Class Notes | 1990s

#BallerAlert! Leander (Altifois) Dolphin was named to Corporate Counsel Business Journal’s inaugural list of “50 Women to Watch.” Leander was elevated by her firm to the role of co-managing partner in 2021, and then to the role of sole managing partner in 2022. She is the first African American woman in the firm’s history to lead as managing partner. As you can read in this press release on her recognition, this is only one of many accolades she’s received for her groundbreaking work. Way to go, Leander! (I can proudly say I knew you back when we were RAs in our junior year).

Chad Bartell is staying busy practicing business law in Madison, Wisconsin, by day and playing gigs by night with Panchromatic Steel—the steel band he founded in 2016. The band recently performed with steelpan luminary Andy Narell and is working on a recording that will feature a composition originally performed at Wesleyan’s CFA for the senior thesis recital of his Uncle Trouble bandmate, Kabir Sen.

Rachel Afi Quinn spent a year on sabbatical in NYC as a fellow at the Schomburg, working on a black feminist biography of mixed race pianist and journalist Philippa Duke Schuyler, seeing friends and lots of art and theater, and sharing her first book, Being La Dominicana: Race and Gender in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo, with many interested readers in the Northeast. “Enjoyed my time in the city and you may see me back in the city some summers.” Rachel also received a 2023–24 fellowship from the National Endowment of the Humanities to continue that writing. “In this era of remote work, I will spend my fall with family in Ghana and spring with friends (who are like family) in the Dominican Republic, while finalizing the translation of my first book.”

Alison MacAdam is still living in D.C. and working in audio journalism. “Most recently, I edited a podcast called The 13th Step, about sexual misconduct in addiction treatment. In lighter news, I have a 13-year-old who has fallen in love with ultimate Frisbee (how Wes-ish!), and I’ve enjoyed reuniting on the soccer field with my Wesleyan teammate, Alison Brody ’97. I have also had some lovely visits with old Wesleyan friends, including Sahra Halpern and Dan Engler, Scott Cavanaugh and Ashley Grant ’00, Greg Brodsky, Leila Buck and Adam Abel ’98, Sean Bowditch, Ilya Marritz, and Marisa Kurtzman.”

Abbie Goldberg is still a professor of clinical psychology at Clark University but has also joined The Williams Institute at the UCLA Law School as a faculty affiliate. This has helped her to leverage her research on the effects of anti-LGBTQ legislation such as the Don’t Say Gay law in Florida. Her work on this issue has been featured in many mainstream news outlets including The New York Times. She has also published a few books over the past few years, including LGBTQ Family Building: A Guide for Prospective Parents (2022) and The (Mis)Representations of Queer Lives in True Crime (2023).

Arthur Baraf is in his 18th year as a public school high school principal at The Met, in Providence, Rhode Island. In November he’ll be a Fulbright Leaders for Global Schools scholar in Germany, where he’ll be visiting Jed Koslow in Berlin. Arthur is still married with two teen daughters, and still plays ultimate like he did for Nietzsche Factor but much slower.

Kevin’s company, Virta Health, was recently featured in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Companies of 2023. “While they surprisingly gave the cover of the print issue to Kim Kardashian instead of us, it’s great to see recognition for what we’re building to address the obesity and diabetes epidemic in the U.S.! Wish my mom and dad were still with us to be able to see my name in print in a publication that they would have heard of.”

Anthony Veneziale wrote in to say he saw a LOT of our classmates as he went to the 25th Reunion at Wes and it was awesome. He saw soooo many amazing humans—too many to name! Since last he wrote, his show Freestyle Love Supreme (which he created along with Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02, Hon. ’15 and Thomas Kail ’99) won a special Tony Award and then did a national tour, which reopened many of the national regional theaters after COVID. The tour included nine major cities and fellow Wes alum Andrew Bancroft ’00. Sadia Shepard ’97 (now professor of film at Wes), Ashley Knaysi, and Anthony organized a Gag Reflex reunion show for the 25th Reunion along with current Gag Reflex members in the World Music Hall. They had an absolute blast performing and doing a talk back afterward about improv in our lives.

