By stepping up whenever she saw an unmet need, Julie De Vries has positioned herself to be a uniquely equipped advocate for children and mental health.

At first glance, the career path of Julie (Seeley) De Vries appears to zig and zag from one area of expertise to another with no rhyme or reason. On closer inspection, it’s clear she has spent decades putting together all the pieces of a puzzle society doesn’t always like to acknowledge. With backgrounds in education, law and clinical mental health counseling, De Vries (’94, ’95) is uniquely suited to help children and families during difficult times. She provides play therapy and counseling, as well as continuing education in trauma, attachment and foster care.

“Coursework for my bachelor’s in family science piqued my interest in advocacy for children and families,” she said. “The focus on child development formed a foundation to which I added knowledge with additional degrees and experiences. A liberal arts background set the stage for lifelong learning.”

Her career metamorphosis started after De Vries earned her Master of Arts in Education and was working as the director of the University’s Child Development Center. Through experiences with one of the students, she learned about foster care and child advocacy in the legal system and felt inspired when she interacted with one of the children and their legal representative.

“I thought, ‘I could do that.’ One night I told my husband out of the blue I wanted to go to law school,” she said.

After earning a law degree from Drake University, De Vries started her private practice. She returned to small-town Iowa one year later and continued to practice law while also serving part-time as judicial magistrate in her hometown of Centerville. In private practice, she represented a lot of young legal clients, and combined with her educational background, she knew a supportive resource was lacking in the area – play therapy. Using play as a medium, children are able to express their thoughts and emotions, allowing them to process experiences, understand their feelings and develop coping skills. While play therapy is a widely accepted form of treatment, the required training and commitment to ongoing education can make it difficult to find service in rural communities.

“I represented a lot of young legal clients who did not have access to play therapy,” De Vries said. “The nearest play therapist was a half-hour drive away. I thought, ‘I could do that.’”

After earning a degree in clinical mental health counseling, De Vries is now the only certified play therapist in her county, and one of only a handful in the region. It is one more skill she can add to her counseling and consulting firm, and something that gives her an advantage in helping clients.

“Mental health, law and education merge and overlap frequently in my practices,” she said. “For example, I can speak the language of individualized education plans when I collaborate with schools regarding play therapy clients. I can also utilize the language of parent-child therapy when I attend a team meeting with my legal client regarding plans to reunify her with her child.  Knowing the vocabulary of juvenile law is helpful in mental health counseling with an adult client who has involvement with a state agency regarding the safety of her child.”

Julie and Levi

Julie and David

De Vries’ work can be as varied as her background. She often consults with parents/guardians and schools, providing assessments both informally through her practice and formally in reports to courts. Some days she can be found conducting on-site counseling services at a therapeutic school, and other days she may be in court serving as a guardian ad litem or as an attorney for children in juvenile law, family law or victims in criminal law. De Vries has even argued a case in front of the Iowa Supreme Court. While there may be many lenses with which to view a court procedure or counseling session, she tries to keep a core tenet in mind for everyone involved.

Sadie and Julie

“Many times, clients are doing the best they can with the situation and skills they have. It’s easy to judge people without knowing the background. I promote giving grace to individuals who struggle,” she said. “Compassion promotes healing.”

Not every client De Vries interacts with starts in the legal realm. Much of her counseling work is intervention-based support, usually in service to the whole family. The goal is always to match the right treatment with each client. She may see some clients for only a few weeks if they are struggling with a short-term issue. Sometimes, educating clients on the goal is the first step of the process.

“Understanding of trauma and its effects on individuals is expanding into other professions; however, counseling services are still somewhat stigmatized,” she said. “I try to normalize mental health treatment by emphasizing the health aspect and not the symptoms.”

Support for families doesn’t stop for De Vries at the end of the workday. She and husband David (’03) are a licensed foster care family. They have provided respite care as well as full-time placements, and they adopted their daughter Sadie through the foster care process. She joins brother Levi in rounding out the De Vries home in Centerville.

