Class Notes | 2010s

Please write to your class secretary.

Please write to your class secretary.

Please write to your class secretary.

Hi, Class of 2019! I hope everyone is doing well (and at this point is getting vaccinated)! Here are some updates from our classmates: 

     Alex Pachter (she/her) is going on a year and a half as a software engineer at Capital One Bank. She spent the first part of quarantine home in Brooklyn and is now working remotely from Burlington, Vermont. Her favorite lockdown activities these days are alpine and cross country skiing, long walks to the corner and back, and hot chocolate with Baileys.

   Aaron Cheung (he/him), who is continuing to live with Dominic Vazquez (he/him) in Berkeley, California, is excited to begin his fourth semester of law school.

     Miles Warren (he/him) and Gustavo René’s (he/him) film, Bruiser, was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival in 2021. The world premiere took place at Sundance at the end of January! A bunch of different Wesleyan alumni were involved in the project.

     Katie Tyner (she/her) started as a fellow at The Cohen Group, a strategic advisory firm in DC, on March 8. She is excited to join this incredible team and the DC community!

     Kevin Le (he/him) started a job at Arena Pharmaceuticals as the CMC operations associate for the tech ops group. He is finishing up his final year at the University of San Diego towards a master’s in healthcare informatics/management and leadership.

     Gabriella (Gabby) Castorena (she/her) is graduating in May with a master’s in clinical mental health counseling from The University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. Upon passing her licensure exam (NCE), she will be interning as a mental health counselor (LPC-A) in a local mental health clinic. During her internship, she will begin her journey to complete her prerequisites for nursing school, which she plans to apply for in Fall 2023 at Texas Women’s University.

     Huge thanks to everyone who shared this time around! Look out for an email from me soon about submissions for the next edition.

Taylor Matthew just watched the “Food and Your Senses” interactive program put on as a collaboration between the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Museum of Food and Culture. The program was co-hosted by Rachel Waugh, director/founder of the Museum of Food and Culture.

     The program description reads: “Gather the kids in your family and friend circles for a virtual variety show featuring food and your senses! Get ready to put your taste buds to the test, using food you have around the house to create wacky taste combinations, watch what happens when a science educator and chef stir up a recipe you too can do from home, and make some art with spices you have around the house! Follow along with us during tonight’s event using the detailed Cereal Treat Recipe, Sensory Spice Painting Guide, and Explore Your Five Tastes Tasting Worksheet.”

     Alas, not all loves are the love. Zach Lambros is once again accepting girlfriend applications.

     Anne Cooperstone’s short fiction “Floaters” was selected to appear in the Best Microfiction 2021 anthology, and is available in bookstores worldwide in June.

     Surprising everyone, Sam Shillet actually moved out to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

     Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll already know that Ali Felman got a dog. His name is Ponyboy, and he’s perfect. She’s still working at the Trevor Project, but now she’s also fishing cigarette butts and pizza crusts out of her dog’s mouth as a second job.

Ani Acopian has been living in Los Angeles and was recently selected as Young Guns 18 winner!

      After a couple of years working in fintech marketing, Maria Massad recently joined G2, a tech startup, as a senior product marketing manager. She also advises on digital strategy and directs social media efforts as a volunteer for the Walt Disney Birthplace, a 501c-3 focused on the historical restoration of Walt Disney’s first home. Also, she is working on getting her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and picking up a couple of fun hobbies in quarantine. She wishes everyone well!

     Melissa Leung writes, “It should be no surprise that I have once again hurt myself partaking in winter sports thinking my potato sack of a body is equivalent to that of a pro skier’s and skater’s. MBA culture has taught me being bullish extends beyond the classroom and into ice rinks and hills. At least this time I’ve downgraded to a cane and have all of my grandma carts at the ready for a trip to BJ’s (best place eva in the upper valley).”

     Lainey Hellman is in her fourth year of teaching elementary special education in Baltimore, Maryland. She was recently awarded Baltimore Teacher Network’s Beacon of Light Award as the Champion of Education Honoree. Then her mom told her to submit that to Wesleyan class notes, and here we are.

    Over the past eight months, Kai Leshne has been producing a full length album in collaboration with several nonprofits focused on affordable housing issues. The crowdfund campaign for the project will be launching soon (more info here). Feel free to back the project and help directly aid in the affordable housing challenge in urban areas across the states!

     This past summer after working on COVID research in Boston, Mariam Torres moved to Atlanta to start medical school at Emory. Things have been going well with school, but she hopes the pandemic ends and the vaccine/herd-immunity kicks in soon so she can finally meet her classmates!

