Class Notes

Zaki Iqbal began his medical school journey at Quinnipiac University’s Frank H. Netter School of Medicine along with Joie Akerson ’17 and Derek Groskreutz ’13.

Jasmine Masand moved to North Carolina in August to pursue her master’s at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. As a Duke-Margolis Scholar, Jasmine is focusing on health care policy and is exploring exciting new models for value-based care in Medicare.

Emily Garvin is happy to be returning to New England to start a new position teaching and coaching at Loomis Chaffee, just up the road from Wes.

Catherine Chase has moved to Seattle and is starting her PhD program in classics at the University of Washington.

Gabe Frankel married Aliya Yule on Sept. 3 in Chicago. They met in 2013 when Gabe studied abroad at Oxford where Aliya was a student. (Big shout out to year-long study abroad programs!) He’ll be moving to London in early 2020 and looking forward to connecting with Wes alumni there; reach out at gabefrankel@gmail.com.

Gordon Petty and Camille Casareno are engaged! He proposed in June, about seven years after they met at Wesleyan. And though they are Cardinals through and through, they are both pursuing post-grad studies at Columbia University. Gordon is entering the third year of his neuroscience PhD and Camille will be starting her MPH this fall.

After more than three years in San Francisco, Hannah Jenkins finally escaped the marine layer, moving across the bridge to Oakland, Calif. She co-founded a holistic healing and wellness center with some other badass women and feels alive and in her purpose more often than not. If you are in the Bay Area, check out The Heartbeat Collective!

Jenna Starr | jstarr@wesleyan.edu

Kristen Salustro is working on her fourth book and is expecting to publish it in 2020. Her debut novel was awarded a silver medal in the Readers’ Favorite Book Awards in the sci-fi category, which made her so excited she accidentally bounced her partner awake at 6 a.m. on a weekend before shoving the announcement under his nose. She just passed her third-year mark at her day job and has been officially named someone’s manager.

Bryce Hollingsworth’s custom traditional dry stone construction business has been going really well. He spent two months this winter working with a certified dry stone Master Craftsman down in New South Wales, Australia, building a huge 600-foot long slate wall which was awesome. Since then, Bryce received the Preservation Trades Network’s International Trades Exchange grant, and used that to spend two weeks working with a Master Stonemason in Galway, Ireland. Later this fall, he will be traveling down to Lexington, Ky., to work with the Dry Stone Conservancy, a nonprofit organization focused on preserving the craft of dry stone walling. This year has been insanely busy, but he’s been loving every minute of it.

Benjamin Smith completely missed chances to script supervise Batwoman and Utopia and is seeking forgiveness from himself. He completed his short film, Bump in the Night, in September, and is making plans to force it on audiences around the world. He likes to call it a short film, as if he really knows what he’s created. You can also find Ben performing improv and sketch at Second City in Chicago. He’s trying to have more friends and stuff. Improv is good for that. Need life advice? Improv, friends.

After nearly four years gallivanting around Asia Pacific, Julian Azaret is finally moving back to the USA! San Francisco and Cambridge have even odds. Zach Libresco just moved from Brooklyn to Harlem to be closer to his new job, modeling for the National World War I Memorial. His theater company, The Humanist Project, is remounting their devised clown show, centered on quantum physics and Russian fairy tales, in November and December at The Tank in Midtown! He is very happy to have moved closer to his best friend, Emily Hunt.

After spending five years in Washington, D.C., working on environmental policy for the National Wildlife Federation and later as a U.S. Senate staffer, Taran Catania moved to Burlington, Vt. She’s pursuing a Sustainable Innovation MBA at the University of Vermont with plans to confront environmental challenges in new, better ways. (And yes, she still loves birds. In fact, she’s the seventh-ranked top birder in D.C. for 2018—including #1 female birder and youngest in the Top 10.)

