Author: Randi Alexandra Plake

Jackie Freed moved back to LA and got her real estate license a month after graduation. She joined the family business, BKF Properties, and is looking forward to helping fellow Cardinals find a place to land out in Cali!

Trisha Arora just moved to Boston where she is working for Epsilon as a business systems analyst. She also just adopted a kitten named Legolas.

Rachael Metz is moving to Santiago, Chile, with her twin brother (Jordin, Tufts ’16), from September to May to immerse herself in the Spanish language and Chilean culture. Her goal is to be fluent (or close to it) by the time she returns home. They will both get their international certifications to teach English, then will look for jobs in teaching and tutoring English. If any Wes alumni are in Chile, please reach out!

Miranda Haymon has jumped right into rehearsals as the directing fellow at Arena Stage in D.C. If anyone is in D.C. and wants to see a show, let her know!

In August, Abby Gruppuso moved to Taiwan to teach English through the Fulbright program. She is living in Taichung, the third largest city on the island, and is teaching fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. Abby recounts, “Taiwan is beautiful, the food is amazing, my students are unbelievably cute, and my coworkers have been super welcoming.” She is excited for the year ahead.

Instead of spending all of August au pairing in Istanbul as planned, Melissa Leung took up a new German friend’s offer to accompany her to her home in Germany. This spot served as Melissa’s home base for the days she didn’t spend touring Europe. Melissa met up with Wy Ming Lin in Cologne, too! Now Melissa is in East Asia traveling with her two sisters (one a Wes ’10), stopping in Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou. She just signed her lease with Sarah Mi.

 Samantha Hellberg has been working as the program coordinator for the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She has been really enjoying her first few months, even though she started just off the heels of graduation (within less than a week!). She’ll be working there for approximately two years, as she develops her research and clinical skill sets further, and applies to clinical psychology PhD programs.

Caroline Shadle moved to Manhattan to start a new position at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea. She is living in an apartment with two Wes alumni, as well as across the street from two other Wes alumni—reminiscent of Home Avenue.

Nina Channing is pursuing her MFA-2 in interior design at the New York School of Interior Design after spending a fulfilling summer helping with Dylan Fernandes’ successful primary campaign for the state representative seat in Falmouth, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket.

Former housemates Alessandra Cervera and Liyan Yao are having post-grad separation anxiety, and miss each other dearly. Sandi is doing cognitive development research at Yale, and Liyan has been accepted to med school, deferring to January. In the meantime, Liyan plans on taking some time off to spend with friends and family.

Emma Buford moved back to NYC to pursue the arts. She loves being in her hometown and continues to spend time with family and fellow Wes alumni. She will be in a production at the Joyce Theater this October, thanks to a connection made by Caroline Shadle, and will also be singing at a fundraiser in November.

Hannah Sokoloff-Rubin has picked up her stuff and moved across the country to Portland, Ore., to see what the whole “West Coast” thing is all about. She’s working for Planned Parenthood as the community education and outreach coordinator in Washington County and hopes to spend as much time in the outdoors as possible.

Jack Reuter just got a job working at a golf course as “the person who drives around in that little cart picking up balls from the driving range.” Jack reports, “That’s about it. Living at home, job hunting. Life is good.”

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

Andrew Yin is a first year at Cornell Medical School in NYC. He has been trying to stay afloat amidst the loads of work and uses every chance he gets to explore the city or catch a baseball game.

Katherine Gibbel started her MFA in poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop this fall. Mackenzie McPike is now an analyst at Jane Street Capital in NYC. Alicia Gansley joined an e-commerce startup called Zola in Manhattan where she is a software engineer.

After working in litigation for almost a year in Boston, Ming Zhu is now going to a master’s program in entrepreneurship at Babson College’s business school to pursue his passion in the agri-business/food-tech business. Also, if any alumni or current students are interested in the food business, especially plant-based beverages, they should reach out to him!

Mateusz Burgunder is working at Accenture in Switzerland, where he is focused on big data and business intelligence.

Five years after meeting on the first floor of 200 Church, their freshman dorm, Marianna Ilagan and Jimmy Nguyen got married in Professor Alice Hadler’s backyard in New Haven, Conn. They are moving to Ann Arbor, where Jimmy is starting his master’s in biostatistics at the University of Michigan.

Michael You Rong Leung has been enjoying summer in Chicago since passing level one of the CFA program. He has been taking sailing classes and traveling around the country. He managed to meet up with Leslie Lai ’14, David Mai, and Jenna Starr in his most recent trip to Wesleyan!

