Conversations With This Year’s Alumni Award Winners
The newest recipients of the St. Olaf College Alumni Awards have developed impressive careers in fields ranging from forensic science to women’s health to music education to childhood abuse prevention.
While they were on campus this fall to receive their awards, each of this year’s winners — Alison Feigh ’00, Sarah Hutto ’01, Jon Nordby ’70, Sarah Branton ’00, and Mark Johnson ’91 — sat down for a conversation about their work and how St. Olaf prepared them to make a difference. Watch those conversations below.
The Alumni Awards are given each year to Oles whose service and leadership exemplify the ideals and mission of the college. In honoring these graduates for their exceptional achievements and professional contributions, they become an integral part of college history and a testament to St. Olaf’s tradition of excellence. Do you know a St. Olaf graduate who should be considered for an Alumni Award? Use this form to nominate them by February 24!
DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD WINNER: Alison Feigh ’00
Alison Feigh ’00 was 11 years old when her classmate, Jacob Wetterling, was abducted at gunpoint while on a bike ride with his brother and a friend in their small hometown of St. Joseph, Minnesota.
As the tragedy gained national attention, Feigh reeled. “As a sixth grader, I didn’t know what to do with that. I didn’t have the vocabulary or even the words,” she says.
In the era before the internet, she turned to her local public library.
“The more I learned, the more I realized that we don’t do a great job of talking about these things,” she says. “Childhood abduction is big and scary — they always call it a parent’s worst nightmare. But there are a lot of prevention points before we get there.”
Feigh went on to develop a career focused on those prevention points. She is now the director of the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, a Zero Abuse Project program that works to prevent crimes against children while connecting families of the missing and exploited to important resources. Feigh works with students, parents, youth workers, faith leaders, law enforcement, and the media to help prevent childhood abuse and abductions.
One of the most effective ways to do that, she says, are to create space for frequent conversations — “lots of little talks throughout the course of a child’s life” — with a network of trusted adults. Advocacy and prevention are not work that is done by individuals, Feigh says, but by an entire community.
“Offenders are looking for kids who don’t have a safety net. And so we have to do better. We have to look for kids who don’t have a safety net and surround them with support,” she says.
Some of the strongest advocates Feigh works with are the survivors of abuse and trauma. “I get really frustrated when I hear people say, ‘Hurt people hurt people.’ In my field, what I see over and over again is that ‘Healed people heal people.’ Some of our best interrupters of criminal behavior are people who’ve lived it and know it and don’t want that cycle to continue. And I think we have to create more space at the table for people who are passionate about prevention.”
Feigh’s work includes writing curriculum for youth-serving organizations, training professionals about the online challenges kids face, and advocating for families of the missing. She is the author of two children’s books and co-author of a textbook titled Sex Crimes and Offenders: Exploring Questions of Character and Culture. She was recently awarded the 2024 Visionary Voice Award from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
Feigh knew she wanted to develop a career focused on helping children long before she arrived at St. Olaf. What she didn’t know is what form that career would take — and that’s what her time on the Hill helped her figure out. She designed her own major on missing children through the Paracollege, a program committed to student-centered learning that was characterized by innovation and individualization, and added a second major in communication. She got involved in the Student Government Association, co-chaired the Sexual Assault Resource Network, and spent a January Term interning at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington, D.C. She landed a job there after graduating before returning to Minnesota in 2001 to work at the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center. It “means the world to me,” Feigh says, to have spent 25 years at the center founded in honor of the classmate who inspired her life’s work.
“We can’t always choose what happens to us,” Feigh says. “We can choose what to do with it.”
And over the course of her career, she’s chosen to make a difference.
ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNER: Sarah Hutto ’01
When Sarah Hutto ’01 first began her career as a physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, she was excited to be part of profound life moments like the birth of a child.
She quickly realized that an equally important part of her job is helping people through some of life’s most difficult moments.
“I think the biggest learning process for me was how to deal with challenging outcomes and how to help my patients navigate those things in a manner that is very caring but also helps them process a journey that they weren’t expecting,” she says. “You have to learn through experience.”
