Kendall Sharp ’85 managed to check off her Icelandic bucket-list item on a trip to the country in January with the Yale Alumni Academy: She saw the Northern Lights.
But she was able to do much, much more than that as well: She enjoyed an Icelandic hot dog, tasted—but did not enjoy—Greenland shark, endured several cold plunges in a frigid fjord, and ran into Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir ’16 MA… twice.
But what really made the trip special for Sharp were the friendships she made with other participants, including Anthony Sabatelli ’84 PhD. Sharp and Sabatelli decided individually to arrive in Iceland before the official Yale trip began and, after connecting via an introduction from staff at the Yale Alumni Academy managed to arrive within minutes of each other at a waterfall on the north shore of the Snaefellsnes peninsula. After that, Sabatelli decided to skip the rest of his bus tour and hopped into Sharp’s rental car. They spent the remainder of the day exploring a deserted mountain road before returning to Reykjavik to dine with another member of the Yale group that evening.
“It seems strange, jumping into a stranger’s car in the middle-of-nowhere Iceland or picking up someone in the middle-of-nowhere Iceland,” says Sabatelli, a patent attorney and inventor. “But having that Yale connection made it a comfortable thing to do.”
Yale Alumni Academy offers exciting learning experiences for intellectually curious alumni, family, and friends. Participants are drawn to the opportunity to connect with other Yale community members while learning with Yale faculty online, on campus, and in locations around the world. The Icelandic Winter Adventure program appealed to Sharp and Sabatelli in part because it was relatively short—just five days. The Yale Alumni Association organized the itinerary, and professional guides led culinary and site-seeing tours, including a visit to the country’s so-called Golden Circle.
Iceland was also on Sabatelli’s bucket list, and he says he appreciated learning about the country’s geothermal activity, naturally produced hot water, and the fact that Christopher Columbus had once wintered there.
Sharp, who owned her own recruiting business for many years and now serves on the board of the Stonewall National Museum Archives & Library, had attended another Yale travel program in the late 1990s when she went to China with her mother. It featured lectures from faculty and Yale experts, including Nancy Chapman ’78, who led the Yale-China Association for many years.
According to Sabatelli and Sharp, the participants on the Iceland program—who ranged in age from 36 to 89—offered up plenty of entertainment, inspiration, and information of their own. One, a physics professor in Canada who obtained his PhD from Yale in 1975, was able to explain some of the science behind the Northern Lights.
Sabatelli says he appreciated Sharp’s sense of adventure, and the pair already have plans to meet up again during Yale College reunions. Both say their experiences as students at Yale were transformative and that staying connected to the campus is important to them. Sabatelli has held several formal positions among alumni, including on the Board of Governors of the Yale Alumni Association and as chair of the Graduate School Alumni Association, where he helped develop the Where Do I Go From Yale? program; Sharp was once president of the Yale Club of South Florida.
The Northern Lights program in Iceland offered another way to stay in touch with the intellectual life of the University.
“It was great being on the trip, doing and enjoying the experience with other people with a common connection,” Sabatelli says. “Even though we were from diverse Yale backgrounds and spanned a range of graduation dates, there was that common thread which bound us together.”
