How the liberal arts made Ayn Dietrich '04 a spokesperson for the FBI

Every day, Ayn Dietrich ’04 talks with reporters about high profile cases involving federal investigators, from suspected terrorist activity to searches for missing children. She previously served as an intelligence analyst and the person who briefs the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the attorney general on important cases.

Friday afternoon, she gave Randolph College Summer Research students an insider’s view of that world. While on campus for her 10-year reunion, Dietrich spoke in the weekly Summer Research seminar.

“I love working for an organization whose goal is to protect those who are in this country and Americans overseas,” she said. “I take it as a real honor to spread information about what we do and clear up misunderstandings.”

Dietrich, a public affairs specialist for the FBI Seattle division, showed video clips of various interviews she gave to media, and she described the process of preparing for the interviews—which sometimes involves having an hour or less to master the facts of a case.

She also described the variety of jobs she has performed for the FBI and how her liberal arts background qualified her to find success in those positions. “I couldn’t have experienced this if I didn’t have the versatile background of a liberal arts degree,” she said.

Dietrich majored in international studies and minored in communication studies and Spanish at the College. She also worked in the White House one summer and in Spain for two summers during her college career. When she went to graduate school at Columbia University, she was able to finish in one year, and her thesis was adapted from a paper she began in her senior year at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.

“You wouldn’t think that in a small college I could write a paper about  how state owned enterprise in China contributes to the failure of China to create a really robust security system,” she said, noting that a larger university might have a professor who specializes in that topic and could advise her. “But I value because what I had here, because instead of one professor who was an expert who could guide me, the College gave me five.”

She added that the College’s emphasis on writing and communicating continue to serve her daily.

As an undergraduate, she was editor of The Sundial, the student-run newspaper, and served in Student Government while also playing tennis and being active in other activities. In her working life, she has continued to be involved in the community by teaching Zumba and mentoring a teenager. “My ability to do all that came as a result of being a well-rounded student and pushing myself in different areas,” she said. “This school still challenges you to be well-rounded.”

Alumna Anne Wilkes Tucker ’67 featured in Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal recently published a column about the career of Anne Wilkes Tucker ’67. On the occasion of Tucker’s upcoming retirement after nearly 40 years of curating photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), the Journal interviewed her about her career.

The column highlights her groundbreaking exhibitions on Czech Modernism, Japanese photography, and war photography. It also touches on changes she has seen during her career.

Tucker, who first worked with photography when she took photos for the Randolph-Macon Woman’s College newspaper and yearbook, has grown MFAH’s photography collection from just 141 prints when she arrived there in 1976 to more than 29,000 prints by more than 4,000 artists today.

She also is a member of the Randolph College Board of Trustees.

Read the full story here: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304914904579439602433136322

Kelley Swain ’07 publishes three books in 2014

Behind Randolph’s Red Brick Wall, Kelley Swain ’07 pushed pens and critiqued poetry with the writing group “the Quill Drivers.” Now across the Atlantic Ocean, she continues her prolific writing.

In fact, the London author is publishing three books this year.

photo credit: Marcos Avlonitis

In March, Valley Press published Opera di Cera, a poetry collection written as a series of monologues about the creation of the anatomical Venus, a life-sized waxwork figure she saw at a museum in France.

This spring, Cinnamon Press will publish Atlantic, a collection of poems that she has worked on since 2009. Although much of Swain’s writing addresses the history of science, Atlantic is more introspective. “It is a very personal collection which engages with family, grief, exile, and love,” she said.

Swain’s first novel, Double the Stars, will debut in September. Also from Cinnamon Press, the historical novel is about Caroline Herschel, an astronomer best known for discovering comets.

These books follow Darwin’s Microscope, her 2009 poetry collection about science history, and two volumes of poetry she has edited.

She said there are a couple of factors that led to her prolific success. “Half of the answer is hard work and discipline. If you want to be a writer, you have to write,” she said. “The other half is having an astonishing system of support. Since writing my first poem at the age of seven, my family, teachers, friends, and relationships have been supportive and constructive in my aim to become a writer, and this support has made all the difference in the world.”

Swain said a lot of that support came from friends and professors at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. She said the faculty encouraged her interests in writing as well as science and helped her develop her talent and understanding. “I would not be the writer I am today without them,” she said.

