Class Notes

Class of 1997, we hope your new year has been a good one so far! Winter requires extra coffee and really should have extra weekends.

Let’s start off with some lovely news from Susanne Blossom: “Sergio Barahona and I are happy to report the birth of our son, John Rodrigo Barahona Blossom, in November. I have been a public defender in Los Angeles for many years and though I love it, I am loving maternity leave even more.” Congratulations, Susanne!

Michelle Conceison wrote to share some fantastic news: “My management company, Market Monkeys, is growing and things are going well in Nashville! Our client Rose Cousins’ album ‘Natural Conclusion’ is nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical category.” Great news, great album!

We’re so happy for Leah Brown Johnson! She wrote: “I am growing as a successful entrepreneur. I run Be Equipped LLC, a training, coaching, and development company. I help new and emerging entrepreneurs and business leaders turn their visions into proven results (beequippedllc.com). I’m preparing to celebrate 20 years of service through my nonprofit, AFCOM Inc. We have been consistently serving at-risk youth who struggle with poverty and homelessness (afcominc.org). I’m loving life, family and business!” Amazing, Leah! We are proud of you.

Big update from Alix Olson: “Happy 2018, everybody! My partner, Jaime, and I just added a second kid to our gang. Her brother is 4. I am also about to begin as professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Oxford College of Emory University, so we’re off to Atlanta. I’d love to meet up with folks in the area!” Wes folks in Atlanta, please email her at alixolson@yahoo.com.

That’s all for now. We love getting your updates, so send them anytime!

Jessica Shea Lehmann | jessica.lehmann@gmail.com

Sasha Lewis Reisen | alewisreisen@gmail.com

Ben Schachter writes in with exciting news that he published Image, Action, and Idea in Contemporary Jewish Art. The artists in the book make installations, performance, conceptual art, and all sorts of other stuff. Ben presents a new way to think about their work deeply informed by Jewish tradition.

Rallie Snowden writes, “Still working at The Counseling Center at Washington and Lee University and acting as the LGBTQ coordinator for campus. My daughter is 7-years-old and I’m waiting to adopt baby number two!”

Dacque Tirado looks forward to traveling to South America this spring and summer. Any Wes alumni in Colombia or Argentina please do drop him a line. He is still teaching high school in the Bethesda area and looks forward to re-connecting with the Wesleyan, D.C. Alumni Club once the weather gets sunny!

Dara Federman | darasf@yahoo.com 

Dacque Tirado | dacquetirado@yahoo.com

NEWSMAKERS | 1990s NEWSMAKER JIEHO LEE ’95 Jieho Lee ’95 is one of 22 business leaders under the age of 45 selected as a 2018 Henry Crown Fellow by the Aspen Institute. Established in 1997, the fellowship offers outstanding entrepreneurs an opportunity to harness their individual skills and creativity in developing solutions for some of society’s most vexing problems. “I am honored to be included in this driven and diverse group of innovators, and together with all the Crown Fellows, I look forward to finding new ways to effect profound, positive and enduring change,” said Lee, who co-founded Knighted Ventures in 2012. Lee, a film studies major at Wesleyan, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dear, ’95ers. Thank you all for your submissions, and I’m excited to announce that we have two first-time entrants to class notes! First up is Soraya Selene Burtnett, who moved to Spokane, Wash., to teach as a professor in film studies at Eastern Washington University. She has 3-year old twins and works as a director and cinematographer. A feature documentary she shot called Half the Picture premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. She had a visit from Stacey Samuel ’96 and would love to connect with other Wes folk in the PNW!

Becky Nulty, who admits that she’s “been a lurker of the notes for years (decades!),” is also finally joining the fray! She writes, “2018 will be a big year for me: I’ve just started a new position as associate dean of teaching, learning, and assessment at Shoreline Community College, just north of Seattle. The new job should ensure that I finish my doctorate, which focuses on faculty development in higher ed. Also, I’m a recently-licensed foster parent, and my pup and I are hoping to welcome a kiddo into our home in the coming months.” Great news Becky! Thanks for sharing—your notes are welcome here anytime.

