Class Notes | 2010s

Melissa Leung spent Thanksgiving with Taran Carr’s family which presented both a turkey and duck and let her assist in putting up the Christmas tree! Thereafter, she took on the honorary title of third roommate to Sarah Mi and Taran, making delicious quiches and apple pies at the Carr-Mi residence in Baltimore. Melissa stopped to say hello to Lars Berg at the University of Maryland, Baltimore library. “Shout out to Whole Foods delivery for making the cooking sessions possible,” says Melissa.

Last summer, Jamie Ember and Arthur Halliday got engaged. Jamie is working as an associate casting director, with credits on Hulu and CBS and upcoming on Netflix, TBS, and CBS All Access, while Arthur is in his first year at Columbia Law School. Their dog, Stanley, is perfect.

Willie Zabar is pursuing stand-up and character comedy in New York City. He is currently developing a comedic one-man show as part of a fellowship with LABA: A Laboratory of Jewish Culture. The performance will take place in April.

Rohan Shriram got a new puppy named Laddu. His older dog, Waffles, likes to steal Laddu’s toys and then lie on them. Tim Israel and Atreya Sinha saw all this firsthand when they visited Rohan in Delhi.

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

Ryan Gardner moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco and started working in video games and interactive tech.

Peter Cornillie wrote in to say that he has been working way too much and not drinking nearly enough.

Jessica Seidman recently passed the Connecticut Bar Exam and was sworn in as a licensed attorney. She is now working at an asbestos litigation law firm in New Haven, Conn.

As a passion project, Julia Chanin, Andrew Hove, and Zia Grossman-Vendrillo have formed an experimental dance company inspired by the lives of primordial beings. Their first installation explores themes of sentience and godliness. They can be spotted in urban centers across the upper-middle West Coast over the summer.

Katherine Lu spent the holidays in South Africa and Madagascar with Maurice Lee, where she saw lemurs and whale sharks and realized she much prefers the great indoors. She also started a new role at Taco Bell to redesign its website. She still hasn’t been to a Taco Bell.

Jenna Starr | jstarr@wesleyan.edu

Some great class news coming your way:

Julian Theseira started a new job with Deloitte Consulting Southeast Asia and is based out of the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, office. Outside of work, Julian volunteers actively with the Malaysian Youth (Climate) Delegation, with whom he co-organized the only Local Conference of Youth (LCOY) in Southeast Asia in 2019, part of a global network of LCOYs that gathered youth input about climate change governance in the leadup to COP 25 in Madrid. Julian has also been catching up with other Wesleyan Freeman Asian Scholar alumni in Malaysia and Singapore. He is active with the Taizé ecumenical movement and attended the 42nd annual Taizé European Meeting in Wroclaw, Poland, alongside 15,000 other pilgrims. His testimonial about the spiritual impact of the philosopher Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) was translated into Polish and featured by the Edith Stein House Foundation in Wroclaw.

Remi Ojurongbe happily reports: “Alexander Mehner and I got married last month and were lucky enough to celebrate with lots of Wes Folks!” Congratulations to you both! #gowes

Jason Shatz writes: “In August, I finished up my master’s degree at the University of Chicago for software engineering while working for a consulting firm called Cognizant. I have been relocated to the Raleigh area for a Big Data project. I hope to return to the NYC area soon, but I will let you know of my whereabouts whenever they change.”

Adele Bubnys received her PhD in biomedical sciences from Rockefeller University last spring. After traveling around Europe over the summer and stopping by Wesleyan for our five-year Reunion, she started a postdoctoral position at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT. There, she is using novel 3D cell culture techniques and self-assembling “mini-brains” to model neurodegeneration in a dish.

I always look forward to hearing updates from our awesome class. Keep them coming.

Your Class Secretary,

Mary Diaz | mcdiaz@wesleyan.edu 

Zach Schonfeld celebrated the one-year anniversary of the time he got laid off, got a book deal, and went to see the repulsive 1975 film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom all on the same day. He is nearly finished with his first book, a 33-1/3 volume chronicling the story of the widely sampled funk band 24-Carat Black. He lives with Rebecca Vaadia in New York City, right near the diner from Seinfeld.

