In an effort to stand out in the vanilla world of business casual, attorney and Flagler alumnus Ben Meredith, ‘07, began wearing bowties to work. Nearly a year later, he’s turned his personal style into a profitable business.

Meredith owns Starboard Clothing Co., selling more than 20 styles of bowties, with a new winter line that came out in late 2011.

Meredith says he was always a fan of dressing “preppy,” but also knew that as an attorney, he would have to wear more traditional suiting. And that’s where the bowties came in.

“I ran through my seven–tie collection pretty quickly and began looking for other options,” he said. “I decided, on a whim, to wear the sole bowtie I owned to work one Friday.”

To his surprise, he got a lot of compliments. Meredith said he was hooked and began buying more bowties, but he never really intended to start a business. He was really just looking for a way to stand out and still look professional.

“After looking at the construction of the ties and fabrics in person, I thought to myself, ‘Well I could do this,’ ” Meredith said.

He started making the ties for himself using an antique Singer sewing machine he found on Craigslist for $35. With a little help from his grandmother, Meredith taught himself to sew from reading about it online. He admits, though, that his first project wasn’t exactly his best work.

“It was not adjustable, and it was not very good, but it was a start,” he said.

As he got better at making bowties, he began wearing some of the ones he made, using gingham and other fabric that wasn’t widely available.

When he told a few people that he was making his own neckwear, friends started asking him to make bowties for them. After putting up a website to deal with the orders he was receiving, requests eventually came in from all over. He gradually turned his initial $70 investment into a gross profit of more than $10,000.

“It has brought me to a place I never expected to be,” he said.

Still, the popularity of his bowties doesn’t surprise him all that much.

“In a world where business casual is becoming the norm, more and more people are splitting the difference by wearing a bowtie with a sweater and jeans,” Meredith said. “It allows people to stand out, but to do so in a good way. People are embracing that.”

Read Ben Meredith’s blog, Bowties and Boat Shoes.

When Headline News (HLN) was looking for analysis on the Conrad Murray Trial, they called on attorney and policy advisor Michael C. Barnes, ’96. Murray, Michael Jackson’s personal physician, was accused and convicted of involuntary manslaughter when the pop star died of acute propofol intoxication under his care.

Because of his previous work in drug policy, Barnes was tapped by HLN to provide commentary on the infamous case after producers had seen some of his clips providing analysis on other issues.

“I started [out] doing radio interviews for clients. Then producers and bookers would contact me to talk on other topics,” Barnes said of his media analysis experience.

Prior to establishing his law firm — DCBA Law & Policy in Arlington, Va. — in 2004, Barnes served as confidential counsel in the White House Drug Policy Office, where he provided executive direction on policies aimed at reducing substance abuse. This experience combined with a law degree made him a perfect candidate to give analysis on the Conrad Murray Trial.

During the week — in a Los Angeles studio that CNN and HLN had created solely for the Murray case — he spent roughly four hours a day watching the trial via television feed and then, during breaks in the trial, would give analysis on what had just taken place.

“I approached it from a purely legal perspective and looked solely at the facts in the case,” he said. “In that regard, I was one of the lone voices saying during the analysis of this trial that the facts of the case did not show that Michael Jackson was necessarily an addict.”

Barnes said he thought the trial and testimonies did a good job of showing that Jackson was dependent on anxiety medication and that he needed better insomnia treatment.

“I wanted for the media coverage of the case to be consistent with the facts of the case and not with preconceived notions about the victim,” he said.

Barnes’ analysis proved to be popular. He was featured on HLN’s “Showbiz Tonight.” He also spent time at the CNN Washington, D.C., studio and flew up to New York to do a few programs including “Piers Morgan Tonight.”

With a bright future in televised analysis, Barnes says he would be happy to continue providing commentary for trials as long as they are covered based on the facts and not on the drama or intrigue associated with them.

“I want to focus on issues,” he said. “I want to focus on making a difference.”

Barnes graduated summa cum laude from Flagler with a B.A. in communication. He went on to La Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for his master’s degree and George Mason University School of Law, where he obtained his Juris Doctor degree.

