Meet Lola Akinmade Åkerström ‘98, M.S. ‘02, award-winning visual storyteller, international bestselling author, and travel entrepreneur. Originally a geographic information systems professional, she eventually made the shift to rely on her passport and storytelling skills to travel the world. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, BBC, CNN, Travel Channel, Travel + Leisure, Lonely Planet, Forbes, and many more. She has collaborated with commercial brands such as Dove, Getty Images, Mercedes Benz, and National Geographic Channel, to name a few. Take it away, Lola!

Q: Tell us about your current job. What do you want Retriever Nation to know about you?

A: As an entrepreneur, I run the Stockholm-based creative storytelling agency Geotraveler Media and online academy, Geotraveler Media Academy, which runs photography experiences around the world and is dedicated to visual storytelling and helping the next generation of travel storytellers put the heart back into the craft.

I am honored to be one of Condé Nast Traveler‘s 2024 “Most Powerful Women in Travel.” I’m also an award-winning visual storyteller recently shortlisted for the Global Peace Photo Award and an international bestselling author.

My book, Due North, received the Lowell Thomas Gold Award for Best Travel Book. I am also the author of the international bestseller LAGOM: The Swedish Secret of Living Well, available in over 15 foreign language editions. My internationally acclaimed novel, In Every Mirror She’s Black, was a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, Apple Editors’ Pick, Amazon Editors’ Pick, Independent UK’s “Best Thought-provoking Story,” and was shortlisted for the Bad Form Review Book of the Year. My latest novel, Everything Is Not Enough, is an NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature, Jennette McCurdy Book Club Pick, and a Washington Post, Sunday Times, and Amazon Editors’ Pick, among others.

Q: What is your WHY? What brought you to UMBC?

A: My WHY really is to fight isolation within my sphere of influence by using my work to make people feel seen, heard, and acknowledged through cultural connection. But I didn’t always start out in the creative industry.

I started at Montgomery College, in Rockville, Maryland, a few days after I turned 16 years old. After a year, I transferred to UMBC to study information systems, while minoring in geography.  I got my bachelor’s from UMBC at the age of 19.

Pictured left: Lola holding an issue of UMBC Magazine in the snow, next to a reindeer.

Q: What are some long-term takeaways from your years at UMBC?

A: My time at UMBC remains one of my most memorable life experiences—from joining the women’s rugby team and African Student Association (ASA) to getting into geographic information systems (GIS) through my minor in geography and meeting my favorite math professor, Manil Suri.

Q: What’s your favorite part of being a part of Retriever Nation?

A: UMBC helped tease out my passions and true career paths. Once I graduated, I went on to specialize in GIS, first as a programmer, and then as a system architect for 12-plus years before switching to my current career as a visual storyteller. 

Many Nigerian parents have a cultural mindset that feels being a doctor, lawyer, or engineer means their children have become successful. Understandably, my parents were worried when I decided to freelance full-time as a writer and photographer. Ultimately, they both wanted me to be happy. Now they are my biggest fans.

As a storyteller, I have been featured on Condé Nast Traveler‘s 2024 Women Who Travel Power List. I was named one of the 2023 Most Influential Women in Travel by Travel Pulse, a 2022 Hasselblad Heroine, and the 2018 Bill Muster Travel Photographer of the Year. I was also honored with a MIPAD 100 (Most Influential People of African Descent) Award within media and culture in 2018, and with a Newsweek 2021 Future of Travel Award – Storytelling.

Q: How have you stayed connected with the UMBC community?

A: Through the lifelong friendships I’ve created in both the rugby team and African Student Association that has seen us through marriages and children too. I am still in contact with some of my former colleagues and fellow students from the geography department as well. 

My days with UMBC rugby led me to form the Dayton Women’s Rugby Club, which previously had only a men’s team. I walked onto the field and said, “I’m here to help you start a women’s rugby team.” Their expressions were priceless. It became my international community in Dayton and the team went on to win their division and develop some of the best rugby players in Ohio. 