Victoria Chu is an entertainment finance/corporate associate at Akin Gump in Los Angeles. She would love to connect with other Wes alumni in the entertainment/legal industry. Evan Hazelett is studying the spatial and racial politics of food and farming as well as critical urban histories and theories as a master in urban planning student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He hopes to pursue a PhD in human geography after this program. He’s also the editor-in-chief for The Urban Review, the student journal of urban studies and planning. On the side, Evan is trying to publish short stories and poetry, and at home he cooks himself to the ground. Shira Gaudet (formally Shauna Pratt) is pleased to announce her marriage to Amelia Atwater-Rhodes on June 2. She now has two children, Rebecca (4) and Michael (1). Both children attended the wedding; Michael slept through the whole ceremony. The couple’s first dance was actually a singing duet, “I’ll Never Tell” from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, “Once More with Feeling.” Rubber ducks abounded.

Laura Yim | Lyim@wesleyan.edu 

It should come to no surprise that 2019 has been an exciting year for the class of 2012.

Andrew Dominguez has had a wonderfully Wesleyan summer, spending time with new friends from the class of 2012 and his younger sister, a Wes sophomore. Andrew spent a week teaching filmmaking at the nonprofit Camp Hollywood Heart. Andrew then capped off his summer with a week of volunteering up at the Telluride Film Festival, where he was reunited with Adrian Rothschild, who has been working at the festival every Labor Day weekend for seven years since graduation. Andrew ran into over a dozen other Wesleyan people (from the classes of 2009, 2015, many from 2019, and even a new professor in the film department). Andrew is looking forward to the fall season, when he will be working with Raghu Appasani, Geoff Mucha, and Heidi Ransohoff on an event in Los Angeles with The MINDS Foundation for the annual World Mental Health Day.

Raghu Appasani moved to LA last year and is doing a psychiatry residency at USC, loving the sunshine, beach, and mountains.

Rebecca Snelling just started a master’s in management degree program at the CU Denver Business School through her company. She is looking forward to diving more into the business and people aspects of her environmental remediation work. Rebecca is also excited to start another hockey season in the South Shore Women’s Hockey League on a team with former Wes teammates Ann Wheeler, Sydney Morgan ’14, and Cait Bray ’15, MA’16.

Lucas Turner-Owens is the fund manager of The Ujima Fund. Launched in 2018, the fund has raised $1 million to date from over 150 investors. The fund is designed to aggregate investments from working class and wealthy investors to fund businesses based in Boston’s working-class communities of color. Uniquely, the fund requires that all investments be voted on and approved by 51% of the members of Ujima who live in Boston. Ujima has 500 members, 250 of which identify as working class people of color in Boston.

Christopher Fragoso is a computational biologist at Verinomics, an agricultural genomics startup in New Haven, Conn.

Chris Russell co-founded Project77 out of Columbia Business School in 2018 to support education and social sector organizations with data analytics tools and services. He is a member of the Columbia Startup Lab accelerator in NYC. He is the proud partner to Doris Martinez ’10 and the proud fur parent to Tali and Brigitt. Chris is always willing to grab coffee and/or drinks with Wes family and can be reached at chris@project77solutions.com or by text 860/539-9284.

Ashley Garrett just left the U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General as an analyst and transfered to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of the Inspector General as an analyst in audit.

Love was in the Wes air with many weddings this year. Liz Dalton and Ben Rose were married in September among several Wes friends. They’re living in Oakland, Calif., where Liz is an interior designer for restaurants and hotels.

Kenny Feder was married this year in May and finished his PhD. in public health. He is working for the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service program as an epidemiologist for Maryland Department of Health.

Dana Levy married Reiss Clauson-Wolf ’13 on Sept. 1 in Rhode Island. Julian Silver and Mattison Peters ’13 were members of the bridal party. Father of the bride, Harold Levy ’75, and uncle of the groom, Daniel Wolf ’79, were in attendance.

A little Cardinal joined the nest. Tasmiha Khan and her husband welcomed their first son. Tasmiha also was published on MTV.com.

