These graduates’ professions heat up in summertime.
Go Wild
In Madagascar — where 100+ varieties of lemurs leap and 800-year-old baobab trees tower — travelers find an island on which 90% of its species exist nowhere else in the world. But you’re probably not getting there on your own. That’s where Anne (Milmoe) ’97 Avellana comes in.
She’s a senior adventure director at Natural Habitat Adventures, a travel company that offers wilderness experiences like swimming with sea lions in the Galápagos, photographing pumas in Patagonia, and encountering orangutans in Borneo.
The organization curates small-group trips with an eco-conscious focus, from the travel logistics to the educational opportunities to its relationships with host countries. “The fact that Natural Habitat Adventures believes that travel plays a crucial role in protecting the planet and that conservation and exploration go hand in hand is certainly one of the main reasons why I work there,” Avellana says.
From her office in Boulder, Colo., she currently specializes in designing trips to southern Africa — Madagascar, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — where the high season is during the U.S. summer because it’s wintertime in Africa.
Avellana plans every detail, from the sites to the guides to the hotels and meals, keeping sustainability in mind for everything. “For instance, if I need to charter a plane to bring a group of travelers to their destination, I strategically schedule the trip dates so that the same plane can bring a different group of travelers back,” she explains, adding that the company offsets the emissions of all flights. (Natural Habitat Adventures calls itself “the world’s first 100% carbon-neutral travel company.”) Nearly all of the guides are locals, and the partnering hotels and organizations must share an eco-friendly ethos. Avellana is even mindful of the nitty-gritty: “I spend a lot of time looking for ways to reduce waste by making sure we have things like cloth napkins and reusable water bottles on our trips.”
The larger mission is to educate travelers and boost economies in the host countries in order to preserve natural resources. “By having people travel, we’re lifting up all of these communities, and indeed, countries,” Avellana says. “In Madagascar, most of the forests have been destroyed through slash and burn agriculture. The areas that are protected have amazing biodiversity. We want to work with locals to realize that trees are more valuable up than down because of the tourism dollars these areas bring in.”
Natural Habitat Adventures is a partner of the World Wildlife Fund and, as such, works with scientists and experts to inform its travelers through lectures. Many who take these trips are Americans, Avellana says, and “[when we] bring people to see these special places, they’re going to get invested in them. A lot of the people who travel with us are very influential and can help shape policy and, hopefully, leave the planet a little bit better.”
When Avellana tells people about her job, it’s a common misconception that she’s always on vacation, but she does travel once a year to scout her locations. At press time, she was preparing for two weeks in Madagascar to do recon for a new trip she’s planning. Her checklist included visiting different camps, interviewing guides and drivers, and talking to restaurants about meeting dietary restrictions — “making sure people’s basic needs are taken care of is a lot of what I help set up ahead of time.”
Back in Boulder, every few weeks, Avellana takes the emergency phone shift, assisting travelers and trip partners anywhere at any time, with situations like missed flights or itinerary pivots due to weather.
In her 12 years with Natural Habitat Adventures, Avellana has specialized in different locations. She spent a decade managing trips to see polar bears in Manitoba and grizzly bears in Alaska. The latter is one of her personal favorite travel experiences, in Katmai National Park, where the bears haven’t been threatened by humans “so they just don’t care about us, and you can be a couple meters away,” she says. “Being on the ground with such an apex predator in a very safe way is a thrilling experience,” she says. “It does not compare to anything else I’ve seen.”
Avellana doesn’t call herself a thrill seeker; rather she seeks outdoor experiences — in skiing, hiking, and kayaking — and enjoys helping make Earth’s wonders more accessible to travelers. “There are lots of ways to go on summer vacation, and I’m proud to design and operate trips like these for people who are interested in the natural world.”
Personal Landmarks
Top recommendations for summer travel: Madagascar and Alaska
Family vacation plans this summer: a multiday whitewater rafting trip from Colorado to Utah on the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument with her husband and daughter
First trip outside the U.S.: studying abroad in Florence, Italy, as a Colgate student
Bucket list destination: hiking in the Himalayas
Wildlife goal: gorilla trekking in Uganda
Colgate connection: Avellana’s dad, Jim Milmoe ’69 — a class editor for the magazine since 1990 — took a Natural Habitat Adventure trip to see the Northern Lights in Churchill, Manitoba.
