Author: Randi Alexandra Plake

Hello again, fellow ’95ers! Bo writing this time. Next year is our 25th Reunion, so we’ll expect a lot more notes in the run-up to that milestone! Brief set this issue, so let’s get to it.

My old music-mate Giles Miller writes, “I don’t think I have ever submitted, but I always enjoy reading class notes. Here goes: Living in Los Angeles with my partner and two kids, ages 4 and 8, running a private investigations firm called Lynx Insights that I sort of inherited from Ed Morris ’94, working as a founding member of the nonprofit arts space Human Resources Los Angeles, and still playing the saxophone with friends around town.”

Amy Hundley and her partner, Kristabelle, adopted a baby! His name is Royal Harrison Keo Munson, born July 5, 2018. So far he enjoys apple sauce, attempting to stand, and the music of the Pet Shop Boys and Henry Mancini, especially “Baby Elephant Walk.”

Some news from Joshua Emmott: “I am in my 15th year as a history teacher and house head of a boys’ dormitory at Milton Academy just south of Boston. I have been incorporating travel to Jordan as part of my Middle East history courses, which has been a lot of fun. My two daughters are finishing sixth and second grade, and my wife travels a lot to Africa for public health work. About six years ago we finished restoring a small cottage on an island in Narragansett Bay, R.I., and now spend the summers gardening and fishing. My newest completed project was to restore an MGB, which I now aimlessly drive around on sunny days.”

Anne Bellows Lee is in Santa Monica with two daughters (6 and 8) and one husband and some cats, working at UCLA. She says she’s hoping to come to the next Reunion. Make it happen, Anne!

From Randy Lesnak: “I’ve been living in Mexico City for 10 years now, and yet my Spanish language skills remain shockingly low because I’ve been teaching English to businesspeople for almost eight years. But good news! My daughter Annika will be starting first grade, so there’s a good chance I’ll be learning something from her homework. My wife is an editor with Bloomberg here. In fact, will try to pepper the president with questions when he visits. We did enjoy time with Elena Pavloff ’96 last year during her visit, a culinary tour. She ate better than I do here!”

Andrew Hindman has worked in biopharma since graduating, and has accepted the position as CFO at Theravance Biopharma in San Francisco. This marks an exciting new chapter in his 20-plus year career in making medicines that make a difference! Personally, he’s been happily married (and legally married!) since 8/8/08 to Damien Wood, who runs their hospitality venture, Blue Door Group, in Mendocino, Calif. Together, they are raising an 11-year-old Yorkie Oscar who is the center of their family universe!

Finally, I heard from my long-lost pal, Masha Raskolnikov: “I am kept busy these days by my two 7-year-old daughters, who are absolutely the most fun I’ve ever had. I’m raising them with my ex, and while I wish I didn’t have to be a cliched divorcée, having them all to myself a lot of the time is really fun. I’m still teaching English literature and gender and theory and stuff at Cornell, and making a life in Ithaca, N.Y., with occasional visits to NYC.”

Thanks, y’all! Hope to see you all next May.

Bo Bell | bobell.forreal@gmail.com 

Katy McNeill | mcneill40@gmail.com

Greetings from Chicago! I (Samera) had a wonderful time attending our 25th Reunion over Memorial Day weekend. It was great to see and catch up with Steve Henn, Emily Henn, John Lewis, Jiyoung Lim, Charlotte Castillo, Tomer Rothschild, Aaron Yeater, Shalini Shankar, and many others.

Steve and Emily announced that their daughter will be attending Wesleyan in the fall!

Our class president, Charlotte Castillo, SVP, Global franchise planning at Viacom Nickelodeon Consumer Products, spoke at Reunion on a panel presented by the Wesleyan Alumni of Color Council, The Coloring of Corporate. Also, Tomer Rothschild and I received Wesleyan University Service Awards at our class dinner.

Shalini is a professor of anthropology and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. She splits her time between Evanston, Ill., and Brooklyn.

In other news, David Nesbett was appointed by the Governor of Alaska as a trial judge in state court in Anchorage.

