Driven to Succeed
Natalie Joy Johnson
Diva of Distinction Natalie Joy Johnson ’00 shares some traits with her selftitled character in Natalie Joy Johnson: Full Bush, an adultsonly show about a down-on-her-luck woman who is looking for love everywhere except where she’ll find it – deep within herself. The performance, described as “riveting” and “heartstopping,” earned a 2013 New York Musical Theatre Festival Award for Excellence for outstanding individual performance. The character “is a bit more grand…boozy…and over the top than I am,” Johnson told Playbill.com. “That’s saying a lot.” The Mary Washington theater major, one of Time Out New York’s Top-10 Downtown Divas, might be best known for her two roles in Legally Blonde – on Broadway as high-strung law student Enid Hoopes and on the national tour as divorced manicurist Paulette. The Village Voice called her weekly performance at Brooklyn’s Therapy bar “zingy…and fun…Bette Midler meets Courtney Love.” Her first self-titled piece, Natalie Joy Johnson Is Relentless, was named a Top-10 cabaret. Her latest creation, Full Bush, mixes her own real-life moments with ones she completely made up, Johnson told Playbill.com. “I’ll never tell which.”
An internship Pionne Young Corbin ’94 landed as a student at the University of Mary Washington has taken her more than 400 miles – from Stafford County, Va., to Buffalo, N.Y. – and launched her even further in her career. Corbin, who has worked for GEICO for two decades, was promoted this summer to assistant vice president of underwriting for the company’s Buffalo regional operation. The country’s largest direct marketer of car insurance, GEICO insures more than 18 million vehicles and is, according to A.M. Best’s 2011 market share report, New York’s top auto insurer. Corbin’s journey with the company began in 1993, when she signed on as a college intern. She graduated cum laude as an economics major the next year and completed a management internship in 1996. She moved on to hold the titles of claims service representative supervisor, sales supervisor, and service manager. By 2004, Corbin was managing the company’s new business underwriting and reunderwriting divisions; by 2009, she was commercial auto operations manager; and in July of last year, she became director of GEICO’s commercial auto division. In her new role, Corbin is responsible for all auto policy underwriting operations in the Northeast, including New Jersey, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Pionne Young Corbin
U N I V E R S I T Y O F M A R Y W A S H I N G T O N M A G A Z I N E • FA L L / W I N T E R 2 0 1 3
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