CLASS OF 2002 | 2021 | ISSUE 1
One year later most of us are still cooped up in our homes, our kids not in school, and still riding out the pandemic. But as the world opens up and vaccines become available, it’s still great to see that Wesleyan alumni are flourishing. And what’s even crazier—next year marks our 20th Reunion! A few updates from our classmates this time around:
Michelle Carney (Rabinowitz) developed and produced a new docuseries on video games for Vice called Reset: The Unauthorized Guide to Video Games.
Eric Donelan left the U.S. State Department in late 2019 and moved to Seoul, Korea with his family to take a position with the Coupang Corporation as the head of global security and workforce protection.
Monica Coquoz sends out “a friendly hello from Seville, Spain,” where she is based. Melissa is a therapist, mindfulness and yoga teacher. She’s “dancing to stay happy and energized. Big hugs to all!”
Suzy Gerstein lives in New York City with her husband, David, her eight-going-on-14-year-old son Harvey, and her almost three-year-old daughter Judith Rose. Since the pandemic hit Suzy has had to pivot her business. Suzy writes, “For the past decade-and-a-half I had made my living as a freelance makeup artist (doing mostly shoots and red carpet). With that no longer viable, I have begun to teach one-on-one virtual makeup lessons. Fellow ’02-er, Nicole Cohen, has given me invaluable PR coaching. I have also been staying sane doing my homegirl Jen Guarnieri’s Yoga Collective workouts and filming Instagram makeup tutorials (with voice by daughter, Judy).” Suzy’s IG handle is @suzygerstein; you can follow along with her! One of Suzy’s first clients was another fellow ’02er Lily Walton (McDowell), who has a new interior design business. Lily lives in Ojai and her design website is lilywalton.com.
As for me, I’ve been riding out the pandemic with my wife and kids in the greater Vancouver area since September, having spent the fall on Salt Spring Island (seven weeks), Quadra Island (two weeks), and skiing in Whistler (one month), while settling in West Vancouver for the winter and spring (and going back to Los Angeles in the summer). I’ve been working remotely, continuing in my role at XTR. At XTR, we’ve been busy building one of the best documentary studios in the world—we produced eight films that premiered at Sundance 2021 and two films at SXSW 2021. And we are in the middle of production on three documentary series, as well as six feature documentaries, and we also launched our ad-supported streaming platform Documentary+, which is available anywhere you stream content, including docplus.com. We are building a home for passionate nonfiction fans and so far the platform has been doing quite well!
Keep the notes coming!