Peter Horton has been living it up in Japan for the last year but came back to Brooklyn on New Year’s to see his friends The Strokes. Croy Salinas has moved to a Park Slope adjacent neighborhood and is remembered fondly by his friends. Ethan Grund is loving the trials and tribulations of being a Midwest farmer at his homestead in Minnesota. Will Davis is loath to admit he has a new hobby, and Mark Popinchalk is looking to reinvent his identity as we enter the next decade by introducing an extra consonant into his name. Noah Masur ’15 has found clarity, Sora Akiyoshi ’14 wants to rue the day, Chloe Rinehart ’14 has been there, done that, Susanna Banks is happily employed, and Natalie Robichaud ’14 falls in love almost daily.

Matt Motta is starting his second semester as an assistant professor of political science at Oklahoma State University. Matt joined OSU after finishing his PhD at the University of Minnesota in 2018 and completing postdoctoral work at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (University of Pennsylvania and Yale University) in 2019. Matt teaches courses on political campaigns, public opinion polling, and statistical programming. His research tests the effectiveness of strategies aimed at helping scientists communicate more effectively with the public about controversial environmental and public health issues. His work has been published in academic journals like Nature Climate Change and has been featured in press outlets like Newsweek, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Matt lives in Tulsa, Okla., and would love to meet up with alumni in the area!

This fall, Nick Orvis returned to Connecticut, where he’s begun working on an MFA in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at the Yale School of Drama. For the past five years, Gabriel Urbina has been living and working in Brooklyn. In that time, he has created, written, and directed a series of award-winning audio fiction podcasts, including Wolf 359, Time:Bombs, and Zero Hours, often collaborating with various Wesleyan alumni. In 2020, he’s excited to dive into new work, including finishing the manuscript for a novel and continuing to produce new original audio content through Long Story Short Productions, the company he runs along with Zach Valenti ’12 and Sarah Shachat ’12. Gabriel also works as a freelance writer, teacher, and public speaker. Ally Bernstein and Audrey Kiely continue to seriously question their life choices as they embark on adventures in other peoples’ problems as newly minted MSWs. They routinely call each other crying, wondering why, oh god why, would they choose to do this work? They could have done those demos for cookware at Costco or given duck boat tours. Instead, they spend their days listening to endless detail of trauma, prompting coping skills, and having things thrown at them. Ally and Audrey have also discovered their dogs are a force dyad, so that’s cool.

Haley Sacks was in the New York Times and on Good Morning America. She is a financial pop star that makes keeping up with the Dow Joneses as fun as Keeping Up with The Kardashians.

Zoe Muller moved to Philadelphia a little over a year ago with her fiancée, Ivy, and two dogs, Roosevelt and Quinn, to start a new job in urban planning and design at WRT Design after graduating from MIT’s master’s program in urban planning. She bought a house in West Philly and went full HGTV on it, complete with surprise basement flood, bathtub leaking, neighbors trimming trees without permission, weekends full of sanding and painting, and beautiful hidden historic fireplaces to help reassure her this wasn’t a crazy idea. It is now a functional and beautiful home with most of the kinks worked out and a handful of half-complete projects. Zoe is looking forward to a year of getting back into more physical activity and outdoor time, spending more time and energy making ceramics, and making time to visit and reconnect with friends.

Laura Yim | Lyim@wesleyan.edu 

A new year and a new decade have arrived. Many of us will look back at the last 10 years and recall the impact Wesleyan had on our last decade. Personally, I am grateful for the foundation provided to me on the Hilltop and the influence it still holds on the journey I am on today. Now a look into what a few our classmates have accomplished in the last year of the decade:

Nate Mondschein started a music production company, Echo Base Production, received the 2019 ASCAP Robert Allen Award for his songwriting and production work and released his debut solo album, . . .And the Sky, under his artist name Best Mann. Nate is working on a few new projects, including some Wesleyan-adjacent songwriting and production work with Spencer Hattendorf and Matt Bernstein ’11, and co-producing Josh the Word’s (aka Josh Smith ’11) upcoming collection of singles. Take some time to listen in on Nate’s debut album.

