CLASS OF 2016 | 2019 | ISSUE 2
After completing law school in May, Nina Gurak is languishing in Philly libraries studying for the July bar exam. She is moving to Nashville soon and would love to connect with local alumni.
Zach Larabee has been living in South Boston the past three years with Jake Smith ’14. He’s been working happily as the enterprise sales coordinator for two years at Toast, Inc. along with fellow Cardinals Abby Cahn-Gambino ’18, Beau Butler ’18, and Alex Kamisher ’17. In his off time, he bowls with Cameron Rahbar ’15 and carries Jonathan Coombs ’15 in Fortnite on PS4. No one really knows what year Zach actually graduated.
Gabe Rosenberg is working at WOSU Public Media in Columbus, Ohio, where he’s been the digital news editor for the last few years. He won journalism awards for his pun-filled headlines and for a series of stories he did on the city of Columbus tearing down a beloved kangaroo crossing sign—a tragedy that he accidentally caused himself. “All’s well that ends well though!” he notes. You can also occasionally read his reporting on NPR. “Oh, and I started a food blog called Oy Sauce, just for fun, and because the name was too funny to pass up,” Gabe adds.
Madeline Keane’s days have consisted of waking up at 6:25 a.m., eating cheese for breakfast, doing some paperwork, and then later taking a nap. Afterwards, she has an espresso and then goes on her daily stroll around Boston.
Pierre Gerard likes to ride his bicycle(s). He’s interning with the City of Oakland’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Program to develop safer streets, and crunching the numbers with a worker-owned bicycle cooperative in Berkeley. He dreams of a day when we all stop driving.
Zarek Siegel is living on a cliff by the sea in La Jolla, Calif., finishing up the first year of his PhD in neuroscience at the University of California San Diego. He was living in NYC for two years, doing computational biophysics research at Weill Cornell Medicine with Mike LeVine ’11, and sharing an apartment with Mike Glasser and Conor Hunt. He definitely misses New York, especially his roommates and Central Park, but he’s finding it pretty difficult to complain about San Diego.
Samantha Hellberg, a graduate student in clinical psychology, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Award. The award recognizes outstanding graduate students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Samantha will be recognized at the 2020 Graduate Student Recognition Celebration, hosted by UNC Graduate School.
Caroline Shadle will be starting a master’s program in dance studies this fall at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
After a stint in consulting, Michelle Li realized she really missed being a student and will be starting her PhD in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Becca Winkler returned to Philadelphia after living in Thailand for two-and-a-half years working with Mahouts Elephant Foundation, a U.K. charity dedicated to improving conditions for Asian elephants and the communities that coexist with them. She will begin her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in September studying cultural anthropology. She will the assist foundation part-time with the development of their projects and is excited to begin this new chapter in Philly!
Tim Israel visited San Francisco in May and went to a party, where he met four Wesleyan alumni he didn’t know. “They were chill,” he says.
Melissa “Melysaur” Leung has been roaming Germany searching for the best beer and pretzels with Wy Ming Lin. She has been studying German and learning about the dual health care system by working at Sana Klinikum. Sarah Mi was a lovely visitor but decided to fly just short of Germany, and instead went to Spain.
Bulelani Jili is in Cambridge, U.K. He earned an MPhil from Cambridge University, where he studied as a Standard Bank Africa Chairman’s Scholar. His work examines the relationship between China and African countries, like Ethiopia, that have adopted its model of economic development and surveillance. This fall he will be starting a PhD at Harvard University.
Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu