CLASS OF 1999 | 2015 | ISSUE 2
Rachel Quinn lives with her partner, Eesha Pandit, in Houston. Earlier this year, they joined 10 of Rachel’s 12 siblings and hundreds of family members in laying her father Dr. Bernard Kwesi Glover to rest in his home village of Akutukope in the Volta Region of Ghana. This fall Rachel will start a tenure-track position in women’s, gender and sexuality studies and comparative cultural studies at the University of Houston. She is working on several articles as well as her first book manuscript, which focus on Dominican women’s lives in Santo Domingo, mixed race identities, and gender and sexuality in contemporary transnational Caribbean culture.
Aaron Shield accepted a tenure-track job as assistant professor of speech pathology and audiology at Miami University of Ohio, where he continues his research on autism and deafness, and teaches undergraduate and graduate students about language development and language disorders. He and his husband, Reginald Harris, moved to Cincinnati this summer.
Gabe Paquette is a professor of history at Johns Hopkins, where he directs the university’s Latin American studies program. Gabe and wife Johanna Bard Richlin ’08 welcomed their baby daughter, Antonia Bard Paquette, into the world on June 5.
Dani Snyder-Young earned tenure at Illinois Wesleyan University last year. Her daughter, Parker, was born in March.
Elsie Kagan and Carl Robichaud welcomed a daughter, Willa Tilden, into their family on May 27. Her brothers, Jasper and Alexan, are delighted by the addition. Elsie continues to teach and make art in Brooklyn, where she started a parent artist network, and this year received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Carl continues his job at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where he makes grants to organizations working to reduce nuclear risks. Elsie and Carl recently visited the Bay Area to spend some time with Dan Engler and Sahra Halpern.
Liz Shulman and her husband, Andrew, welcomed a baby boy—Isaac Emmett Mastronarde—on Oct. 7, 2014. He has blazing red hair and dual Canadian-American citizenship.
Sarah Maine lives in New York, working as director of product development for California-based company Independent Means, and doing creative projects in her spare time. On Aug. 1, she married Scott Sherratt, with Jenessa Joffe ’00, Anders Peterson, Rob Finn ’98, Karen Correa, Allison Radecki ’98, and Neal Wilkinson ’98 in attendance. A wonderful time was had by all!
After 11 years of schooling, Jennifer Karlin graduated from the University of Chicago with an MD in June. During her time at UChicago, she also earned a PhD in the conceptual and historical studies of science, an MA in anthropology, and a fellowship in clinical medical ethics from the MacLean Center. Since so many people were coming into town for the MD hooding and graduation, Jen and Andrew Mullen decided three weeks before the celebration to include a marriage ceremony in the weekend festivities. The ceremony was officiated by Amelia Borofsky at the Ivy Room in Chicago on May 30, 2015. In attendance were the following revelers: professor of psychology and the science in society program Jill Morawski and her family, Jessie Torrisi ’98 (sang and played guitar), Abigail Levine (choreographed a solo dance which turned into a choreographed flash mob!), Laura Zaks (spoke in ceremony and her boys, Luka and Tiago, were flower boys), Diana Glanternik (sang “Moon River” and spoke in ceremony), Shira Gans ’01 (spoke in ceremony), Laura Plageman (spoke in ceremony), Margo Simon (whose husband, Josh Millis, sketched the ceremony in real time) and Martin Lijtmaer (played guitar at the ceremony and reception). See online version for full list of Wes alums in attendance. After returning from a week-long honeymoon in Fiji, Jen left Chicago and moved to San Francisco for her residency in family medicine at UCSF.
When Amelia Borofsky is not officiating weddings, she is a character and researcher in Gemma Cubero del Barrio’s Homecoming, a documentary on climate change and two women who return to Pukapuka, the remote coral atoll in the Cook Islands where they grew up.
Dukagjin Blakaj joined the faculty at the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital at the Ohio State University in Columbus.
Ryan Boutin never expected to be back in Middletown, but he is a physician (hospitalist) at Middlesex Hospital, where he occasionally treats Wes students.
Lauren Tobias lives in D.C., where her son just finished kindergarten. She left the Institute of Medicine two years ago to start her own consulting shop. This spring, she caught up with Jill Clark and Monisha Nariani, and saw Lina Kee and Ookie Ma ’98 when they were stateside this summer to have a second kid. Lauren sees Alison MacAdam occasionally, now that she is back in D.C. after a year in Boston. After 11 years, Alison left All Things Considered, but not NPR. She is now an editorial coach and trainer working to create more opportunities for public radio producers, editors, and reporters to talk about and improve their craft. She shares storytelling techniques from the best NPR content at nprstorytelling.tumblr.com.
After living in New York for almost 16 years, Jayanthi Raja Segaran and her husband, Tirtha Das PhD ’01, moved to the suburbs of Westchester, with two little boys in tow (Rohin, 7 and Eishaan, 3). She has a shorter commute to her job at PepsiCo in White Plains, and a garden to call her own.
Michelle Kawka runs her own portrait and corporate photography and video business in New York City, specializing in character driven portraiture. While her studio is located in Chelsea, she recently moved uptown to Washington Heights. Check out her work at www.michellekawka.com.
Sung An and Suryo Soekarno met up for lunch in Jakarta in May to talk about old times and old friends. Both work in Southeast Asia after stints in the U.S. and elsewhere in Asia earlier in their careers. Sung is a managing director with Falcon Partners, a private equity firm. Suryo is an account director with Millward Brown, a market research and consulting firm.
Thanks for sharing! Keep ’em coming! Hope you all had a relaxing summer!