Class Notes | 2000s

Scott Cole has recently become the chief operating officer of Divot Assets (www.divotassets.com), the leading provider of fixed asset inventory services for K–12 public schools.

Sofia Warner and Eric Weiskott welcomed their second child, Theo Warner, into the world last July 4. Sofia, Eric, Theo, and Theo’s older sister Lili live in Brookline, Massachusetts.

From Sophie Reagan: “Still in DC but always a New Yorker at heart. Our daughter is three—not sure how that happened—but we don’t know how old our dog is. Workwise, I’m a chief of staff within Deloitte’s Government & Public Services practice. There are a couple of us Wesleyan alums here! A small but mighty bunch.”

Abby Rosenstein writes: “My husband Neil and I welcomed our baby, Ezra, in September! We live in central Massachusetts, where I work as a nurse practitioner in a community health center.”

Editor’s note: We need a new class secretary! If you are interested, please email: classnotes@wesleyan.edu.

The Class of ’08 has been working hard . . . at work and at producing the Class of ’43!

Emily Hauck writes, “2021 was a pretty big year for me: my husband (Julien) and I bought a house in Cahors, a small town in southwest France where we’ve been living since 2016; I (finally!) passed the French civil service exam (I work as a fundraiser for the local government); and on November 28th our son George was born!”

Kate Krems gave birth to her third child, Kaya, in May, and now she is attempting to balance being a mother of three children under five with her full-time job as an attorney. After working at her previous firm for two years, she moved to Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, a DC–based employment law firm, in November. Just to keep things interesting, she and her family will be moving to Newton, Massachusetts, in May. After the move, Kate will continue working remotely for her current firm and will appreciate being closer to her parents for help with childcare (and the beach for more cold-water surfing).

Leslie Prado writes, “We got an Australian cattle dog and named him Kona as inspiration to qualify for the Worlds Ironman in Kona, Hawaii. And most importantly, after two miscarriages in 2020, we were blessed with a baby girl this year, and her name is Valencia Mayu. Feeling extremely grateful.”

 

Stephanie Fungsang and Jeremy Finch ’09 welcomed a son in early 2021. He is an adorable squawking goose.

Danielle Klimashousky married Matthew Barnish (non-Wes) in September 2021 in Cape May, New Jersey. Attendees included Julia Kessler and Becky (Ehrlich) Freiman, and they all had the best time!

Grace Overbeke is cited in All Events In for leading a discussion on “The Many ‘Mrs. Maisels’: A History of Jewish Women Comedians” on January 20. Overbeke is an assistant professor in the theater department of Columbia College with a focus on comedy writing and performance. She received her BA in theater and English from Wesleyan.

Nic Benacerraf recently stepped down from his longtime role as co-artistic director of The Assembly (founded with fellow Wes alums)—though he still serves enthusiastically on the company’s board. He founded a new group called Edge Effect, a “think-and-do-tank” that brings together scholars, scientists, activists, artists, journalists, technologists, (etc.), to dismantle the techniques of mass persuasion in our everyday lives (www.edgeeffectmedia.org/). He writes, “We are building our polydisciplinary network; reach out if interested! Work continues on the dissertation, and on live performances—including the upcoming immersive hip-hop/soul/funk concert: CANNABIS! A Viper Vaudeville.”

Marianna Foos writes, “Geoff Parsons ’88 and I were authors on a gene therapy paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in December. Geoff is an expert in many things scientific, as well as puns and gifs, and is a pleasure to work with. Clearly the fruits of a liberal arts education!”

The class of ’07 has stayed busy!  Jose Chapa got married on Labor Day weekend to Adam Martin (not a Wes alum) in sunny South Padre Island, Texas!  The wedding was co-officiated by Emily Wilson-Barnard and served as a mini-Wes reunion since it was attended by Jennifer Ayala, Rosa Cohen-Cruz, Anaka Hennings ’09, Rae Kaplan ’24, Reuben Kosup-Katz, Megan Lollie, Elsa Meany, Christine Mehr, Erin Moore, Mariel Piña, and Shar-de Ricketts.  We danced the night away to Beyonce, as it was her 40th birthday!

Grace Nowakoski and her husband Jeff Diteman and their 3-year-old daughter welcomed a baby brother this summer. It’s a circus. Complete with a trapeze.  Simon Au ’07 and his ever-patient wife have managed to keep their son healthily alive for a full revolution of the Earth around the sun.

