In this week’s TALK series, McLean Today sits down with Al Berg, the Langley High School golf coach. Since 1996, Berg has coached his team  — which have been Liberty District Champions for 22 years — to victory. Last season, the co-ed Langley golf team set a new scoring record in a 36-hole competition. The longtime golf coach aided his team to win seven straight state championships which is an all time record as well. 

Q. When did you first pick up a golf club?

I started golfing around 13 years old. My dad was a golfer. I used to go out with him and follow him around. It seemed pretty intriguing to me. I really love sports but I wasn’t particularly big in [them]. I was well coordinated so I found that [golf] really suited me well and I was able to do well with it. I’m still learning. It’s the game that you never really master. It’s a game that’s always challenging you and you can play it way past the point you can play most other sports.

Q. When did you start coaching at Langley?

I started coaching the Langley golf team 26 years ago. I was a teacher at Cooper Middle School which feeds into [Langley High School]. Then the position opened up at Langley and I applied for it and have been there for 26 years. I came close to teaching at Langley but I was perfectly happy at Cooper and I got to meet my future golfers a little bit earlier because I saw them in the seventh and eighth grade. I started coaching golf for the first time when I started my position at Langley, roughly around 1996-1997. 

Q. Can you explain the golf team’s victories from the past seasons?

We’ve had a remarkable stretch and many of those victories have been pretty dominating. Last year was probably the closest one we had. In one tournament, we only won by six strokes but yet we won states by as many as 38 shots which is ridiculous. You just don’t win a state tournament by 38 shots, but we did that year. Out of the 26 years I have coached, we have been Liberty District Champions for 22 years.

Q. Since retiring from teaching, you’re commuting all the way from Richmond to coach. Why not just give it up? What’s the allure?

I lived in Reston until I retired about 12 years ago. I’d already been a coach at Langley, we’d already won one state championship, but we had a really good team coming back. I really didn’t want to miss the opportunity to help the team win the state championship so I decided to see how it went with me commuting up here. I don’t commute back and forth every day, I usually come up once a week and go back after a couple of days. This worked for me [as] the first thing we did was win the state championship that year and we’ve had such great teams in the last year. We won seven straight state championships and I just keep getting some really great players who are very dedicated. Going back and forth on I-95 isn’t a whole lot of fun but the team makes it worthwhile.

Q. What are your secrets to being a “successful coach”?

The key is to try to develop a program that has some success because when you do that it seems to build on itself without me having necessarily anything to do with it. The kids know that they’re coming to a team that has been the best team in the state almost for decades so they’re very motivated and the competition to be one of the six starters is pretty intense. I try to make it clear to them that even though you might not be one of the six starters, the fact that the team is playing really well, [will] push them to start playing better. I really have been very fortunate to have some of the best players that I’ve ever seen come out of the state. This past year, we had three seniors that started on the state team, and they’re all going to play college golf. I stress to the kids that even though they might be involved in some other sports, they should try to really excel in golf. You really have to keep your game up all year round. It can’t just be a summer sport. 

Q. Do you still play golf for recreation?

Absolutely I still play. It’s a game that I will always play. I just played yesterday.

Q. Who’s your favorite all time golfer and why?

I don’t know if I could pick one, but I would say Ben Hogan. Ben Hogan had to overcome so much and [then] to become as good as he was. After his automobile accident, the doctor said he would never walk again. Not only did he walk again but he actually became the number one golfer in the world after that. He had to overcome all of that and he grew up poor with a family who didn’t have much at all. He just worked so hard. No golfer has ever worked harder than Ben Hogan.

Q. What’s the most challenging part about coaching Langley Golf? The best part?

The best part is preparing for tournaments. I must admit I’m a bit of a nervous wreck when they’re actually playing in the tournaments. But I like preparing them, mapping out the course and giving them some advice. The most difficult part is that I always have some really outstanding [players] who don’t make the starting lineup. Unlike other sports, golf starts off with six players and those are your six players for the day. It’s a little frustrating that I can only play six, I would love to play ten.

Q. Do you have any favorite restaurants you like to go to when you are in McLean?

Rocco’s is a good place. In fact, the person who owns and runs Rocco’s was my assistant coach for two years so I always felt a little loyalty to Rocco’s and I enjoy their pizza. 

Q. Do you have any tips to become a great golfer?

You have to learn how to deal with frustration. Even if you’re really good at something, golf can [be] very frustrating. I’m really impressed with the ability of the teams that I’ve had to be able to deal with the frustration involved because most of the things the golfers do in life lend themselves pretty quickly to effort. You put the effort in and you get rewarded. Golf is not always like that. Sometimes you can be trying so hard but you’re just not quite getting it. It is very difficult and I think it is the hardest game to master. So in order to be great, you have to deal with this frustration.

Q. How do you feel going into the next golf season for next year?

My feeling is that we always have a good team coming back. My goal is to get to the state tournament and be competitive. We were great last year. We had a tremendous run and I can’t speak more highly of how players have performed under pressure. It’s a very difficult game, especially when you’ve got a lot of pressure on you. Every time that it looks like we were maybe in a little bit of trouble, we start playing better. I hope that continues. It’s been a fantastic run.

Dania Reza is the social media content curator for McLean Today. She is a junior at McLean High school and is an assistant design editor-in-chief of her school news magazine, The Highlander. 

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK? Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.

In this week’s TALK series, McLean Today sits down with Omar Masroor, owner, Aracosia McLean, Authentic Afghan Gourmet + Chophouse. From the day Masroor opened his second restaurant Bistro Aracosia in the Palisades, customers from across the Potomac were constantly asking him: “When are you going to open in McLean?” Masroor finally gave them what they wanted when Aracosia opened right in downtown McLean.

Q. Aracosia of McLean is the newest of  the restaurants you own. How does it fit in with the others?

Of the three restaurants that we have right now that are open — we’re working on our fourth in Georgetown — McLean is the flagship as far as being a full service restaurant. The one in Springfield [Afghan Bistro] is a small little bistro, you have maybe 30 seats.  It’s the most casual of our restaurants; our D.C. location [Bistro Aracosia] is also smaller. McLean is a bigger space. The food is pretty much the same. There’s small little things on the menu that you won’t find at Afghan Bistro that you might not find at our D.C. location; wines are going to be different; cocktails are going to be different. We are looking at the neighborhood and creating a  menu around that. We also have a sitar music player [pictured below] in McLean on Friday and Saturday nights.

Q. Before your first restaurant — Afghan Bistro — were you in the food industry?

No. I was in the car business; doing sales and what have you.  I just couldn’t work for people anymore. It was just getting a little too much for me with five kids. When I would wake up in the morning everyone was in school, when I would come home at night, everyone was sleeping. I just couldn’t do that anymore. Everything was fine, financially we were doing fine. Everything was good to go. I decided to take a  little risk. Life is not just about acquiring things. I wanted to spend time with them so I went from not seeing them to seeing them every second.

Q. So it’s a true family business, with your wife and children working as well in the restaurants?

The four older ones — I have a younger one, he’s 11-years-old — but the four older children do. They run the restaurants, actually. They are amazing. I’m telling you not because they are my children. They never worked anywhere before. They never had a job before. Each one of them when they hit 16, they started working at the restaurant with us. Now, my oldest daughter [Taliha ] is running the D.C. location, she’s 24-years -old. My son [Zakriah] is helping her and my other two daughters [Iman and Zainab] with my General Manager, Hassan Boussouf. are helping them.  He has been in the business a long time. So they are learning from one of the best. My wife, Sofia, is an amazing woman. My wife is the main chef of all the restaurants. She’s with the kids, as well, doing what I used to do without all the craziness. She handles the situation better than I do. I’m just so vested in it. We have a saying in Farsi: The person that’s been burnt by hot milk, the next time he sees yogurt, he blows on it.

Q. Tell me about the origins of the recipes, the food.

95% of our menu is family recipes, from my mother and my grandmother and my great grandmother. One of the reasons we wanted to open up a restaurant is because we just felt that Afghan food was not getting justice.  It was just kabobs and chickpeas, bread and what have you. There was a time in Afghanistan where there was really nice gourmet food.  When Afghanistan had a Kingdom, when there was no war and there was peace and people were enjoying themselves. We refer to our menu as food from the pre-Soviet invasion menu — as food from the Kingdom of Afghanistan. The food has changed now. Some of these young kids who are coming from Afghanistan, they don’t even know some of the dishes. We’re trying to preserve something here as well, too.

Q. How did you make your way to Virginia?

We left Afghanistan in 1979. We were refugees in Germany from  ’79 until 1982. Then we got asylum here in the United States. We were sponsored by a church in Kensington [Md.], a Lutheran church if I’m not  mistaken. I was pretty young. I don’t remember that much. For the first couple months we were in Maryland. Then we moved to New York when my father came to America. So I grew up in New York and in New Jersey, went to school there. Then we moved to Virginia in 1994. I met my wife here. My mother wanted to come to Virginia because her sister was here and that is how we ended up here.

Q. Where do you like to eat in McLean when you’re not at your restaurant?

We’ll go to El Tio; that’s a nice little place to go to with the kids. My 11-year-old son plays basketball in McLean, so after that. I like the Thai restaurant called Pasa Thai. Sometimes the kids’ friends will come over and  we’ll go pick up a big platter of spaghetti & meatballs from Pulcinellas. How much coriander and cumin and lamb tenderloin or rice can you have? Sometimes all you want is spaghetti with meatballs or some pizza or Chinese or Thai food. 

