Steven Saum
- Executive Director of Strategic Communications and Content, Saint Mary's College
Czech Republic, Ukraine, United States
Covers:
Ukraine, Czech Republic, Writers, Current Events, Politics, Environment, Technology
Storycatcher. RPCV 🇺🇦. Find me at @stmarysca and @swamiriver.bsky.social | Consular Officer, 🇨🇿 Czech Honorary Consulate Gen. in SF
Articles by Steven Saum
Gaels Brave in Defeat in Semifinals Showdown, Which Brings 2024-25 Men’s Rugby Season to an End
Hoping to return to defend their national championship crown, the Gaels took to the rugby pitch in Berkeley on Saturday to face archrival Cal in the Collegiate Rugby National Semifinals. The Golden Bears got out in front early, and Saint Mary’s fought hard to retake the lead. But on this day it was not to be: The match went to Cal, 38–27. Saint Mary’s and Cal came into the match ranked the top two teams in the west by Goff Rugby Report, with the Gaels at No. 5 and the Bears at No. 4.
Easy to Break, Yet Impossible to Destroy, by Steven Boyd Saum (Ukraine 1994-96)
It began like this: Early the morning of February 24, Ukraine — a free and independent nation — became the victim of an unprovoked war of aggression launched by Vladimir Putin, who ordered tens of thousands of Russian troops to invade. Missiles and shells rained down on cities across the country. Apartment buildings and hospitals were hit. Civilians were terrorized and killed, while many thousands huddled in bomb shelters and metro stations.
In Their Own Words: Miyako Tanaka-Oulevey MA ’95 on Life as an Olympian, Sports Psychologist, TV Commentator, and More
In Their Own Words is a series in which we introduce you to the Gaels you need to meet—students, alums, faculty, and staff—and let them tell their stories, in their own words. Meet Miyako Tanaka-Oulevey MA ’95, a medal-winning Olympian from Japan. Following her career as an athlete in global competitions, she embarked on a career as a sports psychologist that has led her to work with business leaders and athletes.
Olympians over the Decades: the Gaels Who Have Competed in the World’s Foremost Sports Competition
The 2024 Paris Olympics are officially underway, and maybe you’ve heard: Gaels are in the global spotlight. Three former Saint Mary’s basketball players —Patty Mills, Matthew Dellavedova, and Jock Landale—make up a fourth of the Australian Boomers’ twelve man roster. Plus, two former SMC assistant coaches, Adam Caporn and David Patrick, will return for their second consecutive Olympics with the Boomers. In Tokyo in 2021, the Boomers brought home the bronze.
Gaels Win Rugby National Championship
Meet the new national champions in men’s rugby: the Saint Mary’s Gaels. SMC Men’s Rugby surged out to an early lead and held tough to the end to defeat Navy 26–22 to win the Men’s Rugby Division 1A National Championship in Houston on Saturday evening. It was an epic contest at Sabercats Stadium that pitted two rugby powerhouses in this combat sport. The Gaels displayed their signature expansive and unpredictable style of play, capping what has been a stellar season.
Here’s How You Can Get Involved with Events Marking Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April
April 2024 marks the official 23rd anniversary of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
The Gaels Are No. 18 in the Country
After a commanding win over Pepperdine last week, the Gaels are now ranked No. 18 in the country by both AP and the USA Today Coaches polls. The Gaels have not lost a conference game this season, and have won 13 in a row overall. Dig into basketball stats, and Saint Mary’s continues to hold the No. 15 spot in the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) rankings.
Saint Mary’s Thought Leaders in 2023: Expert Insight on Subjects Ranging from Politics to Pandas, from Poetry to Environmental Justice
Saint Mary’s educators are well known for bringing their research and scholarship to the classroom, creating a vibrant learning community for undergraduates and graduate students alike. In 2023, SMC faculty and leaders were also tapped by numerous news outlets and publications for their expertise and creative work. Here are some highlights from the past year from more than a dozen Saint Mary’s scholars.
Saint Mary’s in the News: Highlights from 2023
The year 2023 got off to a roaring start for the Saint Mary’s community: with the Men’s Basketball team ranked nationally, Coach Randy Bennett racking up his 500th win, and the team returning to do battle in the NCAA Tournament in March. Before the year was out, SMC was recognized for the first time as a Fulbright Hispanic-Serving Institute Leader, with College faculty also securing landmark grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support their teaching and research.