Hyung-Jin Choi moved to Hong Kong!  On the other hand, Lydia Bell is still living in Brooklyn, with her husband and their 1-year-old daughter. She recently switched career paths and enrolled in a master’s program in mental health counseling. She’d be excited to connect with other mental health professionals in New York and elsewhere!

In other career news, Frank Giantomasi was elevated to partner at Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi PC, New Jersey’s third-largest law firm.  Jon Pierowicz recently took the position of general counsel with Viridi Parente, a distributed renewable energy company in Buffalo, New York.

Molly Gaebe has started her own comedy theater in NYC called Rubbish Comedy Collective, and she continues to fight for abortion rights with Abortion Access Front. Molly said she would never marry a fellow Cardinal, but the Goddesses had other plans. She and Leila Bozorg ’04 are set to marry in June of next year.

Kathleen Day is deep into the working-mom lifestyle, thankfully supported by her partner, Karl Otto, who is a full-time dad to their two kids (5 years and 17 months old). She still works for nonprofit developer Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH). Following a grueling return to work 6 weeks after the birth of her son in 2020, she successfully lobbied for a dramatic change to POAH’s parental leave program. As of 2022, POAH’s 12-week-paid parental leave is among the most generous of their peer organizations. She and her husband hung out with Ben Sax and Janine Criscuolo and their family over the summer. Occasionally they connect with Rebecca Parrish ’06 and her family in Chicago.

Those with class notes, please contact: 

Class Notes Editor

classnotes@wesleyan.edu

After serving as the country director of Ashoka, Philippines, for the past seven years, Terri Jayme-Mora tells us “I’ve moved my little family of four from Manila to Vancouver, British Columbia.  I am enjoying my new role as special projects lead for Firetree Philanthropy and have also cofounded the Democratic Insights Group focused on voter centeredness and electoral competitiveness in the Philippines.”

Meanwhile, Mark Schindler is a senior director at Fountain, where he leads the team responsible for helping their customers source high-volume hourly workers. Fountain recently closed their Series C funding, led by SoftBank and B Capital, and have grown the team to 175 people worldwide (from just 15 people when Mark started!). Mark has enjoyed the, albeit very slow, renewal of travel and finally meeting colleagues who he has only ever met on Zoom.

Nick Blondin shares that he’s just started his fourth year as a neuro-oncologist at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale, and loves caring for my patients. This May will be his 12th wedding anniversary with Rebecca Gordon ’06. His kids, Alice (4th grade) and Danny (kindergarten), are both vaccinated and in school. “I enjoy spending my free time biking on Zwift!”

Elaina Dellacava reports: “My husband Adam and I welcomed a baby boy (William Joseph) in August of this year, one day before our daughter Sienna turned two. I continue to work as a psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian/Cornell, and am switching roles to focus on the geriatric population with an interest in addressing loneliness in that group of patients. Hoping everyone is healthy and happy as we start 2022.”

Dael Norwood has also  just published his first book, Trading Freedom: How Trade with China Defined Early America (University of Chicago Press). An academic monograph, it investigates the politics of the first century of commerce between China and the United States. Wesleyan’s campus has an “old China trade” connection too: Russell House, the Greek Revival mansion on the corner of Washington and High Streets, is the former home of Samuel Russell—the founder of the largest American opium smuggling firm operating in China during the 19th century.

Greg Heller left his public-sector role as executive director of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority in the fall to join management consulting firm Guidehouse as a director and housing subject-matter expert. Greg is building on his Philly work to help partners around the country develop equitable, resilient communities where everyone can have a quality, affordable home. Governing recently published Greg’s article about how we can draw from lessons in disaster recovery to more urgently address America’s housing stability crisis.

Over in Florida, Brian Hennessey tells us: “I’m living on Miami Beach and am still the Wes alumni regional representative for south Florida and trying hard to not become a “Florida Man.”  I’m happy to meet up with any Wes alums among the droves of folks moving to Miami to work remotely under a palm tree. I can provide expert guidance on how to avoid being hit by falling iguanas or coconuts, among other useful tips.”

Joey Wender left Capitol Hill after working there for nearly 13 years and started as director of the Capital Projects Fund at the Department of Treasury, working to ensure all communities have access to high-quality, affordable broadband. Joey also continues to enjoy his frequent conversations with Adam Lachman, who, as a longtime staffer for Senator Angus King, helped create this connectivity program.

