Margaret Sullivan & Omar Haddad

Margaret had spent the last four years at 80-hour weeks building a diagnostics company. Omar had been just as monastic, running pro bono immigration work between teaching. They both had, they admitted, underestimated the effort required to meet anyone new.

Their first long conversation was over clam chowder at a small spot in the North End. Margaret had grown up in South Boston; Omar had arrived from Amman at fourteen. They compared their two very different Bostons and agreed to walk the Freedom Trail together the following Sunday — not as a tourist exercise but as a way to slow down.

They now live in Cambridge within ten minutes of both their offices. They were married last fall at a small venue overlooking the Charles. Omar’s law students made the playlist; Margaret’s co-founders wrote the toast.