Swain added that the liberal arts curriculum prepared her for life after graduation and her position at the Imperial College of London, where she teaches medical students about the confluence of science and the arts. “Though we used to joke that graduating from a liberal arts college with a degree in English would lead to dubious job prospects, it is exactly that unique educational background which has led to my being a guest lecturer at one of the top science universities in the world,” she said.

You can learn more about Swain’s work, and read excerpts from Opera di Cera and Atlantic, in an interview in the Inpress Catalogue.

Megan Bloomer ’06 shares experience in sustainability career

When Megan Bloomer ’06 graduated from college, she got job offers for positions which required candidates to have a minimum of 10 years of experience. But because of her liberal arts background and the her experience in the environmental studies program at Randolph, she found that she was more than qualified, despite being right out of college.

“I was placed into jobs with no experience, 10 years ahead of where my career could be,” said Bloomer, who now is director of Village Green, the sustainability department for DaVita, a leading provider of dialysis and part of a Fortune 500 company. “That wouldn’t be possible without my Randolph education.”

Bloomer is on campus today to deliver a talk as part of the College’s Sustainability Speaker Series. She met with students at lunch to discuss careers. At 7 p.m., she will speak to a wider audience in a public talk in Nichols Theatre.

She has titled her presentation, “Moving Sustainability from the Trash Room to the Corner Office,” because she believes people will respect sustainability more if they recognize its potential. “When I explain my job, people say, ‘Oh you’re in charge of recycling,’” she said. “That’s still the first thing that people think. But last night I was on the phone executing a $20 million deal. Sustainability is a lot more than policing what people throw away.”

“I can tell you what goes into which recycling bin, but let’s go talk about how we can save $20 million on energy,” she added.

Bloomer hopes to help people recognize the positive impact of corporate sustainability, but she also wants to show students what their liberal arts education  will prepare them for. She recalls taking classes that had nothing to do with her personal and career interests, but that helped her build a foundation for making connections and finding solutions, which is a daily part of her job now. “It comes naturally to me because I was forced out of my comfort zone and forced to make those connections,” she said. “The platform that you're pushed to create here is the best platform for any field.”

2001 alumna runs Boston Marathon for charity

The day after a bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon, Rachel Mathewson ’01 went running.

So did many Boston residents. For Mathewson, it was a way of trying to respond with hope and solidarity after a tragic attack that killed three people and injured more than 200.

“As a mother, and as a runner, and as someone who lives here, I know we have to move forward,” she said, recalling that day. “That’s the way we’ll promote healing.”

This year, Mathewson will run the Boston Marathon on behalf of a charity that honors the youngest person who died from the bombing last year—8-year-old Martin Richard. Mathewson was one of 72 people chosen to receive one of the charity’s spots in the race.

In the aftermath of the bombing, a photo of Richard and a sign he had made stating “No more hurting people—Peace” was widely circulated. In January, his family announced the formation of the Martin W. Richard Charitable Foundation and Team MR8, a Boston Marathon team that would raise money that the foundation could use to support education, athletics, and community programs.

Mathewson, who has run one marathon before, decided to complete the 11-page application. “I never thought I would be picked,” she said. But at the end of January she learned that she had been selected for the team. “It is an extraordinary privilege to be running this Boston Marathon and especially for Martin, adding my voice to his message of peace,” she said.

Since then, Mathewson has stepped up her running in order to be ready for the 26-mile race. Her running schedule includes short runs during the week and longer runs on weekends with other Boston-area members of Team MR8.

“This is a relatively short time frame to be training for a marathon,” she said. “There is the physical part of it, but I think the mental part of it is more challenging. It requires a lot of dedication and persistence. It’s more a state of mind. The miles will come. You just keep putting one foot in front of another.”

By joining Team MR8, Mathewson committed to raise at least $7,500 for the foundation. The amount seemed daunting at first, but she believes it will help establish a strong beginning for the charity. Mathewson thinks of her fundraising efforts much like she approaches running—one step at a time. Currently, she is more than halfway to her goal, according to her fundraising page.

Mathewson, who majored in psychology at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, has been inspired by the way her community responded to the bombing last year. Victims have shown courage and determination in overcoming their injuries, the community has joined together to support their recovery, and the Richard family turned their sorrow into an opportunity to do good.