Training the Next Generation
Before the gates of Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo swing open to allow families to stream in, Kate Dugdale ’16 arrives in advance of her 8 a.m. clock-in. She revels in this peaceful time to stroll the grounds, greet other employees, and visit the animals. The snow leopards — who welcomed three cubs last year, so their exhibit is usually crowded — are her favorite. The Living Northwest Trail is another stop on her route, because the river otters and gray wolves are comfortable in Seattle’s weather “so you’re pretty much always going to see an animal there.”
Dugdale isn’t training the big cats or tending to the aquatic creatures, though; she’s overseeing human teenagers.
As a learning coordinator, Dugdale manages and develops programs for teens and young adults — the biggest part of which is the summer college internship program. It’s a program she knows well, not only from being in her position since February 2024, but also from being a participant. Dugdale grew up in Seattle and worked at the zoo as a high schooler.
At Colgate she majored in history and anthropology, taking museum-related classes (before it became an official program), and was a student assistant at the Longyear. After earning her master’s in museum studies at the University of Washington, she held several part-time positions at Seattle-area museums and then spent four years managing educational programming at the National Nordic Museum.
“I currently work at a zoo, but most of my training and background is in museums. They’re very similar types of organizations,” she explains, “you just have to think of the animals as the collection at a zoo.”
She’s come full circle at Woodland Park Zoo, spending part of her workdays at the Zoomazium, a learning center for younger children, where she began developing her skills in early childhood education as a teenager.
The other half of her job is running the internship program, which requires recruiting supervisors in winter, creating positions and hiring in spring, prepping for the interns (12 this year, with a plan to grow the program to 20) at the start of the summer, ensuring smooth workflows from July through August, and evaluating the program and debriefing in fall.
She acts as a resource for the supervisors and interns, putting out fires that can include resolving conflicts between the two. “My role requires me to have relationships across the zoo in different departments,” she explains, so her walkabouts give her the chance to not only see the animals but also “be visible and talk to folks on different teams, making sure they know who I am because they might be working with an intern I’ve hired.”
Dugdale also leads a cohort experience with the interns, coaching them in professional development, inviting guest speakers to talk about career pathways into zoos and conservation, and organizing field trips to related Seattle organizations, like the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.
Outside of Woodland Park Zoo’s 92 acres, Dugdale spends her off hours enjoying her home city. “Summer in Seattle is Seattle’s secret,” she says. “When you think of Seattle, you think of terrible weather. In the summer, it’s gorgeous, and people are outside all the time, hiking, backpacking, running [activities she herself does]. But we don’t tell people that.” (Keep it under wraps, readers.)
Zoo photos courtesy of Woodland Park Zoo
Selling Ice Cream Dreams
You’ve likely seen freeze-dried ice cream for astronauts. Game changer: What if they could make fresh soft-serve on the Moon? That’s a professional goal of Paul Toscano ’07, senior director of sales at ColdSnap, which sells single-serve frozen-treat machines and mixes.
Toscano recently sold the products to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and on his visit to the Pasadena, Calif., site, his contact wondered aloud: Could they put a machine on the Moon base? “I’d love to work on that project with you,” Toscano replied.
The Long Island–based salesman had another unexpected experience recently, when the Archdiocese of Newark (NJ) was purchasing two machines for its cafeteria. The deal was delayed due to the momentous passing of Pope Francis. “I never thought the Pope would be affecting my workflow,” Toscano says.
Organizations like the JPL and Archdiocese of Newark — along with universities, stadium boxes, golf courses, and car dealerships — are the types of clients to which Toscano caters. There are a few hundred private residences that have the ColdSnap machine, but its main customer profile centers around group gathering places.
Here’s how Toscano built his career scoop by scoop:
A psychology major, he still uses the skills he learned at Colgate today. “Being in sales, I deal directly with people, and seeing things from their perspective is really important in developing meaningful relationships. I credit my time at Colgate for developing my understanding of how people think, react, and operate.” He also still keeps in touch with Doug Johnson, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of psychological and brain sciences. Toscano went on the Wollongong, Australia, study-abroad trip with him and says, “He’s one of my favorite professors of all time.”
With a film and media studies minor, Toscano got his first job as an associate producer at NBC and was soon promoted to producer at CNBC. At the same time, he earned his MBA at New York University: “I always wanted to do something creative, and business school taught me that being creative in a business sense can be really interesting.”
