MELAINIE ROGERS
Melainie was born in Australia, in Bacchus Marsh, a small country town outside of Melbourne, where her family has lived for over seven generations. She grew up in a close community of numerous family members and familiar faces. Her family and her community are predominantly working class. Her parents and family were hard workers and instilled this work ethic in their children. There is a great deal of pride one has in seeing people work hard and honestly. However, there is also a hardship when trying to raise a family on a tight budget. This stress was a big motivator in her seeking out a better way to “do life.”
Fortunately, Melainie’s mother was a huge advocate for the education of her children. Through her support, Melainie went on to attend Melbourne University, where she received her B.A. in Biochemistry and a Graduate Diploma in Sports Nutrition from Deakin University. She is the only member of her family to attend university. After graduation she sought out work in Japan, where she lived for eight years, initially teaching English and then going on to become the Human Resources Manager. Coming from a working class family and a tight-knit community, the idea of seeking employment abroad was seen as quite drastic. And although family supported her, there was also a lot of pressure to move back to Australia after she had “gotten it out of her system.” Melainie feels that the geographic distance has certainly been hard on her relationship with her family, but also her life is so foreign to theirs that it is hard for them to relate to her endeavors abroad.
Melainie had always had her sights on a nutrition degree and moved to New York to attend NYU, feeling quickly that this was “home.” The energy of the city and the access to just about everything was exhilarating. She always had a drive to have her own private practice, and after receiving her M.S. in Clinical Nutrition she founded melainie rogers nutrition, which is now the largest private practice dealing with eating disorders in New York City, providing individualized counseling on eating disorders, weight management nutrition and bariatric surgery recovery. Having struggled with an eating disorder herself for much of her time in Japan, Melainie found that she was able to work well with clients who suffered with eating disorders as she “got it” and understood first hand what her clients were going through.
Due to the success of melainie rogers nutrition, Melainie opened the BALANCE eating disorder treatment center, which provides an Intensive Outpatient Program, an Adolescent Weight Management Program and a Day Treatment Program. The goal of the center is to provide several layers of care for clients who are struggling with an eating disorder.
Having divorced her husband several years ago but still wanting a child, Rogers decided to become a single mother. She has undergone several fertility treatments without any success. However, earlier this year she started dating a wonderful guy, and they have put a hold on the fertility treatments to give their a relationship a chance to naturally evolve, with the hope of having a family together.
DAPHNIE SICRE
Raised in Madrid, Spain but born in Guayaquil, Ecuador to Peruvian and Spanish parents, Daphnie has a deep passion for discovering multiple Latina/o and African American perspectives in drama, which is the focus of her Ph.D. dissertation in Educational Theater at New York University. Daphnie moved to the States when she was 15 to live with her grandmother and flee a turbulent custody battle. Her experience here awakened her to issues of race and racism that she hadn’t considered before and which are now the focus of her academic research.
Given that she loves education, not only is she pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Theatre, but in the evenings she teaches at various universities throughout the city, and in the daytime she works as a teaching artist for George Street Playhouse and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Just recently, she worked with young Latina/o immigrants in New Brunswick, NJ and helped them write plays on their views on immigration. Her passion for teaching goes beyond the classroom and social justice. She stays in touch with most of her former students and feels blessed to know that a lot of them are pursuing careers in the arts.
Daphnie is not only close to her students, she is extremely close to her family, despite the distance. She talks to her grandmother every day and to her father and brother via Skype on a weekly basis since they still live in Spain. Although it is hard to be away from her family, she knows the United States is one of the few places where she can pursue her career and live as an independent woman.
In addition to her doctoral and teaching work, Daphnie has directed over 30 productions with high school teenagers in Miami, Florida. She also directed the first Spanish-speaking production of Romeo y Julieta for Shakespeare in the Park Miami. She recently started working with professional actors in New York and directed Not About Eve by Karl Williams and Collateral Bodies by Erin Kaplan. Inspired by her research, she is currently working on writing her first play, which looks at race relations between Latina/os and Blacks in America.
