Columnist Susan Snyder: Nave truly is a model for success

Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2000 | 10:26 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Alisa Nave really, honestly, never thought her family and friends would see her this way:

Pictured among the pages of Glamour magazine, which in the same issue hawks stories like "Make Him Look Twice Advice," and "10 Biggest Hair and Beauty Don'ts."

They don't make 'em more focused on women's issues than Nave, a 21-year-old Duke University senior and 1997 Green Valley High School graduate.

Yet there she is smiling from the glossy leaves touting Glamour's "Top 10 College Women" featured in the October issue.

But the Las Vegas native figures it's as good a place as any to remind young women that being beautiful starts inside the old noggin.

Nave is pursuing a double major in public policy studies and Russian. She has a five-page resume, which she just rewrote for her law school application. Her possibilities list includes Stanford and UC Berkeley.

She developed communication and organization skills while debating for Green Valley High. She uses them to work on behalf of rape and domestic abuse victims -- issues she also first encountered at Green Valley.

"I had friends who were victims of rape," she said.

At Duke she has created and taught courses on women's leadership and domestic violence.

She volunteers at a campus women's shelter, was a Habitat for Humanity volunteer, is a staff member for sexual assault support services on Duke's campus, was a debate coach for a Durham high school team and has tutored elementary and high school students there, too.

She honed her love of public policy while working for U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan. And she studies six to eight hours a day. That's the short list.

Sleep? Sure, she says. She sleeps -- two, maybe three hours a night.

As for the Glamour thing, it was a whim. It's something she probably never would have done for if it hadn't been for that big snowstorm last winter. She and her friends were snowed in, and one of them had pulled the application off the campus women's center bulletin board for grins.

"I had some extra time," Nave said. "It's such an odd award to win. It just goes to prove you never know what's in your future."

Her mom, DeeDee Nave, is proud of her go-getting progeny. She says she always figured there was something bright in her daughter's future.

"This kid is goal-oriented," DeeDee Nave said. "But she's very human, too. She loves to party."

Well yes, there is that, Nave admits. She is an active member of Alpha Omicron Pi sorority -- president, of course.

Her accomplishments seem limited only by her brief time on this planet. But Nave is humble about it. She believes in throwing herself into the community because it makes life better for others and for her.

"When you leave something you leave energized with more than what you entered with," she said.

Nave hopes to pursue a public policy or political career after law school. And she wants to make her permanent home in Las Vegas.

Lucky for us.