I then went on to play for an elite team in Northern Virginia before relocating to Sweden. 

Q: What’s the one thing you’d want someone who hasn’t joined the UMBC community to know about the support you find here?

A: Once a Retriever, always a Retriever. As an example, from taking Professor Manil Suri’s calculus class in 1996 to still connecting with him in 2024 over social media is a testament to the lifelong impact the incredible people I’ve met through my UMBC community have made on me.

Pictured right: Lola’s UMBC women’s rugby jacket.

* * * * *

UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

Meet Patty Hathaway ’97, M.S. ’03, who earned her B.A. in economics and M.S. in information systems while working at UMBC. After 23 years of service to UMBC, Patty went on to work at three other universities, including the University of Maryland, College Park, where she retired. Patty now works with U.S. Navy veterans as the secretary/treasurer of the USS Hamner DD-718 Association and is the owner of Hathaway Photography of Bowie. Patty recently authored a book for the Hamner association, An American Destroyer: USS Hamner History in Photographs. Take it away, Patty!

Q: What’s one essential thing you’d want another Retriever to know about you?

A: I am a Retriever in many ways: a double alum, a former employee, a UMBC parent (twice), and a past Hilltop Society Member. I was a staff member for 23 years and earned my B.A. and M.S. while working on campus. I worked for three other universities after UMBC, and I now am loving my work with our Navy veterans. I am certain that I would not be where I am today without UMBC.

Q: What’s the one thing you’d want someone who hasn’t joined the UMBC community to know about the support you find here?

A: I would emphasize the feeling of being a “part of the campus family.” It’s not too big and not too small. You just feel like you “fit.” I felt that way as an employee and as a student, and when I visit, I still feel like I am coming home. UMBC was and continues to be a huge part of my life and the person I am today.

Q: Tell us about someone in the community who has inspired you or supported you, and how they did it.

A: UMBC had an atmosphere that made it feel like you were with family. A lot of that was encouraged by Freeman Hrabowski. Although he was the president of UMBC, he found time for employees and students, and was able to be a mentor, supporter, and leader for many. Although I have been away from the UMBC campus since 2005, I have been able to keep in touch with Freeman.

Left: Hathaway waving to the photographer at her 2003 UMBC graduation.

Q: Tell us what you love about your academic program or an organization you’re involved in.

A: During my time at UMBC, I also made time to help with non-profit veterans’ organizations. I was able to use the skills I learned on campus to help these groups. After retiring from paid employment, I have concentrated on my photography business and the USS Hamner DD-718 Association. The Hamner association is dedicated to preserving the memories of the ship and the crew who served on her.

My most recent accomplishment for the Hamner association is the book I authored for them: An American Destroyer: USS Hamner History in Photographs. This book is the sequel to a book I edited for the association in 2022. The history of our veterans needs to be told and I am very happy to be a part of that. Without the skills I acquired and the confidence I developed at UMBC, I would never have been able to edit or author a book.

Q: If you’re currently working, what’s your title and where do you work? What do you enjoy most about it?

A: I am the secretary/treasurer of the USS Hamner DD-718 Association (non-paid office). The relationships I have developed with these Navy veterans is like those at UMBC—we are family!

Q: Tell us about your primary WHY, and how it led you to UMBC.

A: I first came to UMBC in the fall of 1976 as a freshman. I have to admit, I was not ready to be a full-time university student so I pursued my associate degree on a part-time schedule instead at Catonsville Community College. There was something about UMBC that drew me back, and in 1981, I was hired to work in the accounting department. Within four years I had completed my A.A. degree and began the pursuit of my B.A. degree in 1989. I loved working on campus and I enjoyed being a student again. I worked with great people and many friendships developed at UMBC that would last for decades.

Right: Hathaway and her granddaughter at a USS Hamner Reunion.

