This spring I wrote a freelance story for LSA Magazine at University of Michigan, profiling several Michigan grads working to reinvent New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August 2005, followed by the catastrophic failure of the city’s levees, flooding much of the city and turning Katrina into the costliest natural disaster in American history.
Elsewhere, time is measured in years either B.C. or A.D. In New Orleans, the line is Katrina, an event so singular that locals simply refer to it as “the storm.”
In a Gulf Coast city that’s no stranger to hurricanes, no one asks which storm.
For a story about a city wrestling with evolution and revolution in the face of huge challenges, check out LSA Magazine’s fall issue.
Included in the story are:

• Kurt Weigle (’88, M.U.P. ’90), president and CEO of the Downtown Development District
• Steve Ragan (’89), director of development and government relations for Make It Right, colloquially known as the Brad Pitt houses
• Wil Jacobs (M.B.A. ’96), who works for the Louisiana Office of Community Development, which focuses on improving the quality of life of the state’s residents
• Kate Schneiderman (’05), director of marketing with Idea Village, a business start-up accelerator