Vasna lived in Vientiane, Laos, from 1964-71, where she attended the American School of Vientiane until grade 10. She completed high school at The Grier School in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, and received her Bachelor’s degree in Human Studies from Bradford College in Bradford, Massachusetts. 

Returning to the initial question of where she grew up, her answer is: “all over.” 

When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, her father, as a former Laotian government official, was sent to “re-education camps” in northern Laos. He did not flee the country as many of his colleagues did. She said, “It took a lot of courage for him to stay, and I would attribute that to his nationalist core.” Her family was powerless to get him justice and unfortunately, an Amnesty International campaign to get him released failed. Two years prior to his death, her family celebrated when they received word that he would be freed. But just before his scheduled release in 1987, they were told he died at the camp of a “stomach ailment.” That seemed highly unlikely and hit hard, Vasna recalled.  

Vasna’s first job after college was working as an assistant to the deans at the Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. The husband-and-wife civil rights attorneys, Edgar S. and Jean Camper Cahn, started the school with the goal of training law students to represent various disenfranchised communities. These early mentors and the legal aid environment provided her with an infusion of activist energy that lay dormant until her elder years.  

She changed her career after having her second child, returning to school for a degree in medical laboratory technology at Montgomery College in Takoma Park. After 10 years as a clinical microbiologist at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, her antennas were primed for a new journey. As she puts it, “I believe that in life, you have to be open and ready to grab new possibilities when you send requests out to the universe.”  

Timing was perfect when she was offered an academic position. She joined the microbiology department at Georgetown University Medical School as an academic coordinator/research assistant. The job at the university allowed her to earn another degree, a Master’s in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She transitioned to the biotechnology program as a laboratory instructor and retired during the pandemic as associate director. 

“Teaching and mentoring young adults were highly rewarding,” she recalled, “especially when they returned and shared how well they had done in their career paths.” 

When not organizing get-togethers with friends, tending her native plant garden or traveling, she enjoys making floral arrangements. On a recent trip to Kauai, she learned to make a lei of which she is very proud (see photo). 

Vasna said she is grateful to have found Third Act, as it has given her many opportunities to be in solidarity with other activists. She has protested fossil fuel financing by big banks, hosted a postcard writing party in Kensington and canvassed to get folks to vote. New members may get a call from her as a volunteer with the Third Act Maryland Welcome Call Crew.  

This community has also provided her with an outlet to release residual rage and powerlessness over her father’s unjust imprisonment, she said. Now she is doing her part in safeguarding democracy in the U.S. for her grandchildren. 

While Diane was growing up in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., the responsibility to “heal the world,” the Jewish principle of Tikkun Olam, was emphasized in her home. As teenagers in the late 1960s and early 70s, Diane and her friends took public transportation or hitchhiked from the suburbs into the capital to participate in protests against the Vietnam war, in civil rights campaigns, in environmental activism, and in women’s and gay liberation demonstrations. With youthful exuberance, they took to the streets in the nation’s capital, investing endless energy to discuss politics and philosophy, and they embraced the mantra of not trusting anyone over 30.

The arts were also emphasized in Diane’s upbringing, and she enjoyed a 40-year professional career in dance and higher education in roles ranging from chair of a university dance department to executive director of a national nonprofit organization supporting dance in colleges and universities. “Dance is an intensely personal process of attaining technical skill and expressive nuance; it can also be deeply collaborative, where trust, vulnerability, and generosity are essential,” she says. She continues to value active collaboration and thinking outside the box that are part of dance, as well as the tradition of political resistance in modern dance. 

Though she never wavered from her political convictions, Diane’s focus on her career, raising a child, and caring for her aging parents left little time for activism in the political arena. As she says, “I expressed political outrage to anyone who would listen and showed up for my share of marches and demonstrations—but only if they were on the rare free weekend.” At some point, however, that was not enough for Diane. Given the urgency of climate change and the effect on future generations, she concluded, it was time to retire and to act. 

In the Fall of 2023, Diane discovered Third Act. Her first Third Act experience was at the February 2024 nonviolent direct action (NVDA) in-person training in Washington, D.C., where she found others deeply committed and already doing the work.

And then she was off and running. She took part in a get-out-the-vote postcard writing party in Baltimore in March; a Washington-area Rocking Chair Rebellion demonstration at a CitiBank office in April, and Third Act DMV’s Mobilization for Climate and Democracy event with Rebecca Solnit and Jamie Raskin in June. (Third Act DMV is a coalition of Third Act working groups from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.)

Diane was first arrested, along with other demonstrators, in March 2020 while marching on the Capitol grounds for reproductive freedom while the Supreme Court heard arguments in the mifepristone case. Her arrest was captured by a New York Times photographer and included in its live updates of the protests. She happily exclaimed, “This brought me hero status in my extended family.”

More recently, Diane was a pallbearer for a makeshift coffin as part of the stagecraft for a July 8 Third Act demonstration called Elders Rise Up, at Citibank headquarters in New York. Part of the Summer of Heat campaign, the event memorialized people and animals that have perished because of climate change. 