Sachita Shah is enjoying the Seattle summer, working as an ER doctor in both Seattle and Anchorage, and loving taking care of her two daughters and pup Cookie. She’s been in contact with Caleb Langsam ’99, who has an awesome dog named Max and lives in Portland, Oregon; and Matt Downes, who, with wife Kim, just had a second kiddo, and lives in Geneva, Switzerland!

Rev. Dr. Yolanda Denson-Byers has been called as the senior pastor of Shepherd of the Hills (SOTH) Lutheran Church in Edina, Minnesota (sothchurch.com).  She will be formally installed in September 2023.

And Dana M. Peterson was so very honored to receive the prestigious Wesleyan Distinguished Alumna Award in Recognition of Outstanding Achievements and Service at the May 2023 Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association.

Hi Everyone,

We are heartbroken to report that we have lost another member of our class. Mike Mittelman wrote, “In sad news, Brandon Cook, who was class of ’97, lost his fight with leukemia on Easter Sunday of this year. There were many members of our class who had a chance to visit him and say goodbye in San Francisco this winter. Two of us, Adam Rodnitzky and I, spoke at his celebration of life. He was a huge personality and we all miss him terribly.”

Andrew Frishman reached out to share a few of his recent Wes-related connections. “Leigh Needleman ’96 and I are still loving living in Cambridge near Central Square—our kids (age 10 and 13) are attending the Cambridge Public Schools, where they are classmates with the daughter of Laura Warren ’98, who lives a few blocks from us. It’s been great to have our families hang out together. Leigh and I attended a Wesleyan event at an alum’s home who is a professor at MIT—they hosted an introduction to the proposed new design for the newest addition to the Wesleyan CFA . . . . Sounds like they are planning on converting (and expanding) an existing building into a new dance (and theater?) complex not far from Low Rise? . . . . It was interesting to see the ways in which they were seeking to create something new while also preserve some of the building’s original architecture . . . . Speaking of architecture, I recently had a phone call with Alex Jermyn in Berkeley, California, and his architecture firm/studio has been taking off and building all sorts of super-cool houses (particularly up in the mountains) that have been celebrated and featured in a number of prestigious architecture publications—check it out here: https://www.aj-a.co/. I had a phone call with the inimitable Sasha Cooke, (Wes alum and squash coach) who is currently in Tucson, Arizona, and anticipates relocating to Vermont sometime in the coming year(s).”

Andrew wrote, “My work as co-executive director of ‘Big Picture Learning’ continues to be invigorating and inspiring. If there’s anyone out there interested in collaborating to create new forms of public education that focus more on interest-driven real-world learning situated in the community beyond the walls of the classroom/school, I’d be glad to [re]connect.”

Sadia Shepard wrote, “I just finished my third year as an assistant professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan, and I am loving the chance to engage with the Wesleyan community in a new way. If you are back on campus, please drop me a line! You can always find me at sshepard@wesleyan.edu.” Congratulations, Professor Shepard and good luck with your fourth year!

And for our latest update . . .  Ashvin Shah “still doesn’t have his shit together.” We get it, Ashvin—don’t most of us, if not ALL of us, feel the same way, despite all of the adulting? We wish everyone the best, always. Thank you for sharing.

Sending positive energy to you all as we continue to navigate 2023 together.

Sasha and Jess

1996ers family: As we leave the summer months behind, I wish all my classmates well as we look forward to all the fresh blessings of the fall season. Now on to some great updates from folks!

Emily (Merowitz) Tedeschi writes in that after working for 18 years at the largest health system in New Jersey, she joined CommonSpirit, one of the largest health systems in the country, working in their national foundation office as system director of prospect development and research. She asks any of her classmates who are fundraisers or people who work with fundraisers, “let me know; there are always jobs opening up in our 80-plus hospital foundations, mostly on the West Coast.”