Spencer Douglas is a director of integrated marketing for Warner Bros Pictures and the board chair and liaison to the LGBTQ group at WB, where he was able to bring in Jennifer Finney Boylan ’80 to help educate the WB community about issues surrounding transgender representation in media. Over the holidays, Spencer had a great time catching up with Tracy Ferguson ’94, Anne Swan ’96, and Kim Sicard, and regularly keeps up with Megan Caper and Flo Stueck ’96. Spencer says, “I’m thrilled to learn that Eclectic members will be able to move back into the Haus next year!”

Naomi Greyser is continuing to work at University of Iowa, where she recently earned tenure and is executive director of POROI, Iowa’s Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry. She’s excited to be joining faculty in the departments of American studies and gender, women’s and sexuality studies this coming fall. Naomi writes, “Iowa City is a bit off the map of where I imagined ending up when I was in college—yet my husband and I are loving raising our 10-year-old daughter amidst the prairies. Wesleyan helped me think in incredibly intentional ways about political impact and the kind of projects I want to take on—and I feel frequently grateful for my time there!” Naomi has also recently published a book, On Sympathetic Grounds: Race, Gender and Affective Geographies in Nineteenth-Century North America. Anyone interested in social justice issues in relation to the arts and humanities—check it out!

My old WestCo mate Lara Tupper writes: “I released my first full-length CD, This Dance, a tribute to my favorite jazz and pop tunes, on CD Baby and iTunes. I got married in the beautiful Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. Torrential rain and a fabulous day. My talented husband, Bobby Sweet, is featured on the album.” Congratz on both accounts, Lara!

David Perry is now a columnist for the west coast magazine Pacific Standard, covering history, politics, culture, and disability rights.

Danielle Langston, another WestCo alum, writes, “After three years living in Brisbane, Australia, working in architecture in the areas of education and aged care, I have relocated to Melbourne with my husband Carl and children, Otto and Sylvie. Carl has taken a position leading the new urban planning department at Monash University, and I am looking for a new architecture firm where I can torture my co-workers with bad jokes and kitten videos. I will miss my time playing in the Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra, but I am excited to explore the opportunities for music-making here in Melbourne. Get in touch if any of you are ever in this southern neck of the woods.”

Patrick Hutter-Bluml has done a full career flip and started as chef de cuisinefor the owner of one of the largest ecological, organic farms, and online shops in Germany.

Son Tranis in D.C., working as a senior project manager at Forum One, a digital agency, along with two other Wes alumni, Leah Stern ’06 and Shawn Bracket ’97. They recently won a Webby award for their work on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture website! Son also has been kicking around with Cheryl Mejia, who is currently an interventional pain management doc in Western Maryland, and who recently married her partner Clare Madrigal (LGBT nurse navigator for Johns Hopkins) at the pride parade in D.C.; attendees included Son, Joah Iannotta, and probably some other WesFolk inadvertently attending.

Jason Wiser, “I’m living in Somerville, Mass., with my wife and daughter (8), with whom I made a cooperative card game for kids last year called Monsters in the Elevator. Just finished a job as department chair of animation at a private arts college, now teaching classes at Tufts and Harvard in game design and animation at night and working as a mobile game animator by day. Also working with the Boston Globeto make comics to help kids in a rehab hospital imagine themselves as superheroes yayaplay.com.”

Ken Kwiatkowski is living in Jersey City and just celebrated the first birthday of his second son.

Greg Rolland writes, “This past stretch had Wes folks molding my kids right underneath my nose. On my family’s swing through Boston recently, accomplished violinist and music teacher Leah Bartell stuck a viola in the hands of my eldest daughter Sally and convinced her she had natural viola form. The brainwashing took: now she’s determined and excited to start viola. Also, rang in the new year with Peter Follet and Stephanie Flaherty in Easthampton, Mass., who preside over the local basketball league in which my three kids play. So, my girls are hooked on that. All this after they starred in a minor film produced by their cousin Becca Engle ’18 not long ago. Go Wes!”

Finally, big shout to my co-secretary, Katy McNeill, who writes that after spending the past couple of years living in the U.K., she and her family have moved back to the States. They’re back in the Boston area (Arlington) and Katy has started a job at the Harvard Business School library. Living abroad was a really rewarding experience; now they’re settling in back here, reconnecting, managing reverse culture shock, and finding ways to stay connected to British culture (for Katy it’s continuing to listen to a high volume of BBC radio).

