"She's surprising, refreshing, spunky," says MARTHA BRANT. Spunky? That's not how reporters usually describe U.S. diplomats, but that's what Brant found when she interviewed Susan Rice, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Rice, '86, squeezed in her visit with Brant between a meeting with a Kenyan delegation and some frantic wordsmithing on a U.N. resolution on Sudan. "She's a major multitasker," says Brant, who has been a Newsweek correspondent since 1993. She covered Hillary Clinton in 1995 and 1996, then served as the magazine's Mexico City bureau chief for two years before settling in Chicago as a national correspondent. A native of Laguna Beach, Calif., Brant, 32, graduated from Yale in 1989 and picked up a master's degree in Latin American studies from Stanford in 1993.
Growing up in Pullman, Wash., PETER BHATIA rooted against Stanford football in favor of the hometown Pac-10 team. That all changed when he arrived on the Farm in 1971. In his freshman year, the Cardinal went to its second straight Rose Bowl, a game Bhatia missed. He hasn't missed much Stanford action since. A journalist who has worked in Dallas; York, Pa.; Sacramento and Fresno, Calif., Bhatia, '75, has racked up a lot of miles as a "long-suffering" season-ticket holder. Now executive editor of the Oregonian, Bhatia serves on the board of the Stanford Alumni Association. His essay on Stanford's 28-year wait for a return trip to Pasadena appears in this issue.
Illustrator RICHARD DOWNS has a simple procedure for coming up with ideas: he reads a manuscript and waits. He didn't have to wait long after reading Joel Smith's unflinching memoir of a mental breakdown. "With depression, the person gets trapped in his own head, and that was the seed of the idea," says Downs, whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, National Geographic and PC World. Downs, 41, studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., where he developed a painterly style influenced by German expressionist Max Beckmann. These days, he executes his work almost entirely on a computer in his studio in Nevada City, Calif., where he lives with his wife, illustrator Gwyn Stramler, and their daughter, Jillian, 8.
As a management consultant on international development, ROBERT STRAUSS, MA '84, MBA '84, has worked in more than 50 countries. He claims to have "fallen over backward" into writing in 1995, when his wife suggested he write about their five-month honeymoon in Asia. His work has since appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Saveur and Salon. While reporting on the future entrepreneurs in the Mayfield Fellows Program, Strauss, 44, says he was "amazed at how capable and confident they seemed to be." Strauss, who lives in San Francisco with his wife, Nina, and their daughter, Allegra, 3, recently published his first book, How to Have a Baby, online. It's at www.fatbrain.com/ematter.
