CLASS OF 2006 | 2016 | ISSUE 2
First off, I was so happy to see so many folks at the 10 year reunion!
In 2016, Nyasha Foy was appointed to the 2016–2018 Wesleyan Alumni Association Executive Committee as vice chair (along with Joseph B. McElligott IV). She is continuing her role as the chair of the Black Alumni Council. She also joined Vice Media as the associate director of legal affairs in January 2016.
Gabriel Knight lives in West Hartford, Conn., with his wife, Patrice, and 2-year-old daughter, Juliette (who attended her first Wes homecoming game this past November). He is a senior environmental scientist at AECOM. He also brews his own beer and plans to enter some competitions very soon.
Lily Whitsitt, a Princess Grace Foundation-USA Works-in-Progress Resident Artist, and her Door 10 collaborators are developing a new theater performance through a residency at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. This Is the Color Described by the Time, adapted from an early Gertrude Stein play, is inspired by the language and experience of radio plays. The audience wears wireless headphones throughout the performance as live sound and pre-recorded tracks are mixed in real time. Sign up for Door 10’s mailing list to stay in the loop about future iterations of the project: door10.org.
After several years in the nonprofit space and receiving her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in 2012, Hannah Gay recently launched out as an independent consultant with her company malinaSI Social Impact Consulting. She focuses on helping mission-driven organizations with metrics and evaluation.
Smith Louis lives in Cambridge, Mass. and works at Spotify testing and figure out ways to help artists better understand their audience and acquire more revenue. He is also going to graduate school at Tufts to purse a Master’s degree in engineering management.
Sarah Gunther is the director of programs at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, which makes grants to LGBTQI activists and artists around the world. After 10 years in NYC, she and her wife, Amy Krosch, moved to Ithaca for Amy’s new assistant professor post at Cornell.
Jennifer Low and her husband Sean opened their very own cake shop called The Frosted Fox Cake Shop in Northwest Philadelphia. They created the wedding cake for Anna Moench’s wedding! Please look them up at frostedfoxcakeshop.com for more information! Also in the culinary sphere, congratulations to Josh Saffer who is the banquet chef at Del Posto Restaurant in New York City.
Stephen Siperstein received his PhD in English from the University of Oregon and teaches at Choate in Wallingford, Conn. He and his wife, Jemma Braun ’05, are excited to be so close to Wesleyan! His edited collection, Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities, is now out, so pick it up!
Jesse Young had a blast reuniting with Nat Webb and Russell Barlow as their college-era garage rock band The Stanky Panthers for a Friday night show at Eclectic during reunion! Ingrid Aravena is working at the Girl Scouts as the Manager of Urban Day Camps. She is also continuing to work on her side project CinemaKidz, where she teaches movie-making and STEAM activities to young kids.
Burke Giordano has been living in Taipei, Taiwan for the past year. He is developing his magic show, teaching English and learning Chinese. Adam Bernier got engaged to Virginia Aloi at a My Morning Jacket concert in May 2015. Adam lives in Westchester County, N.Y., and works as a producer, educator, and small business owner.
In May 2016, David Bartlett Bates completed a residency in radiology at Boston University Medical Center and is now at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for a one year fellowship. Melanie McCrea lives with her roommate Tracy Honhart in Oakland, Calif. Melanie is a proposal writer for the Sierra Club, a college mentor with ScholarMatch, and a member of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
Julie Mathis has spent the past five years moving around the United States. She now lives in the Greater Seattle area. Since 2011, she has worked for Kaplan Medical, where she was promoted to associate director of advising and sales. In the summer of 2016, she wed her long time love Sean Monts.
Congratulations to Lucy Harper O’Connell, who wed Michael Iain McPherson Robertson in October 2015! The couple met four years in San Francisco, where they still live.
Sarah Montgomery wed Tao Wang in May 2015! Wes alum in attendance include Anna Pinkert, Liz Fortune, Julia Kleinman Horowitz, Allison Hughes, Amy Rosen ’07, Victoria Pinsky ’07, and Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, who referred to himself as the “bride’s servant.”
In October, Kingston Wong married his partner of five years in Copenhagen. Kingston lives in London and works in a strategy role at British Telecom.
Jonathan Harbison married his longtime boyfriend Thomas Senn in a ceremony in Maui. Wes alums in attendance were Jesse Greenspan, Alexandra Loh, Natasha McLeod, Rebecca Morse, Charlotte Page, and Matthew Gregory ’07.
Gabe Tabak and Ruth Brown welcomed baby Liora (who will hopefully be part of the class of 2038) to the world in January 2016! They’re enjoying life with a newborn, and WesUncles Aaron Tabak ’08 and Jeremy Brown ’08 and WesAunt Kara Schnoes ’07 are thrilled to have a niece to spoil. When not changing diapers, Gabe practices energy and environmental law on weekdays and brews halfway-decent beer on weekends.
Nick Bullard and Emily Frost welcomed Henry Frost Bullard into the world May 9, 2016. Baby Henry is doing great and has already memorized the Wesleyan fight song. Dan Lee and Soo Jung Kim welcomed their first child, Madeline Lee, into the world on Nov. 24, 2015. Congratulations!
I am working as a freelance editor and performing stand-up all around the city. I co-host a monthly comedy and music show at The LGBT Center in New York where the proceeds go towards helping LGBT youth of color.
Calvin Cato | catocals@gmail.com