Joann DiGennaro meets with department faculty and students.

By Natalie Fox
Sophomore, Communication

Department alumna Betsy Turner's career choices have taken her from the stage to federal courtrooms. Fellow alumna Joann DiGennaro's have taken her around the globe, from Bulgaria to Singapore. In April, they brought both women back to West Lafayette.

Turner's and DiGennaro's illustrious careers earned them the honor of 2008 College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni.

Turner is currently counsel at Boies, Schiller, and Flexner, where she deals mostly with litigation cases. DiGennaro has been the president of the not for profit Center for Excellence in Education (CEE) since she helped establish the Center with the late Admiral H.G. Rickover, known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy," in 1983 to nurture young scholars to careers in science and technology, and to promote understanding among future scientific and technological leaders in the global community. She is responsible for all international and cultural exchanges between the Center and talented math and science students from other nations. She negotiated the first exchange of Chinese students with a non-governmental organization in 1983. She has negotiated cultural and scientific agreements with more than 51 countries.

Compared to DiGennaro, Turner took a more indirect route to the career she currently enjoys. Although she intended to be a speech teacher, Turner started her career in New York City as an actress. After some time, she came to a point where she decided to take stock of her life.

 "I knew I needed to support myself in a more consistent way," said Turner, who maintains her ties to the theatre by serving as an officer for New York's Drama League. "I thought about what I like and what I enjoy doing, and I thought I would like law school."

Before she decided to commit to this, she wanted to gain some practical work experience in order to see what the job would demand.

"I thought it would be important to go work in a law firm and make sure I could stand being around lawyers all the time," said Turner, laughing.

She got a job working for Williams and Connolly in Washington, D.C., as a paralegal assistant. "That was an amazing breakthough experience for me," said Turner.

She said that not only were these lawyers brilliant, they were genuinely nice people. It was this starter job that set the standard for her ideal work environment in the future.

She went on to receive her law degree from Vanderbilt University, and afterward found herself with another lucky opportunity. She was hired as a clerk for a federal judge, which she compares to a yearlong graduate seminar in law.

These challenging experiences early on set a strong framework for her career, which she began with smaller law firms in New York and currently continues now as counsel for Boies, Schiller, and Flexner.

"I feel as though I am in a firm now that is just the same as my first job was at Williams and Connolly in this regard: they are really smart and truly nice. I saw that standard early on and knew that it was there."

She continues to remain grateful to the Communication Department at Purdue for the vital knowledge and skills she gained early on that would eventually aid her in furthering her career. 

"Everything I ever did, every class I had in the Communication Department, I use every day in every way," said Turner. "That pretty much sums it up."

DiGennaro also said she uses the knowledge she gained in the department's public speaking courses every day. She has done everything in her CEE career from write speeches for Admiral Rickover, to testify before Congress, to make presentations all over the world. She said while she didn't always know the science or the math, she knew the best way to communicate with her audience about the topics.

"It's the communication skills in other nations that I'm good at, very good at," DiGennaro said during a meet and greet with faculty and students in the department. "I'm good because of the skills I got here."

DiGennaro has been a guest of educational and scientific communities throughout the world. She advised the Ministry of Education of Singapore on implementing special programs for academically talented math and science students. She is a founder of Bulgaria's Research Science Institute, inaugurated in 2001. She also has been consultant to Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, Israel. And she helped implement the Research Science Institute at Fudan University in Shanghai, China.

Both women said they were delighted by the Distinguished Alumni honor.

"I've thoroughly enjoyed having a degree from Purdue," DiGennaro said. "I want to give back some of what I have learned to Purdue students."