Q.  So you’ve created a legacy for your kids, the restaurants are their future?

This is their lives. I was telling them the other day, as a matter of fact that Listen, I think I’ve come to a conclusion where I’ve stepped outside of the restaurants for long enough that I know you guys can do this. I don’t want you serving tables for the rest of your lives or being a maître d’. Now you have to look into being the restaurateurs of the future, to look for expansion, to the future. They are excited about it. I want to see what they can do. They have the energy; they have intelligence. as long as they don’t have that fear of thinking uselessly that I’m not going to be able to do it or it’s going to be too tough or this or that, I know they are going to be successful.

Q.  What stands out for you about the McLean patrons in particular?

McLean is all across the board —  which is the most beautiful thing. You get the most international type of clientele that we have in our restaurants. You are talking about someone coming in based on some sort of  [menu] family package deal that we have and not order anything to drink and at another table, you’ll have someone order a $600 bottle of wine with two people, a check out coming out to $800, $900. It’s across the board. You’ll have the ambassador of  so and so sitting at one table and then you’ll have the man who works across the street at Subway coming in and having lunch. It’s the full spectrum of everything. 

“Literally two months before the pandemic we opened. It was kind of scary but McLean is an amazing neighborhood. Our guests responded well,” says Masroor.

Aracosia: 381 Beverly Rd., McLean. 703-269-3820. aracosiamclean.com. 

Gayle Jo Carter is the editor of McLean Today.

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK? Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.

In this week’s TALK series, McLean Today sits down with Lauren Schwabish, owner, Neuro Speech Services, a mobile speech therapy private practice, that brings person-centered speech, language, and cognitive therapy services to adults with stroke, brain injury, and mild cognitive impairment. Schwabish is passionate about community health education to both increase stroke prevention awareness and empower audiences to boost their brain health. In her consulting services to healthcare workers, the former Rehabilitation Clinical Specialist with the Inova Health System, focuses on helping to improve communication skills for optimal healthcare delivery.

Q. Tell us when and why you decided to strike out on your own open your own practice?

August 2021 —  it started with the pandemic. I loved my job but things really changed. I had been working in an inpatient rehabilitation hospital for sixteen years, I thought I had a dream job. I was part of a team that was guiding therapists to do the very highest level of quality care and working with really complex patients. Unfortunately, the hospital made some decisions where they laid off a large amount of our team. It was a devastating loss for our team at a very challenging time in the world. That really got me thinking I would not stay at this hospital for the rest of my career. It was a time to stop and reflect and say “What do I want to do here?” Around that time — as a speech pathologist you have to take continuing education classes —  I started taking some online courses about person-centered care. That’s what I had been practicing but I wasn’t calling it that. That’s something where you’re not looking exclusively at the person’s deficits, but what matters most, what do they want and need to do as a communicator. It definitely got me thinking: Could I practice what I was doing in a different way? Around that time, as fate has it, social media showed me an ad for “Start your own private practice,” a business consulting company. I looked at some of those courses. I started talking to some friends of mine who were very encouraging and I  just took this leap of faith. It was a lot of hustling at first to make contacts but all of the early seeds I planted have been so fruitful. 

Q. You see patients at their homes and have an office in McLean, right?

I have three different ways that I work. I am mobile where I go to people’s homes; I have virtual sessions working with people all over the commonwealth of Virginia and then yes, I am renting an office one day a week downtown on  Elm Street, 6845 Elm Street, right next to the post office. I am thinking about expanding to two days a week.

Q. Who are your patients?

I treat individuals who have experienced a neurologic disease or injury. I see people ranging from young adults in their 20s to super adults in their mid 90s. My caseload consists of those who have had strokes, traumatic brain injury, including concussions, and acquired brain injury due to a medical condition, such as  an infection that got to the brain. I see a lot of folks who are diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment which is a truly underserved community. Those are people who are starting to experience some cognitive changes where they notice it and other people notice it but it’s not really significantly interfering with their lives yet. They are very motivated because they are worried that this will become something really debilitating like dementia. The standard treatment for those folks had pretty much been: Get evaluated and then come see the doctor in six months and see if you’re worse. I think there is just more opportunity to be had. We focus a lot of education about cognition and strategy training and just general brain health support. That’s been really exciting too.

Q. What does your work look like as a community educator in the field of brain health?

I’ve done a workshop for a neurology practice that focuses on multiple sclerosis. They do a wonderful day-long retreat with education and resource provision. I’m a program consultant for a wellness focused organization called Can Do Multiple Sclerosis, where they provide team-based wellness and health education for those who are living with multiple sclerosis. Through the National Aphasia Organization, I run a parenting with aphasia group — aphasia is a language disorder that comes from a brain injury. Once a month, I have a group of parents across the country — and actually in Canada now — who are young adults who have had some sort of brain injury and also have kids; it is a wonderful communication and peer support group. I love community education. It is something I’m so passionate about, especially with neurological disease as it’s really complicated, and making information accessible and providing hope and optimism and resources is so vital for these communities.

Q. What are some of the challenges in striking out on your own to open a business?

The biggest hurdle I had was learning how Medicare works. Working in the hospital system, there were multiple departments that dealt with billing. That was something I had to learn from scratch. Unfortunately, the government continues to make Medicare cuts to therapy services and so in addition to understanding  how billing works, I need to watch the legislative decisions that impact our reimbursement for care. That was 100% the hardest part.

Q. What’s the biggest reward of having your practice?

Patient care: I have gone from a mentor position at the hospital to absolute A to Z patient care where I’m intimately involved in every part of a client’s experience. Working with my clients and their families is so rewarding, helping people to communicate again, to engage in their community again or to feel more confident about  their memory abilities. That feeling is worth more than a paycheck really. It is so rewarding to restore cognitive communication abilities, especially in adults who have been living with a certain set of skills, until an illness or injury changes things. To help people with that is really the best aspect of this job.

Q.  You and your family also live in McLean. When did you move to McLean and what drove you to live here?

We moved here in 2012. It will be eleven years this year. Like a lot of people who move to this area, we really wanted a good education for our kids. We had come from D.C. where sort of a consistent pathway towards a good education seemed really challenging to visualize so we moved here when my daughter started kindergarten. We also wanted to live in a walkable community. We were fortunate enough to be able to find a house where we can walk into town, we can get coffee, we can walk to school, we can walk to the grocery store because that was something that was really important to us as primarily city people before we moved here. We really feel fortunate that we have both the education and the community access.

Q. What’s your favorite place to walk to into downtown McLean?

I’m a coffee drinker so Greenberry’s is on the rotation: I’ll do business meetings there;  I’ll have coffee with friends; I’ll grab something on the way to the office. It’s probably the place I’ll go most.

Q. There seem to be a fair amount of health professional services in McLean. Is that a benefit of choosing to locate your office in McLean?

Absolutely. I have been lucky to make some connections with some neurologists and psychologists and neuropsychologists in this area. Those are some of my best referral services and those are people where we work collaboratively. I have clients who are referred from a neuropsychologist but then I’m sending back to that therapist for some mental health counseling because that’s a big part of health care for my clients. That’s been a really nice mutual benefit. One thing about McLean — Northern Virginia in general — people want very high quality care so we are lucky that we have really excellent medical centers all around us. I think McLean probably stands out. People will pursue really good quality care and I think that’s something McLean has to offer.

Q. All of us, of course, want to know how we can keep our brains at peak power. Can you leave us with some parting advice?

Honestly, it’s like many recommendations for your overall health; if something is good for your heart, like exercise and a good diet, it’s good for your brain. But it’s also about social connection and cognitive stimulation. It’s about really maintaining a role of purpose in your life. I have a client living with dementia and because of his difficulties with communicating, he’s been less and less engaged outside the home. We have started to do some volunteering together at SHARE McLean and what that does is it allows him to have a plan, to have something to do during the day. He interacts with a variety of people and we contribute to their cause. He is contributing to the community. We have re-engaged a sense of purpose. It’s also really important if you’re starting to notice any changes in your thinking abilities, to say something. The earlier the better when it comes to most diseases and certainly if you’re having any cognitive changes, no matter what age you are. It may not be a disease at play but maybe it’s a sleep disorder that’s contributing to decreased attention or new learning. Not being afraid to say something and then seeking out a knowledgeable health care provider who listens to you, who advocates for you, and guides you to helpful treatment options is essential.

A former Rehabilitation Clinical Specialist with the Inova Health System, strikes out on her open with McLean’s Neuro Speech Services, https://www.neurospeechservices.com/.

Gayle Jo Carter is the editor of McLean Today.

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK? Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.

In this week’s TALK series, McLean Today sits down with Sue Christie, co-president, the McLean branch of the American Association of University Women [AAUW]. Founded in 1969, the McLean branch has a strong program in support of AAUW’s mission to advance equity for women and girls. In June 2022, the McLean branch achieved the distinction of being named a 5-Star Branch of AAUW. The recognition came in response to the success of their work in five areas: Programs; Advancement: Fundraising and Membership; Communications and External Relations; Public Policy and Research and Governance and Sustainability. Nationally, AAUW began in 1881. Nonpartisan, though not values-neutral, the group fights to remove the barriers and biases that stand in the way of gender equity. 

Q. Why and when did you first become a member of the McLean branch of AAUW?

I joined in June 2013 looking for both kindred souls and to level the playing field for women and girls.  It is easy to forget in a place like McLean that many girls and women in our community are hitting barriers every day and at every turn.

Q. What is your professional background?

 I have a BA from the University of Michigan.  My last position was Deputy Executive Director of the American Public Human Services Association where I ran the management and leadership consulting department.   Other jobs included Secretary of the Utah Department of Social Services and COO of the Colorado Department of Social Services.