As for me, I jumped on the bridal bandwagon and got married in May. Wishing the entire class of 2012 all the best in the next year to come.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

Terrance Agbi joined Forbes magazine as a senior product owner for their digital team last summer. (“We’re hiring! Please reach out if you’re interested,” he said.) He also got engaged to long-time girlfriend, Liane Membis, and will be married in June.

Dani St. Pierre was promoted to senior food/drink editor for BestProducts.com at Hearst Digital Media. She said, “It’s a young e-commerce, news, and product review site—and one of the top-performing e-commerce sites and revenue drivers in the Hearst network.” She was previously an associate food/drink editor.

Becky Eidelman just started a master’s program in urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts.

Mike Rosen continues to use the platform WESlam gave him to speak internationally on topics of mental health, masculinity, and sexuality. He is an official storyteller for The JED Foundation, and is earning his master’s at the University of Pennsylvania. He jogs in Fort Greene, where he often sees Josh Smith walking his two blind shihtzus and spends time with Samantha Sherman ’09.

Graham Gnall and Kaitlin Ashley were married on June 1, in a Brooklyn ceremony officiated by Ingrid Parl ’10. Attendees included many Wes varsity athletes, fraternal organization and student government members, and surprise guests, including Topanga Cage ’10, marched along Manhattan Ave., to a bacchanal celebration reminiscent of High Street in its heyday.

Cheryl Tan is “still in Singapore, where things have stabilized in terms of visas and money and houses, all your general 30-year-old stuff. Signed with an agency, shortlisted for a Women of the Future Award, featured in a list of 25 Amazing Women in Marie Claire’s 25th Anniversary edition. Did a new play about humanitarian aid workers that was very intense, and a lot of TV that was not super intense. Contemplating the whole balance thing of acting-for-a-living as opposed to making fulfilling art. Also contemplating more training. Thinking about money a lot.” Watch out for her in a teeny-tiny role on an HBO show out soon. Instagram: @cherylchittytan.

Julian Sonnenfeld married Gia Stagliano on May 18 at Wave Hill Public Gardens in the Bronx. He is in his final year of orthopaedic surgery residency at Columbia University Medical Center–New York Presbyterian Hospital, and soon will be starting a sports medicine/shoulder and elbow surgery fellowship at OrthoCarolina in Charlotte, N.C. in August.

Colin Small is working at The Met and writing a novel.

Julia Heffelfinger married Rick Maynard on June 22 in Weekapaug, R.I. The couple has been together since their senior year at Wesleyan and were both film studies majors.

Eliza Gordon just became the principal at a public school in North Austin called Wells Branch Elementary. This is her first principalship after spending the last eight years as a teacher, instructional coach, and assistant principal in Austin Public Schools as well.

Lastly, Tim Morley and I (Allie Southam) were married on Sept. 21 in Los Angeles. Close friend A.J. Chan married us overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Several other Wes alumni were in attendance. We’re living in Northampton, Mass., while Tim is completing his general surgery residency at Baystate Medical Center. I’m working as a neurologic physical therapist for Hartford Healthcare.

Allie Southam | asoutham@wesleyan.edu

Greetings, class of 2010! A short column this time around:

Aivi Doan and Wade Hsu welcomed their second baby and moved to Los Angeles where Aivi is now a physician at CareMore and Wade is a professor at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering.

Jesse Bordwin is moving on from academia for a new gig. He reports: “I’m leaving my job as an English professor at the University of Virginia to start as a consultant at the D.C. office of Bain & Company.”

Eugene Podborits and Briana Nixon ’11 celebrated their wedding on Sept. 14. Eugene shares: “It was full of Wesleyan spirit—officiated by Sofia Leitner-Laserna ’12, with best man Lu Yang, and attended by Mason Tang, John Jung, Dave Wolovsky, Sam Bernhardt, Meera Bhardwaj, Peter Lubershane, Aaron Kelley, Joanna Kelley, Ashik Siddique, Gary Chance, and Katie Nihill.”