Ken Barnett starred in the acclaimed short film Lavender, which premiered this year at Sundance and was acquired by FOX Searchlight. Ken also will appear in a beautiful, new off-Broadway play, Novenas for a Lost Hospital, about NYC’s recently departed St. Vincent’s Hospital. It will be premiering at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in the West Village this fall.

Aram Sinnreich is an associate professor and chair of communication studies at American University’s School of Communication. His new book, The Essential Guide to Intellectual Property, was released by Yale University Press in May.

Adrienne Truscott finished a performance at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art theater. THIS was a one-woman show written, directed, and starring Adrienne. She is slated to perform another show at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York in September.

Kate Gordon has joined Governor Gavin Newsom’s staff as the director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research—a think tank within the governor’s office—as well as senior advisor to the governor on climate policy. Her job requires her to commute to Sacramento from Berkeley, where she lives with husband Gino Segre, kids Julia, 12, and Jacob, 8, and dog Mochi, 2.

Jesse Hendrich serves on the School Leadership Team of his local public school, PS 9, in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, and is on the committee of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council. Last February, at the swearing in ceremony and “state of the district” address of New York State Assembly Member Walter Mosley, Jesse was given the Community Service Outstanding Achievement award for his work with both organizations (especially in the areas of public education and affordable housing).

Finally, for those who are not aware, our classmate Andrew Berends, Oscar-winning filmmaker died in March. His documentary Free Solo won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar earlier this year. Andrew’s first documentary Urk, about Dutch fisherman on the North Sea, was nominated for the International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorentz Award and was awarded the International Documentary Association Courage Under Fire award for his film, The Blood of My Brother, about an Iraqi family whose son was killed by an American patrol. Andrew risked his life to tell stories that needed to be told. I urge you all to read the obituary that detailed his life’s work at independent.co.uk.

Samera Syeda Ludwig | samera.ludwig@gmail.com

Caissa Powell | cdp2000@hotmail.com 

Hi, classmates. This month we have some exciting news. Thanks to the people who wrote in last minute with updates!

Jason Fischer is living in San Antonio with his wife, Sunny, and sons, Xavier and Kingston. He is a licensed professional counselor while finishing his doctorate in counselor education at St. Mary’s University.

Hadley Gustafson is enjoying a healthy summer in the forest of Upcountry Maui and enjoying documentary, corporate, academic, and magazine photo work on Maui, Oahu, and Big Island.

Michael Hanna has been working for many years as an independent medical writer and scientific consultant in the U.S., Germany, and other countries. He has published a book about medical scientific writing called How to Write Better Medical Papers.

Keith Hay joined the Polis administration in Colorado as the director of utility policy at the Colorado Energy Office. He writes: “I have enjoyed working on climate and energy legislation and serving as an expert witness at the state Public Utilities Commission.”

Sue Henshon’s newest book, Teaching Empathy: Strategies for Building Emotional Intelligence in Today’s Student, will be published by Prufrock Press in October.

Janice Jones is a clinical psychologist and faculty member at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. “I just married the man of my dreams, Zack Medway, whom I met in a yoga class (so very LA!). He came to Reunion with me last year and got a chance to meet some of our classmates before our big day, some of whom came out to celebrate with us, including Jaclyn Friedman, Geetanjali Chander, Jenny Simon Tabak, Larry Yang ’94, and Elizabeth Gilbert ’92. It was the most magical night of our lives!”

Tim Olevsky teaches band and coaches his middle school’s Knowledge Bowl team. “I’m excited to help train the next generation of nerds (or, rather, intellectually curious teens who are excited about learning and knowledge—you know, Wesleyan types)!”

Maren Roush, a business unit manager for NSF International’s Biosafety Cabinet (BSC) program, and husband Nick celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. Their older son will attend University of Michigan and their younger son is entering seventh grade. “This past year has had me offering test sessions for BSC field certifiers—the individuals who perform field testing and maintenance on these important containment devices for microbiological and biomedical laboratories in Thailand, Singapore, England (on behalf of Mongolia and Kazakhstan), and India, with many future international workshops in the planning stages.”