Bryan Witherbee has built a career solving problems with cutting-edge technology.

Complex problems have complex solutions, and people like Bryan Witherbee are at the forefront of helping humanity address some of its toughest challenges. Equal parts scientist and entrepreneur, Witherbee’s career has ranged from contributing to the development of life-saving medicine to empowering farmers with the technology needed for improving sustainability and stabilizing their industry. It’s a pretty impressive resume for a guy who says he has never been much of a planner.

After graduating from the University in 1994 with a degree in biology, Witherbee headed to St. Louis. Only about three hours from his hometown of Galesburg, Illinois, it was a natural progression, and in addition to landing a job, he was hoping to remain close to friends he made at school.

“I wish I could take credit for executing around a grand plan that had its roots back at Truman, but I have never been a planner,” he said. “I definitely have benefited from a philosophy of saying ‘yes’ to most opportunities or adventures.”

Witherbee launched his career as a contractor in the health and human services division of Monsanto. Between the corporate landscape of mergers and acquisitions, along with Witherbee’s can-do attitude and willingness to take on all challenges, it is difficult to quantify how many companies he has worked for and all the roles he has occupied. Figuring conservatively, he’s had about 10 different titles at roughly half a dozen companies.

“I have been open to moving down different paths, learning new technologies, instruments or techniques, traveling to different locales, meeting new people, challenging current concepts and taking risks to innovate and improve,” he said.

At all his stops, the pattern that emerges is clear: Witherbee has the scientific chops to understand how a project should run and the business acumen to make big ideas become realities, whether it is using next generation technology to grow more food without increasing costs or implementing key biological analysis protocols for genotyping and cell screening.

“The common thread is that the roles I have taken have centered around new technology development and implementation, usually around solving a problem where there is no existing solution, or existing solutions that do not scale to be mass produced or cost too much to implement,” he said. “Leading a team that can overcome issues or identify a different path has been my later career path.”

Bryan and his daughter Riley Witherbee

Witherbee’s most recent endeavor is Agragene, an agricultural biotechnical company focused on sustainable pest control. After being introduced to the company’s board through the BioSTL network, he worked with its investors to relocate the venture from San Diego to St. Louis, and he currently serves as the president and CEO. Agragene’s core technology is the ability to manufacture sterile insects through the use of gene editing tools such as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). Sterile insects are then released into fields where they mate with invasive pests. Because they are sterile, no offspring are produced, and during the growing season the total number of invasive insects decreases, as does the amount of damage done to crops.

While one of the more beneficial aspects to this approach is its reduction in chemical insecticides, Witherbee is well aware that concepts like gene editing, gene sequencing and nanotechnology can raise their own areas of concern, especially among those without a scientific background. The concept of increasing public awareness while simultaneously implementing these technologies in an ethical manner is a challenge he welcomes.

“These technologies are tools, and like any tools, their impact depends on how we use them. Gene editing, for example, holds incredible potential to cure genetic diseases, improve food security and even fight cancer. Nanotechnology can lead to safer, more effective medicines and cleaner energy solutions,” Witherbee said. “It’s important to be cautious and ethical. Scientists, governments and the public all need to be part of the conversation about how these technologies are developed and applied. Transparency, regulation and public input are essential to ensure they are used responsibly for the greater good.”

Witherbee’s track record would indicate he is a principled steward of the resources at his disposal. It’s one of the reasons he still has a passion for his work now three decades into his career.

“I love getting people excited about science and technology, to show and share what is possible and maybe help imagine a better future,” he said. “When I worked in pharma, it was exciting to know that a medicine that I contributed to, or that was developed by our company, was helping people live longer, healthier lives. In agriculture, it is incredibly rewarding to see how new technologies could empower farmers and growers.”

Witherbee and his wife Shelby (Wooden) Witherbee (’95) live in St. Peters, Missouri. Their daughter, Riley, continued the family connection with Truman and is a two-time graduate. After earning a bachelor’s degree in 2024, she received a Master of Arts in Education in the spring.