Bo Bell | bobell.forreal@gmail.com 

Katy McNeill | mcneill40@gmail.com

Hello from frigid Chicago! Just a couple of weeks ago, I ran into Edward Siskel, City of Chicago’s corporation counsel, at a Chicago law department panel presentation. Earlier in the fall, one of my cases brought me to D.C., where I met up with my dear friend, Peter Chandler, the chief of staff to Congresswoman Debbie Dingell. It was so wonderful to see him and catch up—we picked up where we left off. Other than work, my daughters, Sarah and Norah, keep me busy. They turned 9 in March!

Chuck Berger writes that he is living in Kununurra, Western Australia, with his partner, Christy, and sons, Tom and Leo. He manages a legal services clinic covering the remote Kimberley region—an area roughly the size of Texas, with the population of Galveston. Reach out to him at: charles_d_berger@hotmail.com.

Jonathan Kirsch is spending one year in Cali, Colombia, with his family doing a sabbatical and teaching at a public medical school under a Fulbright grant. He invites us to check his blog at drkirschsabbatical.wordpress.com.

Tanya Bowers updated us by saying that she and her husband, Martin Valadez, traveled to Thailand to celebrate the nuptials of Richard Yu and Taymee Jirachotramee, with Tnyetta Holder Mitchell ’93 and Max Mitchell ’92.

Sid Espinosa writes, “Last August we had a wonderful Wesleyan reunion at the nuptials of Jeff Reilly and Chris Schmicker. The spectacular Hawaiian setting, beautiful ceremony, and fun celebrating were enjoyed by me, John Dudzinsky ’96, Josh Lockwood ’93, Sarah Morgan, and David Niles.”

Greg Schwartz is a gastroenterologist living and working at Mid-Valley Gastroenterology in beautiful Corvallis, Ore. He is married and has three children (12, 10, and 7). Greg wants “any Wes folks living in Oregon please give [him] a shout!”

Tonya Ward Singer continues to work for equity in K-12 public schools across the U.S. and Canada. Her new book EL Excellence Every Day: The Flip-to Guide for Differentiating Academic Literacy (Corwin, 2018) helps K-12 teachers be effective in linguistically diverse classrooms. Tonya is the mother of two boys, lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., and writes that “we are all very grateful our neighborhood survived the October 2017 wildfires that ravaged our region.”

Sasha Chanoff lives in Somerville Mass., with his wife, Marni, and two children, Hayden (9) and Lailah (7). He is in his 12th year of leading RefugePoint, the organization he founded to find solutions for the world’s most at-risk refugees. He co-authored a book recently, From Crisis to Calling: Finding Your Moral Center in the Toughest Decisions. Sasha writes that “among the great joys of my life are coaching my son’s soccer team and reading to my daughter.”

Kate Foster is a Presbyterian minister, but currently serving as the executive director of a service learning program in Baltimore, Md. She is married to Andrew Foster Connors (22 years and counting!) and their daughters are 13 and 16. They have started the college search with the older daughter—and yes, Wes is on the list! Kate says that she loved it when they visited this past fall.

Becky Hunt is an ob-gyn in Portland, Maine, at Maine Medical Center. Her son is in middle school and her husband, John (Bowdoin ’94), is writing a book about the Civil War. She’s learning roller derby with Sarah Mount ’20 and trying out for the Fresh Muscle program in June.

Samera Syeda Ludwig | ssludwig@nixonpeabody.com

Caissa Powell | cdp2000@hotmail.com 

Hi, classmates! Our 25th Reunion is May 25 and 26, and Jessica Gutow Viner is chairing the Reunion Planning Committee. Her email is ddviner@yahoo.com. We’d love to hear from everyone. We have a great committee in place and are looking forward to fantastic participation! There are many great ways to get involved, and we hope to see you in Middletown in May.

Michelle Gagnon emails, “The paperback edition of my young adult novel Unearthly Things will be released on April 10. It’s a modernized, deconstructed version of Jane Eyre set in San Francisco’s high society. I relocated to Los Angeles a few years ago and have finally adjusted to the relentlessly sunny weather. My husband and I live in the Hollywood Hills with our 11- and 12-year-old kids.”