“Everyone is in action. Everyone is moving forward,” she said. “This year’s marathon is going to be a testament to the fact that you can’t take this away from us.”

Alumna could win teaching excellence awards

Tracy Earley Proffitt ’04 is in the running for the McGlothlin Awards for Teaching Excellence, a prestigious annual award that recognizes outstanding teachers with prizes of $25,000.

Proffitt, who teaches in the Gifted Opportunities Center at Lynchburg City’s R.S. Payne Elementary School, will find out in April whether she is one of this year’s McGlothlin Awards winners.

Proffitt has been a teacher for most of the 10 years since she graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. She and her husband, also a teacher, spent three years working together in another field but then recognized their calling was in the classroom. “We both realized that teaching is where we want to come back to,” she said.

Her students and their parents are glad that Proffitt came to that realization. “She really knows how to stimulate a young child’s imagination and channel it into learning,” said Mari Ishibashi, a Randolph political science professor whose son, Elliot, is in Proffitt’s class. “She makes learning enjoyable, creative, and challenging for students.”

Proffitt employs a “flipped classroom” approach, in which many of her lectures are recorded for students to watch at home so more class time is spent on application. Her assignments involve hands-on activities and creative ways of thinking about the concepts.

For example, one assignment asked students to design a playground and describe it to demonstrate their understanding of force and motion. Ishibashi said such challenges help her son enjoy learning. “I really like the fact that he feels so excited, not burdened, about the prospect of doing these projects,” she said.

Proffitt gained the courage to teach this way in part thanks to her fourth grade teacher, who had a similar teaching style. Proffitt said that Randolph’s liberal arts education, and especially the teacher education curriculum, taught her about setting and meeting high standards.

“There was no room to be a slacker and not meet the expectations,” she recalled. “That has carried over to my classroom. If I have high expectations, then my students meet them. If they are not capable of meeting them, then I get involved and help them.”

She also learned about the personal touch that helps in teaching. “I had professors who really invested in me, who, outside of class, cared about what was going on. I try to be that for my students, too.”

Alumna leads United Way fundraising campaign

Maggi Keyes Beckstoffer ’86 plans to jump out of an airplane for the United Way this spring.

As the campaign chair for the United Way of Greater Richmond and Petersburg, Beckstoffer promised to go skydiving along with other local United Way campaign leaders if the organization met certain fundraising goals. They are on target to raise more than $13.5 million by the time the campaign ends, so she is looking forward to the jump in May.

“We’re doing very well,” she said “We’ve had some challenges along the way, but between jumping out of an airplane as a way to raise money and using direct mail, we’re going to be very successful.”

Maggi Keyes Beckstoffer ’86 has been leading the fundraising
campaign for United Way of Greater Richmond and Petersburg.

Beckstoffer, who majored in psychology and philosophy at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, volunteers with numerous causes, and has served on her local United Way board for more than six years.  She is the first woman, as well as the first small business owner, to chair the campaign for this United Way chapter.

She has owned MBM Marketing, a company that organizes and executes marketing campaigns for small and medium-sized businesses and community banks, for about 15 years. Her background in philosophy and psychology helps her see business problems from different angles and motivate her clients’ target audience, she said.

“Understanding how different people think and where they’re coming from is critical to success in any business,” she said. “The College gave me confidence, wisdom, and the ability to think for myself, which has allowed me to build relationships with my clients and leaders in the community and be successful.”

Beckstoffer put those skills to work for the United Way campaign last summer. As campaign chair, she threw the opening pitch at a Richmond Squirrels game to kick off the fundraising,  and then she began meeting regularly with community and business leaders to promote the campaign. Her marketing expertise helped her craft a direct mail effort to complement other forms of fundraising.

The volunteer work requires a lot of time and dedication, but Beckstoffer said it is worth it to help the community. “I feel like I’m very fortunate in my life,” Beckstoffer said. “People have helped me and my family along the way. I am in a position where I can use my skills and talents to help others, and it just feels like the right thing to do. It’s a privilege.”

Maria Karos ’86 leads law firm Women's Forum

An international law firm has appointed an alumna to lead a program designed to help welcome more women to the firm and to the legal profession.

