The clock is ticking. Only one hour remains before the winning team is chosen—and a trip to New York City and $500 are on the line. Kala`i Beck ’20 and his three teammates are huddled around a table in the student center’s Murray Boardroom, brainstorming ways to repurpose coconut husks and shells left over from the production of coconut water. 

Twenty years ago, Tanya Saine Durand ’93 and her colleagues at the nonprofit Children’s Museum of Tacoma found themselves wondering if their jobs—their mission—should continue to exist. After an unsuccessful fundraising campaign and a steep rent hike, the museum was facing substantial debt. “We were in this very humble place of asking the community, ‘Should we shut our doors?’ And resoundingly, folks said, ‘No. This is a valuable asset. We need to strengthen it.’”

A riot is raging in a hallway of a New York prison. This is the scene readers find themselves in when they open Riots I Have Known, the first novel from writer Ryan Chapman ’04. 

Soccer was Maya Mendoza-Exstrom's way to a Puget Sound education. Now, 16 years after graduating, she’s making sure that local children can reap the benefits of the sport she loves. Mendoza-Exstrom ’03, who is general counsel at Seattle Sounders FC, Seattle’s major league soccer club, was the founding executive director of the RAVE Foundation, which aims to make the sport more accessible to young people in the city’s underserved communities.

Longtime restaurateur and neophyte politician Daniel Nguyen ’01 has a lot on his plate.