CLASS OF 2001 | 2024 | SPRING ISSUE
Great to hear from you as always.
Mattitiyahu Zimbler writes, “I recently accepted a faculty position in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College. As part of my teaching, I had the absolute honor of having Kate McGrew, Megan Bartlett, and Eric Rueter ’99 provide incredible guest lectures for my classes. Their relevant expertise has made my classes all the better for it!”
From Matt Earp: “I’ve been pursuing immersive experiences ever since I moved back from Berlin in 2016 and returned to Oakland. For the last five years, I’ve been in Reality Labs at Meta working on immersive experiences for the Quest Virtual Reality headsets. I’m a content designer on the Metaverse team, which means I focus on defining new concepts and then working with [the] team to figure out how to build them. It’s been a wild ride, with a highlight being creating concerts and events in Horizon Worlds, including for Post Malone. I’ve also continued to DJ professionally since college, and now have a duo act called sw00se with my wife, Sara (also a DJ herself). Or maybe now it’s a trio since we welcomed our daughter, Rhye, into the world a year ago. Her favorite toy is a Fischer Price record player and she adores music of all kinds. I still trade tunes with Tim Jones ’02 who also lives in Oakland—we’ve kept our blend of hip-hop and electronic music alive since our WESU radio show days and he still inspires me.”
Nora Friedman writes, “My news is that in May I became the director of the Suzuki Program at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music in Park Slope, where I’ve been on violin faculty for the last 12 years. I would be thrilled to hear from any Wesleyan alums thinking of enrolling their children in bass, flute, violin, guitar, cello, or piano lessons in our program! My email is nora.friedman@bkcm.org.”
Congratulations to Emily Barth Isler for her second book for middle school-aged readers coming out this March, called The Color of Sound. Focusing on a neurodivergent character, the book “explores intergenerational relationships through time travel, and depicts Jewish identity and traditions in an accessible, thought-provoking way.” I see praise already piling up, with best-selling author John Cho writing, “The Color of Sound is a valentine to families everywhere. Isler explores multiple intergenerational relationships lovingly and honestly, while keeping a gifted and vulnerable girl firmly at the center. It’s hard to imagine a book that I would want both my parents and my children to read, and yet, here is one.”
Best,
Mara