Q. What are your goals as co-president of the McLean branch of AAUW?

My goal is the organization’s goal. My fifteen second sentence is that we at national and within the communities are trying to level the playing field for girls and women either in the classroom or the workplace. National has gotten very focused, and we have tried to follow suit, in doing things that speak directly to that mission.

Q. What are some of those “things” your organization is doing to speak to that mission?

We give grants, scholarships to two schools who have a lot of women returning who have had their education disrupted, who face more barriers than probably I or perhaps you faced, letting them start with a little more level playing field as they go back into the workplace. We recognize high school students in four schools. We’ve added two Title 1 schools [Title I is a federal education program that supports low income students throughout the nation.] in Northern Virginia, where those kids and those teachers have lots of resources but not equaling the ones sitting in the middle of McLean. We are looking for young women who are excelling in science and math and in computer sciences that’s offered in the school. We do an  essay contest for middle schoolers who are asked to identify and write about a woman scientist who we might not have heard about. I think we won’t see the end of that for quite a while given the number of women who have done good work that sit on the sidelines. We  try to be both in schools and with women in the workplace. We try and have programs that speak to that vision and we are now going fairly heavy into community involvement that is putting boots on the ground.

Q. Which colleges do you support?

The colleges are Trinity Washington University, Marymount University and Bennett College in North Carolina. We clearly are putting an emphasis not only on leveling the playing field in general but leveling that playing field for girls and women of color. They have an even bumpier road as it were.

Q. What does your membership look like here in McLean?

Our membership is sitting at just about 117. That is the largest in the state of Virginia. We have a a lot of women who care about these issues, very generous people who who care about these issues. As you would in most organizations, we also have a social component because that’s how people build relationships and learn to work together and find common cause. We have mostly retired women but not all. We are going heavy after the next generation because as all organizations know if we don’t pull in that next generation… .We welcome any individual who has earned an associate or academic equivalent, bachelor’s or higher degree from an accredited college or university. Undergraduate students who do not already hold a bachelor’s degree can join as student affiliates.

From left to right: Juanita Cullen, liaison to Trinity Washington University; Anita Booth, branch co-president; Eva Salmeron, Marymount University; Saba Hashemi, Marymount University; Shandale Scott, Trinity Washington University; Katherine Healy, Trinity Washington University; and Sue Christie, branch co-president.

Q. What fields are the McLean AAUW members in?

We have women in journalism, psychology economics, mathematics, nursing, medicine, law, publishing… We have what I would call a pretty powerful set of women here. They care, they bring extraordinary  experience to the table. As we start to reinvest in the community and otherwise, we bring a lot of people who know how to make things happen. That’s basically about the best you can ask from an organization that’s volunteer.

Q. A lot of organizations find themselves changing, evolving — coming out of the pandemic. Did your organization shift in anyway?

One of the things we’ve done coming out  of the pandemic is sort of reorient ourselves, get a more rigorous strategic planning process and put the people in the right spots, branding. If anyone knew anything about AAUW, it was synonymous with book sales as our fundraiser. People know us as having done Stemtastic for high school kids but it spoke to the need for better branding. We’re in the process of upgrading our social media, piece by piece, we’re upgrading our look, making it  more dynamic as the need is clearly there in this area. We’ve tried to spend the last two years probably resetting; recalibrating; reenergizing.

Q. What are some of the social events you mentioned earlier?

We have branch meetings; in December and May we do luncheons. We have a  potluck where we bring in the national fellows and grant recipients that we have endowed with national. So every year when they give those, we celebrate those women — who are really pretty heavy duty women coming in with their PhDs in some very esoteric areas —  that we all find very fascinating and they’re all going to take that back into the community generally to the benefit of women wherever they land. Then the various interest groups where small groups of people meet: book clubs; current events groups; things that keep us individually and collectively on top of  the issues; invested in issues; knowledgeable in issues.

Q. Besides, scholarships/grants, how does the local branch support national’s goals?

We do policy advocacy based on national and state of Virginia priorities We will  both inform our members; ask our members to act —  what we call 2 minute activists, like pick up the phone now. We are involved in Richmond’s Lobby Day and we can do that easier than national because we are physically located in the Washington, D.C area. We have been very very active — and again there  may be differences in different localities,  where are the pressure points in this area? Do we have  lot of companies giving maternity leave but nobody doing anything about child care? Do we have equal access to healthcare for women?  Although national doesn’t push on health care,  it clearly is a determinant for economic security. We used to — and are thinking about whether we continue— attend all the Fairfax County School Board meetings. We have in fact —  as National did —  put out a statement when the new educational requirements came out from the state of Virginia relative to teaching history and social studies. 

Gayle Jo Carter is the editor of McLean Today.

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK? Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.

In this week’s TALK series, McLean Today sits down with Saehee Perez, a McLean High School senior recently selected as one of Virginia’s delegates in the United States Senate Youth Program. The U.S. Senate Youth Program is a week-long educational program for high school students interested in government related fields. Two delegates are selected from each state, including Washington, D.C .to represent in this event.

Q. Explain to us, what is the U.S. Senate Youth Program?

The United States Senate Youth Program is a scholarship program where each delegate receives $10,000 for college and gets to spend a week in DC fully funded. They’ll get to meet different people from [the] government and top journalists [who] might come in as well. This is supposed to give high schoolers an insight into different government officials. 

Q. Why did you decide to apply for the program?

I am very interested in politics. It’s something that I want to study and pursue once I graduate. This program also has an alumni network of people that have been involved in politics since they were in high school. The opportunity to get to sit down with senators and have a meeting is amazing. Beyond that, being able to meet different people within the government. That’s something that I really wanted to experience because I’ve never been 100% sure about pursuing politics. I think it’s an opportunity for me to learn if this is the right path for me.

Q. Do you have any experience in government as a student?

I ran for class of 2023 president for junior and senior year [and won both offices]. This past year, I also ran for a SGA [Student Government Association] position and the difference between this and class council is that SGA is school wide. So in addition to being senior class president, I’m also an SGA officer.

Q. What are you most looking forward to in the program?

I want to be able to explore different career paths within the government [because] there are so many different options. Things such as national security that require good information on technology and computer science. Just being [able to] hear from people of all fields, who had a big impact on the government, that’s something that I’m looking forward to the most.

Q. What are your plans after high school?

I will be attending the University of Virginia next fall through the Posse Scholars Program. Right now, I’m really torn between the different majors. I’ve narrowed it down to public policy which is under the Batten School [The Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy] which is under the College of Arts and Sciences, and then government or foreign affairs.

Q.  What is a Posse Scholar?

[The Posse Foundation] selects a posse of students for their partner campuses and they offer full tuition scholarships to those students. You have to apply and [then The Posse Foundation] will nominate students and interview them as finalists. I sent in my application and got nominated. It wasn’t really something that I was imagining for myself. It’s easy to get into your head about these things, especially when you see every single person who was interviewing there was great. Genuinely, I think everyone there has the potential to succeed in whatever they do. It gets a little hard to be like, “Yes, I’m going to be the one that ends up with the scholarship.” So that’s why when I found out about it, I was surprised. 

Q. When you’re not studying or being class president, what else are you involved in?

As far as school clubs, I’ve done Model UN since seventh grade. This was really the first club that I ever got involved in. It is also how I got over my fear of public speaking. The community and friends I’ve made there [have] always been really supportive. It feels like a second family. I’m part of the Virginia High School Democrats, which I’ve chaired for the last two years. We focus a lot on getting other high school Democrats involved within Virginia state politics. Every year that I’ve been involved in, we’ve managed to introduce at least one bill in each legislative session in Virginia, which I think is really cool. Not just the fact that it happened, but also that it’s 15 to 17-year-olds that are able to do this. Another thing that takes up a bit of my time is called the Pride Liberation Project, which is a coalition of different queer student advocates in Virginia working for better LGBTQIA+ rights.

Q. What’s a fun fact about you?

I am a plant mom, and I have about six or seven plants at home. I also studied abroad last summer in Taiwan through the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLIY) and that had been a goal of mine since eighth grade. I grew up in a Korean, English, Spanish and Japanese household so I was always very inclined towards learning different languages. I am studying Chinese and I’m hoping to get fluent in it. Later on, I also want to learn Japanese, Spanish and Arabic in that order.

Q. What’s the best advice you can give someone interested in getting involved in causes that are important to them?

Literally just show up. People notice when you show up, especially when you’re young because when you get involved in different things in politics, you’ll notice that it’s often people over 50. Just by virtue of being a young person, you will already stick out. Keep coming to different events and keep offering to help. There’s also that tier of young people — but still older than us —  always very willing to be mentors and willing to connect you to different resources. Just come to events since there’s half the battle already. People show up one, two or three times and then never show up again. That’s really the expectation. The bar is very low. So as long as you’re above that threshold, you can make a difference.

Dania Reza is the social media content curator for McLean Today. She is a junior at McLean High school and is an assistant design editor-in-chief of her school news magazine, The Highlander. 

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK? Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.

In this week’s TALK series, McLean Today sits down with Alex Levy, artistic director at 1st Stage — https://1ststage.org/. 1st Stage has maintained an effort to create opportunities for the next generation of theater artists and professionals since its opening in 2009. Levy has embraced that vision, joining 1st Stage in 2014.