Jodi Samuels is now a director of education at CalSAE (calsae.org) and is looking forward to coming back full circle to her education roots.

Matt Schneider and wife Jean welcomed their second daughter Harriet Saul McCombe Schneider on Jan. 13. “Hattie is is all smiles for her big sister Louise, now 3. Since expecting our second child wasn’t enough change in our lives, we decided that we should also buy our first home and move in, only weeks before Hattie’s birth. And since that wasn’t enough, I thought I would change jobs. And work from home. With a newborn. We live in Brooklyn.”

Emmanuelle Slossberg, husband Matt, and daughters Eva and Mae have moved from NYC to Westport, Conn. “Getting the best of both worlds—city and quiet. Madeleine Lansky hung out with us in January and it was great seeing everyone at the 25-year bash. I’m still the director of strategy for CetraRuddy and we are working on affordable housing projects with HPD.”

John Weathers is a senior researcher at the 21st Century Partnership for STEM Education (21pstem.org), where he led a study of teacher shortages in the Mississippi Delta, funded by the Walton Family Foundation and is part of a USAID-funded project developing innovative STEM public high schools and related university degree programs for educators in Egypt to teach students to solve the grand challenges of Egypt (e.g., lack of clean water, etc.), which has led to many students winning top awards at ISEF and beyond.

Anne Castaneda created CircleTales, a creative tabletop storytelling game, made of bamboo and printed with soy inks. It’s being marketing as an alternative to mainstream entertainment and it’s a great storytelling game for kids aged 9-plus and for adults of all ages. She launched a Kickstarter for it, too.

Michelle Gagnon’s next middle grade novel, The Echo Park Castaways (Harper Collins), will be released under the pen name M.G. Hennessey on July 7.

Lastly, there is sad news to share. Nicole Zell recently passed away. She was the devoted mother of three young boys and lived in Oregon. We will pass along more details when we hear them.

SuZanna Henshon | suzannahenshon@yahoo.com 

Sarah Estow | sarah_estow@hotmail.com

David K. Thomson was appointed to the New Mexico Supreme Court and took the oath of office in February. A Santa Fe native, David invites Wes alumni to apply for law clerk positions.

The year 2019 has brought a big change for Kim Buxenbaum, as she takes on the role of director of special education for the New Jersey Department of Education.

Due to the closure of his Boston Regional Office, Bill Kirsner transferred to his Federal agency’s D.C. Regional Office where he will continue to serve as a regional attorney. Bill has reconnected with some D.C. alumni and looks forward to seeing others in the area.

Monica Edwards Moody is a learning and development specialist for a local agency in the Atlanta area, while growing her business as a certified career coach and trainer at Owning Change. She’s served a number of Wesleyan grads (including me) through her business, from offering coaching and writing résumés to facilitating a group session last year for amazing alumnae in Turks and Caicos. Monica says, “Life in the ATL is pretty sweet, as I enjoy the fruits of a 22-year marriage and watch my girls morph into amazing young women.” The eldest completed her bachelor’s in 2018 from Barnard College and Columbia University and heads to Harvard to complete a degree in arts education. And the “little one,” a high school sophomore and soccer star, has her sights set on Stanford.

Sarah Hughes and husband Jeff Hughes ’93 live in Santa Monica, Calif., with their daughters, Maddie, 15, and Willa, 11. Last year, Sarah left the chief of staff position at KIPP Los Angeles Schools, and now works as a consultant to public school systems. Most recently, she assisted a local school district through a reconfiguration from K-8 schools to traditional elementary and middle schools. Sarah and Jeff spend lots of time on soccer fields, watching their daughters play and watching LA’s professional team, LAFC.

When Opium Moon’s eponymous debut won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album this year, “Thank you, Julie Yannatta” were the first words uttered by the band from the stage. Julie is founder and owner of the record label Be Why Music and this was the second time in three years that she heard her name from the Grammy stage. In 2017, the artist White Sun won Best New Age Album for the Be Why Music release, White Sun II.