Ope Amosu is combining his business acumen and West African culinary roots to achieve the American Dream.

By all measures, Ope Amosu (’10) was doing everything “the right way.” After graduating with a business degree, he landed a job in his hometown of Houston, Texas, where he earned an MBA from Rice University. He secured a high-paying corporate job in the energy sector that took him around the world. On paper, he was the model example of a School of Business graduate, so much so that he was named the Business Young Alum of the Year in 2017.

With the brightest of career paths ahead of him, Amosu instead pivoted to invest in himself and do something he found more culturally significant.

“I was asking myself, ‘why is it difficult for me, regardless of where I am in the world, to gain access to the cultural elements that I grew up on as a Nigerian immigrant that moved to the U.S. at the age of three?’” he said. “I decided to create the first modern contemporary West African-inspired food and beverage concept, but now it’s turned into a mission of making my culture more accessible and building community along the way.”

The seeds of a food-related career, in hindsight, began for Amosu in childhood. As early as elementary school he was mixing together sauces and selling them to classmates in the cafeteria, and he sold homemade cookies in high school.

“Some of my earliest entrepreneurial pursuits happen to deal around food,” he said. “I’ve always been very enamored with culture and restaurants and hospitality. It’s been something that’s a part of me since growing up.”

Amosu’s vision has come to life in the form of ChòpnBlọk, a West African-inspired restaurant. After his initial location debuted in 2021 and became the top-grossing eatery in the trendy POST Houston entertainment district, Amosu opened a second restaurant, a 3,000-square-foot space in the city’s historic Montrose neighborhood.

The name ChòpnBlọk comes from the Pidgin English spoken by more than 300 different tribes in West Africa, and it is a micro example of the unity Amosu is striving to create.

“In that dialect the word chop means to eat, and block is a location,” he said. “If you’re coming from a different background and you see ‘chop and block’ it registers immediately this is a location to go to eat.”

The welcoming vibe extends beyond semantics. For example, the menu includes jollof rice, an African precursor to Cajun jambalaya. Amosu has crafted a meal that combines elements of both dishes, which not only allows him the opportunity to share a story about West African culture, it opens his restaurant to a wider customer base. 

“That’s how we start to walk you into maybe less familiar territory. It’s very much designed to build community in the sense of welcoming everyone home,” he said. “We can’t only be serving Africans. We’re really going to be sharing this with the world.”

At first glance, ChòpnBlọk might have the appearance of an overnight success, but the foundation of its prosperity was built by Amosu’s business background and his humility to start at the beginning. For several years, after laboring at his corporate job during the day, he would work in restaurants at night in roles like dishwasher and line cook. When he was accepting his award for Business Young Alum of the Year, no one in the room knew he had a second job at Chipotle so he could get hands-on industry experience.

As Amosu gained skills, he started crafting his own dishes, testing them out by hosting dinner parties for friends once a month, each time taking their feedback and factoring it into the next item.   

“It was basically like a market segmentation exercise for me from 2018 all the way through 2020,” he said.

From there, he expanded to taking over existing restaurants on their slower nights, offering up the dishes he spent years perfecting. It was a grassroots approach that helped when the first location of ChòpnBlọk opened.

“What we were really doing was building a customer base and building advocates, building a following,” he said.

His business model worked, and Amosu has been featured in national media including an episode of “Top Chef” on Bravo, “No Passport Required” on PBS and “Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi” on Hulu. ChòpnBlọk even partnered with the Houston Rockets to be the first West African cuisine available in a professional U.S. sports stadium.

If Amosu has a secret weapon in building ChòpnBlọk it’s his wife Janelle (Gill) Amosu (’10), who, in addition to providing her accounting expertise, serves as a sounding board and level head of the operation.

“We balance each other out. I am the big picture, visionary, aspirational, optimistic person, and she is very much the realist,” he said. “From the early days, she’s really the only person I can truly lean on. She keeps me grounded.”

