When the Stars Align

When past experiences inform current philanthropic goals, and those goals support important Barnard priorities, that’s when you know the stars have aligned for the Barnard community. 

FELICE ZWAS ’76 and SARAH GALLEN

“Barnard helped me curate the value of investing in women from all walks of life.”

Felice Zwas grew up in the lower-middle-class neighborhood of Canarsie in Brooklyn. Her parents, who were Holocaust survivors, filled the house with a relentless love of life. Their ability to love after so much suffering was a source of wonder that she carries with her every day.

Felice’s Barnard experience has stayed with her, too. Barnard prepared Felice to take on new challenges and perform her best — from medical school and establishing her private practice to becoming the first female and first openly lesbian chief of staff at her hospital — and she fell in love with the surrounding neighborhood as well. Now, Felice and her wife, Sarah, “want a world where women in positions of power is the norm, not the exception,” they say, “and we see Barnard as one of the premier institutions to bring that future to fruition.”

Felice and Sarah are counting on the next generation of Barnard’s young women leaders to support their Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Hamilton Heights neighborhoods, which have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. They hope that by providing organizations in our community — including those that serve children and families — with access to Barnard talent, they can work even more effectively toward a better world.

To that end, Felice and Sarah decided to establish the Felice R. Zwas ’76 and Sarah Gallen Community Internship Fund. Their endowed fund supports student internships through Beyond Barnard, providing support for stipends and housing, with preference given to students pursuing summer internships within the Morningside Heights neighborhood.

They hope their gift will address a very specific issue within higher education — unpaid internships that leave out those who cannot afford to go a summer without income — and help to support Barnard’s neighboring Morningside Heights community, which is confronting tremendous challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is up to us to water the roots,” says Felice, “and make the pathway accessible for more Barnard women to follow.”

LAURA LEMLE ’77

“I thought if I could support students who have disabilities, what a wonderful way to help the community.”

For Manhattan native Laura Lemle ’77, Barnard provided a wonderful education and access to great opportunities in an urban environment where she could thrive as a psychology major. Barnard’s stellar professors and experiential opportunities — like working at Barnard’s Toddler Center — confirmed her commitment to psychology. As a result, she continued in that field and earned a Ph.D.

Laura went on to found The NVLD Project, a nonprofit whose mission is to get nonverbal learning disability recognized as a formal disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Her passion for this project and her dedication to Barnard’s mission of empowering women led her to establish the Lemle Family CARDS Support Fund, a current-use fund to support stipends for student notetakers at Barnard’s Center for Accessibility Resources & Disability Services (CARDS). During the 2020–21 academic year, student demand for class notetakers experienced a dramatic rise, and CARDS has struggled to expand its pool of notetakers. Laura’s gift addresses that need and is a step forward in Barnard’s work to make the college experience more equitable for students with disabilities.

MIA MATTIOLI ’09

When Mia was asked by her high school chemistry teacher what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said “doctor.”

Mia Mattioli was raised in northeast Pennsylvania with her single mother, Bridget, and three siblings. Although she faced financial obstacles, attending college was always her goal. She took college courses in middle and high school, as well as summer programs at various colleges and universities, the last of which was at Barnard. After graduation, Mia worked part-time in the evenings as a tutor — in addition to her regular salaried position — to afford medical school applications. It took her a year to save up enough money, and she wondered if her fellow Barnard alumnae has experienced something similar. She found that many did, and that their timeliness for applying for graduate school were influenced by the cost of things like tests, application fees, and interviewing expenses. 

To address this challenge, Mia created the Medical School Bridge Fund, a current-use fund intended to assist Barnard students and young alumnae with grants as they apply to medical school. The Fund is named for its function as a financial “bridge” between undergraduate and graduate school, and for Mia’s mother, Bridget, who passed away in October 2021. It is Mia's hope that the Bridge Fund will allow more young women — especially those in socioeconomically disadvantaged positions — to apply for the advanced degrees and careers of their dreams.