Ibironke Otusile has left NYC Health and Hospitals on Rikers Island, a jail complex in Queens, where she worked in the medical records department, serving the underprivileged jail population. She is an MS candidate in biomedical sciences at Barry University, in Hollywood, Fla. In her free time, she creates videos for her new YouTube channel, Ibironke Otusile.

Jenna Starr | jstarr@wesleyan.edu

Greetings and happy fall, class of 2014! Here is what some of your classmates are up to:

Jessica Titlebaum is back in Michigan for her second year of veterinary school at Michigan State University. She is hoping to focus on small animal medicine upon graduation, and toys with the idea of specializing in neurology.

Lucy Finn moved back to San Francisco and is a business consultant for Kaiser Permanente. She is missing New York, but it’s been fun being back in the Bay.

Jennelle Herrick reports: “After working as a paralegal in trust and estates and at real estate law firms, I have taken a break from the legal setting and joined the private real estate developer, Discovery Land Company, on one of their newest projects on Maui, Hawaii, located at the Makena Golf and Beach Club. Although it was hard to say goodbye to Connecticut—the state in which I was born, raised, educated, and started my career—it’s safe to say I have fallen head over heels for paradise. I am in the final stages of completing my Hawaii real estate license and I am looking forward to witnessing our project grow from the beginning stages.”

Rachel Fox has been quite busy. She completed a master’s in narrative medicine at Columbia University in August 2015, spent the 2015-2016 academic year as an adjunct professor at Rutgers and Sarah Lawrence, and is now getting her PhD in communication and science studies at UC, San Diego. Rachel is living in La Jolla.

In other news: “Nick Petrillo, Keegan Dufty, Sky McGilligan, Ben Kafoglis, Remy Lieberman, and Casey Lasda all live in NYC where they are working on a scene-for-scene, shot-for-shot remake of Dirty Dancing. Most of them are single.”

After graduation, Simon Riker worked mainly as a freelance musician, most notably as associate music director for Summer Theatre of New Canaan, and as music director and marketing associate at PGT, a nonprofit children’s theater in White Plains, N.Y. He is an assistant choirmaster at Christ’s Church (Rye, N.Y.) and associate product manager at Axial, a fintech startup in Manhattan. Simon is stoked to share that his Wesleyan senior thesis, Me Prometheus: Caveman Love Story, had a second student production at William & Mary, and will be having its New York premiere as part of the New York Theater Festival in next summer.

Julian Theseira completed a master’s in international history at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Since he left Wesleyan, he has presented his research at the inaugural global history student conference at the Freie Universitäet Berlin, the inaugural world history student conference at King’s College London, the inaugural Yenching Global Symposium at Peking University, Beijing, China, and the British Postgraduate Chinese Studies network annual conference also at King’s College London. Outside of academia, Julian has interned with the Permanent Mission of the Sovereign Order of Malta to the United Nations in Geneva, during which time he managed external communications and reported on sessions of the UN Human Rights Council, UNHCR Standing Committee, the UN ECOSOC Humanitarian Affairs Segment, and other international meetings. He is interning with the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva, where he manages external communications on social media.

Keep the notes coming and enjoy your PSL’s. Much love,

Mary Diaz | mcdiaz@wesleyan.edu 

With the arrival of fall comes the realization that it’s already been three years since the Class of 2013 graduated from Wesleyan. During this time, we’ve traveled the world, earned an additional degree (or two), and settled into an exciting new chapter of our lives. Keep reading for a snippet of our adventures!

Jim Curley is the director of state relations at Boston University. He is also working towards an MBA at BU. He sees his fellow classmates Derek Lukin and Carmen Boscia in Boston. Amanda Simmons relocated to Philadelphia from NYC to study at Penn Law. She is joined by her partner, Adam Jaskol, who works as a management consultant and engages in casual sax(ophone). Amanda and Adam are hoping to reconnect with Wes friends, so reach out if you’re in Philly. Sarah Cassel finished her master’s in criminology at the University of Cambridge this summer. She wrote her dissertation on higher education in prison, and is working at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. Anna Swartz is still living in Brooklyn and is a staff writer at Mic, where a few coworkers are also Wes grads. From her office in One World Trade she can almost see all the way to Connecticut! Happy to say that she still sees Wesleyan friends at least once a week, if not more.

