Tag: 2012

Please write to your class secretary.

Please write to your class secretary.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

A new year and a new decade have arrived. Many of us will look back at the last 10 years and recall the impact Wesleyan had on our last decade. Personally, I am grateful for the foundation provided to me on the Hilltop and the influence it still holds on the journey I am on today. Now a look into what a few our classmates have accomplished in the last year of the decade:

Nate Mondschein started a music production company, Echo Base Production, received the 2019 ASCAP Robert Allen Award for his songwriting and production work and released his debut solo album, . . .And the Sky, under his artist name Best Mann. Nate is working on a few new projects, including some Wesleyan-adjacent songwriting and production work with Spencer Hattendorf and Matt Bernstein ’11, and co-producing Josh the Word’s (aka Josh Smith ’11) upcoming collection of singles. Take some time to listen in on Nate’s debut album.

Benjamin Kaufman started a new job this year at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Benny is the associate director for Team Fox, the grassroots fundraising arm of the foundation.

Tess Minter got engaged in 2019 and will be tying the knot over Labor Day weekend in Santa Cruz. Her fiancé is Craig Lahti, who is from Minnesota and graduated from St. Thomas. They met when they were both working in a homeless youth shelter in 2012.

A few of our classmates ended the decade with an adventure. Noa Borkan, Anne DeBoer, Ally Wang, and Saumya Chatrath ’13 visited Rachel Levenson in Nairobi, Kenya. They road-tripped across Kenya, including visiting national parks and ringing in 2020 by the Kenyan coast. Rachel continued the Wes-in-Nairobi reunions, spending time with Nathan Mackenzie and Yinka Taiwo, who were visiting Kenya.

As for me, I am enjoying the newlywed life and coastal living. Wishing the entire class of 2012 an incredible year and decade to come.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

It should come to no surprise that 2019 has been an exciting year for the class of 2012.

Andrew Dominguez has had a wonderfully Wesleyan summer, spending time with new friends from the class of 2012 and his younger sister, a Wes sophomore. Andrew spent a week teaching filmmaking at the nonprofit Camp Hollywood Heart. Andrew then capped off his summer with a week of volunteering up at the Telluride Film Festival, where he was reunited with Adrian Rothschild, who has been working at the festival every Labor Day weekend for seven years since graduation. Andrew ran into over a dozen other Wesleyan people (from the classes of 2009, 2015, many from 2019, and even a new professor in the film department). Andrew is looking forward to the fall season, when he will be working with Raghu Appasani, Geoff Mucha, and Heidi Ransohoff on an event in Los Angeles with The MINDS Foundation for the annual World Mental Health Day.

Raghu Appasani moved to LA last year and is doing a psychiatry residency at USC, loving the sunshine, beach, and mountains.

Rebecca Snelling just started a master’s in management degree program at the CU Denver Business School through her company. She is looking forward to diving more into the business and people aspects of her environmental remediation work. Rebecca is also excited to start another hockey season in the South Shore Women’s Hockey League on a team with former Wes teammates Ann Wheeler, Sydney Morgan ’14, and Cait Bray ’15, MA’16.

Lucas Turner-Owens is the fund manager of The Ujima Fund. Launched in 2018, the fund has raised $1 million to date from over 150 investors. The fund is designed to aggregate investments from working class and wealthy investors to fund businesses based in Boston’s working-class communities of color. Uniquely, the fund requires that all investments be voted on and approved by 51% of the members of Ujima who live in Boston. Ujima has 500 members, 250 of which identify as working class people of color in Boston.

Christopher Fragoso is a computational biologist at Verinomics, an agricultural genomics startup in New Haven, Conn.

Chris Russell co-founded Project77 out of Columbia Business School in 2018 to support education and social sector organizations with data analytics tools and services. He is a member of the Columbia Startup Lab accelerator in NYC. He is the proud partner to Doris Martinez ’10 and the proud fur parent to Tali and Brigitt. Chris is always willing to grab coffee and/or drinks with Wes family and can be reached at chris@project77solutions.com or by text 860/539-9284.

Ashley Garrett just left the U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General as an analyst and transfered to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of the Inspector General as an analyst in audit.

Love was in the Wes air with many weddings this year. Liz Dalton and Ben Rose were married in September among several Wes friends. They’re living in Oakland, Calif., where Liz is an interior designer for restaurants and hotels.

Kenny Feder was married this year in May and finished his PhD. in public health. He is working for the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service program as an epidemiologist for Maryland Department of Health.

Dana Levy married Reiss Clauson-Wolf ’13 on Sept. 1 in Rhode Island. Julian Silver and Mattison Peters ’13 were members of the bridal party. Father of the bride, Harold Levy ’75, and uncle of the groom, Daniel Wolf ’79, were in attendance.

