CLASS OF 2001 | 2025 | SPRING ISSUE

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Hello and happy 2025 to the Class of 2001. Here are the latest and greatest updates from your fellow classmates.

Chietigj Bajpaee writes that at the end of 2023, he returned to his roots in the public policy field after spending over a decade in the private sector. Chietigj joined Chatham House, an international relations think tank as their senior fellow for South Asia, and he is currently working on his second book on the India–U.S. relationship. Chietigj welcomes any publishing advice!

After planning to be in Japan for two, maybe three years tops, Roger Smith recently celebrated 10 years in Japan! The first five years he contributed to the recovery of the northeastern Tohoku area post-tsunami. After that he had planned to return to the U.S. to restart his environmental career but transitioned to international work pressuring Japanese companies to do better on climate change and forest protection. Recently, Roger produced a feature documentary film about youth climate activists in Japan with director Yu Iwasaki called Michinoku Denki. It tells an intimate story of students working to help communities suffering from Japan’s energy policy as part of grassroots initiatives fighting for a cleaner and fairer future. Look for it at film festivals, and Roger welcomes any ideas for showings globally.

A little over a year ago, Rebecca Hume closed up her freelance design practice for nonprofits to take an in-house role leading design for Protect Democracy (co-founded and led by Ian Bassin ’98). It’s been—and continues to be—challenging work but also feels like the most meaningful thing she can be doing at this moment.

Mandy Sayle Rinzel is still living in Brooklyn (this is her 22nd year living on Eastern Parkway!) and teaching English language arts and English as a new language—but this school year she left the Bronx middle school where she had worked for the past seven years for a high school that is a block and a half from her house. But she doesn’t even get to “miss” being around middle schoolers, because she has two of them in her house. Stanley is in sixth grade and Julius, Mandy’s eighth grader, is about to make his off-Broadway debut in The Antiquities by Jordan Harrison at Playwrights Horizons. Mandy says it’s been pretty amazing to watch her kid fall in love with acting at the incredible NYC public school he attends (PPAS)—and for Mandy personally it’s gratifying that his first gig is in the kind of play she would have wanted to direct scenes from in Tim Raphael’s class at Wesleyan. Jay Golon and Bex Schwartz ’00 are coming to see it. If any other Wes folks go see the show, Mandy would love to hear from you!

Jenny Selgrath is living in Santa Barbara, where she has been for four and a half years. She works as a social-ecological scientist with the NOAA Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary and the California Marine Sanctuary Foundation (and bonus, Jenny gets to work with Jai Ranganathan ’97!) Jenny works across California on ocean access and environmental justice, on deep-sea corals, and climate change. She is still dancing and spends a lot of time trying to wrangle her fixer-upper house and her dog into submission.

Jim Isler writes in to tell us he is so proud of his wife, Emily Barth Isler, as she continues to write and publish books for young adults and children. Jim and Emily will celebrate their 21st wedding anniversary this spring. Last year, Jim created and produced an award- winning series for PBS called Say What?! that explores the origins of animal idioms. Currently he is producing another series he created for PBS called Comedians vs. Animals where participants pretend to be experts on weird-but-true animals. Jim is always looking for great leads on comedians if people have ideas!

Aryn Sperandio recently began a new project management contract with SNDL, one of Canada’s leading public cannabis companies. After AI started affecting her writing consultancy, Aryn founded Doer Agency in 2024—a people-first project management company focused on getting things done. Although it feels unusual to step away from marketing, Aryn is learning a lot about manufacturing and operations at SNDL. Working in the controlled substances industry comes with challenges, but the unique challenges also keep things interesting.

Be well,

Aryn and Mara

ARYN KALSON-SPERANDIO | arynsperandio@yahoo.com

MARA VOUKYDIS | maravee@gmail.com