Benjamin Kaufman started a new job this year at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Benny is the associate director for Team Fox, the grassroots fundraising arm of the foundation.

Tess Minter got engaged in 2019 and will be tying the knot over Labor Day weekend in Santa Cruz. Her fiancé is Craig Lahti, who is from Minnesota and graduated from St. Thomas. They met when they were both working in a homeless youth shelter in 2012.

A few of our classmates ended the decade with an adventure. Noa Borkan, Anne DeBoer, Ally Wang, and Saumya Chatrath ’13 visited Rachel Levenson in Nairobi, Kenya. They road-tripped across Kenya, including visiting national parks and ringing in 2020 by the Kenyan coast. Rachel continued the Wes-in-Nairobi reunions, spending time with Nathan Mackenzie and Yinka Taiwo, who were visiting Kenya.

As for me, I am enjoying the newlywed life and coastal living. Wishing the entire class of 2012 an incredible year and decade to come.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

I hope 2020 is off to a great start for the Class of 2011. Some exciting updates from our classmates below.

Isabel Magowan writes, “I am a working artist and photographer based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and married last June. Thinking of all my fellow Wes classmates and hoping they are doing well!”

Christopher Ceccolini and Jordan Gratch ’13 finally tied the knot, nearly 10 years after first meeting at Wesleyan. The two were married on Oct. 19, at Gedney Farm in Massachusetts. They were surrounded by many close family and friends, including 26 Wesleyan alumni from numerous graduation years (2010-2014). Jordan is now a first-year associate at Latham & Watkins LLP in New York and Chris is a clinical fellow in psychology at Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Chris looks forward to joining Jordan in New York when he finishes his PhD in counseling psychology next year.

Amanda Faraone lives in Austin, Texas, with husband Alex Anthony ’10, and their son, George. She is the new development director for American Short Fiction and is at work on her novel about teenage girls and love magic.

Becky Eidelman writes, “In the fall, I began a two-year master’s degree program in urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University.”

Jared Gimbel became a member of the International Association of Hyperpolyglots (HYPIA) in late 2019. With his video game about Greenland, Kaverini Nuuk Adventures, slated for a 2020 release after many delays, he has begun working on the expansion.

Cheryl Tan writes, “I am still in Singapore! Last year I did four screen projects and a difficult play called Displaced Persons’ Welcome Dinner, about humanitarian aid workers in conflict zones. It premiered at the Singapore International Arts Festival and took up 13 weeks (two workshop sessions before the full production). It’s a semi-devised work, very tiring.”

Marshall Johnson reports, “Back in September I started a new job in astronomy as a staff scientist at Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) in Santa Barbara, Calif. LCO operates a network of 23 robotic telescopes at seven observatory sites around the world, and, in my new position, I’m working with our NRES high-resolution spectrographs that we operate at four of those sites, in addition to conducting my own research. I now work closely with Tim Brown ’72, among others.”

Last but not least, Jennifer Spero writes, “I will be marrying Tristan Tully ’09 and moving to London!” Congrats, Jen and Tristan!

As always, thank you for your updates!

Allie Southam | asoutham@wesleyan.edu

Greetings, Class of 2010!  Please enjoy the following updates from our fellow Cardinals.

Kait Halibozek married Jack Fitzmorris in October in Palm Springs, Calif. Her bridesmaids included Katie Boyce-Jacino, Rebecca Weiss Roberts, and Lauren Valentino Yadav. The wedding was also attended by Dave Bachy, Tony Zosherafatain, Rose Agger, Emily Rasenick, Heather Stanton, Brenna Galvin ’11, Carrie Cohen Smolen ’12, Lindsay Keys ’11, and Danielle Klimashousky ’08.

Justin Papermaster reports that “Gary Garofalo and I have started a new company called LoudCrowd in Austin, Texas. Our software helps consumer brands turn their regular customers into advocates. Our platform makes it possible to incentivize and measure customers to create more user-generated content about them on social sites like Instagram. We raised our pre-seed funding round in October, led by Active Capital. We actually work in the same building as a company called People Pattern founded by Ken Cho ’94, so lots of good Wes stories get shared at office happy hours!”