Q: Where have you found support in the UMBC community?

A: I had several people who helped me along the way, sometimes just with encouragement as I tried new positions or pursued a new path in life. Friends who are now gone, Diane Taylor ’76, Jim Milani ’73, and Gary Rupert always had an encouraging word or good advice as I selected courses or applied for the next job opening on campus. Their confidence in me meant more than I can put into words.

In both my work life as well as academic and personal life, David Gleason, M.S. ’04, would always be there to help me find the confidence I needed to move forward. He would always know how to convince me that I could take that next step. His friendship is one I still treasure.

Q: What’s your favorite part of being a part of Retriever Nation?

A: I am proud to be a part of Retriever Nation both as a alum and a former employee/retiree. I enjoy seeing UMBC grow and being able to feel like I was part of that growth.

Q: What drives you to support UMBC?

A: I have tried to support UMBC whenever I can. I hope to be able to continue and do more in the future.

* * * * *

UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

Meet Mary K. Tilghman, whose original decision to attend UMBC may have started off more pragmatic than fairytale (she could commute with her brother who was attending), but the story ended up having a happy ending. Tilghman ’79, English, is a novelist—the author of half a dozen modern romance and historical novels. She says she finds inspiration in her native Maryland and draws on her bachelor’s degree from 45-plus years ago. According to Tilghman, her classes at UMBC laid the foundation for a prolific and fulfilling writing career. Tell us your story, Mary!

Q: What’s one essential thing you’d want another Retriever to know about you? 

A: Since graduation, I have used my English degree every day of my life. I’ve been a reporter and editor of local newspapers, a freelance magazine writer, a travel writer, and travel blogger. I’ve written six novels, both historical fiction and sweet-as-cotton-candy romance. I’ve edited dozens of school papers for my three now-grown children—Gina who earned her master’s degree at UMBC, Sean and Brigid. I tell everyone: That English degree paved the way for my life.

Q: Tell us about someone in the community who has inspired you or supported you, and how they did it.

A: My English professors, including Professors Robert Glick, Patricia Meszaros and Joan Korenman, taught me to think and write precisely. My favorite political science professor, Dr. Philip Brenner, showed me how to gain perspective from history. My friend and fellow Retriever editor Kathleen Warnock offered me a job writing Frommer’s guides for Maryland and Delaware that I will always be grateful for.

Q: Tell us about what you love about your academic program or an organization you’re involved in.

A: It’s been 45 years since I got my bachelor’s degree but I still remember the books I read—19th-century novels, Russian epics, world literature. They laid the foundation for my writing. I may never reach the writing level of a Tolstoy, Dickens, or Hemingway but, like them, I love language and a well-wrought sentence.

Right: Tilghman’s husband, Raymond Truitt, graduated from Loyola the same year as Tilghman at UMBC. “Ray and I met by blind date when we were juniors. He proposed to me on UMBC’s (now-gone) tennis courts in 1981,” shares Tilghman.

Q: If you’re currently working, what’s your title and where do you work? What do you enjoy most about it?

A: I write novels, both historical fiction and romance. I love creating characters, wrecking their lives, and then finding them a happy ending. Best of all, I get to share it with readers.

Q: Tell us about your primary WHY, and how it led you to UMBC.

A: I was a student at another college before coming to UMBC. When my younger brother was accepted to UMBC, my mother suggested I transfer. UMBC was a cost-effective option in 1976, had good English and visual arts departments, and the family car was already coming here. So I became a Retriever. Though I wasn’t happy at first, I was soon hooked. I met great people, was taking classes I couldn’t wait to master, and found professors who were caring and devoted. I learned quickly I was going to get the education that would lead to something great.

Left: Tilghman in her senior photo at UMBC.

Q: Tell us about the people who helped you grow at UMBC, and why their HOW made such a difference to you.

