CLASS OF 2010 | 2020 | ISSUE 1
Greetings, Class of 2010! Please enjoy the following updates from our fellow Cardinals.
Kait Halibozek married Jack Fitzmorris in October in Palm Springs, Calif. Her bridesmaids included Katie Boyce-Jacino, Rebecca Weiss Roberts, and Lauren Valentino Yadav. The wedding was also attended by Dave Bachy, Tony Zosherafatain, Rose Agger, Emily Rasenick, Heather Stanton, Brenna Galvin ’11, Carrie Cohen Smolen ’12, Lindsay Keys ’11, and Danielle Klimashousky ’08.
Justin Papermaster reports that “Gary Garofalo and I have started a new company called LoudCrowd in Austin, Texas. Our software helps consumer brands turn their regular customers into advocates. Our platform makes it possible to incentivize and measure customers to create more user-generated content about them on social sites like Instagram. We raised our pre-seed funding round in October, led by Active Capital. We actually work in the same building as a company called People Pattern founded by Ken Cho ’94, so lots of good Wes stories get shared at office happy hours!”
Dan Bloom moved to Seattle in 2015 when his company, Slope, received investment from Microsoft. Dan and his business partner grew Slope (work management software for marketing and creative teams) in Seattle for the last few years, raising money from Wesleyan alumni like Strauss Zelnick ’79 and Frank Sica ’73, and other investors in the Pacific Northwest. In January 2019, Smartsheet Inc. acquired Slope. Dan has been working at Smartsheet for a year now and the Slope technology has been added to Smartsheet’s core capabilities. Dan still lives in Seattle with his fiancée, Laura.
Seth Rosen moved to Brooklyn a few months ago after four years in the Bay Area. He is preparing to start teaching game design as an adjunct at NYU while continuing to work on a few game development projects of his own, one of which Seth hopes to release this year.
Exciting news from Jess Brownfeld Spierer! She and Eric Spierer welcomed their son, David Ari Spierer, on Dec. 5.
J.P. Valette contributes the following: “I completed my family medicine residency at the University of California San Diego in June and I’m halfway through my sports medicine fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. I’m about to finish the hiring process for my first job in primary care sports medicine in San Francisco, where I’ll be moving in August. I’m excited to move back home and finally get my career in medicine started after a long journey of training. Shout out to anyone already in the Bay Area. I would love to reconnect when I get there. In Wesleyan-specific news, I’ve been hanging out with Jed Rendleman ’12 and together we’ve been getting back into Ultimate Frisbee by playing in a recreational men’s winter league and pickup games. We both played on the club team Nietzsch Factor while at Wesleyan. In other news, I’ve been to Burning Man for the past two years and am looking forward to going back this year for another amazing time.”
Katherine Kitfield Bascom is working as a writer-designer creative lead for the analytics and behavior change marketing team at Aetna-CVS Health in NYC. On the side, she is still pursuing her passion for all things fitness. Katherine is happily engaged and living in Jersey City.
Finally, you may have heard that our classmate and friend Pedro Ventura was shot last October by a stranger outside of a nightclub in North Carolina. Pedro suffered major injuries to his spinal cord as a result of this senseless act. Many of you know Pedro as a dear friend, a fighter, and a joy to all who know him. As he embarks on the long road to recovery, our friend is now in need of support. More details on Pedro’s story and his recovery can be found here: gofundme.com/f/hope-for-pedro. If you can, any contribution would go a long way.
Thank you as always for the wonderful updates, and as always, feel free to send them anytime.
David Layne | dlayne@wesleyan.edu