Inspired, Engaged, Transformed: The Top Stories from 2023
Saint Mary’s 160th year was one of breaking ground—on the court, in the classroom, and out in the world. by Hayden Royster, Mike Janes, and Steven Boyd Saum | December 15, 2023 In the summer of 1863, on a windswept and foggy plot of land south of San Francisco, Saint Mary’s College opened its doors for the first time.
Saint Mary’s Celebrates Latinx Heritage Month 2023
Here at Saint Mary’s, we’re in the midst of celebrating Latinx Heritage Month. Held each year from September 15 to October 15, this is an opportunity to honor the rich cultures, histories, and invaluable contributions of Latin American and Hispanic individuals in the United States. Saint Mary’s is proud to have earned recognition as a Hispanic Serving Institution—and, just this month, to have once again earned recognition as a First-gen Forward college within the First Scholars Network.
An Accidental Stumble
Taking Stock of two decades of work by Tom Bissell. In 2022, Peace Corps Writers recognized him as the Writer of the Year. By Steven Boyd Saum Tom Bissell photo courtesy Penguin Random House It was at the Downtown Bookfest in Los Angeles that I met Tom Bissell half a dozen years ago.
Be Good, Be Kind, and Be Lucky - National Peace Corps Association
Parting advice from a writer and friend By Steven Boyd Saum Almost three decades ago, before I left California to begin serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, my friend Clark Blaise passed along the phone number for a fellow writer he knew in Kyiv. Yaroslav Stelmakh was the first Ukrainian to receive a fellowship to attend the International Writing Program at Iowa — a program that Clark directed and, since 1967, has connected well-established writers from around the globe.
Unfinished Business: From the Editor of WorldView Magazine
Hopeful work, as Volunteers return to serve alongside communities overseas. And crucial work to ensure Ukraine survives. By Steven Boyd Saum Illustration by Anna Ivanenko For so much of the Peace Corps community, the months since March have been brimming with optimism, bringing news of Volunteers returning to service in countries and communities across the globe. In Africa, they’ve returned to countries including Zambia and Madagascar, Ghana and The Gambia, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
Ten Hidden Heroes
A conversation with author Mark K. Shriver By Steven Boyd Saum Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Mark K. Shriver teamed up with illustrator Laura Watson on 10 Hidden Heroes, published by Loyola Press, which aims to help children develop counting skills while learning ways to make the world a better place. It shows how acts of kindness and generosity can be found all around us.
Why Does Service Matter?
From Peace Corps to AmeriCorps to envisioning a quantum leap: 1 million people in the U.S. serving every year — and changing the culture and ethos of service. So how do we get there? A conversation with Mark Gearan and Keri Lowry. By Steven Boyd Saum In 2017, the U.S. government undertook the first-ever comprehensive and holistic review of all forms of service to the nation, and Congress wrote into law the creation of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service.
From the Editor: Honoring Your Stories
Sixty years of Peace Corps. Volunteers returning to service. And a first for this magazine. Illustration by Tim O’Brien By Steven Boyd Saum A year ago the cover of WorldView bore the image of a dove encaged by a COVID-like molecule and asked: “What’s the role of Peace Corps now?” It’s a question we’re still seeking to answer. There were then, as now, no Volunteers in the field — though staff in posts across the globe were sustaining connections with communities.
Worldview Summer 2021
WorldView app A Unique Audience Advertisers: Reach the Peace Corps community throughout the United States — and around the world. Find out more how to advertise with us: Download our 2021 Media Kit The quarterly print edition of the award-winning WorldView magazine reaches more than 70,000 readers. The magazine is available free of charge to more than 7,000 Peace Corps Volunteers evacuated in 2020 — and to thousands more Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and staff.
Spring-Summer 2022
WorldView app A Unique Audience Advertisers: Reach the Peace Corps community throughout the United States — and around the world. Find out more about how to advertise with us: Download our 2022 Media Kit The quarterly print edition of the award-winning WorldView magazine reaches more than 70,000 readers. The magazine is available free of charge to more than 7,000 Peace Corps Volunteers evacuated in 2020 — and to thousands more Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and staff.
