CLASS OF 1990 | 2016 | ISSUE 3

Hi, everyone. Here’s the latest news from some classmates:

In June 2016, Victor Khodadad sang the tenor soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the National Music Festival in Chestertown, Md., and Philadelphia, Pa. He is a recent co-founder of New Camerata Opera, a professional opera company in New York City that is in the process of becoming a nonprofit organization. NCO will be commissioning new operas specifically for YouTube, developing children’s operas, and using media in innovative ways to promote the art form of opera. Their inaugural main stage production is The Count of Luxembourg and Other Tales: A Viennese Pastiche, which was performed in New York City in October. Please visit newcamerataopera.org for more information.

Laurie Baum has taken on the exciting challenge of being the middle school director of the Greene Hill School in Brooklyn. Greene Hill is a small independent PreK–eighth grade school with a sliding-scale tuition and a progressive approach to education. “For the past several years, it’s been my job to plan and launch the middle school division, and this year we will have our first graduating class! I know lots of folks from Wesleyan are in education and I would be happy to show our growing school to anyone interested.”

Kate Hardin is still in Cambridge, Mass., working on energy, climate, and Arctic issues. “We welcomed friends from Spain this summer and enjoyed showing them the United States and answering their questions about Trump and Clinton(!). I took the family to my 25th Reunion last year and it was great to see old Gingerbread House compatriots! Most recently, I ran into Debbie Gahr on the Upper East Side and also caught up with Mateo Cummings in Washington.”

Elizabeth Friedman Haybron writes with news about her husband, Daniel M. Haybron, PhD, professor of philosophy at Saint Louis University, who has received a $5.1 million grant to study happiness and well-being. The award consists of a $4.6 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, along with $453,000 in funding from the University. The three-year project began July 1, 2015. This is believed to be the largest grant ever awarded to a researcher in the College of Arts and Sciences at SLU. Titled Happiness and Well-Being: Integrating Research Across the Disciplines, the project will promote dialogue and collaboration among well-being researchers across a wide range of disciplines, including the sciences, philosophy, and theology and religious studies. Advising Daniel on the project will be a board of 14 leading well-being researchers, including some of the best-known figures in the field such as Ed Diener and Martin Seligman.

Bonnie Cohen, formerly my Foss 7 next-door neighbor, and now a first-time contributor to our class notes, went back to school in medicine seven years after graduating from Wes and became a family physician, focusing on urban underserved and immigrant communities. She worked for nine years at Cambridge Health Alliance, a safety-net system of hospitals and health centers north of Boston. In 2011, she married Brad Braufman (MIT ’85) and in 2014 they adopted newborn Shay Daniel Braufman. They are all living in Somerville. Bonnie is “currently not practicing medicine, but instead practicing full-time parenting, which is even more rewarding, though the pay’s not great. In May, we paid a delightful visit to Liza “Maiz” Connolly, her husband Joe, and three wonderful boys in LA. Warm hello to all Wes buds.”

Jon Lipitz is still living in Baltimore with his wife and two sons, hanging out on a regular basis with Jennifer Teitelbaum Palmer and Brian Klaas ’91. He was named director of events at the Maryland Institute College of Art, managing annually more than 1,300 events at the college, “including Commencement, from which he has liberally stolen a few ideas from our 1990 Graduation. (However, not the ugly pink gowns.)”

Thanks for sharing your news. That’s all for now!

Vanessa montag brosgol | vanessa.brosgol@yahoo.com