Alumni launch work-life group

Author: Cloe Shasha

The Lattice Group, started by Middlebury alumni Astri von Arbin Ahlander '07 and Yelizavetta Kofman '07, is a grassroots campaign that strives to foster communication among young academics about a balance between work and life goals.

Inspired by their own search for employment in their senior year of college, Ahlander and Kofman did not feel fulfilled with the idea of working upwards from a traditional menial role that typically characterizes entry-level jobs. They began interviewing their colleagues to find out what they felt about career choices and their futures.

"Our peers didn't seem to have realistic expectations for themselves, or they didn't have realistic expectations for others," said Ahlander and Kofman, in an e-mail. "Like the Midd guys we talked to who wanted stay-at-home wives in contrast to the Midd girls who wanted rocket careers and multiple children. How was it all supposed to work out?"

Ahlander and Kofman began to investigate American roles in the workforce. Their research left them shocked by the stifling limitations that Americans face in the workforce compared with some other countries' abilities to find a healthy balance.

The United States, for example, lacks federally funded parental leave. Also, the Equal Rights Amendment, introduced in 1972, was never passed.

"In the 'Middlebury Bubble,' equality generally reigns," said Ahlander and Kofman. "But in the 'real' world, women still do 80 percent of the housework, over 95 percent of Fortune 500 executives are men, and men still face pressures to be primary breadwinners which limits their ability to take on active care-giving roles."

Beginning as a seed of an idea at a party during senior week, Ahlander and Kofman developed their nonprofit organization with the support of President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, the Library and Information Services staff, Human Resources, friends and private donors.

They titled it "The Lattice Group" to make an analogy between career goals that can span across many fields and the shape of a lattice. This mentality encourages exploration and passion rather than the highway or ladder approach of education serving towards an upward-reaching goal.

Recently, Ahlander and Kofman achieved the positions of official nonprofit executives.

"At Middlebury, we're told that we're the best and the brightest, that anything and everything we want is possible if we just work hard enough," Ahlander and Kofman said. "Unfortunately, we're never actually told to think actively about what it is that we really want."

The current projects of the Lattice Group involve in-depth interviews with young professionals and college students in the United States, France, Sweden and Russia. Their Web site has information about the work-life balance in those five countries, as well as interviews with well-known professionals.

"We post these interviews on our Web site, and they are remarkably insightful," said Ahlander and Kofman in an e-mail. "You learn a lot from speaking with people with more experience. Right now, we have interviews with the legendary literary scout Maria Campbell, [the Museum of Modern Art] Director Glenn Lowry, Dispatch musician Pete Heimbold, Esquire editor Ryan D'Agostino and Bard professor and artist Sigrid Sandström. We also have cool guest blogs."

The Web site has active blogs, uploaded videos and posted articles. It serves as a forum to recreate our conception of life in the work world. On the "Journal" page of the Web site, primarily post-college graduates tell stories of their careers, their true dreams and their life goals.

One woman wrote about the pressures she feels to be the high-achieving career woman she could be, although she dreams of having children.

"Twenty-two-year-olds who are women of color, who graduated from top-10 colleges as president of the student body and winner of the neuroscience thesis prize, who entered doctoral programs on prestigious fellowships immediately after college, who are poised to have Ph. D.s at the age of 26 are not supposed to want babies," an anonymous 22-year-old female wrote. "I do."

On Dec. 6, Ahlander and Kofman came to Middlebury to lead a Lattice Talk. Students were eager to discuss the work-life balance and the two leaders had an impact on the group, according to Ahlander and Kofman.

"A significant part of the Lattice Talk was spent focusing on the pressure students feel to work too hard and be trained into working machines on a college level, while topics relating to a greater social context were difficult for them to relate to," Ahlander and Kofman said. "This showed what the real challenge is for The Lattice Group: how to make our generation engage with work-life conflicts on a larger scale; considering the responsibilities of employers and governments in instigating change, and what each individual can do to make this happen."

Middlebury students can submit writing to the online journal, which is run by another Middlebury alum, Lauren Westerfield '07.

Ahlander and Kofman hope the group will have an impact on current students looking for a new approach to work.

"We hope The Lattice Group encourages Middlebury students, and other college students and young professionals in America and abroad, to think about, and perhaps reevaluate, how they will measure success in their own lives," Ahlander and Kofman concluded.