     Helena Awad and Noah Hamlish decided to start PhD programs amid a global crisis. Both live in California now—Helena is at Caltech and Noah is at UC Berkeley. Naturally, they went to school during the state’s worst housing crisis in recent memory.

     Jared Jacobs is currently working at Blumhouse Television Studios where he focuses on non-scripted content.

    Lisa Kremen is graduating from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the spring, and will be starting her psychiatry residency in July (location TBD). She also moved in with Jack Trowbridge this past year, and they recently celebrated their six-year anniversary!

     Kristin Bumsch is graduating from medical school and excited to start radiology residency this summer. She married Ted Kim ’15 in a small ceremony, and they are looking forward to a larger party at some point in the future. They also just celebrated their rescue dog Willow’s fourth birthday.

Winnie Yung recently graduated from Fullstack Academy’s cybersecurity boot camp and is also a current scholarship recipient of the SANS Institute and ICMP’s Diversity Cyber Academy. She would love to connect with any alum working in cyber or infosec. Or if anybody is interested in learning about the field (it’s really cool!), they can feel free to contact her.

     Camille Casareno is finishing up her MPH from Columbia this May and is looking forward to entering the public health field. Though we missed our official 5th year class reunion last year, Gordon Petty and Camille have been keeping close with Eley Rosenthal, Ali Rosenberg, and Brendan Cole through their monthly-ish Zooms. They are hoping to do a beach hangout again this summer, with masks and social distancing of course!

     Grace Nix is acting in a series shooting in the Bay Area, and making videos for an environmental nonprofit that uses hair, fur and fleece donations to make hair mats that naturally clean up oil spills! Check it out, MatterofTrust.org. Pro-Tip: Collect your hair from the shower and stick it in a little bathroom hair jar, wait a few months and you’ll save an otter’s life.

     Rebecca Seidel is making podcasts for Marvel in her hometown of Queens, New York, where she may or may not be neighbors with Spider-Man. In her spare time, she’s making more podcasts! She co-produced and sound designed Season 3 of the independent podcast Other Men Need Help, alongside a stellar team (including Ben Goldberg ’17). She’s also working on an audio series about bridges.

Tyler Holzschuh graduated with an electrical engineering Master’s degree from UCLA in 2016. He became a licensed engineer in the State of California in 2019 and is now working at the California Public Utilities Commission on wildfire issues.

   At the end of 2020, Ella Dawson left the social media industry to write full-time. She signed with Jamie Carr, a literary agent at the Book Group, and is supported directly by her readers on Patreon, where she publishes exclusive essays about intimacy and relationships.

     Jay Benedith reports that she is an EdD candidate in Educational Sustainability at the University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point, and started her own business called J. Benedith Coaching Services (www.jbenedith.com).

     Julian Theseira is deepening his engagement with climate policy research and advocacy in Southeast Asia. He worked on a climate adaptation policy proposal together with Justin Liew ’18 and others which made it to the finals of an international Youth Adaptation Policy Case Competition organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They have since submitted elements of their policy proposal to the Ministry of Environment and Water Malaysia as a civil society contribution to the process of the updating of Malaysia’s Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. Julian has also been elected to serve on the board of the Climate Action Network Southeast Asia, a coalition of climate NGOs and the regional Southeast Asian node of the global Climate Action Network. 

      Will Dubbs has just settled in DC after 7+ years on the campaign trail—most recently working for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in Iowa. While waiting for his next gig, he spends his days losing at board games to his friend Cpt. Dr. Jake Barack.

     Jeremy Judelson is living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and just began a new job as a Creative Strategist at TikTok’s Creative Lab.

    Jennelle Herrick is celebrating her fifth year in Maui working for the high end luxury developer, Discovery Land Company. Jennelle is a licensed realtor and notary for the State of Hawaii. In 2020, Jennelle launched her company Maui Apothecary Magic, LLC where she makes organic soy candles with essential oils and healing crystals. 

      After returning from his travels in Bhutan a few years ago, Richie Starzec has since taken over his father’s former business and is in the middle of shifting the focus of the company from open capital to defense technologies.

     Andrew Cohen recently started a second job alongside his work in entertainment PR, co-founding small animation studio, Confidential Creative, where he recently worked to animate music videos for musicians including Journey, Kesha, P. Diddy and Maroon 5. He has also been spending his quarantine playing Mafia over zoom with new friends.