What began as a concern for the safety of his family after a move to Costa Rica’s northern Pacific coast has turned into a successful security dog business for Flagler alumnus Brandon Richardson, ‘01.

Richardson, who had been visiting Costa Rica on surf trips since the 1990s, is the founder of Latigo K9 in Playa Guiones — a company that has placed dogs in homes throughout Central America and the U.S., and as far away as Kenya. The facility currently is training 20 dogs and has three full-time employees.

Latigo K9 uses German Shepherds, Dutch Shepherds and Belgian Malinois, all coming from the closed breeding system of a family-run Canadian company called Baden K9. These breeds are herding dogs, often used for police or military purposes.

The companionable, protective nature of the breeds make the dogs, if properly trained, an ideal security option for families, Richardson said. He views the animals he trains as part of the family.

“We do not train ‘attack dogs,’ ” he said. “While our dogs have the capacity to protect their owners, they are much more subtle and versatile than this.

“The truth is the dogs provide a lot of positive in this world. They bring safety to families and comfort to their owners. … In a world that is changing faster than most of us comprehend, the dogs remain a constant. They are there for us, no matter what we ask of them, just like family.”

It was his own family that prompted him to begin the company. Richardson, a husband and father of two, said he had always loved the people, the landscape and the natural beauty of Costa Rica. But adopting the country as his home meant giving up much of the security he had taken for granted in the United States.

“For me, personally, the tradeoff (in Costa Rica) is worth it,” Richardson said.

He purchased a puppy from a local dog trainer and after three years of working with the trainer, Richardson decided to begin his own security dog business.

Latigo K9’s growing reputation has also provided Richardson the opportunity to travel, from working with U.S. Army Military Police in Alaska to providing security training in Kenya.

After seven years practicing law in Seattle, Penny Fields, ‘88, made the career jump of a lifetime in 2011 when she was named the Peace Corps country director for Cambodia.

But it’s not as far of a stretch as you might think for Fields, who has been involved with the organization throughout her career. She joined the Peace Corps as a volunteer in Africa straight out of college, and later served as an associate country director in Niger and Poland, as well as a training director in Bangladesh.

“We like to say that Peace Corps is the organization that reaches that last mile,” she said. “I have been very, very blessed by my association with the Peace Corps and am so happy to be back.”

The Peace Corps program in Cambodia is just four years old, and it provides Fields and her coworkers several opportunities for development. Fields said their two main projects at present are teaching English and teacher training, in addition to a community health education project.

Founded in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, the Peace Corps was created to promote world peace and friendship. Currently there are more than 8,600 volunteers in 76 countries and more than 200,000 Americans have served in 139 countries.

As country director, Fields is responsible for all Peace Corps operations in Cambodia from program activities and training to financial management. She manages the Peace Corps’ relationship with the Cambodian government and America’s mission in the country.

“It is a very wide-ranging and diverse job that requires excellent management skills, vision and good relationship building abilities,” she said. “Public speaking and writing are also a large part of my duties.”

Fields said her goal is to take the program in Cambodia to the next level and to grow the Cambodian staff’s expertise in order to develop the best program in the world.

“I love Cambodia because it is such a beautiful and challenging place to work where one can really feel like we are making a difference,” she said. “Cambodia has a tragic history and as a result suffers from bone-crushing poverty. … Still, the people and the heritage are amazing.”

If you’ve seen an ESPN Film or spent a Sunday night catching up on MTV’s “True Life” series, chances are Andrew Armstrong Rogers, ’07, helped put it together. Rogers is post-production supervisor at Triple Threat TV, a Connecticut-based production company specializing in nonfiction entertainment.

Rogers moved to New York City after graduating from Flagler with a communication degree in the broadcast track. He completed internships at Engel Entertainment and worked for documentary filmmaker, Ric Burns.

In September 2007, he got an internship with Triple Threat TV – then located in Harlem — and was hired on full-time a month later.

The first project Rogers worked on at Triple Threat was a series of eight biographies including pieces on ‘N Sync, Justin Timberlake, The Mickey Mouse Club and Jack Black, among others. He was also put in charge of maintaining the company’s website — skills he attributes to the graphic design courses he took at Flagler.