Dan Bloom moved to Seattle in 2015 when his company, Slope, received investment from Microsoft. Dan and his business partner grew Slope (work management software for marketing and creative teams) in Seattle for the last few years, raising money from Wesleyan alumni like Strauss Zelnick ’79 and Frank Sica ’73, and other investors in the Pacific Northwest. In January 2019, Smartsheet Inc. acquired Slope. Dan has been working at Smartsheet for a year now and the Slope technology has been added to Smartsheet’s core capabilities. Dan still lives in Seattle with his fiancée, Laura.

Seth Rosen moved to Brooklyn a few months ago after four years in the Bay Area. He is preparing to start teaching game design as an adjunct at NYU while continuing to work on a few game development projects of his own, one of which Seth hopes to release this year.

Exciting news from Jess Brownfeld Spierer! She and Eric Spierer welcomed their son, David Ari Spierer, on Dec. 5.

J.P. Valette contributes the following: “I completed my family medicine residency at the University of California San Diego in June and I’m halfway through my sports medicine fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. I’m about to finish the hiring process for my first job in primary care sports medicine in San Francisco, where I’ll be moving in August. I’m excited to move back home and finally get my career in medicine started after a long journey of training. Shout out to anyone already in the Bay Area. I would love to reconnect when I get there. In Wesleyan-specific news, I’ve been hanging out with Jed Rendleman ’12 and together we’ve been getting back into Ultimate Frisbee by playing in a recreational men’s winter league and pickup games. We both played on the club team Nietzsch Factor while at Wesleyan. In other news, I’ve been to Burning Man for the past two years and am looking forward to going back this year for another amazing time.”

Katherine Kitfield Bascom is working as a writer-designer creative lead for the analytics and behavior change marketing team at Aetna-CVS Health in NYC. On the side, she is still pursuing her passion for all things fitness. Katherine is happily engaged and living in Jersey City.

Finally, you may have heard that our classmate and friend Pedro Ventura was shot last October by a stranger outside of a nightclub in North Carolina. Pedro suffered major injuries to his spinal cord as a result of this senseless act. Many of you know Pedro as a dear friend, a fighter, and a joy to all who know him. As he embarks on the long road to recovery, our friend is now in need of support. More details on Pedro’s story and his recovery can be found here: gofundme.com/f/hope-for-pedro. If you can, any contribution would go a long way.

Thank you as always for the wonderful updates, and as always, feel free to send them anytime.

David Layne | dlayne@wesleyan.edu

 

Hey, class of 2019. Hope you all are doing well and had a great summer. Here are some updates:

Steven Fields is staying at Wesleyan for another year, finishing up the BA/MA program in psychology. He’s excited to have the opportunity to continue his education at Wes.

At the beginning of August, Michelle Fisher moved to Madison, Wis., to start a new job at Epic, working as a technical services engineer.

Carina Flaherty moved back to her hometown of Philadelphia, where she is a clinical research assistant at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, specializing in asthma care.

Zachary Obstfeld is working at Tufts’ Fletcher School doing data analysis and visualization for a publication called Econofact that focuses on the dissemination of economic news and research.

Hannah Bolotin is living in Boston where she works as a research lab manager for Professor Katherine McAuliffe’s social and developmental psychology lab at Boston College.

Sahil Shah is working full-time at a mid-market private equity firm called CX Partners in New Delhi, India.

Maya Dorn has been working part-time as a barista at Uncommon Grounds Coffee & Bagels and just started as a laboratory assistant at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Rensselaer, N.Y. She tells us, “Upstate New York is where it’s at!”

Rhoen Fiutak has started a position as a math teacher at Northfield Mount Hermon. During this time, she will also be working towards a master’s degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania as a part of their independent boarding school fellowship program. She is looking forward to this new journey in Western Mass!

Aaron Cheung has started at Berkeley Law School.

Amabel Jeon moved to LA to start her first year as a PhD student in social psychology at the University of Southern California. Her research focus will be mainly on the role of culture on cognition through understanding the consequences of cultural fluency and honor.

Yahya Ladiwala has started working at a charter high school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and is teaching AP U.S. government to high school seniors. He has relocated to New York and is living with Josh Lane. He also wants to give a shout out to his amazing girlfriend, Cassie Morales ’20, who is about to start her senior year at Wesleyan.

