Anthony A. Braga is the Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology and the Director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab in the Department of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. He collaborates with criminal justice, social service, and community-based organizations to produce high-impact scholarship, randomized field experiments, and policy advice on the prevention of crime at problem places, the control of gang violence, and reductions in access to firearms by criminals.

When Heidi Boerstler (Master of Philosophy in Liberal Arts ’26—expected) received the title of Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado Denver Business School, where she teaches ethics and health law, she was ready to try something new. “I decided to go back and study things I’d never studied before,” she recalls. “I had always been so focused on raising my daughter, getting tenure, teaching, doing research and all.

After Mariam Vahradyan (Master of Applied Positive Psychology `24) completed a bachelor’s degree in psychology, she spent a few years working in education management: first for the largest children’s book publisher, Scholastic, then for a nonprofit in Yerevan, Armenia—the city where she was born and where she was excited to return after residing in New York City for most of her life. “I’d been in that corporate culture for a few years, and I really missed learning and talking about ideas and concepts in nuanced ways,” she reflects.