Kristen Salustro missed LA by a couple of thousand miles and wound up in Chicago, which is just fine by her. She is a writer for bswift, an Aetna company, and is working on her third novel. Her first two books, published under the name K.N. Salustro, were nominated for the Chanticleer Book Reviews Cygnus Awards for science fiction and speculative fiction. Sydney Lowe is also living in LA. After working as an associate producer at HBO in New York for three years, she joins the staff of HBO’s upcoming fall comedy, Insecure, as producer’s assistant to show creator, Issa Rae. Sydney continues to work as a photographer and creative producer on several video projects, documentaries, and branded content campaigns.

Despite tenacious efforts to avoid gainful employment in 2016, Evan Carmi ended up with a new job, joining Airbnb’s Portland engineering team. After failing to muster the courage to take Drawing 1 at Wes, he signed up for a local drawing class this fall. Zach Schonfeld delivered a Drunk Ted Talk on the subject of Nicolas Cage appreciation. He still works for Newsweek, and he hasn’t gotten stuck in an elevator since 2014. Julian Azaret moved to Melbourne, Australia, where he’s run into a few Wes alumni. He has been racing bikes, climbing mountains, and consulting in the SaaS industry all over Asia-Pacific. Things haven’t changed much in the last three years. Anyone passing through that part of the world should give him a holler!

After finishing her master’s in sustainable engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, Alissa Santucci has been working at Xerox Corporation in the environmental, health, safety, and sustainability department. Alissa was promoted to environmental technology program manager and is excited for all of her new responsibilities which can help shape the environmental sustainability future of the company. Katie Havlovic writes in from D.C., where she transitioned from working for Congressman Beto O’Rourke to the Opportunity Finance Network, where she advocates for the interests of community development financial institutions throughout the United States. While she continues to explore the D.C. food truck scene, nothing can beat the falafel and grilled cheese trucks back at Wes.

Brooklyn is full of entrepreneurs! Noah Masur ’15 has started a humane pesticide business (very popular in Williamsburg), and William T. Davis has taken his experience in the coffee industry and now runs an online exotic coffee bean store on the deep net. Sora Akiyoshi ’14 and Chloe Rinehart ’14 began a volunteer outreach program that offers ultimate Frisbee classes for those in senior housing, and Peter Horton and Croy Salinas are still making sweet music together as they enjoy the start of their fourth year of happily living together. Mark Popinchalk enjoys keeping tabs on his friends, both in Brooklyn and afar, including Ethan Grund, who is starting his second year working on his comprehensive lake survey of Minnesota.

Matt Lichtash, much like Andrew Perlmutter is wont to do, is also working away, doing all things BKE. Aside from pursuing all forms of football except for the actual thing (fantasy, flag), Matt has also embarked on a new creative venture: a website dedicated to presenting information about climate change in concise posts containing three bullet points or fewer. The site, thecarboncapital.org, is easily digestible, shareable, and nonpartisan, and posts info to motivate anyone to take climate action.

Evan Okun (aka E. Oks) performed a solo show at the NYC’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe alongside Sam Friedman and other members of his Chicago collective. The show celebrated the release of his new single (soundcloud.com/eoks). The next morning, he flew back to Chicago to continue his work with Circles & Ciphers, a hip-hop infused restorative justice organization led by young people who are court-, gang-, and DCFS- involved.

As for myself, I wrapped up three years at Apple and transitioned to Fitbit to work in advanced product development. When I’m not searching for the latest and greatest technologies to apply to future Fitbit products, you’ll find me traveling, watercolor painting, and (still) eating my way through the wonderful city of San Francisco. Would love to reconnect with any Wes alums living in or traveling through this area!

Laura Yim | Lyim@wesleyan.edu 

As many of you know, or perhaps some of you are in denial (like myself), 2017 marks our five-year Reunion. That’s right, it has been five years since that beautiful spring day on Foss Hill when we threw our caps in the air. Similar to time, the class of 2012 has not slowed down.

Alex Ketchum is finishing up her PhD in the department of history at McGill University, focusing on feminist restaurants and cafés in the United States and Canada. She coaches lacrosse and teaches in Montréal where she lives with her husky/lab mix, Bubbles. Laura Bliss is a staff writer for CityLab, the Atlantic’s urban affairs vertical, also based in Montréal.

In New Jersey, David Amrhein has been working at TAG Optics, a recently acquired startup spun out of research at Princeton University, making ultra-fast focusing liquid lenses for microscopes and laser systems. Also on the East Coast, Kenny Feder is in Baltimore doing his PhD in public health at Johns Hopkins. Kenny studies how parents’ mental health and substance use challenges can spill over and affect the well-being of children.

Down in Texas, Katie Silver is a support manager at Atlassian, a software company. She is getting married in this spring, and Benny Kaufman is officiating!