Dacque Tirado had dinner and drinks with Dan Mirsky ’97 in Silver Spring, Maryland—the two caught up on all the happenings in their lives, shared pictures of their kids, and recounted great memories from their Middletown days. He also writes that he had an epic summer of international travel as he chaperoned a cultural immersion trip with his students to Buenos Aires, Argentina (magical city), in June. Then was off to Spain with other high school educators where he walked the Camino Ignaciano—selected spots along the way from Bilbao to Barcelona.

Jullia Chowdhury–Quazi and her husband are finally done with the years of tireless educational advocacy. Their son, Kairan, graduated from Santa Clara University in June, at age 14, as the youngest grad in the institution’s history, joined SpaceX in July as the youngest software engineer on the planet, has been featured in thousands of media pieces across the globe, and will soon be inducted into Guinness. Jullia took a three-year break from a career in health-care M&A and looks forward to the next chapter as the family returns to some form of normalcy.

After nearly 25 years in network news as an award-winning reporter and TV and podcast producer, Stacey Samuel has branched out and started her own firm producing podcast series for streaming services, nonprofits with a mission, and global clients.

Christianne Rennke Phillips has taken her two decades as a holistic fitness instructor and nationally titled/winner competitor and certified chef and is now working on a book combining food and culture, drawing on her Chilean heritage and family.

Danny Atwood has taken to writing short stories with his writing group (books selling on Amazon), joined the furry community and attended conventions in character, even managed to learn digital art making. But best of all is the moonlighting gig taken on as the “Real Bearded Santa,” being hired out as a Santa Claus Christmas performer to spread joy and good cheer. “What started out as a lark, buying a Santa suit from Amazon and wearing it out into my neighborhood during the pandemic to bring a little magic to neighbors who desperately needed it, has turned into something much bigger. Getting old and fat isn’t so bad after all!”

In July 2023, Tracie Broom enjoyed a vacation reunion in Italy at the MacZoni Recanati Estate with a bunch of Wes grads. Jason Walchli, his wife, Pamela Bock, and their two kids, Eli and Casey, came from Portland, Oregon. Tony Schloss ’97 and Juno Shaye ’98 came from Brooklyn with their three kiddos, Cy, Uno, and Paloma. Diego Gutierrez ’97 and Kim Diaz ’97 came from LA with their two kids, Bruno and Dahlia. (The MacZoni estate is owned by their dear friends, Mariah Maclachlan and Peldi Guilizzoni, who are known well to many Wes friends around the country.) Back home in Columbia, South Carolina, Tracie and Debi Schadel, the co-owner of her marketing and communications firm, Flock and Rally, were both honored on the Free Times’ “Power List 2023: 30 People Shaping Arts, Culture and Food in Columbia” and they have been successfully delegating most agency operations to their CEO in the last year—a real milestone for entrepreneurs! Tracie and her partner, Scott Nuelken, spent the rest of the summer getting his daughter, June, ready for freshman year at Wofford College in South Carolina. Tracie is deep into gardening and loves to see nerdy gardening posts from fellow Wes folks on social media.

Please write to your class secretaries.

Caissa writes for this issue.

Hello, all! I hope that this message finds you well. My prayers go out to everyone impacted by the wildfires, storms, earthquakes, and other recent incidents. May you and your families be safe.

On this front, my family is well, and all are accounted for, thankfully. As August comes to a close, it feels like another summer flew by rather quickly. Happily, aside from work, I have been enjoying the beautiful weather; spending lots of time with family; and painting with acrylics, as often as possible. This native Bronx girl even took in a Mets game recently and was pleasantly surprised when they won.

In other news . . .

Holly Bennet writes, “As (one of our) class agents, I want to thank you all for your show of support to Wes this year! Great things are happening AND we have a monumental reunion coming up next year—30! (Brooke Singer, you better finally get back to campus.)” She is still out in Southern California and is now building robot cars to “save us from ourselves and to improve our communities and the climate crisis.” Holly adds that she is also grappling with the fact that “our daughter, Eleanor, is going all the way to The Other Coast for college. I’d be totally wretched except she is going to WES! She has already made off with all my ‘vintage swag.’”

Kate Foster shares that she has started a new job working for the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy as their Mid-Atlantic director of Trail Development, which is based in Baltimore. She adds, “my two daughters are in college, so I’m learning how to do the empty-nest thing after two decades of having kids at home.”