     Tess Keller reports: “My life since Wes has led me from a double major in French and Anthropology to a career as a bilingual digital marketer. After graduation, I moved to Burlington, Vermont and started learning digital marketing at Dealer.com, one of the companies that led to our being able to purchase a car completely online today. From there, I moved on to a marketing agency, where over the years I rose from an account manager to running the digital marketing division of the company, really making my mark in adopting and implementing Agile methodologies to turn a new page on the company’s capacity.  Most recently, I moved to the Boston area, and now work as a strategic digital marketing architect, helping connect a rich but outdated database with the modern practices and software available to harness automation to grow sales and marketing reach exponentially. I’m able to also employ my language skills in this role, and am managing the website launches in five more languages. I miss my Wesbesties all the time, but it’s been great when I can connect with fellow Cardinals, especially during the pandemic. It has meant a lot to rekindle conversations and friendships during such a trying time. It was awesome when the West Coast members of Notably Sharp resurrected the old group thread just to check in to say hey. I still don’t know if we ever got everyone on the same thread (will Androids and iPhones ever play nice?) but it helped to feel connected to some of the people that are part of who I am as a person today.  I’m looking forward to when we can again visit each other in our cities across the world. And of course, I can’t wait until Reunion can be the real deal again.”

     Jason Shatz just moved back to the New York City area to work as a software engineer for Barclays. 

     After six years in New York, Maureen Gorman is currently pursuing an MBA at INSEAD. Upon graduating in July 2021, she and her husband Aurélien will be settling in Paris. 

     Joshua Krugman continues to work for the 57-year-old political theater company, Bread & Puppet Theater, based in Glover, Vermont. He invites Wesleyan folks to come up to see a show Friday to Sunday this summer—socially distanced and outdoors in the beautiful North East Kingdom landscape—and to get in touch if you’d like to bring a touring show to your city. 

     Mia Rossi  is continuing to produce music both solo and with other artists. She has also started her own life and mindset coaching practice based in Los Angeles where she meets online with clients as far as New Zealand! You can find her on IG as @mia.c.rossi.

     Nikolai Muth  and Rehan Mehta  were honored to be groomsmen at Ismet Jooma’s wedding. Congratulations!

Jackson Ulrich shares: “Russell Madison is living in sunny Encinitas, California, having recently completed his masters degree in bioinformatics this spring. His graduate studies are especially impressive considering he’s already balancing a full-time career in data science with an intense surfing habit and an ambitious pursuit of the perfect homebrewed kombucha.”

     Alex Nunez is pioneering the burgeoning field of in-game esports advertising as the lead ad rep for Madden at EA Sports. He is proud to have brought on some of his favorite snacks as official Madden partners, including Snickers and Pizza Hut. He kindly asks his classmates not to bother asking for a Madden code.

     After a stint at AI startup Innoplexus that had him traveling the globe like a software-slinging Carmen Sandiego, Chase Hochman has settled down in Brooklyn and is now working at Kenshoo, an ad-tech shop. When he’s not playing squash with Alex Nunez  or basketball with housemate Jackson Ulrich, Chase spends his free time acquiring new kitchen gadgets to be used once. 

     Amber Bruckner  graduated from Stony Brook University School of Dental Medicine with a DDS in 2019 and will finish her residency as a pediatric dentist this summer. She claims to have single-handedly caused a jigsaw puzzle shortage in the Tri-State area last spring.

   Troy Sampson is still importing and exporting allegedly-legal goods in Los Angeles, where he lives in Marina Del Rey. Give him a ring if you’re ever in town and have a couple of hours to spend learning about cryptocurrencies.

     Just across town from Troy is Patrick Newman, who is still managing and representing a variety of creative talent at Mosaic Media Group. He specializes in comics, illustrators, and fielding multiple intraday FaceTime calls from Gustav Gregor.

     Gus Gregor obtained a masters degree in business communications from Northwestern University and completed a tour of duty for the Danish Trade Council in Chicago in 2018. Since finishing up at the Trade Council, Gus has been working in Spark Foundry’s pharmaceutical division. An avid rider over the past year, he boasts over 400 Peloton badges.

     And finally, as for me,  I am living the first year attorney life as a Law Clerk at Walden, Macht, and Haran LLP in New York City where I mostly focus on white collar matters, after graduating from Fordham University School of Law last spring. Suits ain’t got nothing on me! In my spare time I’ve been getting creative in the kitchen and with my cocktail shaker and am constantly on the quest for the latest and greatest HIIT workout. It’s been great connecting with Wesleyan friends (even if just via Zoom) who have kept me sane during the pandemic. Looking forward to connecting with more of you once things go back to normal.

     Much love to the Class of 2014 from your class secretary.

Hi Class of 2011, thanks for everyone’s contributions. Lots of great updates including announcements of growing Wes families! Congrats to everyone!