Jed Rendlemen is an independent naming consultant. While he works out of his hometown of Portland, Ore,. he partners with businesses around the world to help them create strategic, memorable brands.

Julia Mulhern just finished her PhD in geology at the University of Utah and is moving to New Orleans to work for Shell this fall.

Out on the West Coast, Henrik Cotran is a sector lead at the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), based in San Francisco. SASB is chaired by Michael Bloomberg, former New York mayor, and is developing sustainability accounting standards. Outside of work, Henrik can be found mountain biking, backpacking, skiing, or volunteering at a youth reading program in Oakland.

After working for a year in Denmark and nearly three in D.C., Adam Fishman is now enrolled in a master of environmental management degree program at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Kwasi Ansu ’09 and Nate Kaufman ’08 are in the same program.

After co-founding an independent record label in NYC called Par-ka Records, Charlie Hanna is now working at Paradigm Talent Agency to rebuild the brand partnerships department. You can check out his work in the IBM commercial featuring Stephen King. Charlie is not slowing down anytime soon. He is applying to MBA programs to continue building the knowledge and skills necessary to fulfill his aspirations of one day creating a business at the intersection of media and technology.

After beginning their romance in the basement of Psi U, Anna Brugioni and David Sedgwick finally got engaged. They’re also both at Stern Business School.

Kurt Lyn successfully graduated from Columbia Law and is gainfully employed as a lawyer. Erin Kelly received her MPH from Columbia and is working for the NYC government to improve health.

As for me, I am trapezing between NYC and Connecticut as I have started a new role with Bridgewater Associates in Connecticut. As always, wishing the best to the entire class of 2012!

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

Class of 2011, I hope you all are well. Lots of exciting news from our classmates including weddings, graduations, and graduate school!

Both Leah Coe and Rebecca Friendly got married! Leah writes, “I got married on Aug. 20 to Tom St. Marie in Milwaukee, Wis. Rhee Soo Lee (she officiated the wedding), Jill Reynolds ’12, and Jaime Bonner ’12 were there to celebrate with us.”

Rebecca Friendly graduated from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business with a master’s in social entrepreneurship. She then joined Age of Learning as the communications and public affairs specialist, and is focused on driving the social impact aspect of their mission to help children build a strong foundation for academic success. In July, she married her longtime boyfriend of 10 years.

Joella Jones reports, “I started a new job in May as the communications and Web manager at the Heyman Center for the Humanities and the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University.”

Congratulations to Marshall Johnson who defended his PhD in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin in July. “My research focuses on planets around stars more massive than our own sun. I have now moved to Columbus, Ohio, where I am a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University.”

Jamie Thabault graduated from the University of New England in Portland, Maine, with a bachelor’s in nursing this spring. She is now working on a cardiac progressive care unit at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington and enjoying the beginning of an exciting and challenging new career!

Alicia González-Gross is excited to have begun her MSW studies at the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Alicia hopes to work as a bilingual social worker for Chicago Public Schools upon completing her degree.

Corrina Wainwright writes, “I moved to Boston to start at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the Health Policy and Management program.”

From Reunion Chair Joe Giaimo, “On behalf of the Reunion Committee, thank you to everyone who donated to our class gift in 2015-2016 and to everyone who made the trip back to Middletown for Reunion and made it a huge success. It was great to reconnect, be on campus, and see some familiar faces. We successfully raised $7,163 from 208 donors (30.45 percent of our class), which was 41 donors and $1,500 more than 2014-2015. We hope we can keep up this trend into next year! Lastly, a big thank you to all of our volunteers who help with getting classmates to contribute to the class gift every year, help with career mentorship of undergrads and young alumni, who interview prospective students, and who are involved in many different ways across campus!”

Thanks for the updates!

Allie Southam | asoutham@wesleyan.edu

Happy fall, Class of 2010! Please enjoy the following updates in the lives of our classmates:

Holing Yip has been working for the past four years in an advocacy group in Hong Kong on education policies for ethnic minority students, and just moved to Cambridge, Mass., to start his master’s in education policy. “I would love to connect with Wes friends in the field and in the area!”

Sarice Greenstein is delighted to report that she graduated with a master’s in public health from Columbia University, alongside Jessica Steinke. The two both received certificates in sexuality, sexual, and reproductive health. Sarice is working for Culture of Respect, a project committed to ending sexual violence on campus. She works remotely from various Brooklyn coffee shops. Sarice has enjoyed a season of celebrations as well, proposing to her boyfriend with some extravagant gifts: an “I said yes” t-shirt and matching pair of socks. They plan to get married next summer.