Emily Teitsworth recently became the executive director of the Honnold Foundation, supporting community-based solar energy access around the world. She lives in Oakland, California, with her partner, two stepkids, and son Jai, who turned one in January. She’d love for any Wes alums working in renewable energy to reach out!

Bayard Templeton and his wife Alex welcomed their second child, Jamie, to their family on February 4th. Issie (8) is excited to be a big sister.

Alexander Yellen and his wife Kelli McNeil-Yellen have had a busy year, buying their first home in LA and recently wrapping their first feature together, an indie road trip movie called Daruma, starring two lead actors with disabilities in a story that is not about disability.

Tejas Desai reconnected with a few old Wes friends, including Jessica Stewart, who recently moved to NYC from San Francisco, and went to a Mets game with Bayard Templeton. He performed a musical version of his novel, The Run and Hide, in the New York City subway system with Blues Hall of Famer/Tampa Bay Lightning Fiddler Greg Holt, aided by a City Artist Corp grant in partnership with MTA’s Musical under New York Program; the virtual version was broadcast on the Queens Public Library’s Facebook Live platform. His latest book, The Dance Towards Death, won a Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence and was a bronze medalist in the Readers’ Favorite International Book Contest. He completed the first draft of his new book, Bad Americans, fulfilling his New Year’s resolution, at a whopping 300,000 words in length. He’s currently revising it.

I am very sorry to be sharing the sad news that Daniel Moger passed on March 13, 2022, due to complications from COVID-19 and an underlying blood condition. He is survived by his wife Julie and daughter Georgina. Daniel was a former U.S. Treasury Department official and most recently Asia Pacific Sanctions director for Citibank. In Dan’s memory, his family asks to consider gifts to OutRight Action International in support of human rights and dignity of LGBTIQ people everywhere, and Phillips Academy where donations will be directed to supporting disadvantaged students. I extend my sincerest condolences to Daniel’s family and friends.

(Editor’s note: Daniel’s mother, Angela Moger, was the first woman employed in the professional Wesleyan administration (1969) as the University entered co-education. Ms. Moger was also an adjunct professor of French during the several years she was at Wesleyan.)  

It’s reunion time! Can’t believe it’s been 20 years since we graduated. Just like college was a blink of an eye, so was the last 20 years (well . . . maybe not the last two during COVID). Looking forward to seeing you all in May on campus! Onto the notes:

Felicity Kohn was elevated to counsel at the law firm of Pryor Cashman in New York. She is in the firm’s Intellectual Property and Media + Entertainment practice group, where she handles a wide range of intellectual property and complex commercial matters. Felicity was named “One to Watch” in Intellectual Property Law by Best Lawyers in America (2021–22) and “Women in the Law: One to Watch” by Best Lawyers in America (2021).

Sallomé Hralima is partner in a New York–based archiving and media company. With Umi NiiLampti ’99, she cowrote Through the Wire, a short film about a young West African college student on the verge of making it in the music industry. In 2017, Sallomé returned to WesU to teach a course at the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship and received the Edgar Beckham Alumni Achievement Award. In 2018, she delivered a TEDxWesleyan talk, “Workplaces Suffocate Human Potential” in which she referenced Bozoma Saint John ’99. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two daughters, Dream and Legacy.

Angie Schiavoni recently started Montessori Public Works, an organization dedicated to bringing the first Montessori classrooms to public schools across New Jersey. This proud Wisconsinite (who drove her minivan to Wes full of Wisconsin beer, bratwurst, and cheese one year) still can’t believe she settled on the Jersey Shore, and thinks it must be because of the subconscious brainwashing of college roommates Alena Fiorentino (née Weller) and Cara Summit (née Smith).

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Debra Granik is set to direct a feature adaptation of Una LaMarche’s YA novel Like No Other. She and Anne Rosellini of Still Rolling Productions optioned the book, in partnership with Mad Dog Film’s Alix Madigan. Published in 2015 by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers, Like No Other is billed as a contemporary take on West Side Story. It watches as the unlikely paths of a Hasidic girl and a secular boy meet on Eastern Parkway and blossom into a forbidden romance.

Ryan Akers is a stay-at-home dad. His daughter, Isadora Eleanor Akers, was born last June.