Mytheos Holt completed a Lincoln Fellowship at the Claremont Institute in California. The Lincoln Fellowship provides fellows with the opportunity to study alongside the Claremont Institute’s senior fellows and visiting scholars. Lincoln Fellows study how “the statesmanship and political thought of the Founders and Lincoln should guide policymakers today.”

Finally, make plans for Middletown the weekend of May 21-24, 2020; we are hoping for a great turnout of motivated Cardinals for our 10th Reunion! Details may be found at wesleyan.edu/rc.

Thanks to those who contributed and as always, feel free to pass along notes anytime.

David Layne | dlayne@wesleyan.edu

Maya Bass ’08, MA’10 is a family physician and was featured in The Guardian for her work providing abortions in Oklahoma. She works full-time as family medicine faculty at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia in addition to flying back to Oklahoma part-time to provide reproductive health services.

Jeremy Brown and Kara Schnoes ’07 completed their family this past year with a second child who was adopted in Florida. They are enjoying living in Eugene, Ore., and hope the Wes community here continues to grow.

Steve Maroti writes, “I am finishing a master’s in international affairs at Columbia University, focusing on international security policy and finance, and recently got engaged. I remain eternally game to meet at Miller’s.”

Sam Barcelo graduated in May with an MBA from the Questrom School of Business.

Please keep the updates coming! Your classmates love hearing about you. E-mail me anytime.

Alicia Collen Zeidan | acollen@wesleyan.edu

Wedding bells are ringing for the class of 2007! Amy Lee Rosen married Dr. Nicholas Marinkovich, at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia on Aug. 31. Four years ago, Amy met Nick at the National Gallery of Art and they have explored the world together ever since. The Honorable Bradley Moss ’80 officiated the ceremony. Amy met Brad in Philadelphia one week before she started law school because she was wearing a Wesleyan t-shirt and they happened to be neighbors. Others in attendance were Amanda Brown ’05, Lynn Cartwright-Punnett, Samuel Duncan ’05, Sarah Montgomery ’06, Phu Nguyen ’09, Victoria Pinsky, and Psychology Professor Emeritus Karl Scheibe, who taught Brad, Sam, and Amy while they were at Wesleyan. It was a happy day for Nick and Amy and their wedding dance included a waltz followed by a robot dance, which they are very proud of.

Also, in Philadelphia, Beth Herz and her partner, Neeta Sonalkar, celebrated their marriage, with their mutual friend Molly Hartman basking in the glow of her successful matchmaking. Rabbi Leora Abelson co-officiated the Hindu-Jewish wedding and Nicole Grijnsztein and Kimberly Greenberg led the hora, as Philly-based Compas 48, including Cara Tratner ’12 on sax, got everyone on the dance floor with their signature jarocho-cumbia-klezmer tunes.

Across the pond, Simon Au got married and is marking himself safe in Hong Kong.

On the job front, Erica Pasciullo Cahill officially became a clinical assistant professor at Stanford Medical School in obstetrics and gynecology. In addition to doctoring and research, she started a podcast called The V Word with one of her colleagues all about women’s and reproductive health.

Jocelyn Bonadio-de Freitas is in the midst of an artist residency at The Loisaida Center, Inc., in Manhattan and is starting a new job as program associate, community engagement and social justice projects with the Lower East Side Girls Club.

For the last three years, Jose Chapaled a campaign to pass legislation in New York State that would provide farmworkers across the state with equal labor rights, including the right to organize and a day of rest. The bill finally passed this last legislative session and Governor Cuomo signed it into law. Jose lives in Brooklyn with his boyfriend, Adam Martin, and they are seriously contemplating adopting a cat.   

Rachel Salowitz Vaughan is living in Des Moines with her husband, Brian, and their 2-year-old daughter. She is working as the director of sales and private events for a prestigious 1920s house museum/manor home, running a home organization business, and pursuing a certification as a birth/labor and postpartum doula. She still does commercial work and acting projects when she can; most recently she wrapped a supporting role in the indie film, East of Middle West, due out next year.