TEBOHO MOJA
Teboho was recently described in a South African paper as being at the top of a job she once loved to hate. She was born in South Africa to parents who belonged to two different ethnic groups but had to adopt her paternal side of the culture. Her mother was a nurse and her father was the first black postmaster in her township of Atteridgeville in Pretoria. Raised in an extended and close family of teachers and nurses, she knew that she did not want to follow any of those careers. As fate would have it, she ended up being a teacher but vowed to make the best of it and studied to get her doctoral degree.
Under the apartheid system she was declared an immigrant in her own country. The apartheid government created artificial homelands/Bantustans within the country and regulated the movement of black people in South Africa. Teboho and her family were resettled in an arid area, which was declared independent. Though the word may sound positive, what it meant was that her whole ethnic group was granted an “independent” status within the country and turned into foreigners with no rights in South Africa (or anywhere else since they were South African). When she needed to travel to the U.S. in the eighties, she could not obtain a South African passport and was instead granted a Travel Document that stated that her citizenship was undetermined. The system crumbled with the fall of apartheid and she is now a full citizen of South Africa and a U.S. resident.
Teboho first came to the States in 1982 to work on her Ph.D. in Educational Technology with a minor in Educational Administration at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is currently a clinical professor of higher education at New York University. She has also taught in South Africa and as a guest professor in Norway and Finland. Her teaching includes courses that expose students to international perspectives and she conducts study abroad courses to South Africa, Israel, India and Turkey.
Teboho served as the advisor to President Mandela’s Minister of Education. President Mandela also appointed her to serve as Commissioner and Executive Director of the National Commission on Higher Education. She conducts research on South African education, particularly the implications of globalization on higher education. She has served on UNESCO committees and as a consultant for international development agencies, including the World Bank.
Teboho raised three kids while pursuing her career. Her eldest son is an attorney in South Africa. He’s married and has a son. He has now moved to being more of a commercial lawyer, specializing in finance management and investment. Her youngest son is a university student, following a career in finance, taking after his grandfather, who was also a businessman. Teboho’s daughter was murdered in 2007 in New York City. Her interest was in economics and politics and she was a student at Mills College. She was awarded her degree posthumously. Teboho is a happy grandmother and spends as much time as possible with her family and grandson when she visits South Africa. Recently she started communicating with her family, especially her grandson, over Skype to stay in touch and be present in his life as he grows up.
YATNA VAKHARIA
Yatna was born and raised in India until her marriage at 19 to Govind Vakharia, who had previously immigrated to the United States, where she joined him when her visa was granted after an eleven-month wait. Before her move to the States, Yatna had only left her country once on a short school trip to Nepal.
Before her marriage, Yatna had been attending a Government Girls’ Polytechnic College, where she was studying to become an architect’s assistant. Upon her marriage, her father and her father-in-law pushed her to continue her studies, but feeling that an ideal wife and daughter-in-law would be one who stayed at home, she did not return to school. Vakharia worked full time after her daughter was born and part time when her son arrived, since she wanted to have as much time as possible with her children. She felt guilty that she had quit her studies, but she helped her daughter and son with their math homework, and they in return corrected her English pronunciation. She also volunteered at their elementary school, teaching kindergarteners how to use computers, for which she received a Golden Apple Award, usually reserved only for teachers, not volunteers. She was also the PTA president for her son’s middle school.
In 2005, she decided to take her SATs and got her GED. Due to her motherhood commitments, she started part time at a community college and was thrilled to find that she was still an A student. She did not think Columbia University would accept someone like herself, but she gave it a try anyway and much to her surprise and happiness, they welcomed her. Today, she is a junior majoring in Math at Columbia.
Her son started his freshman year at Rutgers University this fall. He plans to major in Economics and Math. Her daughter graduated from college this spring and is currently in Osaka, Japan, as part of the JET program. She works for the Osaka Board of Education teaching English to Japanese students. She plans to attend graduate school upon her return. Yatna is still very much involved with both her children's education.