A: I took a journalism class my first semester with Baltimore Sun reporter Jack Dawson. I’ll always be grateful for his classes, his mentoring, and his help in getting a Sun internship. I ultimately had two internships, one on the copy desk of the Sun, and another at the Catonsville Times,where my editor, Loni Ingraham, spent a lot of time helping me learn to write a lede and ask better questions. In addition, I worked long hours on the staff of the university’s newspaper, The Retriever. I learned all about writing, interviewing, editing, setting type (this was pre-digital), writing headlines, and laying out pages. And I gained some great friends among my fellow journalists.

Q: If you’re an alum, what’s your favorite part of being a part of Retriever Nation?

A: UMBC grads go places. I’ve met them in all walks of life but the UMBC tie is strong.

Q: If you’re a donor, what drives you to support UMBC?

A: I won a scholarship in my senior year that allowed me to become a dorm resident. What an experience that was after all that commuting. I want to support future Retrievers.

* * * * *

UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

MeetMichelle Jabes Corpora’03, English and theatre. Michelle is the author of nine novels, an editor for commercial fiction, and an avid student of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. She came to UMBC as a Linehan Artist Scholar in 1999 to study theatre before deciding to double major in English. Michelle has found that her background in theatre has been a helpful tool in her writing. Take it away, Michelle!

Q: What’s one essential thing you’d want another Retriever to know about you?

A: I am a 2003 alumna, a double major in English and theatre. Today, I am the author of nine novels for young readers, and have been an editor of commercial fiction for 17 years for both big publishing companies in New York and a book packaging company based out of London.

My latest novel, Holly Horror: The Longest Night, is scheduled to release on August 13, 2024. It is a young adult horror story and the terrifying sequel to Holly Horror.

The first book in my newest series, a trilogy that was pitched as “Ancient Egyptian Game of Thrones for YA readers,” is slated to be published by Sourcebooks Fire in Summer 2025. Stay tuned!

​Q: What is your WHY? What brought you to UMBC?

A: Initially, I came to UMBC as a Linehan Artist Scholar studying theatre, but once I began my years on campus, I realized I wanted to supplement my studies with a major in English. The experiences I had in both academic departments went on to inform my choice of career in book publishing, and the way that I write novels. Learning about drama helped significantly with my approach to character, plot, and pacing.

Pictured right: Michelle as ‘Cleo’ AKA Fraulein Kost in a 2001 UMBC Theatre production of Cabaret.

Q: Tell us more about your career. What do you like most about writing and editing?

A: I am an author as well as a senior commissioning editor at Working Partners, Ltd. Fiction has always been my passion, so I love working creatively every day and writing books for young readers. But it’s been a long road to get where I am today!

After receiving my bachelor’s degree in English and theatre from UMBC, I went on to earn a master’s degree in Children’s Literature from Hollins University. After that, I did some weird stuff. I was a wedding singer for a while. I also worked with animals in a vet’s office and at a wildlife rehabilitation center. Eventually, I moved to New York and worked as an assistant editor at Greenwillow Books before getting my job with Working Partners. All of these serendipitous events eventually led me to the #AuthorLife.

​Before I wrote books with my name on the cover, I was a ghostwriter for a world-famous middle-grade mystery series. I wrote my first five novels in that series, and enjoyed every minute of it. It was an honor to be a part of a legacy that is cherished by so many. Looking back, all those detours were exactly what I needed. Not only do different experiences help you become a more well-rounded person and writer, they allowed me both to meet people who would become so important in my career, and teach me—through learning to be an editor—what really makes a good book. It also taught me to embrace my “chameleon” self—I’ve always loved many different genres of fiction, and felt that it was somehow a personal failing that I could never choose just one. Today, I’m happy to say that I’ve written mysteries, historical fiction, horror, and fantasy, and I see no reason to stop now.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

A. I live in Frederick, Maryland, with my dear husband, my two wonderful daughters, two guinea pigs named Fireball and Olive, and a rescue mutt named Charlie. When I’m not writing and editing books, you can usually find me at Crazy 88 MMA, training in the art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Competing at tournaments and being promoted to blue belt in BJJ were some of the proudest moments of my life. Some people may see videos of me rolling around on the floor and fighting my friends and think that I’m crazy. I can neither confirm nor deny the validity of this statement.