Joseph Mahoney and Deborah Levin Mahoney ’96 write, “Our son is heading to Wesleyan this fall to be a 2027 grad.”

Well, that is all for now. Congratulations to all and a warm welcome to our future Wesleyan alumni!🎊

Wes friends, we have some exciting updates in this set of class notes.  Coming off our 30th Reunion, several classmates will return to campus this fall to drop off their children, who will be members of the Class of 2027. This has been an exciting reunion year, thanks to the fantastic reunion committee and amazing Wesleyan staff.

Jacob Bricca emails, “I’m writing with the happy news that the feature documentary Missing in Brooks County, which I produced and edited, was recently awarded a George Foster Peabody Award. My wife, Lisa Molomot, who produced and co-directed the film, shared in the honors. I’ve also recently released a new book, How Documentaries Work, published by Oxford University Press.”

Camille McGadney and Andrew McGadney’s ’92 daughter, Naomi, will begin classes at Wesleyan this fall as a member of the Class of 2027.

Laura Ross writes, “As of July 1, I’ve been named head of school at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. I’ve been there for the last six years, most recently serving as associate head, and am very excited to take on this new challenge. Perhaps even more importantly, my husband Gregg ’90 and I are thrilled to report that our daughter, Casey, is a member of the Wesleyan Class of 2027 and can’t wait to arrive on campus for the first time in August. It was wonderful to see so many friends at our reunion in May.”

Hello fellow ’92ers!

Normally I am simply the conduit of information but this time, I have a bunch of news of my own to kick us off. In August, Princeton University Press published my new book, Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It. I’ve been working on this project since the early months of the first Obama administration so I’m thrilled (and relieved!) to finally see it off in the world. Also in August, I dropped my son Ben off at the University of Virginia where he is starting his first year. Just before I did, I had dinner with Matt Schortmann and Soo Lim whose daughter, Liv, is about to start her last year at UVA. It was great to see them and my fellow Itza Pizza alums Sarah Guernsey and Adam Blumer ’91, who all live in the Boston area.

I’ve got a lot of company in taking the college step, judging from my Facebook feed. Christina Scully Manning dropped her son off at Pomona College, Samantha Ball Karmel dropped her son off at Cornell, and my first-year roommate James Wilton dropped off his youngest daughter, Lola, at NC State. Lola joins her older sister Carley who is a junior education major. She just missed overlapping with her older brother Jack, who graduated from NC State this year and accepted a leadership development position in Orlando, Florida, with Colony Hardware. Now an empty nester, James remains in Waxhaw, North Carolina, and earlier this year added the title of branch manager to his duties as national account manager for Genesis10 in Charlotte, North Carolina. And he was named head coach for the Weddington (North Carolina) Middle School sixth grade football team for this coming season.

Also on the college front, Chris Chesak’s older daughter is off to Ohio State. Chris continues to live in Cincinnati and is a freelance writer and executive director of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. He was also just elected president-elect of the Society of American Travel Writers.

We also have a few classmates who are sending their kids to Wesleyan, 35(!) years after we started. Laura Hill’s daughter, Allegra, is joining the class of 2027, as is Byron King’s daughter, Merriwether. Bryon also reports that he recently attended the wedding of Julien Farland. In attendance from were Saad Khan ’93 and Anand Kini.

Cati Coe and her spouse moved from Philadelphia to Ottawa, Ontario, last year to take a position at Carleton University as a Canada research chair in migration and care.

Ken Lefkowitz is keeping busy co-developing an 80MW wind farm near the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria. Jennifer Blaine is still based out of Philadelphia and launched a new solo multi-character work, Mannequin, in May 2023. She also continues to work as a comedian and produced a new show in September in FringeArts, a festival based out of Philadelphia.

Kevin Prufer is still teaching in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and has two books coming out soon. The Fears, a poetry collection, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2023, followed by Sleepaway: A Novel, from Acre Books in 2024.  Another recent author is Susannah Fox whose book, Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care is coming out this fall with MIT Press.

