Selected alumni profiles.
Jill Fine Mainelli ’64 Festivals for the Big ApplePatricia Douglas Nicol ’80, M.S. ’83 A Winning CareerBrian Hickey ’80, M.S. ’82 A Seamless LifeChris Layton ’88 Split-second DecisionsCraig Shapiro ’93 Ice KingsLynne Yong, M.A.’00, Ph.D. ’04 Making a Small DifferenceClass Acts Profiles
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Jill Fine Mainelli ’64 Festivals for the Big Apple
Mainelli’s love of adventure and the exotic also finds expression in her job as director of community resources for the City of New York Parks & Recreation Department, which had her handling logistics for the artist Christo’s famous Gates Project in Central Park last February.
From her office in Central Park’s Arsenal, Mainelli organizes such diverse cultural events for New York City as open-air concerts in the park and a proposed festival celebrating Australian and New Zealand wines. Other events on Mainelli’s drawing board include a falconry festival, a kite festival, and a balloon festival.
A Manhattan native with Rhode Island roots—her father, Benjamin Fine ’28, graduated from Rhode Island State College with a degree in agriculture but went on to a career as education editor for The New York Times—Mainelli majored in sociology at URI and was an active member of both student government and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). After graduation, she moved back to New York where she studied social work at Hunter College and became involved with politics, interviewing delegates at one of the Democratic Party’s national conventions.
New York City Mayor Ed Koch appointed Mainelli to her current position 20 years ago. While it brings her into contact with such luminaries as Hillary Clinton (another photo in Matunuck shows the two of them together), it also enables Mainelli to pursue her passion for social justice by ensuring that the events she coordinates have wide appeal and are accessible to all, especially those she calls “the private needs public” who require special arrangements to fully participate in the city’s cultural life.
—Vida-Wynne Griffin ’67, M.A. ‘72
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Patricia Douglas Nicol ’80, M.S. ’83 A Winning Career
Appointed the athletic director at Southern Connecticut State University in April 2005, Nicol, who manages 19 athletic programs enrolling a total of 500 students, says she hopes “to provide the best possible experience for student athletes academically and athletically while encouraging a culture of coaches as mentors to students.”
She plans to build upon SCSU’s tradition of athletic success and academic integrity.She is committed to encouraging communications between the campus and the Athletic Department and has re-established an athletic council that is composed of coaches, faculty, and administrators.
Nicol joined the SCSU Athletic Department in 1998 as senior women’s athletics administrator and compliance director. Her previous coaching career led her from assistant track coach at URI, where she worked with her mentor, Coach Lauren Anderson, to head track coach at the University of West Virginia.
Her administrative career began at Providence College, where she was the first director of compliance before being named assistant athletic director in 1990. That same year, Nicol was inducted into the URI Athletic Hall of Fame in recognition of her outstanding achievements as an athlete.
“Athletics has a unique role in a college campus,” she says. “As SCSU’s athletic director, I hope to contribute to the overall mission of the university and the campus community while establishing SCSU athletics among the elite programs on the national Division II level.”
—Liza Manchester, M.A. ’05
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Brian Hickey ’80, M.S. ’82 A Seamless Life
Hickey is a man of many interests, and they all join together to fill his life with passion and energy. The fit, bespectacled 57-year-old spends his days working as a prescribing psychiatric nurse with West Bay Psychiatric Associates. But his job and the rest of his life don’t occupy separate compartments. “Life is seamless,” he says. “It’s all a unique experience.”
Hickey’s eclectic education may be a clue to his attitude toward life. He earned degrees in literature and philosophy from Roger Williams College before deciding to study nursing at URI. There are plenty of connections to be found among literature, philosophy, and nursing, it turns out. “I use the critical thinking of my philosophy background a lot in my work,” he says. And language is important because, he says, “it helps you break down illogical and inconsistent formulations, revealing what people are really saying.”
Nursing has been a satisfying career for him because of its experiential nature. “You are allowed into people’s lives in a very penetrating way,” he says. “It’s a privilege to be in people’s lives in such a direct, immediate way.”
The exuberance with which Hickey lives life shows in the Warwick home where he and his wife, physician Michele Paquet, raised their two children. The small backyard has been turned into a riotously colorful garden. Indoors, the walls are filled with all sorts of items, from paintings by local artists to guitars to birdhouses.
For Hickey, much of the credit for his enjoyment of life belongs to URI. “URI is a gift to the state,” he says. “You won’t outgrow the educational opportunities, and education makes your life richer. Without URI, my life would not be so rich.”
