November is National Scholarship Month
Atlanta
Boston
Tempe
This month we celebrate the transformative impact of scholarships and the incredible individuals they support. We have devoted this milestone year—the program’s 40th—to celebrating Flinn Scholar alumni: a year-long art exhibition at the Flinn Foundation, a resurgence of our Flinn Talks podcast featuring an Alumni Hour series, highlighting your journeys on a more regular basis through this newsletter, and reconnecting through regional gatherings. We are grateful to have you in this Flinn Scholar community!
Last Call to RSVP for the Alumni Gathering
Join us in celebrating 40 years of the Flinn Scholars community at our alumni gathering from 3-6 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 21 at the Flinn Foundation. Come reconnect, reminisce, and raise a toast to the next 40 years. Please RSVP by Dec. 12.
Reminder: November Alumni Hour to spotlight 1993 Scholar Eric Jackson, Ph.D.
4–5 p.m., Monday, Nov. 17 (Arizona time)
What happens when a future NASA scientist rethinks his trajectory and ends up decoding the mysteries of human language instead?
Next week, we’ll be sitting down with Eric Jackson, a Flinn Scholar whose career took him from NASA internships and Russian research labs to more than a decade living and working among rural communities in China.
We’ll talk about how a single summer abroad reshaped his path, what linguists actually do, and what Eric’s years in China reveal about communication, culture, and connection.
Want to check out previous sessions? Watch them on our YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on Spotify/Apple.
Alumni Voices
Ingrid Burger, M.D., Ph.D.
Class of 1994
Q: Will you share a little about your current role and what excites you most about your work?
I am a radiologist and spent the first 12 years of my career working at Kaiser hospital in Los Angeles, where I was the chief of the ultrasound section and assistant program director for the radiologist residency program. I love my work and feel lucky to have found a specialty in medicine that suits my personality. I recently transitioned to a new teleradiology job which allows me to practice from anywhere in the world, so I recently moved to Italy. My 30-year love affair with Italy began my sophomore year in college when the Flinn Scholarship allowed me to spend a summer/semester studying in Siena and Florence. The dream of one day living in Italy has been simmering on the back burner for a few decades and recently things fell into place in my life to allow this to happen. So, the travel that the Flinn Scholarship allowed had a big impact on the course of my life.
Q: Is there a project, achievement, or experience you’re especially proud of?
One of my passions is playing the violin and I am an avid chamber musician. For three years, I was the president of a 100-person adult chamber music workshop in southern California. During our 2023 workshop we had an outbreak of COVID, and I was in charge of managing that situation. It was stressful, confusing, and hard, but with the help of my fellow musicians and some life experience, I was able to make decisions and create an environment where people felt safe. I got so many compliments from workshop participants on my leadership during that stressful week. It made me feel great!
Q: Looking back, what’s one lesson from your time as a Flinn Scholar that has stayed with you?
Stereotypes of other countries and cultures are an illusion. Stereotypes are easy and lazy and prevent you from seeing the truth. If you want a clearer understanding of a particular culture outside your own, go there. Go there, talk to the people, eat the food, breathe the air, see the sights. Make your own assessments; tune out of social media, it has a low signal-to-noise ratio. Travel makes you softer, stronger, more compassionate, and closer to the understanding that most people want the same fundamental things in life. This is a good path to peace.
Q: What impact do you hope to make in your field or community in the coming years?
I’m grateful to have a service-oriented profession. As a radiologist, I get to help figure out what is wrong with people when they come to the emergency department, which gives me a lot of work satisfaction. Beyond that, I would like to create a workshop/retreat space somewhere in the Italian countryside where people can come for a week and connect with nature and engage in making music, yoga/meditation, and hiking/gardening. Spaces like this offer people the chance to rest, detox, dream, delight, and redirect.
Q: What book, podcast, or piece of media has changed how you think in the last year?
I expect to be going through menopause sometime in the next five years and I am really curious to learn more about this transition. I’ve enjoyed exploring articles/podcasts by Dr. Mary Claire Haver, particularly an interview she did with Dr. Andrew Huberman, easily found online. The female doctors of my generation are leading the discussion around health issues that arise during and after menopause, and offering new research and treatments for symptom management so that women can thrive during the last 30 years of their lives.
December Newsletter
The next newsletter will be dedicated to Flinn’s first president and CEO John Murphy and his legacy. If you were impacted by John and want to share your story, we encourage you to complete this remembrance form.