Maria Karos ’86

Sedgwick LLP named Maria “Kiki” Karos ’86, a partner in the firm’s Dallas, Texas, office as the chair of the Sedgwick Women’s Forum. She previously served as the Dallas office representative to the Women’s Forum. She will lead the forum along with Laura Markovich, a partner from the firm’s New York office.

“I am confident that our new Women’s Forum leaders will continue to raise the bar through their dedication to the cause and demonstrated ability to effect change within the firm,” said Sedgwick Chair Michael Tanenbaum.

Karos, who majored in economics at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, focuses her practice on high-stakes catastrophic injury cases and complex business litigation matters.

“The Sedgwick Women’s Forum was designed to revolutionize the way gender is addressed in the firm, and potentially within the legal industry,” said a news release from Sedgwick LLP.

Recent graduate gets book contract for stories she wrote at Randolph

A collection of short stories written by Sara Taylor ’12 for her senior project at Randolph will be published soon.

Taylor recently signed a contract to publish the collection with Random House Publishers imprints in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. She will spend the next six months working with editors to prepare the book for publication (while also studying for her Ph.D.).

Taylor, an English major with an emphasis in creative writing, started working on the collection the summer before her senior year at Randolph when she decided that she wanted to complete an honors project. “I was told that honors meant 100 pages minimum and no maximum,” she said. “I figured that if I was going to write that much, I might as well write a whole book.”

English professor Bunny Goodjohn, Taylor’s senior advisor, provided guidance and challenged Taylor to perfect the stories’ plots, characters, and language. “Working with her was one of the best experiences of my entire time at Randolph,” Taylor said. Their work brought rewards before long: one of the stories from Taylor’s senior project won the coveted Stony Brook Short Fiction Prize last year.

Goodjohn already knew that Taylor was a talented writer, but seeing her senior project come together taught her something else about her student. “She was also a dogged writer—fully committed to learning two other skills a modern writer needs: self-promotion and marketing,” she said. “Sara knew it wasn’t enough to sit down and write; she had to take control not only of craft but also of her own publishing success.”

Most stories in the volume take place in a fictionalized version of Eastern Shore, a region on a peninsula on Virginia’s eastern coast where she lived when she started writing the stories.

While studying for her master’s degree at the University of East Anglia (UEA) last year, she met a literary agent who started marketing the book. The agent called with frequent updates, and she finally had good news a few weeks ago.

“She called me to say that there was no news, and then she had to leave because she was getting a call. Then she called back and said an offer had been made,” Taylor said. “By the end of the evening I had a publisher.”

The book is currently titled The Shore, but that might change as the book is prepared for publication. It will be about 360 pages and will appear in hardcover and paperback. It is scheduled to hit bookstore shelves in 2015.

“I still can’t believe it’s happened,” Taylor said. “It’s given me a lot more energy to do the next book.”

Her next major project is a novel that she started during her master’s program. She would like to be a professional writer, but she also plans to look for opportunities to teach after completing her Ph.D. at UEA.

Alumna Afreen Gootee '87 meets with Randolph education students

An alumna visited campus today to talk with education students and share advice about becoming involved in the teaching profession.

Chaman “Afreen” Yusuf Gootee ’87 attended a class taught by education professor Consuella Woods. She later spoke to students in an afternoon workshop.

“It is important to me to have a connection to the College, and to help the students here make a connection to the real world,” said Gootee, who has visited the College occasionally to talk with education students.

Gootee teaches history, math, and computer courses in Georgetown School, an alternative education center in Hanover County, Virginia. She is the president of the Hanover Education Association and vice president of a 19-county district of the Virginia Education Association (VEA).

She said attending Randolph-Macon Woman’s College helped her prepare for teaching and leadership roles by giving her much experience in the classroom through the forms of several practicums even before it was time for her to student-teach.

Philip Forgit, the executive director of VEA, joined Gootee for the event. Gootee encouraged students to join the VEA, including the student chapter at Randolph, for networking and for opportunities to advocate for education.

Alumna wins Mid-Atlantic Emmy for video about autism center

Courtney Brinkerhoff-Rau ’86 has won another Emmy for her video storytelling work.

The Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) awarded presented the Mid-Atlantic Emmy for a video Brinkerhoff-Rau produced for the Kinney Center for Autism Education and Support.

