Talk for just five minutes with Newark, N.J., mayor Cory A. Booker, and his exuberant optimism becomes infectious. Still, Booker, 38, seems an unlikely Galahad for a city that has long suffered adversity. Raised in suburban New Jersey, he’s a Rhodes scholar educated at Stanford and Yale. Why would a high-achieving, young middle-class professional dedicate himself to a troubled city?

In a word — heritage.

“My parents taught me at a very early age that I was the beneficiary of a tremendous struggle to make real on the country’s highest ideal — the civil rights movement,” Booker says. “My parents wanted their sons to continue the struggle for a greater country. I knew Newark very well. My parents had relatives there. I fell in love with the city.”

Newark, then, was a logical place for Booker to pursue his ideals. Fresh out of law school, he joined the Urban Justice Center as a staff lawyer and worked on a landlord-tenant project “in hopes of creating neighborhood transformation.” The project went well, but Booker says the government officials seemed unwilling to be part of the solution.

Booker decided to run for office, and he won a city council seat. Later, he ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor. On his second mayoral run, he was elected.

The young mayor inherited a city stymied by governmental challenges and social problems. But there also was the state-of-the-art New Jersey Performing Arts Center; the thriving Iron-bound neighborhood, home to dozens of ethnic restaurants and vibrant nightlife; and a new minor league baseball stadium. In addition, the Prudential Center, a sleek new sports and entertainment arena, was about to open.

The city, he says, has sufficient cultural resources to revive. 

“Newark in its glory — in the 1930s — was named the country’s most livable city, according to Harper’s magazine,” Booker says. “It was the center in the region for arts, entertainment, museums, sports, culture. What we see now is the beginning of reclaiming that past glory by having a critical mass of great New Jersey institutions in Newark.” He cites attractions like the world-class Newark Museum, the state’s largest library, and six colleges and universities. The city is also a leading international port and an important transportation hub for the Northeast, with an international airport, plus major railroad and highway convergences.

Booker trusts that arts and culture and the business they attract can help Newark overcome its two major challenges — boosting economic growth and reversing the perception that the city is a dangerous place.

Along with the new arena, companies like Prudential, Continental Airlines, Diversity Inc., and many more are jump-starting the city’s economy. “Continental is a tremendous partner,” Booker notes. “They were only hiring 8 percent of their employees from Newark when I started, and now, through partnerships, that has increased to 33 percent — and it’s growing.” Employment, he says, empowers residents through improved quality of life and economic well-being. And he adds that the arena is already proving to be a massive economic engine, drawing people to Newark.

Increased downtown activity and residential population will follow, Booker believes. That, in turn, will transform Newark’s dangerous image, one that Booker says is frozen in time. “In terms of downtown, it’s all perception,” he says. He envisions the Prudential Center as a tipping point, sparking collateral development that creates jobs and housing, attracts suburbanites, and generates positive word of mouth.

For Booker, Newark’s revival is personal. “Newark is one of the most exciting places there is,” he says, “The people are exciting and committed. I found American heroes [and] it all resonated with my ambitions for myself — to be part of a community and committed to fighting to improve neighborhoods and, really, this country.”

The world in which Dr. Leroy Hood travels puts sci-fi movies to shame. Co-founder and president of the Institute for Systems Biology, a groundbreaking nonprofit research organization in Seattle, Hood is a leading intellect in the field of human genetics, delving into the very building blocks of life. His automated gene sequencer, first conceived in 1982, allowed the Human Genome Project to hit warp speed during the 1990s, enabling researchers to map the 25,000 genes in human DNA.

“The human genome essentially lays out, in detail, all the elements that go into our genetic constitution. It deciphers the digital code of humanity,” Hood, 69, explains. “The automated DNA sequencer is the instrument that allows us to read the letters of the DNA language, one at a time, down to fragments of chromosomes.”

Without his sequencer, Hood estimates scientists would have needed a century to compute the math of the human genome. Instead, they finished the work in 12 years. Translated to the language of everyday medicine, the findings gave researchers powerful tools to help them better understand and treat diseases.