Diane is a member of Third Act Maryland’s Safeguarding Democracy committee and participated in multiple canvassing, letter/postcard writing events (including hosting two), phone banking, and ballot curing sessions for the November elections. She is currently serving on the Nonviolent Direct Action Toolkit and Resources committee as part of the Third Act NVDA Network. Most recently, Diane felt honored to be a “lamentor” in an action in the Senate Hart Building, a role that meaningfully combines her passion for the environment and her experience as a performer.

Being part of the Third Act community of like-minded, experienced elders is a great place to be an activist again. While her lefty grandmother could never have imagined the climate emergency, her spirit lives on in her descendants. As expressed by Diane’s uncle in his eulogy for his mother:

“She unflinchingly believed that people—each person—could make a difference. She discussed each political event and disaster on the basis of ‘why aren’t you doing something about it now, to put it right?’”

Third Actors are doing something now to put it right.

The 65-year old resident of Upper Marlboro was born in Dayton, Ohio, to a military family, and grew up in various parts of the U.S. and abroad, including California, Germany, and Springfield, Virginia. Though her family was Catholic, as an adult she found that the Episcopal Church suited her better.

With a mother who became extremely anxious about thunderstorms and snowstorms, Donna was drawn to study meteorology at the University of Virginia. After college she joined the Air Force, met her husband in Arkansas, spent time in Guam, and then completed a master’s degree in meteorology, sponsored by the Air Force, at the University of Maryland. 

The Air Force assigned Donna the meteorology subspecialty of atmospheric chemistry for her degree; at the time, the world was focused on understanding how chlorofluorocarbons (used in refrigerators, air conditioners, and aerosol cans) were destroying the ozone layer. She said, “During the 1980s, ozone depletion and its causes brought concern and action across the world, culminating in the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which phased out these dangerous chemicals.” 

Industry tried to fight this change and there was partisan pushback, but the world came together to ban the harmful chemicals, and President Reagan signed the treaty. Donna contrasts the way nations came together to ban chlorofluorocarbons with the difficulty in getting nations to take meaningful action to deal with the climate emergency. (The Climate Solutions podcast Audiomentary: Ozone: How to Solve an Environmental Crisis ties the ozone crisis to the current climate crisis, offering lessons learned.)

After completing 10 years with the Air Force in 1991, Donna worked as a contractor at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, as a scientific programmer in the division studying ozone.

In 1996, Donna went on to work as a contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) in Suitland, as a programmer. In 2001, she became a federal employee with NESDIS, overseeing operational product generation from environmental satellites. Donna worked on fire and other land surface products, as well as products that monitored the earth’s ozone layer. In 2011, she began leading a team that distributes data and products from environmental satellites to national and state government agencies and commercial weather information companies as well as international weather forecasting organizations.

In January of this year, Donna went into semiretirement, reducing her hours by half, which has given her more time to volunteer with Third Act on democracy and climate efforts.

For many decades, Donna focused on individual actions like recycling and conservation to try to solve the problem of climate change. When she learned that fossil fuel companies promoted the concept of individual carbon footprint to divert attention away from their responsibilities, Donna became more motivated to take part in communal actions to hold those responsible for climate change accountable. (For more on Big Oil’s deceptive practices, see this University of California-Davis blog post, Big Oil Distracts from Their Carbon Footprint by Tricking You to Focus on Yours.)

Donna is proud of her three children, who all have careers that serve the public and who are climate supporters, and she’s grateful for her very supportive husband. In her spare time, Donna loves to visit and hike through nature’s beauty. Her favorite Third Act slogan is “No Time To Waste,” as we are in such a critical phase to stop fossil fuel extraction to save our beautiful, nurturing planet.

For nearly 20 years, Nan Tuckett, 77,  has lived in Baltimore’s historic Pigtown neighborhood, near Camden Yards. But Maryland is just one of the 10 states where she’s lived, and she’s traveled extensively during her career as a certified public accountant and internal auditor.

Along the way she’s learned a lot about racial inequality. 

Nan was born in West Virginia, which was and remains – at 94 percent white – the least diverse state in America. In 1957 she and her parents moved to Atlanta, where Nan was surprised to see water fountains and waiting rooms marked White and Colored. Even as a 10-year-old, she recalls, she  knew it was wrong.

As a teenager, Nan lived in Mississippi, and she was there when the “Freedom Summer” of 1964 brought hundreds of college students to the state to help Black citizens register to vote.

Nan was shocked to learn about the many ways her fellow citizens were prevented from voting because of the color of their skin. The most obvious obstacles were poll taxes and a requirement to interpret part of the state constitution to the satisfaction of an all-white panel. The Ku Klux Klan and The Citizens Council actively intimidated Black citizens and those who tried to assist them in registering to vote. Her high school was not integrated until 1969, four years after she graduated and fifteen years after Brown v. Board of Education.