Jonathan Moss is transitioning through a divorce by rowing, biking, whitewater kayaking, and working in health care finance in western Massachusetts. Friends and family help balance the new life, and the Wesleyan network plays a key role, as he rowed a double recently with Emma Koramshahi ’16.

Adam Wilbrecht is now a principal at Cuningham Group Architecture, where he focuses on tech innovations for buildings through the Internet of things and wellness monitoring.

Scott Moore joined Wynn Resorts as their chief marketing officer and splits his time between Las Vegas and Boston. Beth Haney wraps up her current role leading operations for The Works!, a children’s museum based in the Twin Cities and she’s looking forward to the next chapter as an empty nester. Daughter Lea ’21 will start junior year at Wesleyan where she studies theater and is actively involved across the arts community. Son Ryan begins his first year at Colby through the global entry program, spending his first semester in Salamanca, Spain. After more than 20 years in Minnesota, this autumn marks the first time when there will be more Haney-Moores outside the state than in it.

Michael Nachmanoff and Kiki Price Nachmanoff’s [’90] daughter Clara ’21 is also at Wesleyan. Their daughter Anna begins Tufts and plans to play volleyball, giving the family two NESCAC college students. Youngest daughter Charlotte starts eighth grade in the fall.

Dan Matz’s daughter is, you guessed it, starting her junior year at Wes, and his son will be in the class of 2023. After 20 years teaching at the same high school in San Francisco, Dan is taking leave to devote himself to woodworking and a bit of travel—a respite that’s been years in the making.

Maria Floyd Cohen reports from Oregon that her son Miles ’23 will be attending Wesleyan. Maria’s architecture business in Portland is doing well.

Michelle Wien teaches biology to postbaccalaureate premedical students at Bryn Mawr College, and has had the pleasure of teaching several alumni over the years. Michelle’s daughter, Julia ’23, is beginning Wesleyan in August.

Please, will someone start a Wes alumni kids spreadsheet for me? I’m losing track!

Joining the NESCAC drop-off parade, Lizandra Vega reports that daughter Julianna will attend Trinity in the fall on the 1823 Scholarship. She and husband Steve Brown live in Westchester, with son Christian, 10. Lizandra is as an executive search recruiter across the beauty, luxury, and lifestyle sectors, 22 years and counting!

Renée K. Carl | rcarl@wesleyan.edu

Hi, all. Hoping by the time this arrives that everyone will have been enjoying the summer. Here’s what we have:

Becky Lloyd DesRoches is pursuing academics, music, and sports. Becky is a psychology professor at Regis College and lives in Lexington, Mass. Becky stays involved in several music groups and sports teams. In January, she performed Beethoven’s Mass in C Major as a soloist for the Lexington Pops chorus. Married to David, with two kids, she says she’s “still overextended but we try to get up to the White Mountains as often as possible for skiing, hiking, and other fun activities.”

Persis Howe, after living in London for 20 years and “finally dragging my family to the U.S. last year,” has been enjoying Berkeley and meeting up with Wes folks in the Bay Area.

Catharina Schuetz is an associate professor in pediatric immunology at Dresden University, taking care of children with rare diseases (immunodeficiencies and immune dysregulation syndromes). Catharina, who was an international student, plans to send her eldest son, Florian, to Wes for a year in 2022, as “I only have excellent memories from my two years there.” Catharina misses her friend April Cotte ’91, who passed away in 2018.

Sarah C. Townsend’s debut book Setting the Wire: A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis was published in April by the Lettered Streets Press. The book weaves together personal anecdote, film, music, visual art, and psychology in its exploration of postpartum psychosis. Sarah writes, teaches, and practices psychotherapy in Seattle: sarahtownsendwriter.com.

Paul Nikitopoulos wrote in for the first time to share that, after years working in corporate law, mostly in New York, he went to business school and has been involved in plastics manufacturing and, more importantly, recycling (of PET bottles) in Southeast Asia. Paul plans to open a new facility within the next few months.

So long for now. Keep me posted. I always love hearing from you!

