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Carol Lally '90 graduated with a degree in English.  She is now an intellectual property lawyer.

Neal Baer '78 earned his degree in political science.  He is the executive producer and writer for the hit show "ER."

Colorado U.S. Senator Ken Salazar graduated from CC in 1977. Elected to the senate in 2004, he had been the state's attorney general.

Holly Ornstein Carter '85 received her degree in political science and is now a writer and documentary filmmaker.

Karen Andersen Medville, a research scientist at Arizona State University, graduated in 1985.

Marcia McNutt, president and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, earned her degree in physics in 1974.

Jay Engeln graduated in 1974 with a degree in biology.  He is the 2000 National High School Principal of the Year.

Basketball star Verdel Baskin, an English major from the Class of 1999, is now an El Pomar Fellow.

Laura Hershey, a disability rights activist, graduated in 1983 with a degree in history.

Jazz singer Lorna Kollmeyer, a liberal arts major from the Class of 1980, owns an ornamental plasterwork company.  

Richard Koo, 1982 alumnus with a degree in math, is the co-founder of Vitria.com.

Mountain climber Jake Norton, Class of 1996, was a history-philosophy major.  

Paul Markovich graduated in 1988 with an international political economy major and is the co-founder of MyWayHealth.

J. Ralph Armijo, a business administration major, graduated in 1974 and founded Navidec, Inc. and DriveOff.com. 

Theatre artist Liz Stanton earned her degree in business and economics in 1988.

Carol Lally
Class of ’90
English Major
Intellectual Property Lawyer
Washington, D.C.

Carol Lally had a liberal arts approach to life, even before she came to Colorado College. “If I had wanted to learn a trade, I would have gone to a trade school,” she says. “But I wanted a college education.”

Growing up in the South, Carol knew she wanted to venture to another part of the country, just not the East Coast. But she also wanted a liberal arts college with a national reputation. “That’s when Colorado College came on my radar screen,” she says. Like so many others, Carol made up her mind during a campus visit. “I had the best time,” she recalls. “The people were very nice, and everybody I met seemed happy to be at school there, which wasn’t always the case when I went to visit other schools.”

Carol was pretty sure she wanted to major in English, but she didn’t want to be pigeonholed. “Outside of a few requirements, CC really lets you set your own agenda and take the courses you thought were interesting,” she says. “Being well rounded really ends up serving you best in the end because real life isn’t categorized into departments and majors.”

While she admits she “wasn’t one of the athletic stars of the college,” Carol made the most of the outdoor opportunities CC presented. She played on the intramural softball team, “not well, but I did play,” she laughs, and enjoyed hiking and skiing on weekends and block breaks.

After graduation she enrolled in a summer publishing institute. It was a speaker there, general counsel for Harper Collins, who sounded like he had Carol’s dream job. She decided then to go to law school, graduating from Duke in 1994.

Even though she saw herself becoming more of a specialist, Carol treated law school “like it was another liberal arts degree.” She explored criminal law, environmental law, and other areas before coming back to her first interest -- publishing. After graduation, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the Authors Guild. In two and a half years, she progressed from staff attorney to director of legal services, all the while helping negotiate publishing and agent contracts as well as television and film agreements. Today, she’s with a general practice firm, doing copyright, trademark, and first amendment work in the intellectual property department.

While most of her clients are big corporations, Carol counts herself lucky to have a number of individual artists as clients. One of those is also a Colorado College grad. Glenna Goodacre, Class of 1961, is a sculptor who designed the image of Sacagawea on the new golden U.S. dollar coin. Even before the coin was minted, a “collectibles” company copied it and began selling it through national newspaper advertisements. “They probably did it in the mistaken belief that it was a government work and the government couldn’t claim a copyright,” she explains, “but it wasn’t a government employee who designed the coin. It was Glenna.”

Carol thoroughly enjoys her work, and she’s thankful every day that CC prepared her so well for it. “CC taught me how to write,” she says, “and I can’t tell you how invaluable that’s been -- not just because you can be more persuasive and eloquent, but because words have legal meaning, and if you don’t know how to structure a sentence properly, you may end up, especially in contracts, having an entirely different effect.” She also cites the Block Plan as helping her meet the stringent deadlines so common in the legal profession.

Continuing to pursue a well-rounded life, Carol believes today’s college students would benefit from the same. “College is one of the most important times in your life,” she says. 

“You’re going to decide who you are as an adult, you’re going to start making the decisions that put you on the path to your career and your future life. The people you pay your tuition to should be involved in that process, and the people at CC are. They expect more of you, but it’s far more rewarding in the end.”

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