Julie Jette writes, “In President Obama’s farewell speech, he said that anybody who is disappointed in the government should pick up a clipboard and go get some signatures to get on the ballot. Living in volunteer-led towns in New England gives lots of people the opportunity to do that, so I picked up a clipboard and ran for Town Meeting in Brookline, Mass., where I live. In May and November, I vote along with another 240 residents on spending and policy for the town. The rest of the year we represent our neighborhoods on town issues. It’s far from high office, but in these grim political times I feel lucky to be able to serve my community in a small way—and to teach my boys that if you want to make change, you need to get involved, even when it’s uncomfortable. No doubt I’m still influenced by Wesleyan’s activist ethos!”

Stephanie Mohr emails, “I have written a book for a non-expert audience about genetics, biology, and biomedical research called First in Fly: Drosophila Research and Biological Discovery (Harvard University Press). I had the pleasure of attending the Wesleyan Writer’s Conference last summer as I finished up work on the manuscript. The visit reminded me how beautiful the campus is and how great it is that we have places like Wesleyan where arts and sciences entwine.”

Laura Ross writes, “We moved to Los Angeles this summer so I could become the head of upper school at the Harvard-Westlake School. My husband, Gregg ’90, is teaching math at Harvard-Westlake’s middle school, and our daughter, Casey, is in seventh grade there. Our son, Graham, is in fourth grade at the Laurence School. I am thrilled to be back in my home state and hope to see lots of Wes people out here.”

Maren Roush writes in, “I have been working at NSF International for the last 22 years. My current position is business unit manager of NSF’s Biosafety Cabinetry program. With biosafety and biosecurity being such important issues in this day and age, recent years have been increasingly interesting for me. In 2016, I attended the Extended Biosafety Advisory Group meeting at the World Health Organization in Geneva and did a few outreach sessions in Japan and Korea in conjunction with Thermo Fisher Scientific. In 2017, I presented at the Asia Pacific Biosafety Association conference in Ho Chi Minh City and spent a week in Bangkok at the Thai Ministry of Public Health. I have a wonderful husband and the two best sons in the universe—the oldest of whom is a junior in high school and is starting to think about college. I enjoy reading my classmates’ updates and hope all are doing well. Not too many Wes people here in the upper Midwest.”

Jodi Samuels writes from Sacramento, “I have completed volunteer training at the Sacramento SPCA and am now spending several hours each month to ’socialize’ the cats waiting for adoption. One of our own fur babies, Calypso, had some extensive dental work, and now she and Captain Jack are adjusting to a soft food diet. I take Spanish classes at a local organization, Casa de Español, and I was able to really practice what I’d learned when my spouse, Evan, and I took a trip to the Panama Canal area during the winter holidays. Other travel for work, family, friends, and vacation has included Marshfield, Mass., Austin, Denver, Chicago, Madison, Scottsdale, and Honolulu/Waikiki.”

Antonia Townsend emails, “I run Enclosed, my lingerie gift business. John Marshall and I had a baby, Jack Townsend Marshall, last May. As many of you found out decades ago, having a baby is oodles of fun.”

Andy Nordvall is having a lovely time raising two roller-derby- and violin-loving daughters in Los Angeles. He’s also working on a web comic (patreon.com/MyRoommateTheInternet) and an illustrated fantasy novella, Siren’s Song.

SuZanna Henshon | suzannahenshon@yahoo.com 

Sarah Estow | sarah_estow@hotmail.com

Welcome to the latest edition of class notes. We are always happy to hear from you!

First, big news about lots of life changes for my old housemate Simon Fulford. Simon is living in Portland, Ore., with his wife Clare and two of his three sons, Max, 10, and Alec, 6. His eldest son, Kieran, 15, is in the U.K. In September Simon joined the Oregon Youth Authority, the state’s juvenile justice agency, in a program and policy adviser role that covers organizational and leadership development along with the thorny issues of equity and employee engagement. Simon was appointed to the Restorative Justice Coalition of Oregon’s Coordinating Committee.

Another former housemate of mine, Darcy Dennett, was in the Sahara where she was filming a piece on meteorite hunters for National Geographic Explorer. She is next moving to a segment on the Future of Farming in the Netherlands.

In November, my family visited Ann Arbor and stayed with Alison Miller and her husband, Scott Roberts (my wife and I met through them in grad school over 20 years ago). They are both professors at our alma mater, the University of Michigan, and it was great to catch up with them and daughter Ella (just started high school) and son Wes (now in fourth grade and a basketball fanatic like his father).