A little Cardinal joined the nest. Tasmiha Khan and her husband welcomed their first son. Tasmiha also was published on MTV.com.

As for me, I jumped on the bridal bandwagon and got married in May. Wishing the entire class of 2012 all the best in the next year to come.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

AhDream Smith wrote, “I was accepted into the Class of 2022 for the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s MFA acting program in conjunction with the Playmaker’s Theater Company. I will be heading there in the fall and am excited about this next chapter.”

Gemma Doll-Grossman completed her MFA in cinematography from the American Film Institute Conservatory. She lives in Los Angeles, working as a cinematographer.

Harry James Hanson is producing, directing, and styling photo/video shoots in Brooklyn. This spring, his photo series Legends of San Francisco, featuring drag elders, was published on Vogue.com.

Tasmiha Khan wrote, “I just completed my master’s in social impact and looking forward to next steps as a coach in the nonprofit sector and corporate world while taking on a new interest in writing.”

Han Hsien Liew received his PhD in history and Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University. He will be joining the Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute as an assistant professor of arts and humanities this fall.

Nate Mondschein is doing production and recording work with artists Spencer  Hattendorf and Josh Smith. He produced the debut album Young and In Debt for his band Old Flame, released in May. He recorded the album with Andrew Oedel at Ghost Hit Recording and in his own studio, Echo Base. It was mastered by Andy Casella of Shape Recording. This fall, he’s releasing his debut self-produced solo album . . . And The Sky under the artist name Best Mann, also recorded at Echo Base and Ghost Hit and mixed by Andrew.

Matthew Figueroa is pursuing a poetry and spoken word career more seriously. He’s been featured at different NYC events and artist showcases. He piloted a creative writing poetry workshop which highlighted the therapeutic benefits of artistic expression as mental health. It was done at a couple middle schools and he’d like to get more on board this fall.

He also published his first poetry book Adolescence. His book “focuses on the anxiety and depression I struggled with in high school,” he explained. “I wanted people to know that they aren’t alone in the problems they face; that none of us need to strive for ‘perfection.’ And, most importantly, that healing becomes possible once you accept and talk about your demons. It’s a domino impact that empowers others, while silence only feeds self-destructive beliefs.”

2019 marked the tenth anniversary of David Wei, Noah Feingold, Peter Frank, Julian Silver, Phil Hall-Partyka, Kevin Walters, Jeremy Koegel, and Adam Ilowite’s first Warfish games, with Kevin introducing much of the eight to the website freshman year at Wesleyan. The group has played 300-plus games of Warfish almost nonstop and has met for tournaments in places like New York City and Cape Cod. As the eight have spread out around the country, Warfish has evolved to become an important way for the group to stay connected and acts as a welcome respite during the day-to-day.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

Hi, Class of 2011. Hope this finds you doing well! Lots of exciting things from our classmates.

Christopher Ceccolini and Jordan Gratch ’13 are thrilled to announce that they are finally engaged, eight years after first meeting at Wesleyan in the Alpha Delta Phi living room. They reside in Brookline, Mass., where Chris is a third-year doctoral student in counseling psychology at Boston College and Jordan is a third-year law student at Boston University. “We are really excited to start this next chapter of our lives together even as we juggle so many other life changes and responsibilities.” Chris hopes to have a completed dissertation proposal by their wedding in late 2019, while Jordan completed a summer associate position at Latham & Watkins in New York, where he will begin full-time in October.

Lindsey Davis writes, “I gained employment as a research associate handling rare books and manuscripts, largely dealing with abolition, African-American, and women’s history, as well as the transcendentalists’ and Lost Generation’s works.”

Austin Woolridge reports, “My company (playerslounge) that I started with Zach Dixon ’12 went through ycombinator, and we have raised around $2 million from funds and angels including: Comcast, RRE, Marissa Mayer, Strauss Zelnick ’79, and more. We also have the founder of Fanduel as a very close advisor.”

Simone Plummer writes, “I’m starting my second year at New York College of Podiatric Medicine; I graduate in 2021. I also got engaged to Evan Huggins ’10 last November! Mallory Cruz spoke at the UN for international autism awareness day back in April, specifically about the abuse of autistic girls and women.”

Corrina Wainwright reports, “I graduated from the Harvard School of Public Health with a master’s in health policy this May—although I finished coursework in December 2017. During the gap, I started a health equity consulting business, working on various projects with NYC agencies. My biggest client is the Center for Health Equity (CHE) in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. I’m working with CHE to add critical historical, political, and economic lenses to the social determinants of health approach. I’m excited to return to NYC but will miss my community and the social justice library at Harvard. I founded the library with strong inspiration from my time in the Center for African American Studies’ DuBois Library—taking Wes with me wherever I go.”

Thanks for the updates! Always nice to hear from everyone!

Allie Southam | asoutham@wesleyan.edu