     Joe Giaimo and his wife, Emily, welcomed their daughter, Siena, back in August! They’re enjoying every second with her and can’t wait to get her to campus soon for her first football and baseball games!

     Alyssa (Bogdanow) Arens is living in the suburbs outside Boston and working in philanthropy at the One8 Foundation. Her day-to-day portfolio is focused on Jewish community engagement, Israel education, and combating anti-Semitism, though in the early months of the COVID crisis, she also helped support the MA COVID-19 Relief Fund. Alyssa and her (non-Wes) husband had a baby daughter, Eleanor, in July 2020. Alyssa includes, “she was born about 10 days before Allie and Katie Rowan had their son, and we’ve had an incredibly active and helpful Wesleyan new moms text thread ever since. Eleanor is looking forward to toddling around Foss in the adorable little Wes outfits her 76 Lawn uncles and aunts sent her—hopefully at our 10 year reunion, if it happens!”

     In other good news, Joella Jones tell us, “I graduated from Columbia Law School in May and am now practicing at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, LLP in New York City. My husband and I are also expecting our first child, due in April.”

    Ameen Beydoun (Film Studies) writes—“Publishing my first graphic novel about a young African girl that immigrates to the Middle East and faces off against monsters and shawarma. Check out the Indiegogo fundraiser and consider pre-ordering your copy of Habibti Pada for yourself or a young person you love!” Ameen is currently living in San Diego, California. Since graduation Ameen was product manager for EdTech Company in Nairobi (2018–2020), launched a solar refrigeration start-up in Dakar, Senegal (2018) and received an MA/MBA from Middlebury Institute of International Studies 2016–2018. Ameen was an English teacher at Peace Corps Comoros and Libera in 2015–2016 and 2013–2014, respectively.

     Cheryl Chitty Tan started pushing singing lessons like crazy during her lockdown and is now an established vocal coach, which helps her choose projects. She wrote lyrics to a musical called The Monster in the Mirror fulfilling a bucket list item. It’s a Birdman meets High School Musical one-take film filmed in a black box; please watch it! She was briefly on Westworld Season 3, episode 1 with Aaron Paul, and is creating a solo show aiming for Australia. She started playing D&D and has been enjoying reconnecting with Alpha Delts. She wants to break into Los Angeles but maybe after things have improved. She hopes everyone will help each other. @cherylchittytan on Instagram.

     Chris Ceccolini writes, “I am excited to be moving to New York City this summer to begin my clinical psychology residency at NYU Langone—Bellevue Hospital Center. I’ve missed New York while working on my counseling psychology PhD in Boston these last five years, and am looking forward to setting down permanent roots. I’m coming home!”

     Ruby Lin is a country HR manager for Hong Kong and Taiwan at Hyphen Group, and Nigel Stacey wants us to still know he is still related to Arthur Stacey ’13.

    Mallory Cruz includes, “Recently, I wrote a piece for a book being published on March 14 this year. The book is called Sincerely, Your Autistic Child, and it’s an anthology of letters autistic adults wrote for parents of autistic children about our own childhoods. It’s so those parents can read it to consider how to approach and think about their child. I’m sure the book description on Amazon explains it better though.”

Greetings Class of 2010! I hope you’ll enjoy these brief notes from our classmates around the world:

     Katie Roose (Zackin) and her husband Robert Roose ’04 welcomed their second son, Alden, to their family on February 15, 2021. He joins big brother William, who is thrilled with his baby brother! The family lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

     Sam Schilit and husband Jeremy Rosenweig welcomed their first child, Henry Schilit Rosenweig, in September. Henry is looking forward to becoming a Cardinal in 2038!

     Peter Hull shares: “In July I’ll be moving to Providence, Rhode Island to start an assistant professor position in the Economics Department of Brown University.” Peter would love to connect to any Wes folks in the Providence area!

     Sherry Sybertz has recently joined the board of directors of the Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club. Sherry adds “I enjoy spending free time, year-round, sailing on California’s beautiful Monterey Bay!”

     Matt Tannenbaum recently joined the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he prosecutes hate crimes, law enforcement misconduct, and other civil rights violations.  Matt owes a deep debt of gratitude to Wesleyan for teaching him about critical race theory and how to gracefully fail at public speaking in courtrooms across the country.

     Finally, Mark Fajans, after working on the COVID Epi Task Force during the outbreak, left his job at the CDC to move to Seattle and start a PhD in epidemiology at the University of Washington, where he will be back to focusing on pediatric tuberculosis and diagnostics.

     Thanks to those who contributed this time around and, as always, feel free to pass along notes anytime at DavidALayne@gmail.com, or dlayne@wesleyan.edu.