Q. What is the mission of 1st Stage?

1st Stage is a professional, nonprofit theater company. We are the only professional theater in the Tysons area and we were, at the time of our founding, the only professional theater in Fairfax County. Our mission is based around the idea of building community through culture and arts and storytelling. We have been providing resources for world class artists to do their best work. That’s been our focus since 2008.

Q. Was there anything surprising the theater learned when it was first starting out?

The company was started by Mark Krikstan, who was a beloved drama teacher at Marshall High School. Some of his students had become professionals and wanted to do theater in their own community, and so they started a company the way most companies start: a lot of volunteer and sweat, and effort. [They] really had the idea of it being a company for young people to get their beginning, professional resume going. I think the big surprise was that they discovered how much this community was hungry to have the arts in their community and so they grew very, very quickly. Mark recognized it was growing sort of bigger than anything he ever expected to run and left the company very early. [The] ambition of the company really changed its focus from being a company for beginning artists to being a company that really could bring in and support people who are at the top of their field, while still always maintaining an effort to create opportunity for the next generation of theater artists. 

Q. You joined in 2014. Can you talk about how you became an artistic director, and then how you got involved with 1st Stage?

I actually became an artistic director for the first time in a really young age and sort of accidentally. I came to theater a little bit later than some — sort of found my way in college and started working for a company in Chicago, right after college. Five years later, the founder of that company decided it was time to retire. I was asked to take over the company in my late 20s. It was a trial by fire for sure. I learned on the job, as we always do. Then, I stepped aside from that role to go back to school. I went to grad school in Los Angeles. I started just directing around the country, and then came back when the opportunity came to come to 1st Stage. I walked in as an artistic director with a very different mindset, having worked in the field a lot, having done it once before and really having a sense of the kind of artistic director I wanted to be in the kind of company I thought I could help 1st Stage become. It was exciting to get to sort of do it once knowing nothing and do it the second time knowing a little bit more at least.

Q. What does an artistic director do and what does that role include?

I’m in charge of all the programming. I pick the shows we perform; I set the strategic plan and mission; I hire directors; I direct myself; I help develop new works; I lead the charge on our youth engagement work. I’m also the managing director of the company too, so I also oversee all of the financial aspects, the marketing and the fundraising.

Q. What has kept you at 1st Stage for so long?

I love it here. I really do. The people are first and foremost. From the board to the staff to the artists to our audiences — there is a warmth and a community that I love. There’s a feeling of coming together. There’s a value in sharing and stories. There is a real belief in the work. There’s a joy in taking risk, of trying to do things that are hard and leading with a mindset of taking care of people, both on and off stage. That’s a pretty rare culture to find in any company and certainly in any theater company. I’m really proud that that’s who we are and it also makes me want to want to be here.

Q. How are shows chosen at 1st Stage? Do you take cues from Broadway or national trends or is it based off of the community?

It’s no one thing. It’s one of the hardest things we do and it’s a lot of pieces. Part of it is really recognizing who we are and what kind of short stories we tell. When I talk to the team and we’re looking at players, I talk about a number of things. We talk a lot about voice, plays that have a really unique and distinct voice that should be heard. We talk about ethicality, what it means to do a play versus anything else. What are the unique tools of play and how does it play right use them. We talk about the big ideas. I’m a believer that plays are an opportunity to really wrestle with big ideas. Is the play after a big idea? Is it digging in on something really meaningful? And then we talk about what it means to do a play here, at our theater in Tysons, in Virginia, in America and now. What is that conversation that happens with those plays? 

We look at a variety of other things: diversity of season and sort of all senses of that word. One of the things that I say to people often is that a season is a big jigsaw puzzle. You think you have it, but then for one reason or another a show has to be pulled out. It’s rarely just, ‘pull it out and swap in a different show.’ It’s almost always wiping the board clean and putting it back together again. We think about what conversations we have had recently, whose voices haven’t been heard. We look for a variety of genres, style and structure.

 I think about how the rest of the country and commercial theater, like Broadway, influences us. I think I have a relatively unique position at 1st Stage where we have an audience that I think is a very sophisticated audience, but not necessarily a super sophisticated theater-going audience. And by that, I mean they’re not necessarily keeping trends on what’s happening in New York and around the country. The bright side is I have very little pressure to bring in a show just because it was hot somewhere else. The difficult thing is we have a really high bar on telling great stories. We can’t get away with bringing in a show because it did well somewhere else. It really has to be a show that we believe in and believe has the depth that is worthy of our stage. I’m always keeping an eye on what’s happening around the country. Unlike many theaters, I don’t have the pressure to get the hottest, newest thing all the time.

Q.  Who is this community that doesn’t seek the newest or the hottest?

I think we have a super smart audience and so recognizing that they are capable and willing and wanting to learn and dig in deep into complex ideas. We have a community that’s in the midst of a big change. Tysons and Fairfax County are really communities in transition in a lot of ways. They’re growing very, very fast. If you drive around Tysons you see construction everywhere of big developments. They are diversifying and they are getting younger, in many instances. Families are moving in. It’s exciting to be at the center of that and recognize that as a cultural center, we have to help bring those different parts of the community together. The biggest trend that’s happened is the pandemic, right? So, we were closed to a live audience for about eighteen months and audiences are finding their way back slowly and making choices… I don’t think anybody’s date nights are what they used to be. I think our older audiences are more hesitant to come back. There’s a lot of change that’s happening in the field as well. 

Q. What shows are you looking forward to in the New Year?

Our partnership with a company called Arts On Horizon [is going to] bring family shows. It’s something that we’ve been planning to do before the pandemic and then we had to pause it. There are a series of three shows throughout the year that are aimed for kids as young as two and up to eight years old and they’re free. We’ve got underwriting to allow them to be free. And we’re really excited to have families back here, to have that energy in here. 

We launched again, just before the pandemic and then sort of had to pause it, what we call our Yes Pass which is a youth engagement subscription. This is something that we were really excited about and is a place where 1st Stage is leading nationally. We’ve been able to offer free subscriptions to every high school student who goes to school in Fairfax County or lives in Fairfax County. They just have to go up on our website and subscribe for the Yes Pass and make it a free subscription for the whole season. We’re super excited to be creating space for young people that way. 

Q. Are there ways in which the community has impacted 1st Stage or influenced 1st Stage?

I can’t say too strongly enough what the last few years have told us about the community. If you had told me on March 13 of 2020 that we were closing for even a few weeks, more than a month or two, I said that it was an existential threat to the theater. We wouldn’t make it. If you’d told me it was eighteen months, we’d be done. A lot of theaters did close their doors for good during the pandemic. We saw extraordinary support from our community, in donations, in people buying subscriptions to seasons that may never happen and foundational support. It was our community telling us that they cared that we were there and they wanted to see us open our doors again. I’m fascinated by the depth of experience in our community. 

We do a series of what we call “Community Conversations” where we, after most of our matinee performances, we invite folks in to talk about issues that the show brings up. And our community is so full of experts who are working in government or academia or the nonprofit sector, in the social service sector, who can talk about ways that we let issues that are brought up in the plays and ways in which we can support their work. Being in the Washington area, even knowing that you are always speaking to people who impact our audience. That’s an exciting thing to think about when we’re programming our shows.

Q. Are there ways in which you would encourage the community to become more involved?

First and foremost is showing up right now. It just means so much right now to sort of vote with your feet. I know we all gotten out of the habit of going places, doing things, but it matters and it matters to our audience too. We have a lot of volunteer opportunities, if people are interested. They can always sign up. It’s a great way to build community that way too. We’re always looking for people who want to join our board of directors. We’re always looking for people who want to help out in a number of ways and, quite frankly, I would get in trouble if I didn’t say that we are in the midst of our end of year fundraising campaign, so if folks do have the wherewithal to make a contribution, it goes a long way, especially right now.

Claire Schiopota is the social media content curator for McLean Today. She is majoring in journalism at Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism. Claire has previously written for Ohio University’s The Post and at the University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service. 

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK? Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.

This week in our new TALK series, McLeanToday.org interviews Doug House, owner, Chain Bridge Cellars. We learn how a University of Virginia philosophy major came to be in the wine business. Plus — just in time for the holidays —  House offers up a selection of great gift ideas. A visit to this neighborhood wine shop, which features a wide array of vintages as well as offering free tastings and classes, should be on everyone’s to-do list.

Q. Tell us the story of how you became the owner of Chain Bridge Cellars. 

I had a consulting firm for about fifteen years here in Northern Virginia. I sold it in 2004. I was ready to move onto new things but I had a two year non compete in that space so I had to find something to do until I could work back in the competitive strategy world again. I was interested in wine and thought it was kind of an interesting business and figured it would be fun to learn about it so I decided to look for a job in the trade.  I was poking around and I emailed the woman who owned this store then, Cecile Giannangeli [Cecile’s Fine Wines].

I offered to take her to lunch and her response was “I have no time for lunch” but if you’re interested in a job, I’m hiring right now. Come talk to me.”

So I went to work for her in fall of  ’06 and in 2008 she decided she was done with owning two stores at the time and after some consideration — This is a lot more fun than the consulting business was — my wife and I decided to buy it. We will never forget the day we bought the store because we came out of the closing, got into the car, turned on the car radio and Lehman Brothers went bankrupt while we were in the closing. It was just a really stupid time to buy anything but “Ok.”  We’ve been doing it ever since.

Q. So this wasn’t some back in the day 25-year-old’s American dream?

Oh no, no. I did not grow up in a family with a wine culture. I got a little bit interested maybe in the mid ’90s. But I got really interested in the late ’90s. The online world opened up at that point and I stumbled into a discussion group online and that turned into a tasting group here in Washington. I was in a tasting group for about five years and that just got me really interested in wine and where it came from. Before that I never thought about it at all.