As post-production supervisor for Triple Threat, Rogers puts in a lot of late nights. His responsibility is to “make sure that the technology doesn’t get in the way of creating.” This means that Rogers is in charge of finishing each project the company produces.

Take, for example, a documentary they produced called “Thumbs,” which aired on MTV. The film follows the texting lives and habits of six teens from across the country. It’s an investigative look at the elaborate world of teenage texters and the integral role mobile phones have come to play in day-to-day communication.

“Initially, we asked ourselves, ‘Do we make a documentary asking if it’s OK for these kids to be texting this much?’ ” he said. Instead, the team chose to highlight the teens getting ready for a marathon race to the 2010 LG National Texting Championship in New York City.

“We had a cool mix of characters,” Rogers said of the teens they chose. “They are all really good kids deep down, and the viewer finds a way to care about each one.”

During the National Texting Championship, Rogers’ job was to sit in a room and wait for all of the cameramen to bring him their footage, then he would dump the footage onto his computer, back it up and organize it. “With on-the-fly interviews like we were doing, it can produce hours and hours of tape,” he said.

Since “Thumbs,” the Triple Threat team has been working on an array of productions including “Catching Hell” for ESPN Films, “True Life: I’m Addicted To Caffeine” for MTV, “The Real Rocky” for ESPN Films, “Small Potatoes: Who Killed The USFL” for ESPN’s “30 for 30,” and “Right To Play” for ESPN Films.

When Rogers worked on “The Flintlock Disaster” for PBS, a documentary about the fateful flight taken by Marine Fighting Squadron VMF-422 during WWII in the Pacific Ocean, he discovered his favorite part of working in filmmaking.

“The best part is getting a hold of all of this material – never before seen photos and film – and digitizing it,” Rogers said. “A lot of this material has never been backed up and is deteriorating every day. I get to help maintain memories.”

The Johnston family’s painful and transformative journey in 2008 began on the soccer field when Brennan Johnston fell and fractured his left femur.

The 4-year-old son of Flagler alumnus Brian Johnston spent more than two weeks in the hospital where he underwent five surgeries, three blood transfusions and several other treatments in a grueling and agonizing experience for the entire family. Yet, after all of that, doctors were still forced to amputate the boy’s leg.

Little did they know, the loss of Brennan’s leg would soon turn in to the birth of a new endeavor — one to help the Johnstons heal and to help other families do the same.

It started when Brennan was being fitted for his prosthetic leg and his therapist told him about a camp for amputees. Brennan lit up with excitement and told his dad he must go.

“I said, ‘Sure, absolutely tear it up,’ but then the therapist told us we have to wait three years because he has to be 8 to go … Brennan just sat there, deflating,” Johnston said. “I asked, ‘What do you do for younger kids?’ and their response was, ‘We tried it once and it really didn’t work … So bummer.’ ”

But Johnston, who lives in Atlanta, where he founded EVOLUTIONS total wellness center, used this obstacle as a way to transform their struggles into something worthwhile. Johnston’s idea for AMPUCAMP was ignited.

On the way home from the therapist, Johnston thought of something a character said from “Robots,” Brennan’s favorite movie.

“I asked him if he remembered that Bigweld said, ‘See a need, Fill a need,’ ” Johnston recalled. “I don’t care if you’re 2 or 102, we’ll make our own camp, and everyone can come.”

AMPUCAMP’s first event was held in in Atlanta in August 2009. The initial plan was to host four events throughout the year to bring amputees and their loved ones together. The day usually consists of a cookout, sporting events and professional counseling. Johnston said the events are mentor-mentee situations with amputees ranging from 5 to 68 years old.

AMPUCAMP enables amputees to reignite their passion for life and for all of the activities they loved to do before the procedure. Johnston said it helps people to face and relieve themselves of frustration and let go of questions like, “Why me?” or “Why would God let this happen?”

“Hopefully through the environment we provide, people will have the opportunity to explore those feelings,” he said. “You get people pulled back in, they re-engage and they continue to improve and progress from that point forward.”

And now Johnston’s dream is to expand outside of the Atlanta area.

