Springboard to an ILRie Bond: A Boat in the Galapagos

In October, Jay Waks ’68, J.D. ’71, P ’08, and his wife, Harriet, P ’08, traveled to Cairo, Egypt, to attend the wedding of Louisa Heywood ’20, an ILRie roughly 50 years his junior. The trip was just the latest chapter in a friendship that began in the unlikeliest of places – a boat off the Galapagos Islands.

It was the summer of 2016, and the Waks boarded a small boat that would be their primary mode of transportation as they traveled around the islands. The couple took seats across from a teenage girl and her father. It wasn’t long before Harriet discovered that the man she was sitting near, Alan Heywood, was an electrophysiologist, a cardiologist who specializes in the heart’s electrical system and its disorders. Coincidentally, the Waks’ son, Jonathan, had recently finished his fellowship to train in that same specialization. 

“Harriet is a scientist, a biologist, actually. She began talking with Alan about all that’s involved in electrophysiology. That left me to start a conversation with a young woman who turned out to be an 18-year-old,” Jay says, describing how he met Louisa. 

Louisa, for her part, recalls seeing Jay’s tote bag, emblazoned with the Cornell Law School logo. Being from Seattle, she wasn’t accustomed to seeing Cornell gear, and she was even more interested to engage because she was considering law school.

“I pointed to the bag and told him that I would be starting at Cornell in the fall,” Louisa says. “He asked what college, and my understanding of Cornell was so limited at the time that I said something like, ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it because it’s really small, but it’s the ILR School,’ and he just erupted. It seems silly now because obviously anyone who goes to Cornell knows the ILR School, but at the time I just didn’t want to be presumptuous.” 

For the next week, the Waks and the Heywoods explored the Galapagos by boat and spent time discussing electrophysiology and the ILR School. 

When they returned to the United States, Jay and Louisa stayed in touch, sometimes intentionally and sometimes by chance, due to ILR’s small footprint. 

“Sometimes, I would be going up to Cornell for an event, and I would text her and see if she wanted to get together, and because she had expressed an interest in law, there were a couple of times when I took her to a reception with law students and faculty,” says Jay,  the 2007 Judge William B. Groat Award winner. “Other times, there would be an ILR event, and she would just happen to be there. So, we always managed to find each other.” 

Louisa, who currently works for Compensation Advisory Partners, had no connection to Cornell before attending the school. Establishing a friendship with Jay was a great way to learn about the careers an ILR student could pursue and to engage with fellow ILRies across generations. 

“Jay is such a magnanimous person and a connector of people,” Louisa says. “He’s so outgoing, and he took me under his wing in so many ways. I see them more often now that I live in New York City, coincidentally just about a block from where he and Harriet used to live, and very near to where their daughter, Allison [’08], lives now. So, we will meet for lunch or dinner, and my husband and I have visited them at their house for dinner with Allison and her husband. It’s really nice. It’s almost like having an aunt and uncle right here.” 

And just like you would a real aunt and uncle, Louisa and her then-fiancé, Aamen – whom she met while participating in the ILR/UCD Semester in Dublin Program – invited the Waks to attend their wedding, nearly 6,000 miles away in Aamen’s hometown of Cairo. 

“We didn’t hesitate, we love them,” Louisa says. “With a ‘destination’ wedding, you just never know, and we were inviting people and worried that maybe only five would be able to come. But we immediately heard from Jay and Harriet, saying that they had received the invitation and had a lot of travel coming up, but they would be there. It was so sweet.” 

According to Jay, forming a friendship with Louisa was easy, as she was “an outstanding student and is just a wonderful person.” 

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Cornell, or the ILR School,” Jay says. “And I enjoy mentoring young people. I think it’s just in my DNA to be as helpful as I can to students. I was there once. I know that people at Cornell were very kind to me, and I certainly want to give back.”