Jennifer Gagne is living in Buffalo, N.Y., pursuing a master’s in urban childhood education with a specialization in TESOL (Teaching English as a New Language) while teaching ENL (English as a New Language) in Buffalo Public Schools.

Andrew Jacono is heading to Lyon for TAPIF (teaching assistant program in France) for the next seven months. He plans to do a lot of writing there to get a jumpstart on his writing career. He’ll be searching for a permanent job while abroad for when he returns in May 2020.

Sydney Riddick is pursuing a Sc.M. in biotechnology from Brown.

Devon Cooper moved to Worcester, Mass., where she is working as a laboratory research assistant in the department of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She is helping to conduct research on a specific chemoreceptor and its potential role in microglial activation as involved in the progression of neurodegenerative disorders.

As for me, I just relocated to New York City, where I work as a paralegal for the Urban Justice Center. There I am an advocate for low-income folks who struggle with mental illnesses, helping them get the help and health care that they deserve.

And last but not least, Erin Angell and Max Wimer have gotten engaged and are set to have their wedding in May of next year!

Special thanks to everyone who reached out with their life updates.

Justin Campos | jxcampos@wesleyan.edu

Hello, class of 2018! For this round of class notes we will be featuring Aylin Garcia. After graduating Wesleyan, Aylin stayed at Wesleyan for three months to work on astronomy research with Professor William Herbst. She is writing a paper for that research, which is in its final draft.

She then worked at MIT for Professor Sara Seager and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission for around 10 months. TESS is a NASA/MIT mission launched last year. Its purpose is to search for planets around other sun-like stars. She worked as a research assistant, teaching people how to find exoplanets and managing the team and the public-facing and conference websites. This fall she will be attending Dartmouth College for an astronomy PhD.

Write in next time for a chance to be featured and to stay connected! Go Wes!

Najwa Anasse | nanasse@wesleyan.edu
Garett Larivee | gslarivee@gmail.com

Max Dietz and Anna Cocuzzo got married in June!

Torie White lives in Oakland, Calif., where she spends her days working at a community-minded café called The Well. Her afternoons and evenings are spent organizing with Resource Generation, a group that engages young people with wealth and/or class privilege to radically redistribute their resources to social justice movements. She’s also writing a screenplay and making space for as much fun, play, and pleasure in her life as possible. Hit her up if you’re about any of that.

Max Winter is training to go on American Ninja Warrior and firmly believes 2020 is going to be his year!

Lainey Hellman is entering her third year of teaching special education at an elementary school in Baltimore. She completed her master’s at Johns Hopkins. She is much more patient with her students than she was with customers at WesWings. If you are interested in supporting her classroom, visit donorschoose.org/hellman.

Taran Carr and Sarah Mi tied the knot on July 28 and live in Baltimore. Wedding party included Ethan Quinn, Jack Trowbridge, Emerson Obus (Taran’s roommates at Wes), Scarlett Harris, Melissa Leung, Mariam Torres ’16, MA’17 (Sarah’s roommates at Wes), and Deborah Mi ’14 (Sarah’s sister). Their wedding rehearsal ended up being Wes themed, thanks to Melissa, Scarlett, and Mariam, who drove to Wes the day before to pick up Wesleyan gear and banners. Most important, Melissa hit up Wes Co-Op’s local bakery in Connecticut and brought five delicious, fresh loaves of garlic asiago bread to share at the reception.

Sophie Breitbart is entering her second year as a PhD student in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto. She’s investigating how urbanization influences the evolution of urban-dwelling plants, like the monarch butterfly’s darling common milkweed. She may extend her study to other cities, so if your area is a milkweed hub, she’d love to hear about it!

Lili Borland celebrated her marriage to Manan Dhulia on July 27 near her hometown in sunny California. The two met in Boston while working at Amadeus, and fell in love skiing and snowboarding the Northeast. Big shout out to Denise Francisco, who was a phenomenal bridesmaid and choreographed the couple’s first dance. Lili and Manan will move cross-country to the Bay Area.

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu