Alums Leading the Way

Named the 2022 Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year, Tara Roberts ’91 is recognized for her work diving with — and telling stories about — a group of Black scuba divers as they search for wreckage of ships from the Atlantic slave trade.

Mona Sutphen ’89 is partner and head of investment strategies at The Vistria Group, a Chicago-based private equity firm with a focus on technology. At Mount Holyoke, Mona was an international relations major and has had an illustrious career, serving as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011.

Natasha Mohanty ’03 is head of engineering at Stripe, a financial services and software company based in the Bay area. Natasha was a computer science major at Mount Holyoke. After working for several years at Google, she co-founded Primza, an AI-powered video engagement and media analytics SaaS solution that offers content discovery, personalization, predictive viewing and analytics for media and telecom companies.

Aimée Eubanks Davis ’95 is the founder of Braven, a startup that works to ensure underrepresented college students develop the life skills, confidence, experiences and networks that enable them to get strong first jobs after graduation. Named as one of America’s Best Startup Employers of 2022 by Forbes magazine, Braven is now operating in five cities and working with more than 3,300 students.

Suzan-Lori Parks ’85 is the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an award she received in 2002 for “TOPDOG/UNDERDOG.” In 2018, the play was named “The Greatest American Play of the Past 25 Years” by The New York Times. This unprecedented distinction was awarded unanimously by a special panel of critics convened to examine and rank the most important plays written and produced in the previous 25 years. Parks is also a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.

Tony Award-winning producer Debra Martin Chase ’77 is an entertainment industry trailblazer. She was the first Black woman to have a producing deal at a major movie studio, and her films have grossed more than a half billion dollars. She has a deal at Universal Television and executive produces CBS’ “The Equalizer.” Her numerous credits include “Harriet,” “The Princess Diaries” and “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella.” In partnership with Marc Platt, she won a 2022 Tony for Best Musical for “A Strange Loop.”

Addison Beaux serves as an executive leadership, strategic communication and management consulting asset. Before becoming a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, he served as a staffer to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, speechwriter to the President and Board of Trustees at Stanford University, congressional liaison and speechwriter at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and lead researcher at the Center for Economic Integrity. Addison is trained as a child and family therapist and is also a celebrated storyteller and public speaker.