Larry Mouradjian ’79Michelle Dally ’83Rajkumar Tolani, M.S. ’84Debra Frey Fadool, M.S. ’87Reza Corrine Clifton ’03Class Acts Profiles
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Normand Beauregard ’73
Normand Beauregard has an occupation that gets him lots of attention at cocktail parties. He’s a “fight master,” that is, someone who choreographs staged combat for theater: “You could say it’s an interesting job, yes!”
Beauregard’s been staging fisticuffs for 30 years and has worked on 1,000 different productions; he’s choreographed everything from rapier and dagger melees (Shakespearean fights) to commedia-style (clubs, poison) and broadsword (Medieval) bouts. He’s also taught slapstick comedy, clowning, and dangerous stunts like fire-eating. “I spend a lot of time teaching actors how to execute all the physical demands of the stage,” he says.
Beauregard, now 56 and the father of five, hasn’t always taught the physical arts; he began his career performing them. As a theatre major at URI, he prided himself on his athleticism. “I was one of the most physical actors in the department,” he says. “I took fencing, ballet, gymnastics, and mime classes with master Michael Grando.” His athletic gift gave Beauregard an edge for certain roles, Laertes in Hamlet and Tibalt in Romeo and Juliet, for example: “I was always second banana because those characters got in all the scrapes!”
Beauregard’s affinity for staged violence morphed into choreography, and soon he was one of the theatrical world’s most in-demand fight masters. These days, he’s also added script writing and college teaching to his résumé. “I teach a kind of Swashbuckling 101,” he says, “but I also talk about other physical issues that actors face.” Of course, when you’re playing with weapons like broadswords, safety becomes a huge factor: “In a stage fight if something goes wrong with a blade, the audience knows real quick! There’s no hiding.”
Today, with his children now grown, Beauregard eyes a return to performing: “There’s a real demand for physical actors of my age because not many guys can pull it off. But I may be getting a little old to go back to swinging from chandeliers!”
—Bob Gulla
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Larry Mouradjian ’79
At the beginning of 2007, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management promoted Larry Mouradjian to associate director for natural resources management, one of the agency’s top posts.
Hard working, articulate, and talented, Mouradjian arrived at the position the old fashioned way, by earning it. “I vividly remember during my undergraduate education a professor asking my class how many of us wanted a job in an environmental capacity, and we all raised our hands. He told us, ‘two of you will get one.’”
Mouradjian was one of the lucky ones. He began his career at DEM as a laborer cleaning toilets and emptying trash, became a forest ranger, then ascended the ranks of the Parks and Forest Divisions. To date, he has been serving in the DEM for three decades and has become one of the state’s top environmental stewards. He has overseen projects as diverse as the renovation of Fort Adams in Newport, the protection of nature preserves, and the management of Rhode Island’s growing deer population.
“It’s been a gift, working in this position,” he admits. “For me and for many people I work with there’s passion beyond the paycheck. There are a whole lot of dedicated people who care about what they do. I appreciate being part of this team.”
Mouradjian’s staff oversees some of DEM’s most visible aspects: coastal resources, fish and wildlife, forest environment, parks and recreation. On his watch, Rhode Island signed the National Geographic Geotourism Charter, a document that makes explicit the state’s continuing commitment to preservation and conservation. Rhode Island was only the second U.S. state to sign.
Having reached a peak in his field, Mouradjian offers advice to would be environmental workers. “If you have sincere appreciation of this work, I recommend educational and life experience to get your foot in the door. There are limited opportunities, but it’s amazing work— you’ll often find yourself saying, ‘I can’t believe I get paid to do this!’”
—Bob Gulla
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Michelle Dally ’83
Michelle Dally is a lawyer, a former political aide, an award-winning journalist and the co-founder of a successful media relations firm. Now she can add “novelist” to her already impressive résumé with the publication of her debut novel, A Highly Placed Source, released last fall by Ghost Road Press.
It may look like Dally has embarked on a new career. But when you consider that her novel’s main characters include a journalist, a lawyer, and a political aide, you can see that her tales come—as good ones so often do—from exploring her own experiences. Even the book’s protagonist, 12-year-old Peter Banks, draws life from Dally’s role as a parent to four boys with her husband, Brian Schupbach.
In a well-rounded career, Dally, who earned a degree in political science from URI and a law degree from Georgetown University, worked as an aide to U.S. Senator John Chafee, as a lobbyist for Bradley Hospital, and as a political columnist for Rhode Island Monthly. In 1993, she moved to Denver, eventually working as a reporter for The Denver Post, where she shared a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for the paper’s team coverage of the Columbine High School tragedy.
Politicians, journalists, and the religious right are fair game in Dally’s satirical novel about a young boy who receives a message from God, setting off a nationwide round-the-clock media firestorm. “My whole career I’ve been inside either politics or the media, and I know what a circus they can be,” the author says. “One thing I wanted to do was tell people they shouldn’t take them so seriously.”
With sharp humor and deep sensitivity, Dally skewers arrogant politicians, misguided religious leaders, and self-important media stars while exploring the destructive nature of power and the mysterious quality of faith and miracles in the modern age.
