you use your liberal arts education in the work you do today?
“I use my liberal arts education in a few different ways. First, at Amherst I learned a particular kind of intensive analysis and thought. My classes were always teaching me to look at the whole picture and understand the history and complexities of underlying issues. Second, my work now involves a lot of systems thinking and systemic advocacy, and having a well-rounded basis in history, politics, literature, and philosophy has been incredibly helpful in doing that work.”
Dr. Cuthbert “Tuffy” Simpkins ’69 is the Sosland-Missouri Endowed Chair in Trauma Services in the Department of Surgery at the UMKC School of Medicine, and the founder, president and chief innovation officer of Vivacelle Bio, Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri.
Dr. Simpkins is the inventor of the phospholipid nanoparticle technology for treating shock due to sepsis or hemorrhage. He has been issued 10 U.S. patents and 35 patents in international jurisdictions for discoveries related to this technology.
Dr. Simpkins’s journey began in, at that time, a heavily segregated Shreveport, Louisiana. As African Americans, his parents struggled to obtain voting rights, and his family homes were bombed, causing them to flee to Chicago and eventually resettle in New York City. Dr. Simpkins earned his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Amherst College and his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1974. He completed his general surgery residency at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York.
As a naval officer, Dr. Simpkins held surgical research fellowships at Boston University and the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. After leaving the Navy, he held several academic positions where he practiced as a trauma surgeon and intensivist and maintained a research laboratory. While on the faculty at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Dr. Simpkins designed and founded the Violence Intervention Program, which continues to prevent the recurrence of injury due to interpersonal violence. He served as professor of surgery and the director of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care at the LSU School of Medicine in Shreveport, Louisiana. Throughout his academic career, Dr. Simpkins maintained a laboratory focused on studying severe physiological disruption due to shock. His research is now supported by grants from the Naval Medical Research Center, for a clinical trial of VBI-S for the treatment of hypovolemia in septic shock patients; from the Army, for the study of reanimation after clinical death; and the NIH, for the development of methods for the treatment of sepsis without antibiotics. Dr. Simpkins was also the principal investigator on a recently completed phase II trial of his patented phospholipid nanoparticles in treating severe septic shock in which standard therapy failed. The trial met all its therapeutic endpoints and will soon be going to phase III.
A multi-talented individual, Dr. Simpkins is not only a medical visionary but also an accomplished biographer, capturing the essence of musician John Coltrane in a widely acclaimed book.
Tell us about a job you did not get or take. How did this shape your career path?
“When I left the Navy, I did not get any of the academic jobs I sought. I took a job at a community hospital in Washington, DC (DC General) that served a lot of those at the lower socioeconomic level. After providing care for the patients there, I realized the recurrent nature of interpersonal violence. This led to the development of the Violence Intervention Program (VIP), which has been shown to be successful in rescuing individuals from a cycle of violence, and that continues today in many hospitals around the country. While at DC General, I discovered an unexpected electron transfer mechanism that led to a relationship with the Chemistry Department at Howard University.”
August 16, 2023 – Luke Lavin. (Photo by Joe DelNero / NREL)
Luke Lavin ’13 is a senior research engineer in the Grid Planning and Analysis Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. He develops modeling tools, data, and analyses for valuing the contributions of electricity technologies and uses to future electric power systems. His recent work has focused on developing wind resource datasets, managing electric vehicle charging, valuing transmission expansion, and modeling power system response to extreme weather events.
Luke holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Physics from Amherst College.
Was there an “aha” or “eureka” moment at Amherst after which you knew the career to pursue?
I took a small research seminar course taught by Chris Dole entitled, I believe, “Inquiries into the Catastrophic.” That course showed me an overlap in my interests in scientific and social science research in the nuclear energy space, particularly given this was just after the high-profile Fukushima event. From there, I did a senior thesis on debates over the continued operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant (now closed), which turned my interest to electricity markets and regulation given its crucial role in those decisions. I guess that’s more or less what I’ve worked on since!