Last year, Hood, a native of Missoula, Mont., was doubly rewarded for his contributions with his induction to both the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). The NAE induction clinches a rare triple play, as Hood is one of only seven people ever elected to the United States’ three national academies: the NAE, the National Academy of Science, and the Institute of Medicine.

“This is one of the most exciting times ever in science,” says Hood. “The 21st century is going to be the century of biology, because for the first time we have the tools for really deciphering all the complexities that surround biology. What we hope to do with the insights that have come from the Human Genome Project is to revolutionize medicine over the next 5, 10, 20 years, moving it from its current very reactive mode to one that we call the Four Ps.That is, predictive, personalized, preventive, and participatory.”

As for the creative process, that fundamental need to find answers and make new discoveries, Hood takes a refreshingly simple approach. “To solve really hard problems, I have to think about the problem from every single vantage point that I can,” he says. “Typically, where I’ve done that is while running. At those times, when you’re free and unhindered, and you allow yourself to think about it from many different points of view, then all of a sudden your experiences get integrated into solutions.”

Everyone loves to listen to a good story, especially Sandra Bernhard, who is in the business of telling some big ones. Bernhard came to Houston in August 2007 to lead HGOCo, a new initiative by Houston Grand Opera (HGO). But before we get into Bernhard’s story, we first need to explain why and how HGOCo came to be.

It starts with Bernhard’s boss, Anthony Freud. Shortly after stepping into the role of general director and CEO of Houston Grand Opera in 2005, Freud went on a listening tour, interviewing everyone he could to glean ideas about how to further enhance the world-renowned company and build audience interest. He heard a universal message: the opera is a nice cultural asset, but it’s not really relevant to the lives of Houstonians. In addition, people outside HGO’s dedicated patron group were intimidated by what they considered a snobbish art form reserved for the rich.

For Freud, that perception was a thrown gauntlet. He set out to make opera more accessible to 21st-century audiences and found a compelling need for sustained and diverse arts education. And what better entity to spearhead such a program than Houston Grand Opera? Opera reflects life, Summers says. “The telling of stories through words and music, through visual representations in their many forms, and through writing and composing is our oldest and most important expression.”

And so, HGOCo was born. Freud and his team dove right into HGOCo’s launch project, Song of Houston — a large-scale initiative intended to engage the community creatively. Houston Mayor Bill White helped identify seven émigré groups to involve in the initial project — African, Central American, Indian, Pakistani, Mexican, Soviet-era Jewish, and Vietnamese. Named The Refuge, the first work would be a tangible representation of the connection between company and community.

With an inaugural production for HGOCo already under way, finding the perfect leader for such a dynamic, cutting-edge initiative became paramount. Summers needed someone who could facilitate collaboration with other civic and arts groups in the city while also revamping HGO’s traditional educational outreach. No small task.

Enter Bernhard, a director who has been knocking the socks off audiences from coast to coast for more than 20 years — most notably with 56 productions at San Francisco Opera, where she worked with Summers. “I’ve known Sandy for nearly 20 years,” Summers says, “and she is the most skilled, innovative, and dedicated arts evangelist out there. She is a passionate artist, yet at the same time, a consummate pedagogue. I am overjoyed that she is here, already at work with the force and energy I’ve admired for so long.”

Besides reaching out to Houston’s diverse ethnic population, Bernhard wants to entice more young people to the opera. She’s used the edgy cachet of The Refuge as a lure. “Arts education went missing from public schools in the 1980s,” says Bernhard. “Now generation Y is thirtysomething and they are the lost group. We are putting things together for them because they need exposure. They need to know that music can transport them, that there is a whole world they can feel comfortable with and excited by.”

Bernhard also feels that opera is the perfect facilitator to help Americans revisit their roots of storytelling. “We didn’t really lose it, it just went away for a while and it’s coming back,” she says. “What better way to express it than through opera? That’s what we do — we tell stories.”

Lots of Houstonians are listening.

— Gracie Cavnar

Continental is an official sponsor of Houston Grand Opera.