“The goal is to AMPUCAMP the globe — basically to create an opportunity in a box, to duplicate the systems in the program,” he said.
The events also help parents, including Johnston, to establish a sense of peace about their child.

“It gives us chance to cut the umbilical cord from the parent,” Johnston said. “It was a lot tougher for me to let it go… my son was like, ‘I just want to run; I just want to play. Stop asking me about my leg.’ ”

For more, go to http://ampucamp.org.

Photo by Zach Thomas, '00

Abrams lettered in basketball at Flagler from 1976-80. He still holds the college’s record for most free throws attempted in a game with 19 vs. Saint Leo College in 1978. Abrams is currently the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Flagler College Alumni Association.

Sherri Anthony, ‘82 – Women’s Basketball & Softball

Anthony was a four-year starting point guard at Flagler from 1978-82. She helped lead the Saints to an 18-7 record and the AIAW State Title as a freshman. Flagler went on to play in the regional tournament, representing all the schools in Florida. As a senior, Anthony was selected as the team’s most valuable player. She still holds the career record for assists at Flagler with 368 and is 11th on the all-time scoring list with 751 points. Anthony has coached girls’ basketball at Allen D. Nease High School for the past 25 years.

Photo by Zach Thomas, '00

The team won the NAIA National Championship, the first of two titles. Gordon Jones was the singles champion, and he teamed with Jim Twigg to win the doubles title.

Three alumni awarded for achievements and contributions

Photo by Zach Thomas, '00

Stewart began working at Flagler College in 1980 and was the director of Athletics from 1982 to 1993. He helped form the Florida Sun Conference and served as commissioner from 1993 to 2006. In 1993, he was appointed dean of Student Services and has received the Administrator of the Year award four times.

Professional Achievement Award – Dr. Thomas Kelleher, ‘93

Kelleher serves as associate professor and chair of the School of Communications at the University of Hawaii. He published “Public Relations Online: Lasting Concepts for Changing Media” in 2006 and has been published in 10 scholarly journals.

Community Service Award – William “Bill” Walter, ‘84

Walter is the owner of St. Augustine Center for Living, a care facility and day treatment program for developmentally disabled adults. Over the past two years, he helped raised thousands of dollars for Relay for Life, and he is funding a bedroom at the Bailey Family Center for Caring for the terminally ill.

• Hugh Shaw Memorial Surf Contest
• Athletics Hall of Fame Ceremony and Dinner
• Alumni Awards Luncheon
• Markland Reception
• Alumni Art Show
• Public Administration Alumni Picnic

After graduating from Flagler in 1984, Dvorak spent more than two decades working corporate jobs in sales and marketing for technology companies. He loved the stability, but it wasn’t his passion.

“It was scary to cut the chord,” Dvorak said of quitting his corporate position at IBM. “But you have to suit up and show up and make it happen.”

Dvorak’s true passion is public speaking and improvisational comedy. He had spent years honing these hobbies – attending the prestigious Second City, a sketch comedy and improv theatre and training center in Chicago – as well as giving hundreds of pro bono motivational speeches at local clubs, organizations and businesses.

While Dvorak was at Second City, he developed an alter ego of sorts named Dr. Earnest Carpediem – a spoof on life coach and motivational speaker Anthony Robbins. The character was a hit among his fellow improv actors and audiences. When Dvorak decided to become a professional motivational speaker, he thought his Carpediem persona was a great way to add a little humor.

Dressed in a blue button-down shirt, black slacks, a bowtie, red suspenders – with plenty of flair – ­and nerdy glasses, Dr. Earnest Carpediem doesn’t seem like the kind of guy a Fortune 500 company would hire to be their keynote speaker. Yet everyone from Marriott Hotels & Resorts to Merrill Lynch to Swissport Cargo Services has extended the invite.

Dvorak has traveled around the globe to places like China, South Africa, Malaysia, Turkey and Russia to deliver his comedic, creative and motivational message. Dvorak’s audience ranges from dozens to thousands, and he’s run the gamut from pest control operators to orthodontists to investment bankers. He even had a recent gig at the World Adult Kickball Association.

Dvorak says the length of keynote speeches can be a challenge.

“You’re up there in front of all of these people and you’ve got to keep them entertained and not lose the vibe,” he said.