Peace Corps Response: An anniversary. A pandemic. A historic moment for this program launched a quarter century ago.
Short-term, high-impact. Now marking 25 years since its founding. By Steven Boyd Saum Photo by Christian Farnsworth A quarter century ago, at a midsummer White House Rose Garden ceremony attended by President Bill Clinton and Sargent Shriver, first director of the Peace Corps, a new type of Peace Corps service was announced to the world: Crisis Corps.
From the Editor: Crisis and Response
Beginnings. Good sense. And the second time in history that Peace Corps Volunteers have been deployed in the United States. By Steven Boyd Saum Photo from 1994: A Rwandan refugee camp in eastern Zaire. Photo courtesy CDC Here’s an instructive but heart-wrenching place to start, if we want to tell the big story at the center of this edition of WorldView. It’s one of crisis and response: April 1994. A plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi is shot down over Kigali.
Now Is the Time: From the Editor of WorldView Magazine
An invitation to listen, learn — and roll up our sleeves. By Steven Boyd Saum Let’s start with a story about an invitation. There’s that historic letter from JFK below, sent to the first would-be Volunteers. And let me tell you about Laurel Hunt, a recent engineering grad from University of Minnesota, and the years of Peace Corps service she has yet to undertake in Peru, working with a community on health and sanitation. Return to March 2020: “Friday the 13th was my last day at work,” Hunt writes.
Peace in the Time of COVID
If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that approaching this endeavor with a sense of solidarity and humility and commitment is a matter of life and death. By Steven Boyd Saum Cover illustration by Ellen Weinstein This is not the magazine we wanted to publish. How could it be? Instead of marking six decades of Peace Corps in pageantry and scrappy DIY inventiveness, we find ourselves in an existential moment.
WorldView Magazine
JFK at the Union: The Impromptu Campaign Speech that Launched the Peace Corps Well after midnight on October 14, 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy arrived at the steps of the Michigan Union. Origin story: The Peace Corps begins here. By James Tobin Making Our Mark President’s Letter: 2020 has been a year unlike any other. Now is a time to commit to building a legacy of inclusive peace. By Glenn Blumhorst What Guides Us? Equality and justice. Empathy and compassion.
Pandemic Lessons
On the nature of a virus. On community. And on systems — how they function and how they break. By Steven Boyd Saum Illustration by Maria Carluccio The toll of the COVID-19 pandemic hit a sobering milestone in the United States last spring when we marked the death of 100,000 Americans. By September, that number had doubled. The year 2020 concluded with some 350,000 dead in the United States alone, and 1.82 million lives lost worldwide.
WorldView Magazine Summer 2020
From the Editor: Unfinished Business The evacuation of Peace Corps Volunteers serving around the globe is unprecedented. So is the way our nation is coming to terms with the truth that Black Lives Matter. By Steven Boyd Saum Read story Pandemic has changed our community forever. Another disease we must fight: racism itself. By Glenn Blumhorst Read story What Guides Us Equality and justice. Empathy and compassion. Join National Peace Corps Association and support work guided by Peace Corps values.
From the Editor: This Time
Peace Corps teaches us a new way to think about time. Pandemic does, too. So what do we do with this? By Steven Boyd Saum ACROSS THE DECADES and countries and communities where tens of thousands of Peace Corps Volunteers have served, there are a few things we share. One: a new grasp of time.
Sorrow and Gratitude: Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg
She was committed to justice and equality. And a Peace Corps Volunteer helped the world see her in a new way.
WorldView Magazine
From the Editor: Unfinished Business The evacuation of Peace Corps Volunteers serving around the globe is unprecedented. So is the way our nation is coming to terms with the truth that Black Lives Matter. By Steven Boyd Saum Read story Pandemic has changed our community forever. Another disease we must fight: racism itself. By Glenn Blumhorst Read story What Guides Us Equality and justice. Empathy and compassion. Join National Peace Corps Association and support work guided by Peace Corps values.