Q. So it could have been a bread store or something?

It could have been in some ways. The wine business is uniquely  attractive to somebody like me. I set out to be a small business owner. In the  late 80s when I was working at Marriott, I realized that was the space I wanted to be in because of how it lets you interact with employees and make a difference in their lives. The nice thing about the wine business, especially here in Virginia, is it’s a reasonably complex retail business but not wildy complex.

Q. What does that mean?

In Virgina,  we don’t deal with spirits [Virginia is a control state, spirits are only sold in state-run stores] so the entire large volume spirits world isn’t something you have to deal with, meaning it’s  complex  but we only have about 1,000 SKU [pronounced “skew”;  short for stock keeping unit, is used by retailers to identify and track its inventory, or stock. A SKU is a unique code consisting of letters and numbers that identify characteristics about each product, such as manufacturer, brand, style, color, and size]  store so it’s not like you’re running a 6,000 SKU store. 

And bizarrely a great asset for somebody like me is that Virginia Is a C.O.D. state [cash on deposit] for wine purchases. We have to pay for wine when it comes in the door which actually acts as a wonderful moderator on getting super excited and buying too much wine thinking you’ll pay for it by selling it. During the recession and some of the other times that have been kind of weird, that has been an asset. 

The biggest thing is that I don’t want to make something. I don’t really want to bake bread or make food. That’s not my gig but the wine business lets you make wine a little bit in retail because you know when we drink wine, we’re drinking what’s in our glass but also what’s in our head. When somebody comes in to buy, there’s a chance to tell them things about the wine and sort of contextualize it and give them something to attend to so in some ways we’re like the last step of winemaking before someone takes something home and drinks it. That’s been really enjoyable. I really enjoy having a chance to do that

Q. Where do you get your “interesting” wine recommendations from?

If you go back to when I started in 2006, there were really three main wine publications that we followed. The Advocate and Spectator and Stephen Tanzer were who we paid attention to.  The critics universe now is so big and there’s so many of them and they cover so many wines, it’s become incredibly difficult to use them as sources. We taste wine every week. I have people who are trying to sell me wine and they bring wines in so we typically get introduced to a new region or a  new thing that way and then based on what we’ve tasted and the little bit we’ve heard  there, we’ll go off and learn more about it and decide if we’re really excited about. 

Q. Some people might find they feel intimidated coming into a wine store, especially not maybe knowing much about wine but liking it none the less. Do you have people who come in and know nothing about wine? 

Oh my gosh, yeah. That’s kind of what a store like this is for. There are serious wine collectors and experts out there in the world who do read all the critics and they know everybody in Burgundy and they know everybody in Bordeaux. To be honest the way the import trade and and access to wines in California work, if you’re that kind of a buyer, we can be an okay place to shop but if you know what kind of wines you want to buy, you can buy them online and frankly get better pricing or even in some stores in D.C.  We refer people who come to buy certain kinds of wines to other stores because  they just do a better job than we do. 

Our core customer is somebody who either  just likes the experience of  wine and wants to engage with it or explore or somebody who doesn’t know anything about wine at all. We meet a lot of people this time of year, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, you’ll get a lot of people who are walking into a wine store for like the only time that maybe they intend to walk into a wine store all year. The rest of the year they buy their wine at the grocery store. That’s the opportunity to connect with those people and maybe build a relationship, maybe get them intrigued about what they find when they drink a bottle of wine and then they come back saying “I was intrigued by that, what comes next?” and maybe you have  a chance to work from there.

Q. What kind of events does the store offer?

We do free tastings every Friday and Saturday which is a great way to explore the wines we are promoting, our featured wines, and also get to know other wines from other places. Before the pandemic, we also had a  pretty active class program that we are restarting. We’re doing champagne classes right now. We do four of those between Thanksgiving and Christmas which are always a blast. 

We just set a class schedule for the first quarter,  to do some classes on Thursday nights and occasional Sundays. We also do some special tastings. we’re having a portfolio tasting with a local importer and taste fifteen of their wines. We try to do things like that. Once a quarter at least, we’ll do festivals in the store. We have a classroom space in the store that sets up real nice.

Q. Will the new businesses that have opened, Lidl, or are opening near you make a difference in your business? Matchbox, Best Buns?

In my little part of McLean, the issue is just having people in the trade area, This is a trade area that  sort of historically rolls up the sidewalks at 6 o’clock. So Lidl being here is just sort of neutral; Matchbox and Big Buns across the street I believe will help our business. I believe it will bring people into the trade area for for lunch and bring them in for dinner and we’re going to monitor that.  Right now we close at 7 p.m. all nights. We might look at staying open another hour if there are enough people in the trade area who want to be here. We think that will be really good for us.  We were super excited to see that development happen. 

Q. How are the Virginia wines?

There are many terrific wines in Virginia and I’m very impressed with what Virginia winemakers do. I will say that Virginia is a very expensive place to grow wine because of the nature of our climate and how hard that hits the grapes and how hard that makes the wine makers, wine growers work. So what we find is that for a given level of quality and style, a Virginia wine is typically more expensive than a similar wine from California or Washington. 

Here in the shop we have a  small selection of virginia wine which are purchased mainly for gifts or for the few people interested in exploring Virginia. What we tell people is it makes more sense for you to get in your car and go meet the people who are growing the grapes and making that wine and to buy the wine directly from them because then when you’re drinking that wine, you’re not just drinking what’s in your glass but the experience of having been there knowing about it and maybe becoming part of their story. There are plenty of great  Virginia wines, at the retail level they’re less important for a retailer than they are to be sold right at the winery.

Q. Is it mostly McLean residents who are your customers?

The core has always been McLean, Great Falls, Vienna and some of North Arlington  but we’ve always had customers, a good number of  customers who drive to the store from D.C. and I have a customer or two from Gaithersburg. The pandemic kind of expanded our reach. We expanded our free delivery zone during the pandemic to go all the way to Arlington and Falls Church. That helped to really expand our connection to those people and now that the pandemic is over, we see a lot of those people in the  shop too. 

Q. Are you still doing expanded delivery?

It’s been interesting — that’s ’s the big change post pandemic. Before the  pandemic we would get orders through our website but it was typically people buying wines that were on promotion or particular wine or two. During the pandemic, people got used to actually shopping online, browsing and putting together a set of wines. Before the pandemic, maybe  twice a month, we’d see an order with five or six different wines on it, now we’ll see ten or fifteen of those a week — a lot of those people are still using delivery service, they’re working from home. So we take the order on line and call them up and schedule a time and get them over to them.

Q. I noticed you studied history and philosophy at U VA, somehow this makes sense for a wine store owner. Let’s discuss this. 

[Big laugh] I will say that the wine business is retail first, that’s actually what we forget is that the wine is second, retail is first and retail is about how you treat your customers; how you interact with them; figuring out  how your going to price; figuring out how your going to promote ;that’s all the retail stuff. The wine stuff, again especially for my customers: we need to know things about wine but the reason that my long time customers are my long term customers is less about how much we know about wine and more about how much we know about them. That’s really the essence of the business. 

If you get retail right, the wine stuff is learnable and it’s obvious because you’re being presented with it all the time. Nobody out there is really talking to you about how do you greet customers; how do you ask the a question that causes them to break their to-do list mentally; to open up and give you some ideas about what they really want to buy and how do you move past selling them just what they want to do buy. A retailer who is just filling orders is ripe to just be beaten online. For our store what we try to do is we try to help customers take home everything in the shop that they’re really really happy to have especially those things they had no idea they wanted because if we only sold them what they know that want, then it’s just an online business and we’re not adding enough value in the experience, to justify our margin.

Q. You can say that about almost any brick and mortar store, right? 

I believe that the fundamental problem with retail in this country is that the the model of retail developed in the ’50s,  ’60s and  ’70s where being in the right place and having the right stuff in your shop was what it took to be successful —  and then maybe having good enough service so that people felt nice when they came in that they prefer you to somebody else. Today you have to create value. You have to create value in the assortment but you especially have to add value in the experience so the customer when they come into the store you can’t just let them just buy what they came to buy, what they thought they wanted, you have to help them discover stuff.  Ultimately, to get people to happily pay you the margin you need them to pay you, you have to be delivering something beyond the product, there has to be something more or you get killed online. 

Q. That’s pretty profound. So maybe that is philosophy.

More interesting than the English Analytic Philosophy I did my first year in college [laugh out loud].

Just in time for the holidays —  House offers up a selection of great gift ideas: https://mcleantoday.org/holiday-gift-ideas-from-chain-bridge-cellars/

Gayle Jo Carter, the former entertainment editor at USA WEEKEND magazine, has interviewed newsmakers for AARP, USA WEEKEND, USA TODAY, Parade, Aspire, SurvivorNet and Washington Jewish Week.

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK? Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.

even dishwasher safe!

This week in our new TALK series, McLeanToday.org interviews Lori Carbonneau, executive director, McLean Project for the Arts [MPA]. The MPA  is a leading contemporary visual arts 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Their mission is to exhibit the work of emerging and established artists from the mid-Atlantic region; to promote public awareness and understanding of the concepts of contemporary art; and to offer instruction and education in the visual arts.

Q. So, are you an artist?

Depends on who you ask. I would say no but my colleagues, the creative vision at the MPA, would say every one of us is an artist. I’ll never forget the first board meeting that I led. With my business and corporate consulting background, I had put a lot of thought into the message that I was getting across. Afterwards, my colleague who leads our outreach program —MPA ArtReach — said to me “You chose such a beautiful color palette for your powerpoint.” I realized then that’s there’s a whole different way to look at work, a whole different way to look at business. Combining my analytic background with something quite so evocative as art has been a wonderful learning experience for me.  