At CNBC, he started producing stories “about cool companies,” and covered a coffee company called Joyride. He couldn’t stop thinking about the concept (cold brew coffee on tap), met with the founders several times to learn about their growth plan, and signed on as its COO in 2013. He helped expand Joyride to a $30 million business, but when the pandemic hit, the company was acquired by Aramark Refreshments. “I knew that I really wanted to stay in high-end food,” Toscano says.
He spent three years at Aramark Refreshments before becoming wowed by ColdSnap in 2023. “This is going to go somewhere,” he remembers thinking. “We get to change the landscape in ice cream.” The machine was imagined by the founder and his two daughters who wanted to figure out how to make an easy-to-use, single-serve ice cream machine. The product is approximately the size of an espresso machine and works by inserting a small can, which is shelf stable and thus has a lower carbon footprint.
Of the handful of flavors of ice cream (there are also nondairy options, protein shakes, a fruit smoothie, and two coffees), Toscano has a hard time choosing his favorite: “boozy bourbon … salted caramel … Mexican hot chocolate, final answer.”
From the Moon to a Connecticut golf course that wants to install a machine on a golf cart, Toscano’s sales are serving up fun. “I feel very lucky because I get to travel around the country talking about ice cream. It’s awesome.”
Making Boating More Accessible By The Numbers
Out on Cape Cod, Mass., a surprising proportion of children who live there have never been on a boat. So every June at Pleasant Bay Community Boating (PBCB), Ali Hogue ’18 organizes First Sail, which brings local third graders and their teachers to the Harwich-based campus for a free ride.
“Everyone goes out and has a great time,” says Hogue, who is program director at PBCB. The nonprofit’s offerings are for everyone — in addition to school groups, there are adult lessons, cruises for the Councils on Aging, and adaptive programs. “We try to get every cross section of our community covered,” she says.
Adaptive sailing and kayaking programs enable those who have physical or cognitive challenges to experience the water, sometimes for the first time. Beyond a dedicated adaptive program, PBCB aims to make all of its programming as inclusive as possible. “We’ll get calls from parents who say that their kid is typically turned away from other programs because of a disability, but more often than not, we’re able to find ways to make our youth sailing programs accessible for their child. It’s important to us that everybody feels they have a place here and on the water.”
Hogue grew up in North Attleboro, Mass., but vacationed on the Cape with her family and worked at Cape Cod Sea Camps during her college summers. A biology major at Colgate, she tried working in a lab after graduation, but quickly found that the spark wasn’t there: “The people around me were super happy to come check their parasites in the middle of the night, and I did not have that level of excitement about what we were doing,” she says. “I was having dreams of quitting my job and going back to work at camp. [Now] here I am. I manifested a full-time, year-round job of working at a camp.”
She joined PBCB as a science director in 2021 and moved into the role of program director, managing operations and staff — as well as filling in gaps when needed. “Like any small nonprofit, everyone does everything,” says Hogue, who sometimes washes boats, fixes website issues, and handles social media. In the off-season, PBCB offers events like family science nights, lectures, and yoga workshops: “We dabble in lots of stuff over the winter to try to keep people engaged.”
Head to the beach to learn more about Hogue and her work:
“We’re a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and our mission is to make boating and marine science education more affordable and accessible.”
“We offer ~4,500 experiences a year” to local youth, adults, outreach participants, and school groups.
“PBCB offers semi-private and group sailing, paddling, and a floating classroom experience for individuals and a range of partner organizations, totaling around 400 experiences per season.”
“Our floating classroom [named Friend] is a 37-foot pontoon boat with solar panels on top, so it is fully solar powered.”
9/5/25: “We end the summer with a big regatta weekend, The Sandpiper Invitational. Then we pull the boats because we’re getting into hurricane season.”
“I learned to sail when I was 11 or 12. My first job in sailing was working at Sea Camp in Florida for one summer [as a first-year at Colgate].”
2 certifications: “I have my U.S. Sailing instructor cert, and my launch tender license with the Coast Guard, so I can drive people out to their moored boats.”
1979: Colgate graduating class of her mom, Jan (Huerter) Hogue
“The waterfront’s open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day, so we’re busy.”