In family news, Daphne Clyburn and her husband, Michael MacEwen, just welcomed their first child this summer. His name is Benjamin Arlo MacEwen and he was born on June 29. They were grateful to get together with folks from 88 Home—Meredith Katz, Kara Brodgesell, Thomas Coen, Sally Smyth, and their families this summer, too.

Grace Nowakoski and her husband, Jeff Diteman, are enjoying raising their daughter who was born in June 2018. His first translation of a novel, The Anarchist Who Shared My Name by Pablo Martín Sánchez, also came out last year. Grace works with pregnant folks as a doula and facilitates group prenatal care at the local hospital. They are happy to have neighbors again after living out in the country for two years, and to be able to stroll with their kid to the library, park, and restaurants in the “big city” of Northampton, Mass.

Megan Harrington | wesleyan007@gmail.com

Victoria Belyavsky Pinsky | victoriapinsky@gmail.com

Nick Myers has spectacularly exited the corporate consulting world to work on opening an experiential, immersive gallery and bar space in Seattle devoted to his travels to off the beaten path locations around the world. He has the undying love and support from his besties Katie Walsh, Jackie Noh, and Anna Brown, who all continue to be spectacularly accomplished and fabulous women.

Kevin Egolf is continuing his impact investing career journey with a new company, The Capital Good Fund, while concurrently developing his own impact finance consulting firm, Trellis Capital L3C. The Good Fund is a Providence, R.I., based community development financial institution and Kevin now has a handful of social enterprise clients with Trellis. He has found a wonderful niche industry combining his finance career with businesses and organizations that are making positive social and environmental changes. He likes to remind folks that you can vote with your wallet and your investment account.

Bonnie Loshbaugh lives in Seattle with her husband and their 3-year-old. She says, “I’ve been training in martial arts for over a decade (in close company with Tyler LePard ’00), got my brown belt in kajukenbo last December, and am teaching regularly as well as mentoring new students in the art. Black belt is on the horizon!

“I published my first historical sports romance this spring under the pen name Irene Davis—I’m doing a series called The Whitford Crew, following eight heroes who rowed together at a small college on the Connecticut River in the 1880s (see if you can guess where I got that idea from). Book one, Anyone But the Earl, involves a sibling’s best friend, insurance fraud, and Victorian flower language. The next book, Head Over Wheels, will be out next spring and includes bicycle polo, Emily Dickinson, and lemon cake. Research is a blast—I’ve been learning about women’s bicycle costumes, Victorian medical procedure for concussions, marriage manuals (i.e. Victorian sex ed), incident reports from the NYFD, the night lunchwagons that were the precursors to O’Rourke’s and Athenian . . .”

Nora Bowman ’05, MALS ’08 married Paul Bomer on Oct. 13, 2018, at The Owenego in Branford, Conn. Her sisters Shaleen Bowman Thody ’03, MALS’05 and Kelly Bowman Allen ’07 served as bridesmaids, as did her Wes roommate of all four years, Susan Frost ’05. Also in attendance were her former basketball teammates, Kamica Lewis ’03, Amy Posocco ’04, Meeghan Ward Creeden ’04, Liz Walsh MacMillan ’04, Ashley Elia Weller ’04, and their coach Kate Mullen. Nora and Paul live in Boston, where she is a senior vice president at eSecLending.

Marcella Winearls | marcellawinearls@gmail.com

After nearly a decade running an independent design practice, Mark Forscher joined Bison Trails—a leading blockchain infrastructure provider—as head of design in NYC.

Rachel Morris Bruce and her husband, Samuel Bruce, welcomed their second child in January, Aviva Miriam. Everyone is doing well.

Kirsten Yamaguchi is happily engaged to Jahna Berry and living in the San Francisco Bay area. Kirsten is animating at Pixar Animation Studios.