Vanessa Montag Brosgol | vanessa.brosgol@yahoo.com

With our Reunion weekend (now months) behind us, we get it. Fair enough. Y’all are drained of sharing. We’re now in the oversharing phase of our relationship (haha!) and we all just want to roll over and snooze. We totally get it.

We’ll just take this space to say thank you, ’89ers. You show up in different ways for your Wes family—even if only in the yummy internal memories that you marinate on and share with your own community wherever you are in the world. We appreciate you.

So, squeeze yourselves and please plan to make it to our 35th (early plug). Pro-tip: Staying in the dorms felt a little like going camping replete with your friends in their jammies shuffling to the loo in the morning after the bugle screamed through the air. The accommodations paired well with the where-is-my-bed-please-people, post-karaoke sheen we were sporting in the wee hours (or just me?).

Lastly, a thought . . . When did our class notes become solely about our achievements? We should continue to share victories. Yes, let’s! What if we also add something a bit of a Q&A to that?

Let’s try this. For our next round of notes—which we’ll be seeking your updates sooner rather than later—let’s all answer: Describe where you would go and what you would do if someone wiped out all of your debt, put $25k in your savings account, gave you three first-class airline tickets, and another $25k in spending money. Yet, you cannot save any of the spending money. It must be spent on travel, food, lodging, and fun only. Where would you go and what would you do when you got there?

Check out our next notes to find out how your classmates answered this.

Jonathan Fried | jonathan.l.fried@gmail.com 

Michele Barnwell | fishtank_michele@yahoo.com

Greetings, everyone. Looks like you all must be busy this time of year with graduations and summer fun. I didn’t hear from many people, so if you have not reached out lately, please send your updates when you read this one. Also, if you have any ideas on how to spruce up our notes, please shoot me an e-mail. Enjoy your summer.

Alice Jankell and her husband, Jess Shatkin, are facing impending empty nest syndrome, (daughter Parker is at Oberlin and son Julian is off to drama school). But happily, Alice remains busy writing and directing. She helms the new musical An Enchanted April off-Broadway this fall. Alice, I loved the movie and read the book. I even visited Castle Brown in Portofino last summer where the movie was filmed. I can’t wait to see your show when it opens. Congrats! Maybe you can do a Wesleyan night?

Sheila Spencer is adjusting to her new status as “open nest” since her daughter started Sarah Lawrence College and her son is at Reed College. She writes, “Dropping them off at college brought back many memories of the excitement that I felt as a freshman at Wesleyan. Enjoyed catching up with Janice Okoomianand Kenneth Schneyer at SLC drop-off.”

Keeping with the empty nest theme, two-thirds of my trio have returned home for their final year of graduate school. I’m thrilled to have them back and super excited for our last hurrah together before they fly solo. My third decided to stay in San Francisco after graduation and I miss her terribly, though I do enjoy visiting her throughout the year.

Lisa Hamilton has about a year until she joins us empty-nesters and “assuming no returns of any of the four!” She enjoys working at Butler University, celebrating one of her kid’s wedding, and seeing her young adults find their paths. She hopes to make it back to campus for our 40th.

Eileen Kelly-Aguirre’s latest news is she and her partner (now living in Connecticut) run a “Brownhouse studio through Airbnb in New Preston, Conn., should any Wesfolk be looking for an affordable, cozy, cool place to stay in this beautiful corner of the planet.”

Deirdre Black and husband are in Accra, Ghana, where she has been advising organizations in a diversity of sectors from higher education to cocoa entrepreneurship—all with a goal of capacity building. She has enjoyed explorations of Ghana and adventures in Nigeria, Senegal, and other parts of West Africa.

David Steinhardt moved to Seattle. A book he edited for several years is now out: Hammer and Anvil by Dartmouth professor P.K. Crossley, published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Kirsten Wasson works as a college counselor and internship coordinator at a private school in Calabasas, Calif. She is a storyteller (adult-style) in dozens of venues around L.A. and is finishing a memoir about changing her life at 51 from academic to paddle-boarding free agent. She has published poetry, photographs, and nonfiction in literary journals.