Over the course of her career, Hutto has used what she’s learned to become a well-regarded physician specializing in high-risk obstetrics, minimally invasive gynecological surgery, preventive care, and full-spectrum reproductive and contraception care. She has been recognized for her exceptional clinical care by her peers as a University of Minnesota Physicians Clinical Excellence Honoree from 2022–25, and she was named a Top Doctor by Minnesota Monthly and Mpls.St.Paul Magazine multiple years.
Her true passion, though, is medical education. An associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and women’s health at the University of Minnesota, Hutto has received a number of awards for her excellence in education and teaching. She currently serves as the director of the OB-GYN Residency Program, and before assuming this role she served as the OB-GYN medical student clerkship director for six years.
Hutto says her passion for learning and teaching was, in many ways, inspired by her time at St. Olaf. Although she arrived on the Hill with an interest in medicine, she wasn’t quite sure what that career path looked like. She majored in biology, while also playing on the women’s tennis team and singing in the choir.
“I was able to grow as a whole person,” she says. “At St. Olaf I was able to learn a lot about my personal values, but also really find my calling in life and my passion for medicine and for community and service and taking care of others.”
After graduating from St. Olaf, Hutto earned a master’s degree in public health at the University of Michigan, with a focus in epidemiology and a concentration in women’s and reproductive health.
“I worked in the public health sector for a couple of years and found out very quickly that I was missing the person-to-person contact found in clinical care,” she says.
So she enrolled in medical school at Wayne State University, and ended up at the University of Minnesota for her residency. She’s stayed on the faculty since.
“What it means to be an Ole is to be able to develop yourself as a whole person and to go through a lot of self-growth and to find the path that is going to be the best for you. That takes you so far in your life,” Hutto says. “And I’m incredibly grateful for all of the opportunities that I had at St. Olaf that have gotten me to where I am today.”
ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNER: Jon Nordby ’70
As Jon Nordby ’70 prepared for college, his parents told him there were two things he should focus on honing during his education:
- The ability to think carefully and deliberately.
- The skill to make shrewd observations.
So Nordby, who had an interest in pursuing a career in forensic science and forensic medicine, chose to major in art and philosophy at St. Olaf.
“I wanted to be able to think clearly, and I wanted to be able to frame observations,” he says. “Medicine is all about seeing things and articulating explanations for what you see, and then stringing them together in useful and testable ways. I enjoyed everything about the liberal arts, and it prepared me to go out in the world and learn how to learn things.”
Those skills have served him well. For more than 45 years, Nordby worked in forensic science and forensic medicine, specializing in the scientific and medical investigation of violent human death. He worked for the medical examiner’s offices in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, and for the National Disaster Medical System. He is a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security, a position that resulted from his work at the World Trade Center in New York City following 9/11 and his prior work with the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing in 1995.
Nordby started an independent practice in forensic science and medicine, Final Analysis Forensics, which focused on the scientific reconstruction of puzzling death cases. His work served prosecutors, defense attorneys, public defenders, law enforcement, the Defense Department, and various innocence projects throughout the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Costa Rica, and the Netherlands. He also taught at the University of Washington and at Pacific Lutheran University, eventually retiring as a full professor. He has presented talks and written papers, articles, and chapters for scientific works, as well as authoring four books on forensic science and forensic medicine.
Throughout all of his work, Nordby says he relied on a simple guiding value: all people deserve justice, and his work could help deliver that by using science to uncover the truth.
“All of the patients I dealt with were catastrophically dead, always from some sort of violence. And it was very trying to see the suffering of their families. We worked hard to support the living,” he says.
His work has made a difference for hundreds of families over the years. And yet sometimes, he reflects, the world can still be unjust despite the evidence. He recalls one case where a police officer was acquitted in a fatal shooting despite forensic evidence clearly showing they had planted evidence at the scene. In another case, a woman was convicted of arson despite proof that her coffee maker had started an electrical fire.
“I lay the evidence out for the court. They decide. And that’s the way our system works,” he says. “Cases that run afoul of logic, good science, and simple fairness make it difficult to stop and take a breath and keep moving.”
In those instances, he says, he has had to lean on his faith. That, too, was something he honed at St. Olaf.
“The thing that stays with me is St. Olaf’s ability to strengthen as well as challenge your faith. That was very important for me,” he says. “And that’s something that stayed with me forever.”
ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNER: Sarah Branton ’00
Sarah Branton ’00 came to St. Olaf with plans to major in math while participating in music.