Over the pandemic, I did take time to pick up watercolors and do some work, though it still only hangs on my parents’ walls.  My inspiration in this was my grandmother — who was busy with a full career and raising her children. When she retired to Sun City, Arizona, she picked up a paintbrush and became an accomplished oil painter as part of a senior center. Which is exactly a lot of the outreach we do. So, it’s quite lovely to me that MPA comes full circle in that way. 

Q. Tell us about that MPA art outreach? 

MPA ArtReach was founded 30 years ago. It brings to life one of the most distinctive elements of MPA’s work. Let me stop for a moment and put MPA’s work on the spectrum of art institutions, with museums downtown at one point on the continuum with their collections and the curated story that they tell about a particular history or a particular people, and on the other end of the continuum would be a commercial gallery representing current artists in whom they have a commercial interest. Instead, we are a teaching institution in the middle of that continuum where we are able to show work from very exciting, established and emerging artists from throughout the mid-Atlantic, presentingwork which represents the next chapter in the canon of art history. We raise money and are grant-supported as well, so we are not dependent on the sales of our work nor are we beholden to a collection. We’re able to push the conversation through art and each exhibition brings to light a contemporary story.  

Our wonderful director of outreach, Sharon Fishel, with our artistic director and touchdown, curator, Nancy Sausser, writes a curriculum around each gallery installation, so every exhibition has a deliberate teaching element to it. During different times of the year our MPA ArtReach audiences vary.  Our signature program is with Fairfax County Public Schools for which Sharon writes curriculum that ties to the Virginia Standards of Learning. We raise money to pay for the buses to allow field trips for students from throughout the region, including Fairfax County Schools, Title I schools, and many others, to come into the gallery. 

Q.  I’m not sure everyone realizes the MPA is a teaching place, right?

Yes, though it’s not a “Come, let’s give you a drawing lesson” teaching institution. While that’s important too, it’s “Come, let’s sit in front of this art and understand what the relationship between art and geometry is or art and literature.”  Art helps give language where language is challenging and it helps kids look at something on the wall and be inspired by a professional artist and say ‘Huh, okay, I can see how they formed that or I can see the layers in that” then they create their own piece that is inspired by the work of those artists on the wall.  

Q. What does your outreach to seniors encompass?

We work with several programs in the area who are serving senior populations. We work with Fairfax County senior centers as well as the private senior communities. We also work with those with intellectual and physical disabilities. 

What was amazing during the pandemic is how our outreach programs grew.  MPA ArtReach just thrived.  And for people who were really quite homebound, it was quite a gift to have Sharon come into their lives. We worked with many of our partners to reach people however we could, including preparing programming and delivering it through Meals on Wheels, or delivering art supplies to their homes. 

Q. How many employees does the MPA have?

We’re about a dozen on staff including a fantastic curator, artistic director, Nancy Sausser, who has a profound reputation in the region for developing that vein of work that I described in showing the best of contemporary art that’s moving the conversation forward. We were just written up in The Washington Post again. It’s quite distinctive that nearly everyone of Nancy’s exhibition is reviewed in the Post. In addition to Nancy and our gallery manager is our is our outreach and education staff, along with our teaching faculty, our development and our admin team.  

Q. How did you find yourself Executive Director of the MPA? Were you searching or did it find you? 

I was a religion major undergrad and then got my MBA, so the idea of: “How is it that you can do well while doing good?” has always been a theme in my career.  It was time for me, with my third child settled in school, to put my periscope up. I considered going back to the corporate or consulting world, but MPA was a lovely opportunity to be entrepreneurial and contribute to our community in such a meaningful way. I was at a New Dominion Women’s Club event when my dinner partner, Senator Barbara Favola, introduced me to my then predecessor. I was interested in what she did and her description of a project I thought I could help her on. So, becoming Executive Director was a natural evolution starting with my help on that project.  

Q. What’s the most challenging thing about your job?

Going back to “Am I an artist?” —  my colleagues joke that I bring the art of a spreadsheet. It’s challenging but fun to think about the sustainability and growth of a non-profit with my business background. One of the tenets that we comport ourselves and our community with is: This is a community arts organization therefore by definition it should be a source of joy and not of stress.  So, my challenge as Executive Director, in partnership with our board, is to keep that spirit of joy even those there’s all sorts of buffing winds around us is a deliberate choice. That can be hard work! Holy cow, those first three weeks of the pandemic shut down could have been cripplingly stressful but for that sense of joy. 

One of things that is hard to get used to as a businessperson is having a finite amount of cash in the bank and not having an inherently sustaining business model. People vote with their feet; they vote with their support. So, finding ways to be relevant and engaging is strategically important.  Also finding community partners, such as The Mather, who find value in our mission, is essential to MPA’s success. 

Another challenging part of the role stems from the fact that despite having a small staff, we are a huge organization.As has been the case throughout my career, my interest in building teams is the most satisfying part of what I do. We are a dozen people on staff, but our 44-person board and 40-person advisory board and the concentric circles of the artists, volunteers and leaders in the community whom we touch is vital to who we are. It takes a whole lot of communication and coordination. So, my biggest challenge right now is to move us onto Microsoft Teams so we can stop drowning in email! 

Celebrating at the MPA’s 60th Gala Anniversary

Q. Can you share with us your long term vision for the MPA?

For a number of years, MPA has been in conversation with the Fairfax County Park Authority to build an arts and education center to complement our gallery and studio at the McLean community center.  Our studio there, the Duval Studio, is a marvelous multi-purpose space for painting and drawing, mixed media and live drawing classes and camps. But you can’t do heavy equipment-based arts, like pottery and print making and paper making in a multi-purpose studio. So, we are excited about the idea of building an arts and education center where the galleries are core to the teaching environment and house studios which also allow us to teach four or five different medium space studio spaces for artists of all ages and levels of accomplishment. 

We’ve worked through the public approval processes to get the concept of such an arts center approved at Clemyjontri Park where Mrs. Leibowitz’s home would be our offices. With further approvals, we would enter into along-term lease and construct an art center around the home. These are long processes so being patient is part of the effort. 

Q. In your quest to combine your work experience with your desire to do something good, what expresses that working here at MPA?

One such example is the electric connection of witnessing a hugely accomplished professional artist describe their work to a young audience who is inspired by it.  You wonder whose career you just watched blossom.  

Another example is experiencing how art builds community. Our current show is called Continuum: Artist Teaching Artists, recognizing artists not only for the body of work they’ve built but how they’ve done it by teaching others.  The eighteen artists in the show are all university professors who significant bodies of work and have nurtured the works of hundreds of artists behind them as well. There is a community built among working artists. Making art is fairly insular: it’s you and your work. So, MPA aims to be a place where artists and artists of all ages and all levels of accomplishment feel welcome.  Our goal is to then help the rest of us realize that even if we’re not making art, there’ s community to be found in it.  

MPAartfest is a great example of a day that brings to life MPA’s goal of building community through art. Having grown up in Vienna where there is a vibrant town hall, I feel personally compelled to do what we can do to foster community among McLean’s two unincorporated zip codes.

Q. For those who have yet to experience the MPA, what would you say to encourage them to come over?

We’d want to share that MPA is an open, welcoming environment where teaching is taken very seriously.  Sometimes people have concerns when they think of a gallery, as I sometimes feel too, wondering “what do I need to know before I walk in?”. MPA deliberately suspends that concern: All you need to know is that we are part of your community, andwe welcome you.  I’ll also love to remind the community that we are a local 501C 3 and we very much need your support, particularly as we look to grow. 

As I learned when researching for my comments at our MPA’s 60^th Anniversary Gala, MPA was founded in the window between the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis. All of us look back on those and recognize them as highly stressful world events. We are proud and grateful to realize in sixty years, we have continued to knit together a community that can remind us, even in times of other challenging world events, to stick together and it’s going to be OK!! 

Gayle Jo Carter, the former entertainment editor at USA WEEKEND magazine, has interviewed newsmakers for AARP, USA WEEKEND, USA TODAY, Parade, Aspire, SurvivorNet and Washington Jewish Week.

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK? Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.

This week in our new TALK series, McLeanToday.org interviews Louise Waxler, executive director  of McLean Youth Soccer [MYS]  —  MYS offers year-round programming for children aged 3-19 years old from the recreational level through the elite level in the form of teams, leagues, camps, clinics and more.  Waxler, above, surrounded by MYS boys:  Senior Day at Lewinsville Park.

Q. Were you a sporty kid?

I was a sport kid in my younger days. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania — Pittsburgh.  My brother Tony and I both played multiple sports. Tony played basketball, baseball, football and went on to be very successful in Major League Baseball. He retired six years ago as the director of scouting for the Atlanta Braves. Through high school, I played basketball, softball, field hockey, and volleyball.  

Q. I bet there wasn’t a girls soccer program for you to join back then?

No, you’re absolutely right.  There was no soccer program offered for female athletes during my era of growing up.

Q. You shared your brother’s incredible sports journey. Tell us yours.

In college, back in the ’60s, I pursued physical education/health at Slippery Rock [University in Slippery Rock, Pa.] but we came from a blue collar family — my dad was a steel worker — and it was difficult to pay for college for my brother and I. My brother had a baseball scholarship so he was taken care of but when it came to me it was a struggle to pay for college tuition. During my junior year of school my mom became ill and passed away. It was a financial burden for me to continue my degree.  It was a difficult time.  I had a year left and I just couldn’t complete it.

