Profile

For her students and others around her, Beth Katz purposely sets simple examples of how to live a more sustainable lifestyle. “The best way to spread a message is through your daily actions, making the little changes you can make in your own life,” she says.

Kristen Tracy likes writing, but she loves telling stories. At the root of her success is her confidence in her stories — she grew up often feeling trapped in a small Mormon farming town, population 841, and turned to her imagination for respite.

Influenced by French New Wave films of the ’60s, John Bailey wanted to become a writer and theorist about changes emerging in American cinema, so he entered a nearby graduate film school in 1965. But a 16mm Bell & Howell with a 100-foot roll of B&W film changed all that

Lecia Brooks is no stranger to the “isms” that exist as the ugly potholes on the road to a better society. In 2004, she took a job in Montgomery, Ala., with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which fights racism and intolerance.