Within her first semester, she knew she had to major in music. “That was just part of me,” she says. “It was my passion.”
She became a music education major, with a focus on vocal and instrumental education. She joined Manitou Singers and St. Olaf Cantorei, and played bass in the St. Olaf Orchestra. She completed her student teaching at a high school in Blaine, Minnesota, before being recruited by a fellow Ole to move to Colorado.
Branton led the choir at a high school in Longmont before taking a position at Cherry Creek High School in Denver. She’s now in her 25th year of teaching and her 20th at Cherry Creek, where she directs multiple choirs and teaches Advanced Placement Music Theory. Under her direction, choirs have performed at numerous state and regional conventions, at Carnegie Hall, and on tours throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, and Iceland.
“In many ways, it feels like I am continuing the legacy of St. Olaf because it is very similar in the importance of band, choir, orchestra, and just music as a part of the well-rounded person,” Branton says. “My job has become my dream job because I have been able to change with it. I get to try new things. I get to be with different people. I get to see the growth of other humans and just connect with them.”
In addition to her work as a teacher, Branton serves as the assistant director and section leader with Kantorei, a Denver-based adult choir dedicated to performing choral music at the highest level of musical excellence. She also chairs the Colorado All-State Choir and has previously worked on the board of Colorado ACDA. Branton regularly serves as a guest conductor and clinician for honor choirs and festivals, and she is on faculty at the summer Sitka Fine Arts Camp in Sitka, Alaska. In addition to her work as a vocalist, conductor, and educator, Branton is an accomplished orchestral and jazz bassist.
“As a music educator, it is crucial that I still create my own art,” Branton says. “Continuing my own craft feeds my soul and feeds my passion for the art. It allows me to sit in the seats that the students are sitting in. It allows me to be a better conductor. And to be a part of a community as opposed to just leading the community is also very important for me. My understanding of music has definitely evolved with time.”
What hasn’t changed, she says, is the role that St. Olaf played in helping her develop a career rooted in music.
“St. Olaf was life-changing for me, and I can’t imagine my life without having St. Olaf in it,” she says. “It feels like home, and it allowed me to become who I am today.”
OUTSTANDING SERVICE AWARD WINNER: Mark Johnson ’91
“As a music educator, you don’t focus as much on the music as you do on the people sitting in front of you,” says Mark Johnson ’91.
The music is important, of course. But nurturing and supporting the young people at the heart of that music, he says, is how you bring it to life.
Johnson would know. After majoring in vocal music education at St. Olaf, he taught junior high choral music for six years before becoming the full-time conductor of the Minnesota Boychoir. From 1995 to 2007, he was a member of the staff at Albemarle, a summer music camp program of the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey.
Johnson’s reputation in choral work, especially with children’s groups, has led to many invitations to work as a clinician, accompanist, and adjudicator for honors choirs and festivals around the globe. He conducted the Young Men’s track for the World Voices Australia Festival at the Sydney Opera House in 2007 and the Minnesota Music Educators Association Celebration of Young Musicians Festivals in 2014 and 2016, among many others. The American Choral Directors Association of Minnesota honored Johnson with the Minnesota Choral Director of the Year Award in 2022, and he is currently president of the organization, serving in a leadership capacity until 2029.
For all the venues he’s performed in all over the world — from Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican to Carnegie Hall — Johnson says the most powerful space is often the simplest.
“Some of the best times and most magical music moments come right in that rehearsal room. Just the raw element of being together and creating that music that can be pretty special. And that, for me as a teacher and as a person, has carried me a long way in this career,” Johnson says. “The biggest win for me has been kids who come back and still feel that connection to the music they learned and performed in the Minnesota Boy Choir.”
It’s a testament to his deep belief that music can be a vehicle to connect people as a community and as a family. “St. Olaf helped shape that,” he adds.
Johnson arrived at St. Olaf with plans to major in piano performance. He quickly realized that music education would be a better fit. He continued to sing in the choir and was a piano accompanist for many concerts and recitals. But he also broadened his interests beyond music.
“St. Olaf was a great experience because it provided me with a platform to do a lot of different things. I did spend a lot of time in the music building, but I also played some club volleyball and was involved in a lot of different community groups,” Johnson says. “All of it shaped who I am as a person and as a musician.”