‘Leave only footprints’

Feeling frustrated and helpless about racial injustice, Nan found an unexpected haven in Girl Scouts. It was her introduction to camping and learning ways to protect and maintain the environment. From Girl Scouts she learned “take only pictures – leave only footprints.”

Nan continued in Girl Scouts through high school, and over the years became a leader for each age group from kindergarten through high school. Her troops were always a joyous mix of girls from affluent families and some in public housing; gifted students and those struggling to read; girls from stable families and girls forced to grow up all too soon. The girls learned to work together and depend on one another through hiking and camping. 

A Lifetime Girl Scout, Nan encourages new generations to love nature and to embrace the need to protect the environment. To feel a connection to nature, “Kids need to get their hands dirty and their shoes scuffed.”

More recently, Nan joined a neighborhood climate group organized by Third Act volunteer Uta Allers, who invited members to join Third Act’s first Baltimore event – a protest in front of the Wells Fargo bank at the Inner Harbor in December. She decided to give it a try and at the post-action lunch, declared:  “Chanting and holding up anti-fossil fuel signs while sitting in rocking chairs with a bunch of old folk like me – what  FUN!”

It was also good to recognize that she was participating in tikkun olam, the Jewish concept of taking action to repair and heal the world. Nan wants to leave a viable future for her grandsons, Jacob and Luke. 

Third Act’s Lawrence MacDonald wrote a book called “Am I Too Old to Save the Planet?” Nan’s response to that question  is simple and whole-hearted: “No! We elders are just the right ones to save the planet”.

Coming to the United States from Taiwan at age nine, Bill grew up in the diverse neighborhood of Bronx, N.Y. His parents had left China for Taiwan just before the Communist takeover in 1949. His father, a civil engineer, worked in Taiwan for a few years before coming to the U.S. to work and attend graduate school. In 1961, Bill and his family also immigrated to the U.S., after navigating through the immigration policy that at the time set national quotas for certain countries. Living in the multi-ethnic Bronx largely spared Bill from overt discrimination, though he remembers being barred from staying at a motel with his family on a trip through New England in the 1960s.

Lure of science

Bill was always drawn to science. He attended the Bronx High School of Science, and studied Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Cornell University. With his interests in photography and geology, he decided to continue at Cornell, which was a pioneer in the new research area of remote sensing, for his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees, also in CEE.

After working as a post doctorate at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, he went on to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he analyzed remote sensing data to monitor crop development and conditions.

But it was at NASA that Bill really found his home in 1989, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. He conducted remote sensing research on soil moisture and led the Science Group at Goddard’s Earth Sciences Data Center in managing the voluminous climate-related data from NASA missions.

As he neared retirement in early 2022, Bill was looking for ways to continue his NASA work via other means. Then he found Third Act. Driven by a desire to leave a more livable planet for future generations – as well as for his almost-100-year young mother – he has purposefully moved from science research to something he thinks is more important: advocacy.

Bill loves the outdoors. He is a runner of marathons and other long-distance races, and an alumnus of the Boulder Outdoor Survival School. Both have led to his current research into the relationship between modern society’s disconnect with nature and climate crisis communication that motivates people to act. Toward that end, he and others are working to create short videos on the effects of a warming climate on what matters in people’s daily lives, like coffee production and outdoor activities.

As Bill  says, “sooner or later, a warming climate will come for what matters to you.”

Cory is a Ph.D. mathematician and statistician, who has analyzed safety data on nuclear power plants for the Department of Energy at the Idaho National Laboratory. This followed years of teaching at several universities, including Haile Selassie I University in Ethiopia, where he taught for four years and became head of the mathematics department. 

As grandchildren started arriving, Cory and his wife retired officially from their Idaho positions in 2000 and moved to Silver Spring to be near their daughter and family. Cory continued working as a consultant, however, often for the same customers. Finally, at age 80, he really retired. 

Cory is not new to climate change activism. In fact, he has been investing his retirement savings in what he calls “transformative investments,” and has created a website, greenira.org, to explain transformative green investing to others. But there’s more underlying Cory’s efforts than you might think. As he explains, “Ever since the protests of the sixties, my models and mentors have been Martin Luther King, Jesus, and Gandhi, and I have wanted to do more in a nonviolent way.” 

Several years ago, Cory happened upon an article by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, in which she cautioned activists not to go solo in their climate work, but to join with others. When Third Act arrived on the scene, Cory heeded the call. “I went to my first bank protest in this area and discovered that IT WAS FUN. I liked the singing, the chanting, the camaraderie. I like the opportunity to get to know other people, working on something together.”

In addition to serving on the Third Act Maryland Steering Committee, Cory is an Advance Fossil-Free Finance liaison between Third Act Central and Third Act Maryland. He is also preparing to advise Third Actors in switching their accounts and credit cards from dirty banks to green banks. 

With all his experience and enthusiasm, we are lucky to have Cory on our team.