William Tavel
Bullis, Class of 2013
Building on his interest in designing everything from computers to skateboard half-pipes, William Tavel studied engineering in college. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and master’s in engineering management at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
After working at car, chemical and consulting companies, Tavel was looking for a job that aligned with his values.
“I was tired of taking money from people, instead of making the world a better place,” says Tavel, 28, who grew up in Rockville. “I realized if I stayed on the track of engineering, I’d never really be able to create the type of impact I wanted.”
Tavel got a position with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a private investment arm of the World Bank, as an analyst in the education and health care sector. He found he had a knack for translating the needs of technical experts to finance investors in order to serve communities in emerging markets. Tavel says it’s fulfilling work, and he gets the added benefit of collaborating with a multinational team and traveling internationally. He is now an associate and program manager with the IFC, and last year started his own impact management consulting firm.
Tavel married in 2020, downsizing the wedding because of the COVID-19 pandemic from a guest list of 150 to four: his parents and hers, at a park in Georgetown, followed by an Italian takeout dinner. Thanks to the money saved, the couple bought a house in Washington, D.C., which they now rent out, and another in a historic neighborhood of Cleveland, his wife, Kirsten’s, hometown.
Elena Crouch
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, Class of 2013
She enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after earning her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Pennsylvania. Crouch went to medical school at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda and is in her second year of residency in internal medicine at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.
“I wanted to be a vet for a while, but I changed my mind,” says the 29-year-old, who grew up in Chevy Chase and was influenced by her parents, both of whom are physicians. “I figured with medicine there was a lot more opportunity.”
In high school, Crouch was enamored with photography, and taught it as a form of therapy to children undergoing cancer treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.
Now, as part of her service, she travels widely and says she is drawn to tropical medicine, where she feels she can have the most impact on global health. She recently worked on the USNS Mercy hospital ship in the South Pacific.
When she’s not putting in 12-hour shifts at the hospital, Crouch is often running, biking or swimming. She has completed 10 triathlons—both sprint and Olympic distance. In 2022, Crouch married her husband, Timothy Park, an engineer in the Navy Reserve; in 2023, they had a wedding celebration in Italy, where much of her extended family lives.
Julianne (Pearson) Bell
Connelly School of the Holy Child, Class of 2012
As a teenager, Julianne Pearson put in hundreds of community service hours, tutoring students, coaching youth basketball and volunteering at camps for underprivileged kids. She also sang in her school’s chorus and played in the jazz ensemble.
Pearson continued to pursue those interests at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where she participated in three service-learning trips to Nicaragua and sang in a college a cappella group. After earning a degree in psychology and Spanish, she taught ninth and tenth grade Spanish in rural Louisiana for a year, followed by an administration job at a high school in San Francisco.
Next, Pearson made a career change and took a job at a tech startup. “It was challenging, but also exciting,” says the 30-year-old, who lives in Sacramento, California. “It definitely built up my confidence working in a new industry—and I learned a lot on the fly.” For nearly two years, she has been a partner operations manager for a business coaching and consulting firm.
In 2019, Pearson married her wife, Erin Bell. Julianne Bell says coming out as queer in her mid-20s was a big life shift. “It’s been a beautiful one—definitely hard at times—but one that I’m really grateful to have made,” she says. She’s a big advocate of therapy and mental health, adding: “It’s really helped me get to be who I fully am and live a healthy, grounded and balanced life.” The couple had a son, August, last fall.
Sasha Berger
Walt Whitman High School, Class of 2012
After graduating from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Sasha Berger attended Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in anthropology with a concentration in global health and environment, and minored in environmental studies. She became interested in the interaction between people and the built environment, and how policy and social movements interact with climate change.
Berger briefly considered environmental law but instead pursued a career in public policy. She worked for five years with the National Association of City Transportation Officials in New York City, where she helped plan events and run the leadership development program. Berger recently completed her master’s degree in public and urban policy at The New School in Manhattan.
Now 29, Berger is a policy adviser at the New York State Department of Labor, focusing on the green jobs transition and workforce development. “We want to make sure that those who have been disproportionately harmed by climate change or left out of the conversation are the ones who will benefit from the jobs that will come, which are plentiful,” she says.
As she works with advocacy organizations in her job, Berger says she leans on teamwork and listening skills she gained in high school through her involvement with theater and while serving as president of the drama club. She says she’s found her community in Brooklyn, New York, and is continuing with her love for the arts, singing in a choir, taking dance classes and being active in a pottery studio.
Cynthia Betubiza
Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, Class of 2010
Cynthia Betubiza says she realized she liked writing in third grade, when she kept a diary about her life. In high school, she became active in theater and raised money to help a charity for children in Uganda.
Betubiza combined her interests and love of storytelling in all its forms to become a journalist.
“Storytelling has had such a massive impact upon my life,” says the 31-year-old, who lives in her hometown of Bethesda. “It has really shaped my world view and given me access to lived experiences of other people that I never would have been able to understand otherwise.”
After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Betubiza went to New York City with her bachelor’s degree in journalism and landed an internship (and later a contract job) on the editorial team of TED Conferences.
Looking to expand her multimedia skills, Betubiza earned her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in Manhattan in 2019. She went on to work at American Public Media’s radio program Marketplace, and at National Public Radio’s Planet Money and On Our Watch, a limited-run podcast looking at police misconduct.
Betubiza now works on the audience development team for NOVA, which airs on PBS. In 2020, she launched Become-All.com, a website focused on the power of inclusive storytelling. Her advice for young people just starting out: “No matter what highs and lows you experience in achieving your goals, you should keep trying… and it’s OK to take time off to take care of yourself.”
Read about 2024’s Extraordinary Teens here.
This story appears in the March/April issue of Bethesda Magazine.