Jenny He is the exhibitions curator for the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

Ben Allen has completed five years now as technical advisor for Microfinance Research and Learning at Catholic Relief Services in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 2020, Ben has coordinated surveys in Africa and Latin America to learn how the informal savings and lending groups trained there have fared during the pandemic. Ben has also been moonlighting as an economics instructor at Loyola University–Maryland in 2020–21 and Catholic University of America (Washington, DC) this spring. His eldest daughter, Livia, is two and started preschool in December; and his youngest daughter, Norah, turned one in February.

After spending two years in Seoul, Korea, building the global security function for Coupang Inc., Eric Donelan moved back to the U.S. to be closer to family. He recently joined eBay as the senior director for Global Security and Resiliency based in the San Jose area.

Ernest Hartner is living in Miami with wife Raquel and three kids. He plans to stay in a dorm room with Nick Bazos at reunion.

Rachael Slivka and husband Joel had a baby boy, Dov, in August. Big brother Ori is excited to have a new friend.

As for myself (Justin Lacob), after spending a year during the pandemic in Vancouver with my wife Melanie and two daughters (Scarlett, now 7 and Juliette, now 4), we returned to Los Angeles in July 2021. Still working at documentary studio XTR, I recently produced the Oscar-nominated feature documentary Ascension; They Call Me Magic, a four-part documentary series on AppleTV+ about Magic Johnson; Butterfly in the Sky, a documentary about the impact of Reading Rainbow and LeVar Burton; The Territory, a Nat Geo film that premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival about an indigenous-led land defense against illegal loggers and nonnative farmers in the Amazon rainforest (edited by Carlos Rojas); art-heist documentary The Thief Collector (which premiered at SXSW); The Hobby, a documentary about the recent trading card boom; and about 15 other documentary features and series. I also am the cofounder and head of Documentary+, an ad-supported streaming platform (www.docplus.com) for passionate nonfiction fans.

See everyone on campus soon!

Hi 2001,

So much has changed, but what remains the same is how happy I always feel to hear from our classmates about the things they are up to around the globe. Keep sending in those notes!

Myra Sessions shares that she had so much fun watching Katie (Barge) Paris Zoom interview the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Murthy, in a panel arranged by the White House. Topics included COVID-19 and keeping kids safe, as well as political activism.

Ben Hurwitz, Aryn (Kalson) Sperandio, Scott Kushner, and Aaron Rosenberg left behind parental and professional duties for a weekend together in the California desert to celebrate the wedding of Jess Goldfarb to James Winston on March 5.

Ben Spatz has been promoted to reader at the University of Huddersfield and continues to explore connections between artistic research and theories of identity. View Ben’s work at urbanresearchtheater.com/, including videos and publications. Visitors to Northern England are always welcome!

Ashley (Crossan) Morse lives with her husband and two sons in Chicago, where she occasionally has the pleasure of hanging out with Loren Berlin ’00. This past summer, Ashley and her kids traveled to Los Angeles to spend cherished in-person time with the ladies of 54 Home (and their partners and sweet kiddos): Julie Ames, Sarah Kozinn, and Liz Weiner—an “annual-ish” visit that usually includes Kate Purdy too (she was quarantining this time). Ashley also shares that after nine years as an organizational effectiveness consultant at Allstate, she has brought her career back full circle to the not-for-profit sector and is now doing social impact consulting and loving it. Last, but definitely not least, she has also found time to take a painting class—in Ashley’s words, “a delightful, albeit sometimes bewildering, challenge!”

Andrea Donnelly writes in with news that her work as a sound and energy healer, spiritual mentor, and coach took off last year. She was featured on Yahoo, Bustle, Hello Giggles, Re-Spin, and several incredible podcasts including, Chakra Girl Radio and Raising a Powerful Girl. Andrea is particularly proud of an interview with Thrive Global on finding happiness and joy during turbulent times, which seems to be a continued theme as we move into 2022. If you’re interested in learning more about Andrea’s work, find her at wearehere2remember.com or reach out at andrea@wearehere2remember.com.

Until next time, 2001.

Trace Peterson is currently the 2021–2022 NEH postdoctoral fellow in poetics at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Emory University. A trans woman scholar and poet, this year she also co-organized, with two other trans scholars, the first-ever Working Group in Trans Studies at the MLA Conference, which featured nine participants. Her new publications this year include a chapter for the SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, a chapter in the forthcoming Wiley Blackwell Companion to American Poetry, and new poems in Michigan Quarterly Review.