Jenny Ajl and Ruthie Lazenby are co-habitating and celebrating their 10-year “friendiversary” in New Haven, where they are at Yale, studying to be a family nurse practitioner and lawyer, respectively.

Sam Friedman reports that he got married to Rebecca Cimino ’11, and “we had a few Wes people there to help us celebrate: Nadeem Modan, Eugenie Carabatsos, Nick Miller ’09, Dana Shukovsky ’11, Nic Wilder ’11, and Marlene Sim ’11.”

Niki Holtzman-Hayes is happy to say, “I am (finally) in medical school at Northwestern University in Chicago!”

Seth Rosen reports: “After moving back to domestic soil (San Francisco, specifically) a year ago, I’m finally emerging from crunch mode at work. The past year I’ve been working on Mafia 3, making the ambient life in our version of New Orleans in 1968, and the game will be out in October.”

Ben Seretan writes, “I continue to play music, and performed a concert at the National Gallery of Albania in Tirana.”

Michael DeFranco and Jason Krigsfeld continue to build Lua Technologies, the startup they founded while at Wesleyan. Lua provides a secure messaging solution to the healthcare industry. They are now serving hospital systems, clinics and laboratory environments, encrypting communication wherever patient information is being digitally shared.

Michael added that he enjoyed playing a part in the greeting of the Polynesian Voyaging Canoe from Hawaii, The Hokule’a, as it sailed into NYC in June. The Hokule’a has been on a worldwide voyage, spreading a message of malama honua, to care for the earth. Over 2,000 attendees congregated in North Cove Marina, a few blocks from the Freedom Tower, to receive and honor the canoe. Michael was responsible for the coordination of all the indigenous communities present that day. Since then, he has been playing a larger role with the United Nation’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and has been helping shed light on some of the issues Hawaii is facing. He has also been working with the indigenous tribes of New York to support the Lakota in their efforts to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Danielle Mor is finishing a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania. “My work has focused on the mechanisms of neuron death in Parkinson’s disease. I am starting my postdoctoral research at Princeton University to study the genetics of aging.”

Wesleyan alumni of all ages have been collaborating in the Berkshires, Alice Maggio reports. As executive director of BerkShares, Inc., she works with potter Dan Bellow ’87, who serves on the board of directors of BerkShares, Inc. She and Emily Watts ’03 joined forces to bring BerkShares, a local currency, to northern Berkshire County. All three of them hope to work with Adam Hinds ’98 when he gets elected to the Massachusetts state senate in November.

Brendan McEntee has some great news: “I, and projects I oversee at my work, have been honored with major recognitions. I received recognition as the top ’Forty Under 40’ in the association community, and a project I oversee was recognized with top honors for having the power to profoundly impact society. The project is implementing clinical decision software that assesses individuals with addiction to determine what treatment is appropriate. It has been an exciting five years working at the American Society of Addiction Medicine. I will be sharing this experience with Wes students in October as part of a career center event.

“In my personal life I took up the hobby of rock climbing and have been enjoying pushing myself indoors and out on mountains. I’ve been living in D.C. and I spend my free time cooking, seeing friends, and volunteering for mentoring programs and on my condo board. I look forward to catching up with everyone next time we are all back on campus. I am impressed every time I catch up or see what my colleagues are doing. I cannot wait to see the further impact as we keep on advancing. Go Wes!”

Angus McCullough updates us that he is managing a newsletter, At the Present Moment. Angus’ newsletter invites folks to art exhibitions and events around the country. Angus explains: “Art requires being in the room with something to feel and understand it. Over the past few years, I’ve been sending out invitations to exhibitions and events that are, for many city people, hard to get to. So I’m very happy to send invitations to events in three major cities and in Vermont, all happening this fall.” Angus also adds that he has been playing improvisational music. “One notable jam was a live score for Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams at the 2016 Cooperstown Biennale. Another was when we played in a field under the full moon and let the horses decide when the session was over. This fall, there will be a show, potentially in Saratoga Springs and in NYC.”

Jonna Humphries has an update: “For the past year, I have been with Sofar Sounds leading growth in D.C. Sofar Sounds is a global music series that hosts secret concerts in over 271 cities around the world. In D.C. we’ve featured artists like Broods, Vanessa Carlton, BUIKA, Fruit Bats, and more. I am excited to announce that I’ve accepted a position at Moog Music and MoogFest to help lead their branding team.”

As always, if anyone has notes to add anytime feel free to send me an e-mail.

David Layne | dlayne@wesleyan.edu