Before reaching the age of 40, Amosu is already well into his second career, and just like his first, he’s doing everything “the right way.” In an industry synonymous with volatility, he and Janelle have meticulously planned for stable growth, and his goal of one day owning 100 ChòpnBlọk franchises is anything but far-fetched. One could say he is still the model School of Business graduate.

Emily Tolipova harnesses the power of art to raise awareness for wildlife.

As an artist, Emily (Pulley) Tolipova’s favorite subject matter is birds, which is fitting given how certain events influenced her life like a feather floating in the wind. For each little twist and turn Tolipova saw an opportunity and used it as a springboard to success. Now she’s in a position to put her skills to use advocating for wildlife.

Originally, the plan was to be an art and psychology double major. After quickly determining that was not what she wanted to do, Tolipova dabbled in a variety of classes and – in her own words – “a whole slew of other majors” before one class sparked a passion.

“It wasn’t until I took my first visual communication course that I realized this is what I wanted to do, I just didn’t have a name for what it was before,” Tolipova said. “I was delighted how much you could use these skills and tools across a wide array of industries. I love that it’s so adaptable and flexible. Design and branding touch everything we interact with on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not.”

As a student, Tolipova had the opportunity to photograph illuminated manuscripts in the Special Collections Department at Pickler Memorial Library where she got to see life-size illustrations in Audubon books. During her semester studying abroad in Indonesia, she explored the world of graphic design through a different cultural lens. By the time she graduated in 2016, Tolipova not only had a bachelor’s degree in visual communication, she also had minors in art history and international studies.

“Truman was instrumental in me becoming the creator I am today,” she said. “I was always looking for different classes, both in and out of Truman, that could teach me new skill sets. I am excited to see how I can continue to incorporate the things I’ve learned even more moving forward.”

One look at her professional portfolio will show Tolipova is an artist who is difficult to pigeonhole – pun intended. She has collaborated with large brands and organizations, in addition to selling her own pieces online and in markets. Her work has been featured in galleries and in art vending machines. She’s also comfortable working in a plethora of media, from stained glass to modern embroidery and papercraft. Her favorite, however, remains watercolor.

“I honestly fell in love with painting wildlife in the first watercolor illustration class I took at Truman with Rusty Nelson,” she said, “He had us paint birds for one of the demos, and I was hooked. I have always enjoyed exploring the nature around me, and it’s so exciting to bring these amazing creatures to life with my paintbrush.”

Tolipova found more than inspiration in recreating wildlife, she discovered a cause to champion. Not long after graduating, she created “Where’d The Wild Things Go?,” a series of illustrative postcards featuring endangered species. Tolipova would then photograph her painted works at various locations in an effort to show how these animals were missing in society. Originally a passion project, it turned into a full-time business due to some unforeseen circumstances.

“It wasn’t until the pandemic in 2020 that I picked it up again and turned it into a business,” Tolipova said. “I suddenly had all this free time on my hands and used it to expand on the postcard series, develop new pieces such as cards and prints, and it really exploded from there.”

Her website, wheredthewildthingsgo.com, not only showcases Tolipova’s work, it’s also a platform to raise awareness for wildlife and organizations working to protect them. One of the featured projects is Austin Bird Bingo, a creation that highlights 24 unique species of birds in her current home of Austin, Texas. Described as “Pokémon GO, but real life” these color-coded cards feature scannable QR codes so participants can learn about each of the birds they spot.

“It’s hard to conserve something you’ve never seen, interacted with or might not even know about,” Tolipova said. “At people’s core, we all want to help, but we don’t always know what around us is in need of that help. By bringing my piece to life in the homes of those who scanned the code, they are now able to interact with species and to see them and these different ecosystems they may not have known about before.”

Bird Bingo may ultimately be one of many interactive art projects Tolipova creates. She has hopes for collaborations with zoos, botanical gardens, national parks and educational programming.

“I would love to see my work continue to grow both nationally and internationally,” she said. “I want to get people excited about being outside and interacting with the world around them.”