Lynn Ogden is excited to attend daughter Emilie Ogden-Fung’s [’19] graduation from Wesleyan and looks forward to seeing classmates from ’84 and ’83.

Until next time, namaste.

Laurie Hills | lauriec@rci.rutgers.edu

Rebecca here. Back again, and thankful to hear from so many of you. In the wind up for these notes, Elizabeth Kromelow and I had a compelling back and forth about this column. We decided that many of you might run a dialogue internally to vet your own experiences, asking the questions, Is this news? Does it sound good? Is it inspiring? Elizabeth argues that you should feel comfortable expressing what’s actually going on in your life and not just the Sunday’s best, social media version.

In that spirit, Elizabeth reports that she has been struggling through the American medical system as she recovers from a brain tumor. She writes, “It’s incredible to learn that doctors don’t realize they’re part of an orchestra, and that a conductor is essential. I’ve had to fight for all kinds of things to which I’m entitled and put things in context for the doctors that they should be able to do themselves. The irony is that doctors tell me to avoid stress and relax. A Wesleyan education is definitely required to get through this!” Elizabeth hopes to be back at the hockey rink in a couple of weeks. We’re pulling for you, Elizabeth!

Karen Humphries Sallick reports that after 23 years, she still enjoys work in her customer experience consulting company. In April, she soft-launched an app called Contacts 411, a contact updating tool based on the idea that people should have access to the same data companies do for their marketing without sacrificing the privacy of their contact list. Eileen Deignan provided awesome early feedback that Karen incorporated before the launch.

Andrew Hall regularly plays gigs in the NYC area with the instrumental rock trio, Big Lazy, and the Western swing band, Brain Cloud. He’s been learning the sousaphone, inspired by a twin love of New Orleans brass bands and old time jazz. He says it is fun, ridiculous, physically invigorating, and vastly different from his experience with the acoustic bass. Big Lazy toured the southeast this spring. Andrew was looking forward to seeing Annabel Conrad ’88 when the band hits Memphis. Check out both groups online—they’re great!

Nicholas Birns is teaching in China this summer and he and his wife Isabella are vacationing in California later in the year.

Ben Waxman probably speaks for many of us when he reports that when he and his wife Nicole McLaughlin became empty nesters last August, it was “totally devastating.” But don’t worry, by May, Ben was presenting on digital marketing micro-conversions at the NAFSA conference for international educators in D.C.

Hemanshu “Hemu” Nigam launched the Center for Online Justice to help victims of cyberstalking, online harassment, and other attacks to bring to justice those who use anonymity to engage in bad conduct. Hemu hopes to bring his work into a university setting as a clinic to help those who can’t afford services like these.

Lots of news from James Flynn, who became managing partner at Epstein Becker Green in January. James says he keeps in touch with Professor John Finn, “forcing him to endure” his eclectic articles about intellectual property. James and his wife Monica have three children, Justyna (bachelor’s and master’s from Loyola University), Michael (Boston College grad), and Anthony (Villanova University ’23).

Carla Yanni won the Rutgers University Scholar-Teacher Award, a university-wide prize for her work as a social historian of architecture. Carla was cited for her ability to inspire students to think about the ways people live with the built environment. Josh Bellin teaches writing and literature at La Roche University in Pittsburgh. He just published a novel titled House of Earth, House of Stone, the final book in a fantasy trilogy.

Joan Morgan published her second book, She Begat This: 20 Years of the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill to great reviews. Joan took a national book tour with events at the Brooklyn Museum and The Kennedy Center. Her first book, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks It Down, was optioned for screen rights by Academy-Award-nominated producer Mimi Valdés. Still, it was back to work this summer as Joan prepared to defend her American studies doctoral dissertation at NYU.

Rafael Semansky began his own business Nantasket Road Consulting, providing health analytics, writing, and grantwriting. Prior to this, Rafael was a scientific review officer for NIH, organizing expert review groups in health IT and nursing science.

