Fall 2026
Work: Life
Kelly Jordan
On This Page
How Rollins faculty, staff, and students find balance—and promote their mental health—through outside pursuits
Public health practitioners often work tirelessly with dogged determination. The complexities of disease, and of human nature, require it. Many may find they are less apt at carving time out for themselves to practice the health habits that research has shown are tantamount for living a healthier life—things like exercise, sleep, pursuing relaxing or enjoyable activities, connecting with others, and eating a nutritious diet.
Modern life is stressful. One tangible, effective way of alleviating it is through pursuing a hobby. Research has supported hobbies as effective ways to strengthen connections, alleviate anxiety and depression, and even undo some of the harms of sedentary work. Hobbies can also increase overall satisfaction and mental well-being. They may even help people live longer. Rollins is full of interesting characters with an array of unexpected pastimes. Here are a few.
Finding a second family on center stage
It feels a bit like a joke set-up: A department chair, a student advisor, and a career coach step into a bar. But, in this case, it’s what you see when the cover band, Reinstate Pluto, hits the stage. All five band members—who often practice in the Claudia Nance Rollins Auditorium—have roots at Rollins.
Tim Lash, DSc, (bass guitar) is chair of the Department of Epidemiology; Srdjan Popovic (guitar and backing vocals) and Joanne Williams (vocals, guitar, piano, and violin) are the executive directors of the Professional Advancement and Student Experience Center. The other two members also have Rollins ties through their partners—drummer Michael Burbrink is married to Rollins epidemiologist Rebecca Nash. Vocalist and guitarist Jay Knudsen is the partner of a Rollins grad.
The band started in 2022 after Lash, Williams, and Popovic discovered their shared affinity for music at Rollins orientation. The first year, their goal was to prioritize weekly practices, develop a setlist, and play an open mic night. Their setlist tops 140 songs these days, and ranges from Otis Redding to Lady Gaga. At time of writing, four years since the band formed, they have gigs booked every week in August—including a gig at Park Bench Battery near Truist Park following a Braves Game—and are now starting to book weddings.
Their name, sparked by a gamer’s T-shirt Lash noticed with his son, is a nod to the band’s sense of humor, love of science, and retro sensibilities. Like them, it’s also just...fun. At its core, Reinstate Pluto is a cover band working hard to show people a good time—that includes the bandmates, too.
Whether it’s Williams marching off stage and into the audience at Tucker Brewing Company (a venue the band views as home turf) or stepping in on the vocals for a song she had never sung when Knudsen lost his voice, the band has developed a strong sense of camaraderie and trust over the years.
“It’s really become like this little band family,” says Williams.“We hang out with each other's families. We do Thanksgiving together. We'll do Christmas together.”
For three people known around Rollins for their immense work ethics and devotion to their first careers, all agree that playing music helps serve as a release valve for pent-up pressure. Outside of leading an academic department and supporting its faculty, staff, and students, Lash is an epidemiologist of international renown, who is deeply immersed in a research project aiming to improve the way cancer registry completeness is measured.
Williams and Popovic both lead, develop, and deliver career development and student life programming for current students. The past year of workforce shortages, federal cuts, and uncertainty has impacted their work and forced them to lean on their trust in one another as they explore creative new ways to engage with students, identify unique job opportunities that match student skills, and provide academic support.
“The band is accountability for my well-being, because I know that when I play music, no matter how rough of a day I'm having, I'm just going to feel better on Tuesday nights when I'm hanging out with these guys,” says Williams.
“Music and playing guitar have always been my sanctuary,” says Popovic. “It has always been an avenue for me to channel my emotions and to cope with stress, with difficult life situations, moments. The band is a combination of music and relationships, two core values that I try to inject in my life on a regular basis. And that relationship piece, I cannot take for granted because the band mates, these are all great people. And to be surrounded by great people without drama means a lot.”
Out of the three Rollins employees in the band, Popovic is the only one whose commitment to music has remained steady over the years as a source of solace, joy, and identity. Music was something the other two had to rediscover in adulthood.
“I didn't realize when I was younger that when I got stressed out, I went to the piano,” says Williams. “My mom recently told me that. Before the band, I was really struggling with how to manage stress. But now I have this amazing creative outlet and am rediscovering things that I enjoyed in childhood as an adult.”
For others currently seeking ways to live better, and combat stress, Williams encourages people to revisit their younger selves. “Rediscover the things that made you happy as a kid and don't be ashamed of that.”
From Grants to glasgow
On the surface, being a grants manager and a bagpipe musician couldn’t be more different. But, as Robert Laverock can tell you, they draw from a similar skill set. Both are challenging tasks that require dexterity, good communication, patience, creativity, and strict organization. Laverock should know; this is where he excels. At Rollins, Laverock manages research grants for faculty across the school in his role as assistant director of the Office of Research and Administration.