“There are so many fascinating stories out there, and I love the opportunity to tell people’s stories, especially when it can be used to educate people about something that needs attention,” she said.

Courtney Brinkerhoff-Rau, front row, right, received the Emmy accompanied by her daughter, Ann Elisabeth Rau,
Ian Rowe Nicholls, and representatives of the Kinney Center for Autism Education and Support. Photo: Top Guns Photography.

Brinkerhoff-Rau worked in the news industry for 25 years, working for news groups such as CNN (alongside Candy Crowley ’70), Knight-Ridder, and Fox. She has won several Emmy awards along the way. As she progressed, she found herself spending more time in management and less time producing journalism, her real passion. Three years ago, Brinkerhoff-Rau decided to start her own production company dedicated to helping clients tell their stories through video.

She has developed a technique for effective fundraising campaign videos, inspired by her analysis of ineffective videos she has endured over the years. “There’s really a craft and a unique way that you tell a story,” she said. “I figured out a good formula for how to get people to watch and pay attention.”

Leaders of the Kinney Center, an autism education program offered by St. Joseph’s University, approached Brinkerhoff-Rau in 2012. She conducted on-camera and off-camera interviews with autistic students in the program, their parents, college students who work with them, and the program’s administrators. The finished film debuted in September 2012 and has been successful in both raising money for the Kinney Center and increasing awareness of the need for autism education.

This was one of her favorite projects because of the inspiring stories it captured—children who met true friends at the Kinney Center, college students who found their passion in education, and parents who found hope. “I’ve done a million stories, but every once in a while there is one that really sticks with me,” Brinkerhoff-Rau said. “This was one of them. This piece was very inspiring to me personally. What a pleasant surprise that it ended up winning an Emmy.”

Newly discovered Pearl S. Buck novel to be published this fall

Shortly before Pulitzer Prize winner, Nobel laureate, and R-MWC alumna Pearl S. Buck ’1914 died 40 years ago, she finished writing a novel titled The Eternal Wonder. That book will be published for the first time this fall.

Pearl S. Buck ’1914

Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher and multimedia content company, and InkWell Management, a literary agency, announced the publication this week. They will publish the novel in digital and paperback formats on October 22, 2013. The book was featured in an article in the New York Times.

The daughter of Presbyterian missionaries, Buck was born in West Virginia but spent many of her early years in China. She graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 1914. She became a prolific writer, winning the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Good Earth in 1932. She later won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.

According to the New York Times story, two copies of the manuscript for The Eternal Wonder—one typed and one handwritten—were discovered in a Texas storage unit earlier this year.

The publisher describes the novel as “a personal and passionate fictional exploration of the themes that meant so much to Buck in her life. It tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax, an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, a mission patrolling the demilitarized zone in Korea that will change his life forever—and, ultimately, to love.”

In a joint statement, Jane Friedman of Open Road, Michael Carlisle of InkWell, and Edgar S. Walsh, Buck's son, said, “We are thrilled to discover and publish a novel by one of only two American women to ever win both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. The Eternal Wonder is as brilliant and inspiring as Pearl Buck’s most famous works, and we look forward to readers across the world getting to enjoy this long-lost masterpiece this fall along with Buck’s other wonderful books.”

L.A. Times highlights photography exhibition curated by alumna

The Los Angeles Times recently gave its readers an inside look into a war photography exhibition curated by Anne Wilkes Tucker ’67. The exhibition and a Q&A with Tucker are featured in reFramed, part of the Times’ art and photography blog.

Tucker and two colleagues at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston spent years working on the exhibition War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath, which includes 480 objects and photos documenting heroism and horror in armed conflicts decades old and more recent. They also created a 620-page catalog featuring essays and interviews. After opening in the Houston museum, a scaled down version of the exhibition is on view at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles.

The Q&A with Tucker reveals a lot about the story behind the exhibition and what she and the other curators learned from it. You can read the L.A. Times feature here. Randolph magazine published a story about Tucker and the exhibition in September 2012.