10-second reflection about summertime: “The best part is working a long day in the sun, and then you go home, take your shower, get in your comfy clothes, and you’re on the deck enjoying a sunset. You just had a great day outside, and then it’s that golden hour relaxing time, knitting or reading on the porch.”
Taking the Sweat Out of Pickleball
Wendi Green ’98 Aspes became obsessed with pickleball the way many people did: She was at home during the pandemic looking for something to do when she decided to give it a try.
“I ordered a net and some starter paddles and set it up in the driveway, and the whole family just started playing,” says Aspes, an avid tennis player who lives in Atlanta. “And I realized this is a lot more fun than I thought.”
While playing with her brother-in-law, Aspes noticed that they were both wiping the sweat off their hands on their clothes. A fast-paced mashup of badminton and ping pong, pickleball involves constant movement, which can lead to excessive sweating. To deal with this problem, Aspes turned to gels, powders, sweat bands, and towels before coming up with a better solution: Designing clothing that would absorb sweat.
Aspes uses a patented technology called DRYV, a two-layer fabric that wicks moisture away from the body while acting as a towel to absorb sweat. After spending months creating a line of sports apparel incorporating this fabric, Aspes and her brother-in-law, Jason, launched Wringer Wear in March 2025.
“When you talk to any player, whether it’s pickleball, paddle tennis, ping pong, racquetball, or squash, and you say, ‘Do your hands sweat when you play?’ — every single one across the board says ‘yes’ because you’re holding a paddle or racket tightly,” Aspes says. “So we’re a solution for a problem that racket sports enthusiasts have. You can wipe your hands directly on your gear and it will absorb the sweat.”
Wringer Wear is available online, at selected clubs across the country, and at pickleball tournaments nationwide. The line includes everything from shirts to sweatshirts to hats; prices range from $35 to $95.
Creating a sports apparel business is what Aspes calls her “second act,” following a 10-year career working in the nonprofit world — most recently as marketing director for Ian’s Friends Foundation for pediatric brain cancer research.
While she is now a board member, Aspes left her position at the foundation in March so she could focus on her new start-up. Her work on the venture had begun in 2021 when she partnered with a California-based manufacturing company to bring her idea to life.
“Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the country, and Wringer was built for those who love the community and the competitive aspects of the game,” Aspes says. Statistics bear out that claim: For the past four years, participation in pickleball has increased more than the growth in any other sport, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association.
Aspes hopes that Wringer Wear will give players a competitive edge in their game because it will allow them to focus on their next point instead of their sweaty hands.
So far, the reaction to the line from pickleball players Aspes has met at tournaments has been positive. “People are really excited,” she says. “They see it as a solution.”
The demand for the apparel is likely to increase as pickleball continues to grow in popularity because of its appeal to all age groups and the sense of community it offers, Aspes says.
“We live in a divisive world, and not that pickleball is going to solve any of our world problems, but it brings people together,
and you feel like you’re part of something,” she says.
— Sherrie Negrea
A Breath of Fresh Air for City Kids
Several times a week, Lisa Gitelson ’91 leaves her office in midtown Manhattan and drives two hours north to Sharpe Reservation in Fishkill, N.Y., where she’ll visit one of the Fresh Air Fund camps and its Model Farm. The farm cultivates more than just rhubarb and strawberries; New York City children learn about plant care, eating healthy, and tending to animals. This is in addition to traditional camp activities like swimming, boating, and arts and crafts.
Five of the Fresh Air Fund’s six sleepover camps are on Sharpe Reservation, and as CEO of the youth development organization — which provides outdoor experiences, at no cost, to New York City children from underserved communities — Gitelson goes to support the staff, connect with campers, and give tours to potential donors.
“At the end of the day, I’m in charge of making sure that this work happens,” Gitelson says to describe her job in a nutshell. She just completed a new strategic plan for the organization and oversees all operations, including fundraising, staff, and communications.
This role, which she began in 2022, is the latest in Gitelson’s career of advocating for children. She spent numerous years as an attorney specializing in foster care and family court cases. Then in 2012, she accepted a position as director of foster care and adoption at the family services nonprofit Sheltering Arms, after serving as its in-house counsel. This new role “was something I’d always been extraordinarily interested in doing. I moved into big-picture work and impact work; it felt like a natural progression of what I hoped to do,” she says.