Chadwick Canedy and his wife, Bona, welcomed their second son, Easton Haechan Canedy, on May 4, 2017. He was born in D.C., much to the enjoyment of his very jealous 2-year-old brother, Declan.

Andrew Draper remains in Prospect Heights and is working in Midtown East. In 2017, his son started middle school in Vermont and his daughter started high school near Albany, so between keeping up with them and with his parents on Cape Cod, he expects to be up and down the whole Northeast throughout 2018 and is on the lookout for Wesleyan meetups.

After 19 years in London, Claire (Weldin) McConnell moved back home to Seattle in August with her husband, Craig. She was sad to leave the job she loved at Arup but is working at McMillen Jacobs Associates doing almost exactly the same thing: managing the design for train stations. She finds Seattle’s light rail “dainty and petite” in comparison with London’s Crossrail, but is happy to be back stateside.

Also in Seattle, Liz Broussard is working at Pacific Medical Center in gastroenterology and specializes in fecal microbiota transplants (transferring poop from healthy donors into diseased colons of sick people) for clostridium difficile infection, and train fellows and medical residents from the University of Washington. Her husband, Kevin Hakimi, is a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at the Seattle VA and they have twin daughters, Vivian and Chloe. They are 11, just got their junior black belts and are loving fifth grade. She sees Corey Casper for breakfast regularly and saw Scott Shapiro at a performance of Here Lies Love.

Johanna Stoberock lives in Walla Walla, writing and teaching at Whitman College. Her novel, Pigs, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2019. Chris Chesak has a new job as managing director of Tracks & Trails, a tour operator offering self-drive RV tours in western national parks.

Kate Edwards is in the R&D department at Datacolor, where she makes instruments to measure the colors of paints and textiles. While she says it’s been fun learning about color science, she now takes longer to pick paint colors for her house in Pennington, N.J., where she lives with her husband, Nathan, and kids, Iris and Nicholas.

That’s all for now. Paul and I would to hear from you so please send your news!

Adam Berinsky | berinsky@mit.edu 

Paul Coviello | coviellop01@alum.darden.edu

Mark Steele has lived in Boulder, Colo., for more than 10 years, but spends summers in Telluride, where he originally moved after graduation. His freelance art direction, design, and Web business allows him freedom, and the real estate success of his number one client—his wife—allows him to dedicate weekly pro-bono time to local nonprofits fighting for climate and social justice. Last year he had lunch with resilient Shizuko Aizeki, and he crashed the getaway weekend of Tibby Erda, Alys Campaigne, Sara Newmann, and Aislinn McGuire, spending a day showing them quintessential Boulder: bagging Mount Sanitas, wandering Pearl Street Mall, and drinking local brews at the bar in the bicycle shop.

“Colorado is perfect for cross-country convergence,” and Mark is game for more guiding and is currently scheming an epic adventure with Jan Hasselman, Adam Rosen, and Daren Girard ’92 to celebrate being a half century young.

Marcela Von Vacano fights on at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco, serving as a water law attorney. Her husband, James Shafer, is a partner in a small law firm. Their children Nina (10) and Max (7) are thriving, though learning about politics at an early age. “I just saw Heidi Jones, Erin Branagan, and Robin Ekiss. They are beautiful and super fun, as always.”

Deborah Sue Mayer serves as chief counsel and staff director for the Select Committee on Ethics in the U.S. Senate. She was promoted to captain in the U.S. Navy in July, and her reserve assignment is to serve as a military judge.

Curry Rose Mills Hoskey and Robin Crestwell Harris ’90 have sons who play basketball together in College Park. Curry reports, “Robin is the coach of the boys’ ’little league’ basketball team, a fact that gives me great pride. After all, how many teams can say that they are coached by a bona fide college basketball star?”

Scott Timberg is co-writing a book with guitarist and singer-songwriter Richard Thompson, to be titled Beeswing: Folk Rock, Britain, and the End of the ’60s. Faber and Faber will publish it in the UK and Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill will handle it in the U.S. Look for it in 2019.

Dorian Hart published the second book in his Heroes of Spira epic fantasy series, titled The Crosser’s Maze. When he’s not writing, Dorian is the stay-at-home dad for daughters Elanor (13) and Kira (10).