Tucker, named America’s Best Curator by Time magazine in 2001, recently donated two photographs to the College to honor two other alumnae. In honor of Lucy Williams Hooper ’73, Tucker donated an untitled photograph picturing a male and female samurai in Japan, stating that the confident pose of the female warrior was reminiscent of Hooper’s service and leadership on the College’s Board of Trustees. She also gave the College a print of Joseph Rosenthal’s famous photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima in honor of Lynn Hume Stuart ’60, who used to share patriotic images with Tucker and exhibited significant dedication and service to the College.

Alumna's TED Talk now available online

Kakenya Ntaiya ’04 has captured many audiences with her personal journey that included becoming the first woman from her African village to attend college. Now a TED Talk about her accomplishments is available online.

Ntaiya delivered the speech last fall as part of the popular TED Talk series that features thought leaders from various fields. Titled “Kakenya Ntaiya: A girl who demanded school,” the talk details life in her Massai village, her strategic efforts to convince her father and the village leaders to allow her to break tradition and attend college, and her decision to open a school for girls in her home village.

The speech was placed on the TED website this week. Watch it here:

Alumna chosen to moderate presidential debate

The second time that President Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney take the stage to debate each other in person, one of our alumnae will take the stage to moderate the forum.

Candy Alt Crowley ’70 will moderate a town hall-style presidential debate on October 16. She will be the first woman to moderate a presidential debate in 20 years.

Crowley is chief political correspondent at CNN and anchor of State of the Union with Candy Crowley. She is no stranger to high profile political figures, covering numerous presidential campaigns and national political conventions.

Here is Crowley’s reaction as she shared it on a CNN blog:

“As someone who is in awe and grateful every day  to be  in a country where freedom of the press, free speech and free elections are a way of life, I am wowed, amazed and excited by the opportunity to moderate a 2012 presidential debate."

Crowley has returned to her alma mater several times to share her experiences with students and the community. She delivered the commencement address at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 2002. After the 2008 election, she came to Randolph College to share insights about that presidential race.

It will be exciting to watch her play a role in the important process of a presidential debate!

Alumna will dance in the Olympics opening ceremony

When Mary-Elizabeth Carter White ’90 learned that she could audition to dance in the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, she hesitated. Should she really try out? Most of the other dancers would be many years younger than her. The rehearsal schedule would be demanding.

But then she recalled the words of Doug Hamby, a dancer and choreographer who visited Randolph when she was a student. When Hamby did not cast White for a dance he choreographed for an annual show, he gave her one piece of advice: “Be bold.”

Watch the Opening Ceremony

Friday, July 27, 9 p.m. London

NBC broadcast in the U.S. at 7 p.m. Eastern

Alumna Mary-Elizabeth Carter White ’90 will be in a group that starts performing about 57 minutes into the program.

“Now, I often think to myself, ‘Be bold,’ before I throw myself into new adventures,” White said. “His two little words made a huge impact on me.’

With that inspiration, she signed up to try out. After two exhausting auditions, she was offered a role, and she will be one of the thousands of performers on stage Friday night.

White, who now lives in England, majored in economics, but she also studied dance under Pam Risenhoover, who still leads the dance program today, and the visiting artists Risenhoover brought in. While she was in England for Randolph’s signature study abroad program in Reading, England, she met her husband.

“I don’t think I realized how lucky I was with R-MWC dance,” White said. “The exposure to so many different styles and teachers helped me when I headed to London and started dance classes there.”

White said she has not danced professionally, but she is a “passionate amateur” whose career has centered on performing arts. She has worked at English National Opera, Warner Brothers, and now a theatre group in Putney, London.

Dance rehearsals for the opening ceremony began in April, White said. Her shortest rehearsal was five hours long. The longest rehearsal ran for 10 hours. While it was hard work, she got to meet many other skilled dancers who have prepared an impressive show. “This is a hugely talented bunch of people, and I am so proud to be a part of it,” she said. “I am a mere cog in the whole thing, but I am having a grand time doing what I love—dancing!”

Olympic Stadium in London

White doubts that anyone watching the opening ceremony on television would be able to pick her out of the crowd, but she says her group’s performance is not to be missed—although she is sworn to secrecy about what the performance actually includes. You’ll have to tune in for the surprise.

The opening ceremony will take place on Friday, July 27, at 9 p.m. London Time (4 p.m. Eastern), but NBC will broadcast a recording at 7 p.m. Eastern. White’s group is scheduled to dance starting 57 minutes into the ceremony.