October 11, 2012
Starting this month, the Spectrum Center will be hosting a series of Brown Bag Skype sessions bringing students and alumni together. The first session of AlumniConnect will be held on Wednesday,October 24 from 11:30am-12:30pm in the Spectrum Center lounge. The alumni featured for October is Barbara Timmer.
Interested in politics? Barbara Timmer, a Michigan Law alum ('75) shares her perspective of 25 years . . . "Politics is conflict, compromise, anxiety and exhilaration, and elections, appointments, passing legislation and writing regulations . . . and for me, it's not just a job or profession, it is a passionate lifestyle." Barbara was general counsel for the House banking committee, Assistant Secretary of the Senate, led financial fraud investigations for the Congress, lobbied on behalf of some of the country's largest financial institutions, was in-house counsel for a tech startup that crashed and burned, saw herself on television (C-Span, of course) during the hearings that exposed the collapse of the savings & loan industry and of course in her spare time worked and still works for justice and equality for gays and lesbians. Barbara spoke at the Spectrum's Fortieth Anniversary Celebration last November on the implications of anti-gay marriage politics and became a Spectrum Center supporter (and has the Spectrum Center decals on all her luggage!)
In the Spring, we sent out a survey to alumni and current students asking about topics they would be interested in learning about and facilitating discussions around, as well as favored modes of communication. The Spectrum Center now has a LinkedIn profile and we are launching the AlumniConnect series as a result.
Students and alumni both expressed an interest in discussing professional development and issues, life outside of Ann Arbor, and more. Each AlumniConnect session will be on a different topic and feature an alumni of the Spectrum Center. We are thrilled to announce Barbara Timmer as our first feature of the series. If you will be in Ann Arbor and would like to attend the session, please RSVP.