Alexander Yellen married Kelli McNeil, an LA-based writer with whom he has been sharing adventures for the better part of four years, in a ceremony at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 7. Among his groomsmen was fellow PsiU alumnus Matt Pierce. Also celebrating with them were Alex Brown, Jason Sax, Matt Gottlieb ’05, and Chris Connor ’04. Alex and his new bride are hard at work fundraising for their feature film collaboration, Daruma, a dark comedy starring a pair of lead actors with disabilities.

Tejas Desai’s new novel, The Run and Hide, was released on Sept. 16. An article in the Queens Courier praised The Brotherhood Chronicle trilogy as “timely and exciting” and a “must-read” that “will keep you guessing.” He will be on local TV and headlining various reading series in NYC to promote the book. He is also attempting to create a multicultural stories program at the Queens Public Library where he works as a supervising librarian. The third book of the trilogy, The Dance Towards Death, is tentatively scheduled to be released on Sept. 16, 2020.

The Elizabeth Dole Foundation has recently named Jonathan Selter as senior vice president of strategy and impact. In his role, he will work with the foundation to expand its reach of empowering military and veteran caregivers.

Amy Tannenbaum Gottlieb | atannenbaum@wesleyan.edu

Hi, everybody. Mara here, reporting for duty. Thank you for your notes.

Sarah Dalsimer writes, “My husband, Josh, and I welcomed our second son, Judah, on March 21. He joins big brother Ezra, 5. We live in Brooklyn (shocking, I know!).”

Melody Moezzi just celebrated her 17th wedding anniversary (with Matthew Lenard ’00), and is a visiting professor of creative writing at UNC Wilmington. Her third book, The Rumi Prescription: How an Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life, will be published on March 3 by an imprint of Penguin Random House (TarcherPerigee) and is available for pre-order (hint!).

Jeff Lane and his wife, Emily Henretta, welcomed a baby boy named Vincent James Lane on Sept. 16, 2018. They still live in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx.

Jim and Emily Barth Isler moved this summer from New York City to Los Angeles with their two kids, ages 8 and 4. Happily ensconced in life in Burbank, they would love to connect with other Wes alumni and film/TV people in the area.

Woody Fu is a lead in the film Lucky Grandma, which debuted at Tribeca Film Festival and won $1 million from AT&T Presents: Untold Stories. The film features Tsai Chin as an ornery, chain-smoking grandma.

Jenny Selgrath writes, “I’m living in San Francisco and a post-doc at Stanford University, where I work on biodiversity changes in Monterey Bay. I ran into Megan Koss Richards and Celeste Fowles Nguyen at the Wesleyan reception for Hamilton in San Francisco earlier this summer, which was a nice surprise.”

Eli Sheridan Wise welcomed baby Kestrel June into the world. He feels incredibly lucky to have been able to conceive and give birth to a beautiful baby girl. He and his loving partner, Stephen, are in the small group of gay couples (one cis, one trans) to be able to create life all on their own. She was born on Sept. 1 to The Cure album, Disintegration. It was a great start to a bright new life. As I write up these notes, I am at this very moment listening to and really enjoying Eli’s music, which is over at eliwise.com.

Here in Boston, my son is now old enough to explain the world to us, which is probably the most magical thing I’ve ever experienced (have you noticed lately that sidewalks sparkle?). He just started preschool, and on the first day I turned to introduce myself to a dad in the room and I was completely delighted to see that it was Will Tsoulas! We’re bringing some wacky Butterfield energy to the school, though we haven’t found its tunnel system yet. On another front, I’m excited to be a part of the new Justice Committee of Prisoners Legal Services, which aims to raise support and funds for a series of new initiatives related to prisoners’ and detainees’ rights here in Massachusetts. Learn more at plsma.org!

Best wishes,

Mara Voukydis | maravee@gmail.com

Aryn Sperando | arynsperandio@yahoo.com