Zoll, a native of Salem, taught linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge for eight years before moving with her family to Amherst about five years ago. Though she did some teaching at both Hampshire and Amherst colleges after arriving in the Valley, Zoll says the opportunity to try something different appealed to her: "I realized my heart was really in social services. I call this my 'mid-life epiphany.' "

She says she filled in her skill gaps by doing considerable volunteer work, eventually becoming the site director for The Literacy Project in Orange. Zoll, who's also vice-chair of Amherst's Comprehensive Planning Committee, adds that moving from teaching to management "is not as dramatic as it might seem ... the fact that 'All the world's a classroom, and all the men and women merely students' has made it easy to take skills acquired through teaching and apply them in a practical manner to broader social issues."

• Full name: Cheryl Zoll
• People know you as: Cheryl
• Date and place of birth: May 31, 1962, Salem
• Address: Amherst
• Job: Director, Amherst Survival Center
• Who lives under the same roof as you? My husband, Eric Sawyer, and our daughter, Lydia Sawyer
• Children: Lydia, 8
• Education: Salem High School, 1980; Harvard University, B.A. in biology, 1984; Brandeis University, M.A. in linguistics, 1992; University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D. in linguistics, 1996
• Pets: A guinea pig, Sir Seth Skwekoms Hwounkee Zowhoir
• Books you'd recommend: "Motherless Brooklyn," by Jonathan Lethem; "Spoken Soul," by John Rickford and Russell Rickford
• Favorite movie: "Afterlife," a film directed by Hirokazu Koreeda. It's a vision of purgatory where you get to preserve on film one incident (and only one) from your life to take with you into eternity
• Favorite television shows: "NYPD Blues" and "Seinfeld," neither of which I get to watch anymore!
• Favorite singer or group: Girl Howdy, an all-women honky-tonk band based in Greenfield
• What do you waste your money on? Old-timey music CDs, especially vocal duos like Stecher & Brislin, Hawker & Justice, Hazel & Alice
• Guilty pleasure: Occasional dips into East Heaven Hot Tubs in Northampton with my husband and daughter on cold winter nights
• Life-changing experience: Two years doing forestry as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small rural village in Senegal
• Funniest memory: Being stranded with a friend for several days on the border between Senegal and Guinea. We ending up having to sleep on the dirt floor of a restaurant run by young boys, who in exchange asked us to translate the book "Treasure Island" into Pulaar, one of the local languages
• Strangest job you ever held: I once worked the graveyard shift at a psychiatric hospital, supplying study subjects with schnapps in exchange for "points" they earned by constantly pressing a little red button they held in their hands
• Bumper-sticker statements? "I love North Quabbin" (until recently I worked in Orange)
• A little-known fact about you: I play the banjo
• Dumbest thing you ever did: Spent 15 years playing and paying off a bassoon, and then quit the day it became fully mine
• One product, trend or fashion you'd like to see return: A person at the other end of the phone!
• What really sets you off? Faulty logic
• Favorite Web sites: www.people.umass.edu/support/asc/ and www.ouramericancousin.com
• One thing you would change about yourself: I would fold laundry immediately out of the dryer
• People who knew you in school thought you were: An egghead
• Whom do you most admire? I've been lucky to have been mentored by a lot of strong, wonderful women. Locally, Jenifer McKenna of Northampton, co-founder of the California Women's Law Center, and Rhonda Cobham-Sander at Amherst College are two people for whom I have boundless admiration
• Parting shot: In the words of Jane O'Reilly -- "We must remember the past, define the future and challenge the present, wherever and however we can"

-- Compiled by Steve Pfarrer