Jill Slater lives in Manhattan with her husband and nine-year-old daughter and leads Resiliency for the New York City Housing Authority.

And finally, Abby (Smith) Saguy will be spending the 2023–24 academic year in NYC as a Russell Sage Foundation fellow, living with her husband, Dotan. They are hoping for visits from their daughter, Claire, who will be in her senior year at UCLA, where she is majoring in labor studies and minoring in Spanish and food studies, as well as their son, Jonah, who will be in his second year at UC Riverside, where he is majoring in computer science with business application. And tying into Abby’s news is my last piece of news: I’ll be joining Abby at Russell Sage in February 2024 for five months, marking my return to Manhattan after over 30 years away. I’ll be excited to see my old friends, so give me a ring if you are in NYC!

That’s all for now. Please send me your news and notes for the next issue!

Let’s catch up with Narda Jones, who serves as the Federal Communications Commission’s chief of staff, having joined the team from the White House where she was the director of legislative affairs for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. It’s a Wesleyan affair at the FCC, as the chairwoman is Jessica Rosenworcel ’93.

In 2022, Narda was recognized as a Leadership Honoree by Crittenton Services of Greater Washington. At the presentation, Narda spoke of the importance of representation, and being in the room when decisions are made.

Mark Kiefer debuted his first feature film, Pacific Coast, at the Woods Hole Film Festival in August. This “coming-of-middle age” comedy joins two brothers on a road trip from San Francisco to LA, in order to help their somewhat estranged father move into a retirement home.

Those of you who remember Mark as an economics major at Wes or knew of his long career in management consulting, will wonder how this twist in life happened. Mark says the film is “in part inspired by my own ‘journey,’ so what it’s really about is trying to find our creative voice later in life, while we still have time.”

Please forgive me if I have missed an email with your news—putting “Class Notes” in the subject line helps me stay on top of messages.

Hi all. There were some nice updates and Wes memories this time around.

Owen Renfroe fondly remembers: “Best film class: Film Noir, J. Basinger. Taught me nuts-and-bolts lessons about visual storytelling that I use every day at work! Best other class: Arts in America, Creeger/Reed. A glorious walk through American art. A real invitation to explore many great works of art that make up [and] express the American spirit. Who knew Phillip Sousa wrote all those marches!?!.”

Carol Cleverdon Booth recalls that some “of the best music I heard at Wes was in the Foss tunnels—friends jamming in a makeshift band, listening to Straight Ahead in that large underground space. Best classes: Intellectual History of the Enlightenment with Professor Henry Abelove and all my Russian classes. Favorite quote from Professor Irina Aleshkovsky as we first-year students were trying to master writing the Cyrillic alphabet in cursive: “Do not hurry as you write. Remember, time is money only in United States.” Professor Bob Whitman and I stayed in touch, and I am grateful he met my son before he passed.”

Susan Ellman writes that she and Stu ’88 “are well and almost ‘empty nesters.’ Our son, Ben, who was born around our 10th Reunion, works at a real estate private equity firm in New York. Our daughter, Lily, just completed a gap year in Israel and starts college this fall. Stu still works at the VC firm he founded after business school and I am doing a lot of fiction and essay writing in the quiet of this empty nest. It’s not completely quiet, though: Our newest baby is a tricolor corgi named Bamba. He’s very cute, smart, and if Stu could carry him around in a Baby Bjorn, I think he might . . . . A favorite Wesleyan memory? My Low Rise ‘10-Man’ threw an ‘anti-Valentine’s Day’ party, sophomore year. Everyone was instructed to wear black and we served a frightening concoction called Liquid Lust. Stu and I met at that party and started going out shortly after. Favorite course: Woolf, Cather, and Colette taught by Phyllis Rose.”

Victor Khodadad will be performing with New Camerata Opera this fall. More information is available at www.newcamerataopera.org. Victor’s “favorite class while I was at Wesleyan was Acting with Bill Francisco. He was unbelievably talented as a director and acting teacher, and each class was always something that I eagerly looked forward to and learned from immensely.”

That’s all for now. Please write me with any news you would like to share!