Q: What’s the one thing you’d want someone who hasn’t joined the UMBC community to know about the support you find here?

A: UMBC is a tight-knit community. Even though it’s a public state university, it has a private college feel with big university resources. It’s a place that allows people to find their way in the world, even if your journey might take you off the beaten path.

Q: What’s your favorite part of being a part of Retriever Nation?

A: I meet so many other UMBC alumni out in the world, and we always have great stories to tell about our time on campus. It’s a wonderful shared experience that always feels personal.

* * * * *

UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

The habitat in central Maryland where Jill Sisson Quinn ’97, English grew up isn’t very different from the habitat in central Wisconsin where she lives now. The birds, insects, and trees are similar; you can use the same field guides, she says. Yet when she moved to the Midwest in 2005, she had traded a place full of rivers for one full of lakes, and “it was a huge problem for me,” she says. “I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would feel like I was moving to another planet.”

Is this homesickness, or an acute sensitivity to one’s environment? Quinn’s work suggests that the two things tangle like roots from different plants, complicating where personal experience starts and human nature begins. The essays in her 2010 collection, Deranged: Finding a Sense of Place in the Landscape and in the Lifespan, are remarkable literary hybrids designed to explore these complications. In one piece, she weaves a discussion of Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old skeleton of a human ancestor, alongside a remembrance of Fatso, a tree near her childhood home. In another, a breakup is a launchpad for thinking about shrinking forests, and how life at their edges is different than their interiors.

The shifting definition of place is a constant in Deranged, and she refers often to her childhood home – more precisely, the branches of the Patapsco River not far from it. As she writes in the book’s introduction, “I like to believe that there is some un-faulty guide steering me home, and hope that if I am not there now, I soon will be.”

Quinn has been publishing these lyric essays since 2001, but their sensibility is predated by the interest in science and literature she cultivated as a student. When she arrived at UMBC, she was committed to writing poetry, inspired in part by what she had learned about astronomy.

“I remember reading the textbook religiously,” she says. “I remember it talking about stars and the birth and death of stars, and how stars aren’t really alive but that we owe our existence to stars, because the atoms that make up our bodies were formed in the centers of stars. I never read a textbook that personified things and gave this eminence to them. That really moved me.”

She wrote her honors thesis on the work of Heather McHugh, a poet who draws heavily on nature. “She’s always been an environmental writer,” says James C. McKusick, her thesis advisor, who is now dean of the Davidson Honors College at the University of Montana. “Both in her prose and her poetry, she reflects deeply on people’s relationships with place, or with humankind’s relationship with the natural world. She reflects on that in a way that a poet should, with a lot of concrete imagery – a lot of deeply thought and felt images.”

Quinn’s writing process involves a lot of walking – 6.7 miles every day with her dog, to be exact – and a lot of thinking about connections: “I discover something in nature that’s weird, like a wasp, or these beautiful rocks, and I’ve got this question in my head. I know I’m going to connect them, and then I research the nature, and the connection grows out of that.”

Last year Quinn received a $30,000 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, given annually to emerging women writers. The prize has allowed her to take a half-time sabbatical from her job as a high-school English teacher. She’s currently at work on her second book, titled The Doctrine of Signatures, which leverages her close study of nature to address larger spiritual questions. This is perhaps an unlikely pursuit for a nature writer, who’s generally expected to be a John McPhee-like rover. But in Quinn’s particular line of work, depth trumps breadth.

“I’m not a traveler,” she says. “I don’t think I’ll ever exhaust Wisconsin or Maryland.”

– Mark Athitakis

Read the full issue of the Winter 2014 UMBC Magazine.