He also happens to be a professional Highland bagpiper. Last year, he placed second at the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow, Scotland. At the time this article was written, he was competing in the World Championships again. He has performed alongside Celtic Woman and Rod Stewart, and before a range of audiences—from wedding guests to former President George W. Bush.
Watch Laverock perform with the City of Dunedin Pipe Band at the 2026 World ChampionshipsA first-generation Scottish American, bagpiping has always been an important part of who Laverock and his family are.
His father competed in the World Championships as a drummer in a bagpipe band, and both his paternal grandparents played. Laverock learned how to play as a 10-year-old growing up among a large Scottish population in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Then, as now, the music served as a conduit to Scotland and to pride he feels about his
heritage.
As an adult, Laverock maintains practice as a regular part of his routine—especially during competition season when he
travels to be with bandmates in the City of Dunedin Pipe Band based in South Florida.
Bagpiping is hard. The instrument constantly goes out of tune if there’s rain, a change in temperature, or just because. It’s heavy. The peak sound is fleeting. Playing it requires squeezing, blowing, playing, memorizing, and moving. Getting 13 to 18 players coordinated is complicated. In short, it’s exhausting.
“As someone working in public health, there are definitely public health benefits to bagpiping,” says Laverock. “It’s a full body experience. It requires endurance—the instrument is always working against you.”
And yet, for an instrument that is so frustrating to play, there is something undeniably powerful about it. Because when everyone plays in sync and in harmony, it isn’t like anything else. It’s loud, soulful, and quintessentially Scottish. Perhaps that’s why Laverock’s 13-year-old son is eager for his dad to teach him. Maybe he feels the way that Laverock does: a sense of pride and a sense of connection to his family and to Scotland.
“When I play, I get to be one with music. I also know that it’s something that made my mom really proud. I want to keep that going," he says.
Going with the Flow
Sometimes a health scare can serve as a catalyst for change. In Kathryn Yount’s case, it was a breast cancer diagnosis. As she thought about her work, life, and the way she wanted to live it, she decided to make some changes—one change included redefining her relationship with stress.
“I wanted to be more mindful about how I was spending my time and responding to stress in my life. I wanted to embrace a
different way of living, working, and being.”
A long-time yoga hobbyist, she immersed herself in her yoga practice and earned her 200-hour yoga teacher certification. She began her 500-hour training too, where she learned about trauma-sensitive yoga and yoga for cancer survivors.
“It's been helpful for me to focus on the process rather than the outcome,” says Yount, PhD, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Global Health at Rollins. “Academia can be very outcome-oriented with respect to papers and grants. I have found that focusing on the intellectual process is compatible with a successful, and more gratifying, academic life.”
Now cancer-free, Yount says yoga has helped her stay centered at work and in her personal life. At Rollins, Yount’s research areas lie at the intersection of preventing violence and empowering women as strategies to improve health. She is in the 17th year of a collaboration with the Center for Creative Initiatives in Health and Population, which aims to understand and prevent violence among young people in Vietnam. Having developed an effective online prevention program, her team’s current implementation trial is scaling the program to reduce sexually violent behavior and increase pro-social bystander behavior among young men nationally.
“Over the years, our partnership in Vietnam has grown from one local NGO to about 20 institutions working together to train the next generation of science leaders to prevent violence in Vietnam, with a special focus on at-risk populations and communities.”
Yount notes that through her work, she has found that a high percentage of young adults, including young men, have been exposed to various types of child maltreatment, which contributes to a cycle of violence. Now, her team is moving into mindfulness practices and other accessible, acceptable, and non-stigmatizing approaches to address the psychosocial impacts of early exposure to violence as young people move away from home and into the university environment.
“I'm very interested in mind-body practices—including yoga —as intervention strategies that are widely acceptable and for which the evidence for effectiveness is growing," she says.
Yount recently submitted with team members at Emory a research proposal to examine whether Cognitively Based Compassion Training can effectively intervene with at-risk students at Emory.
“If we really care about primary prevention, we need to address the psychosocial challenges that many young adults carry with them from childhood into the university environment,” she says.
Yount is intentional about integrating mindfulness and yoga into her daily routine. This can be a morning or evening practice before or after work—either alone, or as part of a group class at Vista Yoga. But it can also be two minutes of chair yoga, a five-minute meditation, a quiet walk on campus without her phone, or a few moments of a meeting to focus her attention and breathe. On a personal level, Yount’s deepened relationship with yoga has impacted all aspects of her life.
“I am happiest when I am practicing daily because it reminds me to stay present, even when the demands of work and life seem to multiply. I am happier on the team. I feel like a better mentor. I feel more intellectually stimulated…I'm a better mother when I practice regularly.”
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Rollins Magazine is published twice a year by the Rollins School of Public Health, a component of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center of Emory University, for alumni and friends of the school.