Want to know what your toddlers are babbling about? Just ask them.

Or so says Michelle Anthony, one of the founders of Signing Smart, a Denver-based program that helps parents and caregivers teach American Sign Language (ASL) to hearing children. "It's a wonderful way to have conversations with your six-month-old," says Anthony, who earned an ASL certificate at Northeastern in 1996.

ASL works for tykes because the gross motor skills needed for signing develop sooner than the fine motor skills needed for speech. "Children naturally reach and grasp before they talk," explains Anthony.

And teaching signs offers a bonus: You jump-start your children's language development. "At eighteen months," Anthony says, "most children know ten to fifty words. By contrast, kids from Signing Smart will know seventy-nine signs and a hundred and five spoken words."

Anthony began signing almost by accident. In the early 1990s, she was the director of the nursery program at the Wheeler School, in Providence, Rhode Island. "I was at a children's bookstore, and I noticed the book Signing with Kids. On a whim, I got it and started to use signs with my three-year-olds."

The result was a resounding success. "Our parents loved it," says Anthony. "We began teaching it to all three- and four-year-olds."

In 1993, while still teaching at Wheeler, Anthony enrolled in Northeastern's part-time ASL certificate program. "NU is one of the best interpreter schools in the country," she says. "If you're serious about sign language, go to NU."

Anthony helped to create Signing Smart in 2001; the program's offerings include classes and workshops all over the world. A book, Signing Smart with Babies and Toddlers: A Parent's Strategy and Activity Guide, which Anthony cowrote with Reyna Lindert, was published in May.

But beware: An infant's language acquisition brings its own set of problems. For instance, in a recent family photo (above), Anthony, her husband, and older daughter Kylie are smiling into the camera. But seven-month-old Maya, in her mother's arms, wants everyone to know she's tired. She's got her right palm on her right cheek. She's signing "bed."

Kids sign the darndest things.

- Katy Kramer, MA'00

  Michael DiFranza
  Photo Courtesy Michael DiFranza

Playing to a Captive Audience

As a young entrepreneur-to-be in Everett, Massachusetts, Michael DiFranza, E'84, drew inspiration from the businesses on Main Street. "I grew up watching the fruit stand on the corner become the corner store, and then a chain of stores," says DiFranza. "These people didn't realize they weren't supposed to succeed."

So by 1997, with an anyone-can-be-CEO attitude, DiFranza was the general manager and founder of Captivate Network, the first company to bring on-screen advertising and other programming—such as news, entertainment, and stock market reports—into elevators. Now located in such high-end sites as the Sears Tower and the Empire State Building, Captivate's 5,800 screens reach more than 1.7 million people daily in eighteen major markets across the United States and Canada.

DiFranza says a "Eureka" moment led to his high-flying idea. After Northeastern, he'd gone on to amass fifteen years of media and marketing experience, and completed Harvard Business School's program for management development. Attending all those meetings and classes meant he was no stranger to lifts. "I had just come from a strategic meeting in Portland, Oregon, via San Francisco," he says. "I was standing in Waltham's Federal Street Tower elevator in a red-eyed haze. And I thought, ?ÄòIt would be great to have something to look at. Think of the audience you could reach.'"

Before you could say, "What floor, please?" DiFranza had left his job, lured two friends into his venture, built a prototype, and started raising capital. After nine months of ups and downs, Captivate was treating elevator riders at Boston's Seaport Hotel to something other than Muzak. Last year, DiFranza spearheaded his business's successful acquisition by the Gannett Company.

Though DiFranza's dad and older sister also attended Northeastern, his interest in entrepreneurship is a first-generation thing. "My kids grew up watching the start-up being built. It was part of their bedtime lore," he says.

Do innovators run in the family? "They do now," he quips.

— Katy Kramer, MA'00

  Joseph Morley
  Photo Courtesy Joseph Morley

The Good Food Fight

Joseph Morley, LA'74, has a lot on his plate: He serves upwards of a thousand dinners and as many snacks every week.

Morley is the food service director for Club Cafes, a program within the Boys and Girls Club of Syracuse, New York, which delivers food to three separate locations twice a day. The meals make a world of difference to kids who might otherwise not get enough to eat. Or who might munch goodies much less nutritious than the ones experienced chefs can prepare.

Hired three years ago to create the program, Morley plans the menus, works in conjunction with the Onondaga County Health Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and hires and trains staff. It's his cup of tea, but he doesn't do it single-handedly. "There is one staff member at each site, and the kids set up and clean up," he says. "It works pretty well."

Morley's job also involves hands-on, in-person management. So he spends a lot of time behind the wheel of his large-window van.

How'd an English major end up supervising and planning the kind of courses that have nothing to do with literature? During his Northeastern days, the Hartford, Connecticut, native worked in Brookline at the now-defunct Chez Rainier, assisting with food preparation and doing dishes.

Finding his calling—and a full-time job at Rainier after graduation—was the result. "I just fell into this," says Morley. "The chef was trained in France, and I learned his cooking technique. I enjoyed it right off the bat."

A melange of jobs followed: in Aspen, Colorado, where he worked as a chef and skied; in Michigan, where he learned about catering function-hall meals; and in Syracuse, where he was the chef at Sibley's. His gigs also included stints at SUNY?ÄìCortland and Drumlins Country Club, part of Syracuse University.

Morley's three sons, two of them teenagers, demand culinary skills on the home front, too. Fortunately, his wife is an accomplished cook herself. "We take turns in the kitchen," he says.

Piece of cake.

- Katy Kramer, MA'00