—Paula M. Bodah ’78
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Chris Layton ’88 Split-second Decisions
Layton, president of Layton Commodities, went to work at his cousin’s firm after graduating with a marketing degree. Soon he gained membership on the New York Board of Trade and developed a brokerage business trading frozen orange juice contracts.
“In the 1980s the orange groves in Florida suffered severe and hard freezes in nine of the 10 years of the decade. Farmers were going out of business. I presented them with options strategies to protect themselves from severe price increases and decreases.”
Layton developed trading strategies for other commodities based on applying technical analysis on price charts. By 1995, “I had enough confidence to leave the brokerage business and trade on my own account.” He hired his URI roommate, John J. Murphy ’88, to take over his brokerage business. Murphy is now a partner at Layton Commodities.
As a market maker, Layton gravitates toward “whatever is the most hectic and most volatile market that day. What I like best is the energy and mayhem of the trading pits.”
Layton, who lives in Franklin Lakes, N.J., with his wife, Carolyn, and four children, said URI gave him a “diversified and well-rounded education,” laying the foundation to help him survive in a profession that often eats its young.
“There are a lot of young kids who come down here wanting to make millions in a very short time,” he said. “Most of them are gone in a year.” Among his tenets: “Don’t let your emotions take you in and out of a trade”; “try to be in for the long term”; and “don’t trade just to trade—some of the best trades are the ones you don’t make.”
—David Gregorio ’80
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Craig Shapiro ’93 Ice Kings
Craig Shapiro ’93, a Warwick, R.I., native and New York City resident, recognized the significance of the streak, the longest championship run in national high school sports history. His company, Magic Garden Productions, is producing Ice Kings, a documentary on the history of Rhode Island hockey.
Shapiro most recently produced and directed The Countdown to Jones-Tarver III, a 30-minute documentary boxing preview show for HBO Sports. He has directed television shows for numerous networks, most notably The Life for ESPN, which was nominated for an Emmy in 2000, and I Love the ’80s for VH1.
Ice Kings will cover the Mount powerhouse built by father-son duo Bill and Dave Belisle, who coached more than 30 current and former NHL players, including No. 1 draft picks Brian Lawton, Brian Berard, and Stanley Cup winner Mathieu Schneider.
“The Mount hockey program is arguably the greatest high school sports program in the country, and no one had ever done their story,” Shapiro said. “The level of hockey there is so high, but so many people don’t know about it. ” Ice Kings tackles the roots of Rhode Island hockey, from the Quebec natives who came to the Blackstone River mills looking for work to the impact of the Rhode Island Reds, a former professional team.
“This film is going to be an interesting look at Rhode Island with hockey as the backdrop. This was a way to pay homage to our home state,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro hopes to premier Ice Kings at the Newport International Film Festival next summer. For more information, check out www.icekingsthemovie.com.
—Shane Donaldson ’99
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Lynne Yong, M.A.’00, Ph.D. ’04 Making a Small Difference
Four months later, the tsunami hit.
Yong quickly emailed her mentor Jim Campbell, director of URI’s Counseling Center, for advice and volunteered to train doctors and nurses at the local Penang hospital in psychological first aid.
Her own first consultation was with an Acehnese woman found floating in the sea after 11 days. The frightened woman had hardly ever left her village before. While a horde of international reporters waited to interview the woman, Yong tried to calm her confusion and fears while setting limits on what reporters could ask.
Next Yong joined a Malaysian relief team headed to Sri Lanka. When a team member adapted a Federal Emergency Management Agency tsunami education story for kids, Yong drew illustrations for it. To her delight, UNICEF used her drawings in other training groups.
She worked with a despondent 5-year-old boy who had avoided being swept away by clinging to a tree branch for hours until his mother found him. His village had been destroyed and his sister and all of his cousins and friends were killed.
Yong tried to reach him with finger puppets. His puppet stated that it wanted to go home to die. Yong’s puppet told him other children were afraid of another wave and asked him what to do. He replied, “tell them to climb a tree.” A week later, Yong returned to the camp and saw the boy playing. A 12-year-old girl who was also traumatized had bonded with him.
“My training in trauma definitely helped, especially what I learned from Jim Campbell. And Psychology Professor Kat Quina was instrumental in grounding me, always focusing on the human side of things. Originally, I did not think I knew so much, but when put to the test, I knew the do’s and don’ts quite well,” said Yong. “I’d like to think I have made a small difference here.”
—Jan Wenzel ’87