Over the past nine years as a professional speaker, Dvorak has offered his clients a list of programs like “Mega Motivation With A Twist,” “Laughter is the Best Medicine,” “The Art of Being Creative” and “Selling Up in Tough Times.” One of his favorite phrases is, “The power of laughter and humor can bring true employee and customer loyalty.”

Dvorak says it was the special attention he received at Flagler that led him to turn his hobby into a career.

“There was always that little extra TLC,” he said.

In fact, when Dvorak came to visit Flagler College in the early 1980s from his native Chicago, there was no such thing as a sales degree. Actually, only a few colleges or universities in the entire country offered one. During Dvorak’s admissions interview, the counselor suggested that he do an independent study and design his own major. The mixture — a hodgepodge of acting classes, public speaking, and sales and marketing — worked.

But he’s quick to recall his favorite professor, Theatre Arts Department Chair Phyllis Gibbs’s sound advice: “She would always tell us this great Shakespeare quote, ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’ ”

For more, go to www.dougdvorak.com.

Fueled by nature and tinged by oddity, Brandon Nastanski’s installation art and sculptures provide a glimpse into the mind of this 2000 grad.

Nastanski created his best-known installation art while exploring Boston’s 527-acre Franklin Park. Walking his dog took him to the park several times a day, where he started collecting discarded items. As a refuge for his collection, Nastanski built a lean-to against a rock outcropping, using sticks and twine he found in the park. He hung a picture of nature’s original ombudsman, Henry David Thoreau, at the entrance and dubbed his creation the “Unofficial Franklin Park Research Outpost.”

“Unofficial” because there was no map to find your way — at first, visitors just happened upon it accidentally — and he didn’t seek permission from the Boston Parks and Recreation Department to build the structure. Spurning the officials landed Nastanski and his outpost on the pages of The Boston Globe and local alt weekly The Boston Phoenix. In an editorial, The Globe celebrated the project, while wagging a finger at Nastanski’s bypass of the permits process.

Permit squabbles aside, Nastanski used the structure to house the growing collection of artifacts he’d found wandering Franklin Park: a rusted shopping cart, old bottles, tea tins, candles, a raccoon skull, religious statues and a keyboard, among other items. Nastanski has almost created an altar to the park itself — a form he’s familiar with — as he admits to a history of “almost obsessively” collecting things.

“I’ve always displayed these things around my home, toeing a fine line between a natural-history-type display slash altar-type display,” he said.

As part of his MFA work from the prestigious Parsons Fine Arts in New York City, Nastanski created a miniature speakeasy that was featured in the 2008 Pulse Contemporary Art Fair in New York City. Visitors entered the tiny wood cabin through a trick bookshelf. Inside, Nastanski served drinks amid found furniture and other curiosities.

“Brandon Nastanski’s speakeasy … reminds us of the at-first cozy, then-frankly-spooky cabin in which Jeffery Euginides’s hermaphrodite protagonist realized she was more than just a little girl in Middlesex,” New York Magazine remarked in its write-up of the work, before celebrating the artist’s eccentric sense of humor by adding, “Or is that just us?”

“Getting the public in is a big part of my installations, [especially in] a public piece like that,” Nastanski said.

An assignment from a Parsons professor to create an art piece involving a shelf, liquid and a jar helped him realize the connection between his collecting past and his artistic future.

“A friend pointed out that this should be the easiest project for me,” he said. “I had these things all over my house. Duh.” From there, Natanski began to marry his personal life with his art life, embracing things he’d previously considered outside the realm of his artistic practice.

During his stay in Boston, Nastanski also helped form Esprit de Corps, an art collective dedicated to providing open access to the art world. The group has exhibited many shows in its own basement residence in Jamaica Plains, along with hosting or curating shows at other galleries.

Now living in Richmond, Va., Nastanski has returned to some of the pieces he began at Flagler, working with plaster to create body casts, which he’s now melding with his love of natural history by attempting to create sculptures of “sort of animal-human hybrids.” Whatever work is yet to come, you can be assured it will be equals parts nature, spook and art.