Gitelson, who grew up in Croton on Hudson, N.Y., “loved the outdoors”; she went to summer camp as a kid and became a counselor as a teenager. Her two children — who are now 20 and 24 — also went to camp and have an appreciation for nature, even though she raised them in the city.
“One of my kids will call and say, ‘I’m having a really hard day. I’m going to go for a walk in the park.’ I love that. [Being outside] gives you a way to center yourself.”
That mindset — that children can savor nature, even with skyscrapers nearby — propels her work today. “The outdoors impacts each of us in the most positive of ways: physically, mentally, and in learning,” she says.
The organization is launching a new program called Fresh Air City Explorers, focusing on mentorship and outdoor access all year. “In my dream, on Saturday you come to our program, and you go sledding at Inwood Hill and have hot cocoa. We don’t want kids to think the only way to get outdoors is to get on a bus and come to us during the summer. We want them to know that the outdoors of New York City is theirs year-round.”
Another new program is at Camp Tommy, which received its starter funding from Tommy Hilfiger. (There’s also Camp Mariah, supported by Mariah Carey.) Camp Tommy is transforming from a camp for teen boys to a youth leadership training camp.
“One of our major goals is that our youth stay with us to become our staff,” Gitelson said on the podcast Learning Unboxed. “We want youth who were campers to be our counselors, to be our leaders, to be the next CEO.”
STEAM By the Sea
Every summer, Newport, R.I., hosts tennis tournaments, golf championships, sailing regattas, and tens of thousands of tourists oohing and ahhing their way through the opulent mansions built by Gilded-Age millionaires.
But the City by the Sea is not all glitz and glamour. Just 3 miles from the tony shops of Thames Street and the lavish “summer cottages” of Bellevue Avenue, the North End might seem a world away. The neighborhood is home to half of Newport’s school children and a significant population of marginalized residents — many of whom power, rather than partake in, the tourism and hospitality industry.
The North End is also home to the Newport Experience, or NEX, a six-week, full-day summer program that enables the area’s young people, grades 5 and up, to explore and engage in the riches of Newport County.
NEX is an offshoot of FabNewport, an experiential learning program for middle and high school students founded by Steve Heath ’80 in 2013. At the time, with two decades of teaching under his belt, Heath was serving as internship coordinator for the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, where students do much of their learning in real working environments — a perfect fit, given his conviction that young people often learn best outside of the classroom. One day, he led a field trip to a Fab Lab, or digital fabrication laboratory, in Providence. (A fabrication laboratory provides community members with access to computer-controlled equipment, software, and training, making it possible to design and make “almost anything,” according to MIT, where the concept originated.) During the visit, Heath was struck by the students’ enthusiastic response. We need one of these! thought Heath, who soon obtained a grant for FabNewport. Today it runs a year-round slate of STEAM programs in schools and offers after-school programs in its North End lab, which provides space, materials, and tools for kids to make, learn, and do — whether that’s creating jewelry, using a laser engraver, or making a fishing rod.
The organization has also cultivated a network of area partners who expose students to resources to which they might otherwise not have access, such as surfing, golf, sailing, a wildlife sanctuary, the town’s art museum, and local farms. Heath, who describes himself as “a catalyst who is weaving Fab learners into the fabric of the community,” points out that the benefits of access flow both ways. FabNewport’s partners want to serve under-resourced youth, he says, “because service is where we are at our best. Doing something for someone else is when human beings feel fulfilled.” It’s a perspective he acquired at Colgate, where he majored in philosophy and religion. His professors were “the first group of people I’d met who were committed to something outside of themselves,” he says.
In 2018, after five successful years of FabNewport, Heath and colleagues realized there was a need for learner-centered, content-rich programming not only at the end of the school day, but also at the end of the school year, so they created NEX. Seven years later — and despite recent funding cuts — the camp is thriving: 50 young people, mostly from the North End, are taking advantage of what Aquidneck Island has to offer this summer.
In addition to creating a sense of trust, inclusivity, and belonging, Heath says, both FabNewport (which recently won the Youth Empowerment Award from the Rhode Island Governor’s Workforce Board) and NEX aim to provide kids with a sense of agency — the ability to envision a positive future for themselves undergirded by the skills and relationships that can help them realize that vision. This is a big leap from the original Fab Lab concept, he says: “We’ve gone from making things to making lives.”
— Sarah C. Baldwin