From the Editor: Unfinished Business
The evacuation of Peace Corps Volunteers serving around the globe is unprecedented. So is the way our nation is coming to terms with the truth that Black Lives Matter. By Steven Boyd Saum For most Peace Corps Volunteers, the news broke on the Ides of March: due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, every single one of them would be coming home. In its 59-year history, Peace Corps had never undertaken a global evacuation. But then, in so many ways, these are unprecedented times.
2020 Vision - Techer
Caltech alumni at JPL have starring roles in the dramatic three-act play of the Mars 2020 mission: Send a rover to the surface of the Red Planet, collect samples, and bring them back to Earth. Success could advance our understanding of the planet’s history—and its potential for future human exploration.
The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!
Thirty years on: Thanksgiving memories of turkey, football, and revolutions that changed the world. Thanksgiving 1989 was a cold one in the Midwest: a couple feet of snow blanketed the fields and forests of Chicagoland. It was a year that we came home—all five of us kids—to the big white house where my family had moved the year I went away to college. We came with significant others in tow for the Thanksgiving inspection.
Santa Clara Magazine - SCM Web Only
The first moment of dialogue in the new book by writer Khaled Hosseini ’88 comes near the end of the tale. It is a mother’s voice, remembered by father to son: “Oh, but if they saw, my darling Even half of what you have. If they only saw. They would say kinder things, surely.” The child his three years old, sleeping. The mother is dead.
Santa Clara Magazine - SCM Story
A confession: I have never had much sympathy for those who don’t vote, so long as their names are on the rolls and it’s just a matter of showing up on Election Day or getting that ballot in the mail. But last September I was in Belarus to observe the country’s parliamentary elections. Belarus has justifiably earned a reputation as Europe’s last dictatorship: The same president, Alexander Lukashenka, has ruled since 1994.
The Castle
It goes without saying that when you manage one of the world’s leading hotels and are hosting the Group of Seven — leaders of the world’s most powerful industrialized democracies, accounting for half the global economy — you better be prepared for contingencies big and small. Say you’re in the Bavarian Alps and the summit occurs during the NBA finals and the president of the United States wants to catch the 2 a.m. (local time) broadcast of game two and have a snack — chips, salsa, guacamole.
Perpetually Awaiting A Rebirth of Wonder
Steven Boyd Saum I. In which the mobile ballot box is carried to the communal apartment The Molotov cocktail hit the front door of Kherson School No. 56 in the early morning hours of Ukraine’s Election Day, on the last Sunday in May, 2014. Three polling places were inside. The entryway to the building was charred, but no one was hurt, and the polling places opened on time.
Perpetually Awaiting A Rebirth of Wonder
I. In which the mobile ballot box is carried to the communal apartment The Molotov cocktail hit the front door of Kherson School No. 56 in the early morning hours of Ukraine’s Election Day, on the last Sunday in May, 2014. Three polling places were inside. The entryway to the building was charred, but no one was hurt, and the polling places opened on time.
Center of the Storm
The first Saturday in March, Natalia Popovych, ’03 MS Mass Communications, spent the day on the phone. The head of PRP Group in Ukraine, a leading public relations firm, she was calling contacts about collaborating on an urgent new venture. It would take incredible time and energy. Work would be on a volunteer basis. Why do it? To take a stand on the front lines of democracy.
Accidents Will Happen: Atomic Disaster and the Half-Life of Truth
1. Day of Health It’s a ravishing Tuesday morning in May, one of those lengthening days in the sweet rush toward summer when all things seem possible. The sun is warming the soil, the trees are blossoming and the air is humming. We abandon our classroom duties and head for the woods.
Accidents Will Happen
It’s a ravishing Tuesday morning in May, one of those lengthening days in the sweet rush toward summer when all things seem possible. 1. Day of Health It’s a ravishing Tuesday morning in May, one of those lengthening days in the sweet rush toward summer when all things seem possible. The sun is warming the soil, the trees are blossoming and the air is humming. We abandon our classroom duties and head for the woods.
Ode to WorldCom's failure
A year and a half ago, I had a vision in the desert. After a day in the parched heat of Anza Borrego, I saw the future, and it frightened me. But now, with the once-mighty WorldCom crumbling into dust, this future -- or at least the version of it that came to me in a flash at a bank of pay phones -- shall not come to pass.
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