You know what?  Her passing didn’t stop me from pursuing what I loved at a later time in life — and that was sports. After I married and had kids, I became involved with sports once again, specifically soccer. I was recruited — as a volunteer — to assist with managing the Columbia Invitational Soccer Tournament in Maryland. I took over that in 1986 and stayed with that for 20 years. Along the pathway that led me to my career in the sport, I was approached by John Hendricks, who was the founder of the Discovery Channel. We were at a tournament in 1999 —  his daughter’s team was a finalist in the tournament playing —  and although I had never formally met him, I found him to be one of the most caring and passionate individuals who had a love for the women’s game.  I recall this man wearing a Discovery bomber jacket approaching me to introduce himself. He told me that he was going to start a women’s professional soccer league right after the Women’s World Cup and asked if I would be interested in joining the league, which left me speechless. Next thing I knew I was on the 24th floor in Bethesda at Discovery headquarters [which since moved to Silver Spring] and I was offered a position with the soon to be Women’s United Soccer Association and the Washington Freedom.

So it was John Hendricks who launched my professional career in soccer in October of 2000. I started with  the Washington Freedom as Director of Operations in grassroots outreach. My connection to the youth game was very strong.  I had also run the WAGS Soccer Tournament for three years so I had developed a reputation within management and operations, particularly in the women’s game. I worked for the Washington Freedom until that league suspended operations.  During the time period between the launch of the secone league in 2009, the WPS (Women’s Professional Soccer), current MYS Technical Director, Clyde Watson, former Washington Freedom coach, Jim Gabarra and I created the Washington Freedom soccer club. I stayed with the WPS and went on to be the general manager of the Philadelphia Independence. Unfortunately, sustaining a women’s professional soccer league in the USA struggled and so the WPS suspended operations at the conclusion of the 2011 season.

After 11 years in pro sports, I decided to return to the grass roots game. McLean Youth Soccer had decided to hire an executive director for the club and had advertised for the position. A few people called me from McLean and said, “Hey Wax, you should apply for this.” So I did and I was offered the position in April 2012 and have been rooted in the program since.

Q. What’s changed most with MYS in your ten years as executive director?

We’ve gone from a volunteer organization to a professionally managed operation. Prior to my position, the volunteer board of directors managed the operations of the club.  We transitioned from that to staff. That was a slow process. It took probably two, three years. For me it was important to learn the culture of the community, the membership and the coaching staff. To come in and learn about the people that you’re working with: who your members are:  what they prefer;  listening to people versus coming in and deciding everything is broken and we’re going to make change.  It was a gradual process for me to hire management staff. We professionalized it. We built from the bottom up.

Q.  What’s your staffing size now? How many players?

Full time staff — you’ll probably be shocked at this —  is seven who work remotely. We’re still small.  We work from home. The overhead —  for us it’s like why spend the players money when we can put it back into the program. With technology such as Zoom and Google Meet, we can conduct weekly staff calls or “meet” on an as needed basis.     MYS membership is currently comprised of 1700 recreation players and 1150 travel players. The recreation number fluctuates as we offer fall and spring sessions.

Q.  What would surprise us to learn about MYS?

There’s so much that we do in the community that people are not even aware of —  we’ve partnered with FCPS to build eight synthetic turf fields. All those fields that the kids play on —  McLean Youth Soccer paid for most of them. The newest, the Holladay Field that opened in the fall of 2021 was funded partly by Leidos and the Ambassador from the United Arab Emirates. Leidos CEO Roger Krone and United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba, wanted to contribute as soccer fans but more importantly to contribute to the youth of the community. Then I went to Fairfax County and said I had this money and we would like to convert that field to turf because we need another surface. The County contributed the remainder and the field opened last October. [Collectively, the private funding amounted to $725,000. The project also used public money from the county’s 2016 park bond.]

It’s not just about youth soccer. It’s about kids at all levels and all sports.    We believe that we can enhance recreational sports for both youth and adults by investing back into the community.   You can go to Lewinsville Park on any given afternoon and see football and McLean High School field hockey and McLean High School soccer. We are about to embark on a capital campaign to raise funds to build permanent restrooms at Lewinsville Park and hope the community will support our efforts.  The cost of the project is approximately $650,000 with a projected completion date of early 2025. In addition to the restrooms, a shelter and equipment storage facility for the club will be incorporated into the design. 

Q. What are McLean families looking for when they come to MYS?

A professionally managed organization that can offer their children a positive soccer experience. The procedures and policies that we have in place align with best business practices for non-profit organizations.  

Managing Stress seminar: Dr. Lauren Gregg (in blue jacket), former assistant coach of the U.S. Women’s National team; WWC champion and Olympic gold medalist with MYS coaches at McLean High School

Q. What’s the most challenging thing about being the executive director of MYS?

That’s a loaded question. The most challenging aspect is to continue to be innovative with new programming while providing customer satisfaction for our membership. I ask myself —  it’s not the how it’s the why.  Why are we creating new programming? What are the goals and the end results for the players? What are their aspirations?  There are 70 travel level teams that offer different pathways for players: players at the elite level; those players that are looking for us to help them with a college pathway; and those who simply love to play. It’s about providing opportunities for everyone.

Q. What’s the most fun part of the job for you?

Being able to watch our players on the field.  I love the camaraderie that is established on teams as well as players being proud to wear the McLean badge on their uniform. When I come to McLean, I try to go to all the fields, starting with the rec kids in the morning —  I’ll go to Springhill and then I ultimately wind up at Lewinsville because we have two fields and I can see a number of games and see and talk to some of the parents, coaches and players. Aside from watching these players, the support the players have from their families is quite special. The parents are proud of their kids and it’s enjoyable to go out and see them.

Q. Given your profession, is soccer a family — your husband and two daughters — affair for you?

I don’t think my family has had much of a choice. People used to tease my husband — we bought him  a t-shirt when I was running the Columbia Tournament. On the back it said simply “Louise’s husband.” He enjoys the game. He loves watching the Premier League.  My oldest daughter was not a soccer player, she pursued non-athletic interests. My younger daughter started  her “soccer career” when she was four and she continued through the college game as a member of the University of Arkansas women’s team. Playing was definitely her passion.  

Q. What are your goals still for McLean Youth Soccer?

To be the best soccer organization in the DMV area; continuing to be innovative by offering the best soccer experience for all ages — from ages 3 to 23 and beyond. I’m proud of the diversity and quality of our coaching staff —  many of whom have played at the highest levels representing their respective countries.  Obviously a field complex would be superb; an indoor facility for winter training would be wonderful and I just want us to remain a viable entity to provide a sport for those kids that choose to play. We’ve created a wonderful culture in McLean.

Gayle Jo Carter, the former entertainment editor at USA WEEKEND magazine, has interviewed newsmakers for AARP, USA WEEKEND, USA TODAY, Parade, Aspire, SurvivorNet and Washington Jewish Week.

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK? Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.

In the latest interview for McLean Today’s Talk series, we chat with Giri Sastry, the owner of The Union Restaurant — https://theunionrestaurant.us/. As the owner and chef, Sastry is committed to the goal of quality food at a good cost.

I

Q. For those who haven’t yet been in to grab a bite to eat and chat with you, what would you tell them about The Union?

It’s a very interesting story, you know what I mean? I opened in February of 2020, a month before you know who was here. I want anybody and everybody that walks through these doors to relate and find something to eat. My menu is “world cuisine: ” I have a little bit of Asian, Indian, Mexican — everything. I want to be the best restaurant in town. I don’t want to be the biggest. I don’t want to be the most profitable. Good food does not need too much: Good food and good price. Very casual atmosphere.

 Q. Covid-19 is the “you know who” you are referring to.  What was that like starting a business at that time?

We had a good first month of February, and then towards the end of March I shut it down for two and a half months… I’m the owner. I’m the chef, so that’s how I kind of made it. I would take the order, go back [to the kitchen], cook the meal, and bring it out. I had a bartender make the drinks and that’s kind of how I survived.

Q. When did you find out you wanted to become a chef?

Well, you’re taking me back 20 years… It was an interesting journey. I don’t know how many people tell you, [but] this is the calling, right? I was on track to become a microbiologist. One day I woke up and I’m like, okay, this is what I want to do. So, that’s how I started.”

Q. What was your path through the culinary industry?

I went through culinary school back in India… and then it kind of led me here into the U.S. When I got to the U.S. in 2002, [I] started my career with The Ritz-Carlton and worked my way up. I did a bunch of freestyling after that. Before I decided to open my own place, I was executive chef and food & beverage  Director for ten years at The Mayflower Hotel.

Q. What are your biggest influences?

I grew up in the DMV area and it always inspired me how culturally diverse this place is and how culinarily diverse this place is. You name it. You have all the places available to you at your fingertips, whether it’s Indian, Korean, Japanese, sushi, Korean barbecue, tacos – everything is right here. It’s [such a] culturally rich location – that’s what inspires me.

Q. I read that you learn to cook from your mom. Does family mean a lot to you as a chef?

That’s where it all started way back – ’93, ’94 – that’s where I come from. It caught my attention like, ‘Oh, how is this done?’ My roots back there, it’s all hardcore Indian, right? I’m from South India, so it’s all about something I would cook at home. I started spending a lot of time with my mom in the kitchen and that kind of grew… I would say [I get] a lot of conceptual, inspirational guidance from my wife. She’s been a source all along, since we got married. She’s been a source all along, since we got married and we both grew from scratch. I was a chef. She was a finance manager at the same hotel. That’s how we met. That’s how we got married. Same inspiration, same vision and we grew together.  Today, if I want to do something and I have a vision conceptual-wise, I would definitely talk to her before I implement anything.