She’s not yet sure what her next book will be about, and, she says, “I’m not the kind of writer who churns out a book a year.” Judging by her first effort, her second will be worth the wait.
—Paula M. Bodah ’78
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The Tolani family, left to right, Raj Tolani, his daughter Aishya, his son Vijay, and his wife Alka. |
Rajkumar Tolani, M.S. ’84
Raj Tolani is living the good life. The resident of southern California has spent the past 18 months or so as a stay-at-home dad to his teenaged son and daughter. He’s hardly shirking, though. His breather from the workforce came after more than 20 years on the cutting edge of technology, often as an entrepreneur heading up his own companies.
After earning his master’s from URI, Tolani worked for a startup tech company in Boston. “I was fortunate to get into a startup and learn just what it takes to start a company. It was a very good learning ground for me,” he says.
The temperate climate of California beckoned, and he headed west, working for a high-tech company in San Diego until 1996, when he decided it was time to start his own firm. ObjectLogic, specializing in developing view-of-access software for the manufacturing industry, grew quickly. By 1999 it had been acquired by Parametric Technology Corporation. “I worked with them for a year,” Tolani says, “but PTC is a very large corporation. I felt that small companies are really my calling.”
Off he went on his own again, starting InfoPrise, a company that provided data applications for mobile phones. Within a couple of years, his new company, too, was acquired, and Tolani once again found himself working for a larger corporation. “I worked with them for a couple of years,” he says, “then I took some time off to spend with my kids.”
While he’s been tending to the hearth, his wife, Alka, has started her own company, designing and selling clothing and accessories based on traditional designs from India. Now that his younger child is just two years away from college, Tolani is once again thinking of starting a new company. “The ideas are starting to come to me,” he says. “After a year and a half of leisure, it’s time to get going again.”
—Paula M. Bodah ’78
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Debra Frey Fadool, M.S. ’87
Debra Frey Fadool credits graduate school at URI with providing her with the perfect role model for her life and career.
That role model was Chemistry Professor Phyllis Brown, who was both a successful research scientist, a respected teacher, and a mother of four. “She was a really wonderful lady,” Fadool says. “And a terrific role model for me at a time when there weren’t that many female professors in science.”
Fadool herself is now an award winning scientist, a popular professor, a community volunteer, and a mother of three who has also managed to find balance between her family life and her academic career.
As a professor of neuroscience and molecular biophysics at Florida State University since 1999, Fadool splits her professional time between teaching and research on the neuro-pathology of diabetes and nerve damage through disease or injury.
On the home front, Fadool and her husband, James, also a professor at Florida State, alternate early morning and late night shifts at FSU to make sure one of them is always home with the children. “It takes a lot of coordination,” Fadool admits, “but my husband and I split duties really well.”
Fadool leads her daughter’s Girl Scout troop, and on weekends once a month, she and her younger son sell succulents plants they have grown at a local farmer’s market. The Fadool family also volunteers for an inner-city church program one afternoon a week. The Fadools’ oldest son is a freshman in Florida State’s engineering program.
A former cross-country runner at her alma mater, Albion College in Michigan, Fadool continues to run. She has competed in triathlons and has run the Boston Marathon.
In an academic world where women make up only a small percentage of tenured science professors, Fadool’s well-rounded life is an inspiration for the next generation of young women entering the sciences.
—Sharon DeLuca ’85
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Reza Corrine Clifton ’03
Initially Reza Corrine Clifton’s working life appears to consist of a complex jumble of responsibilities that the ambitious 2003 grad gets done seat-of-the-pants style. But after speaking with her, the picture emerges of a multi-talented and energetic individual with a wide range of interests.
She’s moved from working at the Rhode Island Children’s Crusade (now called The College Crusade of Rhode Island), to writing and lobbying with the Urban League of Rhode Island, to her position today as a workforce development consultant for YWCA Northern Rhode Island. She also spent 2007 serving as vice president of the Rhode Island Young Professionals (an auxiliary of the Urban League).
Since graduating magna cum laude, Clifton has become a Renaissance woman. In addition to her job, she is a community advocate and activist, deejay, and speaker on international, community, and women’s topics. “I love music, theater, history, and current affairs,” she says. “I want to make a difference. All I can hope is that what I’m doing today is related to the issues of tomorrow.”
Clifton maintains an extensive Web site and freelances as a photographer and journalist. “It might seem like I’m zig-zagging through my career, but actually I’m going back to my studies in all that I do, especially in terms of race and class issues and in terms of my multidisciplinary approach. All my work is associated with my major in African and African American studies and my minor in international development. Human rights and dignity are my biggest guiding principles.”
If, given her fast-paced life, catching up with Clifton proves tricky, her Web site, RezaRitesRi.com, provides an overview of her activities and work. The site has many monthly readers and fans as far away as Spain and California.
“I’m dedicated to finding a way for my life and career to mix,” Clifton says. “Maybe it’s naïve, but I guess I’m kind of a free spirit.”
—Bob Gulla
