CLASS OF 1994 | 2020 | ISSUE 3
Greetings from Chicago! The pandemic continues and I hope that everyone and their families, friends and loved ones are all safe. I continue to practice law in Chicago—mostly remotely these days—and was recently named my firm’s administrative partner. As many are, I am negotiating working from home with two kids who are schooling from home! I caught up with my sister Humera Syeda ’90 in Albany, New York with her kids and our parents over the summer. I reconnected with frosh hall mate Amy Grundt whose daughter started at Wesleyan this year! Also, I had great fun being a guest on Peter Chandler’s cooking show where Lourdes Arista also made a cameo experience. Check out Peter’s show on Facebook!
Evan Sils writes that he relocated to Los Angeles after 20 years in NYC. He is heading up the in-house legal department and business affairs team at a media company.
Josh Thomases writes that he is living in Brooklyn with his wife and two sons. He helps run a small school in Brooklyn (El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice), leading the small schools effort in NYC where he helped open 350-plus schools and currently leads a small organization providing high dosage tutoring and mentoring to secondary schools in five cities on the East Coast. Josh keeps in regular contact with our classmates Monique Sully, Terry Johnson, Mike Goodman and Ben Pappas.
Aram Sinnreich announced that he and Jesse Gilbert are writing a new book called The Secret Life of Data, based on an article they published in the International Journal of Communication in November: They recently signed a book contract with MIT Press and hope to have it in print in 2022–23. Congratulations!
Congratulations also to Joel Gershon whose first feature-length documentary film, entitled Cirque du Cambodia, is set to have its world premiere at the United Nations Association Film Festival in October! Cirque du Cambodia is about two teenagers from Cambodia who became determined to be the first Cambodians to take the stage with Cirque du Soleil after seeing one of their videos. The teens learned how to become circus performers at a special school for the arts near their home village and later moved across the world to Canada where Cirque du Soleil is headquartered to attend the world’s most elite circus school after receiving full scholarships. Joel started work on this film in 2011 and tracked the two main characters for more than six years as they continued to try to fulfill their dreams, filming in four countries in three languages! Check out information about the film at cirqueducambodia.com.
It is always wonderful to hear from you all. Please continue to send in your updates!
Samera Syeda Ludwig | samera.ludwig@gmail.com
Caissa Powell | cdp2000@hotmail.com