Annual Soup & Hope speaker series to kick off Jan. 23

The 18th annual Soup & Hope speaker series returns to Sage Chapel on Jan. 23, spotlighting six Cornell staff, faculty and student storytellers who will share their experiences overcoming life's challenges while attendees enjoy a free meal of soup and bread.

The series is open to the public; no registration is needed. The six talks will take place Thursdays through March 27, from noon to 1 p.m.

"Cornell is a big campus, and Soup & Hope provides opportunity for us to come together to hear inspiring stories from amazing Cornellians who serve in different roles, who represent different cultures and communities and who have vastly different life experiences," said Joel Harter, director of the Office of Spirituality and Meaning-Making, a co-sponsor of the series, and Cornell United Religious Work.

"The gathering and the storytelling help us connect with one another and our shared humanity," Harter said, "and hopefully hearing these stories will inspire all of us to make time to connect more with each other as human beings."

This year's stories come from a diverse group of people whose life experiences include navigating college with a disability; obtaining a master's degree after incarceration; climbing the professional ladder as a Haitian immigrant; empowering indigenous coffee bean farmers of Guatemala; relocating for a job during a global pandemic; and returning from war to study how outdoor recreation promotes recovery among combat-wounded veterans.

One of the speakers is Dannemart Pierre, the Peggy J. Koenig '78 Associate Dean of Students for Student Empowerment, director of first-generation and low-income student support, and a Ph.D. candidate at Azusa Pacific University. She studies the work of historians and statisticians to reveal how slave codes socially marginalized Black women and exposed them to medical practices that continue to negatively impact their experiences today.

Pierre will share her experience of feeling like a subject of her own research this summer while at a local hospital. She was told that she needed a procedure that ultimately did not work for her, which made her feel like a statistic.

Pierre's talk will focus on re-telling stories we have been told, in new ways.

"I wish I had listened to my gut and not had the procedure," Pierre said. "I hope my talk will inspire people to develop the imagination and the freedom to imagine a different outcome for themselves than the one that has been imagined for them by society."

The full series:

• Jan. 23: Conan Gillis '21, doctoral student in mathematics;
• Jan. 30: Thomas Jones '24, MILR, the fair practice employment specialist in the Office of Human Resources;
• Feb. 13: Dannemart Pierre, the Peggy J. Koenig '78 Associate Dean of Students for Student Empowerment in the Division of Student and Campus Life;
• Feb. 27: Martina Pablo Pablo '26, a hotel administration major in the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration;
• March 13: Sarah Janusz, assistant director and disability access consultant within Student Disability Services; and
• March 27: Keith Tidball, Ph.D. '12, senior extension associate in Cornell Cooperative Extension.

Soup, provided by Cornell Catering, is available starting at noon; talks begin at 12:15 p.m. and each event concludes around 12:45 p.m. While the series is held in Sage Chapel, the events are not affiliated with a religious organization.

The Soup & Hope series is co-sponsored by the Office of Spirituality and Meaning-Making, Human Resources, Cornell Health and Cornell Catering.

Laura Gallup is a communications lead in Student and Campus Life.

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