After 50 years of East Coast living, Brooks Kraft and his wife Christine have moved  to California, where he now works at Apple. Their son Daniel ’23 will be attending Wesleyan!

For the record, Michael Bennet announced his run for the presidency. Lots of classmates are rallying around him, and as I finalize this column, he is preparing to do a CNN town hall. To me, we are all still 22, which makes the stories of our lives even more amazing. Keep us posted.

Rebecca Zimbler Graziano | rebecca.graziano@hotmail.com

It’s always a pleasure to share news from classmates, and I hope you’re enjoying the new look of the alumni magazine. Now that my kids are older, I’m now getting alumni magazines from several institutions and I feel that the Wes one is the best.

The last issue got Kristin Bluemel to write in: “Having seen my friend Monica Bose’s profile, I am inspired to write you before I lose momentum.” She said that in May she celebrated her 25th year as a professor of English at Monmouth University in New Jersey, where she now holds the Wayne D. McMurray Endowed Chair in the Humanities.

We also heard from another in academia: Sarah Elkind is a professor of history at San Diego State University and was elected vice president (president-elect) of the American Society for Environmental History. Sarah has been teaching environmental, political, urban, and public history, and runs SDSU’s public history internship program. In the area of environmental policy, one of her interests is how influential groups secure and exercise their power and why Americans expand or constrain government services. Sounds timely to me.

Here in Massachusetts, Jennifer Steel works in Newton, where she’s the senior environmental planner for the city. She is responsible for staffing the Conservation Commission and implementing the Wetlands Protection Act, managing Newton’s conservation land, and engaging the public on issues of land stewardship and helping shape large-scale developments, transportation projects, stormwater projects, and bicycle and pedestrian improvements.

Risa Shames is living in Newton, and she wrote a career progression saying, “After a 20-year career in health care project management, I have transitioned to nonprofit consulting, helping organizations tell their story, raise funds, and advance their mission. I have also joined the board of my local food pantry and my synagogue.” She survived and enjoyed her first year as an empty nester, or “as I prefer to be called, a free bird.” Her daughter graduated from Tufts in the spring, and this fall, her son will be in his second year at Brown.

Further south, in Mount Kisco, N.Y., Doug Polaner is “super excited.” His son Mason will be at Wesleyan starting in the fall. “Other than that, still selling wine in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania through a wine import company, Polaner Selections, that I run with my wife. Celebrating our 20th anniversary in business this year. If you live in these states and like drinking wine, look for our back label and keep popping those corks!”

Ellen Santistevan shared some news from out west. “One of my kids just graduated with his AAS in welding technology. Another one was awarded a research prize in art history. One is a successful property manager and the last one is finding himself in Phoenix. We are definitely in that time of life when the offspring are taking charge of their lives.” She spent much of last year on a project that many of us are facing: helping parents move into a senior living community, and then, along with siblings, preparing the old home for sale. “That was wrenching and draining.”

My sympathies to all who are going through difficult transitions. Several studies have suggested that the early and mid-50s can be a particularly hard time in a person’s life. Don’t be afraid to call old friends and ask if they would be willing to let you cry on their shoulders. But do ask permission first, as your old friend may be going through tough times too.

With warm regards,

Eric Howard | ehoward86@wesleyan.edu

Hello, Class of ’85! As sobering as it is to find ourselves in the middle of the notes (hey, weren’t we on the last page just a couple of years ago?), our classmates remind us that we still have a few tricks up our sleeves.

Nancy Vélez is working as a senior director of major gifts at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she assists in the development and implementation of successfully fundraising plans to grow the college’s endowment and expand its programs. She directly secures philanthropic gifts for the college’s board and President’s Advisory Council. She has over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit and higher education sectors.

Dawn Watt-Stewart earned her master’s degree in electrical engineering from NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. Congratulations!

My own news is that I’m training to become a certified yoga teacher. After almost 28 years teaching college students, I decided to add some flexibility, literally. If you’re in the D.C. area and want to practice with me, let me know.

CAROLINE WILKINS | cwilkins85@yahoo.com