Natanski says his art in and of the Boston woods is still standing more than two years later. The “Unofficial Franklin Park Research Outpost” has withstood the brunt of two northeast winters in its attempt to reach out to the public and bring them more into the world of art.

“I didn’t have permission to do this, but the area was very underused,” Nastanski said. “I like to think that I bettered the space — I cleaned up tons of trash and made a safer place and a destination in the park.”

He recently visited it and said community has helped to maintain the piece.)

In Richmond, e is also working on a project similar to Franklin Park called, “The Unofficial Chimborazo Museum of Curiosities.” You can view his work at: www.brandonnastanski.com.

Of all the news coming out of predominantly Muslim countries, many of the women living there wish the Western media spoke more about women who are fighting against repression and less about the abuses they endure.

Alumna Cassandra Schaffa, ’05, found herself helping spread that very message after she answered an ad on Craigslist last year. Schaffa was in her last year of her master’s degree in cinema studies at New York University when she stumbled upon an ad for an internship at a unique film festival.

Women’s Voices Now was conceived as a way to empower women in the Muslim world by putting cameras in their hand. It evolved to include stories of Muslim women living as minorities around the world and women of all faiths living in predominantly Muslim countries.

Schaffa, a communication and Spanish major, says the idea was simple: “If you give somebody who is facing an issue a camera, then they can highlight their own circumstance. They are being given a voice and being empowered.”

Over the course of 14 months, Schaffa, along with the other staff members, reviewed submissions, secured judges and promoted the fledgling film festival. But there was another aspect that needed special attention.

Because she had literally no personal experience with Islam, and none of the other women working at Women’s Voices Now were Muslim, Schaffa relied heavily on Muslim women to give them advice for the festival. What she heard intrigued her. These women didn’t want sympathy or pity. In fact, they wanted to stay away from a lot of what Western media had been reporting; they simply wanted to tell the world what great things they were doing to help themselves. They wanted a voice.

“What we heard was, ‘Yes, there are problems in these countries. But there are so many women who are empowered, so many women who are making changes within our countries.’ ”

Schaffa said they were able to tell those stories without even trying to steer the submissions in that direction. “We were very happy … that we weren’t getting the same information that was being provided on the traditional news sources, ” she said.

One of the more than 200 stories told through submissions to the festival was a 25-minute documentary of a female prosecutor in Afghanistan who was fighting for the rights of Muslim women. The word “women” is misleading, though.

One of the “women” she helped defend was a 9-year-old girl who had been married off by her father and beaten and burned by her husband for simply trying to sleep. It won first place in the documentary category.

Schaffa says people were shocked – not necessarily over the treatment of the women and girls highlighted in the film, because that was anticipated – but because they didn’t know you could make movies in Afghanistan, let alone that there were female prosecutors who fight for women’s rights.

And it wasn’t just the stories of women told in the films that influenced Schaffa. “What shocked me … was in terms of communication with people in these countries,” she said. “We’ve become more globally connected in the past 10 years or so. I never realized how much.”

Schaffa said she received emails from all over the world thanking her and Women’s Voices Now for their work with the festival. “[I remember thinking] there’s no way we’re going to reach that far into those countries,” she said.

Women’s Voices Now is continuing its work making sure these voices and stories are heard. They embarked on a university tour, booking lectures and screenings at American universities and even in Jordan and Qatar. Their goal is to give the films a longer shelf life.

“It would have been a waste to collect all these films and then not get them out there,” Schaffa said.

Some of the films are having larger impacts than simply story telling. One of the student films, called “Breast Cancer in Qatar – Overcoming Cultural Boundaries,” deals with healthcare in a country where women’s body parts are never talked about. “If a woman talks about a problem with her breasts, it’s taboo,” Schaffa said. “She’s suppose to be covered up.”

And so women stay in the dark about medical conditions, often to their detriment. But the film highlights an effort to raise awareness. Women are gradually becoming more comfortable discussing their health with doctors, and it’s becoming less embarrassing for women to seek treatment.

Schaffa, who has since moved on to look for more permanent work, says that film characterizes her goal for Women’s Voices Now.

“[The women are telling] the world their circumstance, but they’re also being given a voice,” she said.