Q. Was opening your own your own restaurant something you knew you always wanted to do or did that idea come later?

It’s an ambitious dream … I’m just starting out with it. I’m not a one and done kind of guy. I need to leave a footprint in society. That’s my plan.

Q. Could you talk about your favorite dish and why is that your favorite dish?

That’s a tough one. It’s like asking me about my babies. It’s gonna be a hard one to pick. [The menu is] meticulously put together. I keep them seasonal. I keep Brussel sprouts and apple cider for winter. I do fattouch, which has pomegranate seeds, then all these fresh ingredients.

Q. Why did you decide to open your restaurant in McLean?

McLean is a very cute fun neighborhood. It’s a good mix of residential and commercial, more residential. The kind of food I do and the place I put together, I don’t think anybody does it here with the quality and price point I put up. When I wanted to go into my own business and open my own restaurant, I tried – I am trying – to break this barrier of “good food does not need too much commitment.” You don’t need to make a reservation. You don’t need to valet your car and break your bank while having a good meal. That’s where I come from. My menu is not too big. I try to keep it very limited, so I can prep it fresh everyday and give you quality. If you ask my clientele and look at my reviews, that’s exactly what you’re gonna get. It’s so fresh, it’s so good.

Q. How has the community responded? 

I had a few customers come through Covid, when I just opened, but then they became our regulars. Now, two and a half years later, I got a good base that knows me.  I touch every single one of my tables. I touch everything. Every time you’re here – rest assured – I will come by and say, “Hey, how’s everything?” 99.9% of the time the response is the same as last time. That consistency is the key. Being able to put a quality product out there and to maintain that quality every single time we execute a dish.

Q. What plans do you have for the future of The Union restaurant? You mentioned having a second location that recently opened.

I just opened up one in Arlington. Like I said, I’m not one and done kind of a guy. I am planning to grow this brand. For me, it’s more a brand representation kind of thing, where if you are in McLean, you know “The Union.” If you happen to be in Arlington and you see “The Union,” you know exactly what to expect. I am planning to open a few more.

Claire Schiopota is the social media content curator for McLean Today. She is majoring in journalism at Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism. Claire has previously written for Ohio University’s The Post and at the University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service. 

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK? Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.

In the latest interview for McLean Today’s Talk series, we chat with Sarah Schallern Treff, The Alden Theatre’s Performing Arts Director — pictured above second from front right with her Alden colleagues.

This week in our new TALK series, McLeanToday.org interviews Tim Reed, the founder and Chairman of We Rock Cancer —   a McLean based non-profit working to provide free early detection skin cancer screenings and to increase skin cancer awareness. The charitable organization’s fourth annual fundraising Concert to Rock Cancer,  featuring Bruce In The USA and local D.C. artist Laura Tsaggaris — https://werockcancer.org/events — rocked Capital One Hall last week.

Q. Take us back to the beginning of We Rock Cancer.

I was diagnosed with skin cancer. I caught it early. I’m an Air Force vet so I had surgery at Walter Reed [National Military Medical Center] and they were fantastic. Everything was great but it opened my eyes to the importance of early detection. So I started looking in my network at ways I could combine my love of music and my radio background and the performing artists that I knew to try and come up with a way to make early detection screenings more available. [Reed lost his father to kidney cancer at a young age, making him even more aware of the difference that early detection and treatment can make.]

Luckily, we are blessed to live in an area with plenty of dermatologists but I think [screening] is sometimes a B or C priority to people. How can we get it moved up on the importance level? How can we make it accessible and right here? Something you don’t have to make an appointment for; something you don’t have to go the doctor for. It takes five minutes. The blaring point for me is that it’s the most common form of cancer in America and it’s the easiest to treat as long as you find it early. That seems like an easy thing for us all to get behind and make this not the number one form of cancer. If we just find it and treat it, we’re on our way.

Q.  Why choose McLean to set up your nonprofit?

I’ve lived in McLean since 2008. I know the area. I have a consulting business, I still do.  We Rock Cancer [started in 2019] is certainly a place I focus my passion for music and trying to increase cancer awareness. Since I was here, the infrastructure is here, it was a convenient place to start it. Fairfax County has been a fantastic supporter in multiple ways: the grant support; Arts Fairfax for their support to be the first organization that recognizes that we’re a hybrid. We’re not a ballet company or a symphony but they recognize the power that music can have in bringing these things together and they support us as well. 

Q. It must have been serendipity then that Capital One Hall opened here?

Arts Fairfax is a presenting partner with Capital One Hall so they were supportive in helping us get performance times there for our annual event as well. It’s perfect and right here in McLean, easier than hosting somewhere else and it’s world class. All the artists that have seen it are over the moon about playing there.

Q. What’s behind this thing you call “rock-and-roll entrepreneurship?”

That’s leftover from my doctoral dissertation. [Reed’s doctoral studies led him to create a symposium and graduate course on “Rock-and-Roll Entrepreneurship”  which serves as the foundation for bringing key music stakeholders together to do good.] Looking back you can see I was always trying to cram two things that weren’t necessarily thought of together,  together. I went to the University of Colorado and studied Strategy and Entrepreneurship.  One of the first things I wanted to do was approach entrepreneurship through a rock and roll perspective.

Q.  Do you play any instruments or better yet, play in a rock band?

I wish. I played clarinet growing up  and I play a little bit of piano. I’m still learning. We have to have goals. I was never in a band. I think it came from my early days in radio. I was always around music. I was a radio personality in Florida and in Syracuse, New York and things were going great. I loved that job but again, a part of my entrepreneurial strategic outlook kind of informed off me wisely that that’s something you want to do for a while but it’s not something you do for a long time, only a handful [can] if you want to have a satisfying financially productive career.  

Q. How has the transition been into working full time for We Rock Cancer?

It’s been eye opening. I was always the guy who would go out on stage and say “Will you please welcome Sammy Hagar” or do the interviews or do the radio bits. I was always involved with that part of the business. I was never involved with the promoting parts or the signing contracts with bands to perform, arranging for venue space or working through tech advance. That part of business is a whole other part of business that has been eye opening. I’m not sure that’s where my talents lie but you learn a lot.

Q. What do your events look like for We Rock Cancer?

We have at least two or three  different models for our awareness/screening events. One is we do a ride along where our artist partners are performing at an area venue. They might invite us down to screenings for the fans before their show. We have done that at City Winery and some other venues. We call that  “a ride along” where they do all the production and then we do “a self-produce,” such as September 16,  where all we have is the empty canvas of Capital One Hall and we have to fill it with our artists/partners and we have the risk of selling tickets. That’s a complete We Rock Cancer production.

Q. Tell me about the mobile screening vehicle that you use for screenings?

Early on at our first screening events we had pop up tents/privacy areas. We could only go to venues that could support that space so that was limiting in terms of what we could do outdoors. We wanted to go to construction sites and other sun intense occupations’ work locations. We quickly determined we needed a mobile screening vehicle to do that. It’s once one of the best decisions we ever made. It’s turn key. Now we can go anywhere there is a road and be ready in fifteen minutes.

Q. How many events will you have?

Our goal is to work up to one a month post Covid. Covid really slowed us down. We have outreach going on in underserved communities, especially to try and screen agricultural workers and day laborers. We’re going to screen construction workers at the Capital One Hall [on September 16]. There’s a lot of construction going on there. So we’re going to coordinate with those folks to come get screened. We’ll do bilingual screenings as well for everyone who needs that service. Our other outreach, in addition to the underserved community, is the outdoor running community. They’re very aware and of course they’re out in the sun all the time. They have been very supportive so we’ve done a couple events with them every year. And then of course, the music.

Q. Did you turn to anyone for advice in starting a nonprofit?

A lot of self learning. We did talk to a couple of other organizations that do mobile skin cancer screening: the Sun Bus in Colorado; Polka Dot Mamma [Melanoma Foundation] were organizations that were really, really helpful to us. We found that the skin cancer community is very supportive too. One organization Helms Hope in Texas we talked early on to for ideas. They started an education program for barbers and hairdressers [who unlike ourselves can actually see anything suspicious on the tops of our heads]. They introduced us to a legal firm that helped us with the Trademark process.

Q. So you need one big donor to come along?

Every single event we have, we have met someone we didn’t expect to be there either as a fan or a runner at one of our race events. We’re still young. We have to make some decisions. Do we remain a local McLean organization and do our best? We would love to have more dermatologists be a part of the team too. The ones we have are awesome but it is difficult for someone to come out after they’ve worked a full week and do screenings for another couple hours. That’s certainly a need that is as important, honestly, as funding because I can do a lot of things —  I can dig ditches and set up tents and hand out information but what I can’t do is skin cancer screenings. If you are a dermatologist or PA that would like to help out with our screening mission, I’d love to talk to you!

Q. Is your primary goal to stay local with We Rock Cancer or do you want to expand?

I’ve answered this question [before] by saying “I don’t see why there is not one of these in every town in America.” There certainly should be a We Rock Cancer branch or at least a chapter in Nashville, in  Austin, in Los Angeles. Pick a place where live music is important to the people who live there. It’s just a function of money and support and people who recognize the importance and value of this. 

Do you know someone in McLean who would make an interesting interview for TALK?

Tap us at contact@mcleantoday.org.