Caroline Mosher Gadaleta is a managing director with Jones Lang LaSalle, a global corporate real estate services company. She leads a team of 43 professionals in managing the real estate and facilities portfolio for the number-one premium spirits company in the world. Caroline mentors women in the organization and serves on the Diversity and Inclusion Council. She and her husband, Frank, have two teenage daughters, Shelby and Jessie.

Sarah Sutter hosted Zanne ’94 and Ian Gerrard in Tokyo in February and offers anyone passing through to connect with her. She enjoys receiving inquiries through the Wes Career center about living in Tokyo or teaching abroad.

Kristin Aldred Cheek and Brian Cheek ’92 moved back to New Hampshire, about an hour outside of Boston. Kristen is finishing a PhD from Cornell in human behavior and design (environmental psychology). Brian manages the Manchester Monarchs, an ECHL team, and their children are in high school.

Dana Schultz works for RAND in Pittsburgh, focusing on child and family well-being research and evaluation. She and husband Steve Jackman ’89 are preparing for the next chapter as both of their girls are leaving home. “Our younger daughter, Piper, went to boarding school this year for ninth grade and our older daughter, Reilly, is headed to college in the fall. Reilly found an incredible fit in a small liberal arts school which, alas, is not in Connecticut, but is just the right place for her.”

In September, Jeff Post took his two boys, Andrew and Bradley, up to Wesleyan to take the campus tour. “Yes, we’re starting to look at colleges! That night, we watched the football team play under the lights. It was a fantastic game, as Wes pulled off a comeback win in overtime.”

It is with profound sadness that share the news of the death of April Cotte, who died on Jan. 25. April majored in Latin American studies and sociology at Wesleyan, and devoted her life to striving for environmental and social justice. April is survived by her partner, Brian Young, their 7-year-old son, Barry, her mother Kathi, her siblings Peter and Pam. Appreciation to Gayatri Gopinath and Erin Kelly for informing me of this loss. Your remembrances of April are welcome for inclusion in a future edition of notes.

Renée K. Carl | rcarl@wesleyan.edu

Class of 1990 Scholarship

Bryden Tierney Auer ’21, Lake Oswego, OR

Happy New Year! Here’s what we have for 2018, when many of us will be turning 50(!):

Laurie Baum is the middle school director of a progressive school in Brooklyn called Greene Hill School. Laurie was hired to plan and launch the middle school division “and it has been exciting to be part of a new and growing school. We graduated our first class of 8th graders in June. Greene Hill is committed to social justice and is unusual for independent schools in NYC because it has a sliding-scale tuition.”

Jennifer Teitelbaum Palmer is president of the Maryland Psychiatric Society, her local branch of the American Psychiatric Association. In that role, she is asked to write regular columns for their publications.“I just submitted an essay contemplating whether Alexander Hamilton suffered from type two bipolar disorder, in the context of my frank obsession with fellow Cardinal Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02’s musical and the biography upon which it was based. Wesleyan just keeps giving!”

Other big news: two more members of our class are becoming Wes parents. Dan Jewelewicz writes from Delray Beach, Fla., where he has been for 18 years (“has it really been that long?”). Dan is busy with his ophthalmology practice and has four children: identical twin girls, 13; a son, 16; and daughter, 18. “Although we don’t live on a farm, it feels that way: we have two dogs, two cats, two rabbits, two horses, one parrot, and a pot-bellied pig named JellyBean. Our big news is that eldest daughter, Natalya, got accepted early to Wes. She is super-excited; I’m really proud of her. I’m looking forward to being back on campus a lot in the next few years.”

Our second Wes-parent-to-be is Gabriella Nawi who writes that “my son was accepted to Wesleyan, class of 2022, so that is exciting.” Gabi will be starting a new role at Travelers in 2018, as head of financial planning for personal insurance.

Finally, after seven years as CEO of 826 National, Gerald Richards “decided to move on and see what the next adventure in life would be. After a sabbatical of six months, with travel to New Zealand, Australia, Japan, France, and Scotland, I decided to accept the role of CEO for a new nonprofit called The Superpower Agency in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Superpower Agency is a nonprofit dedicated to improving the writing skills of students in Edinburgh through fun and creative writing workshops and programs. I am excited to be living overseas for the first time and working on my Scottish brogue. Before I left, I had the opportunity to have drinks and dinner with David Patterson, Carolyn Clark, Nina Grekin, Linda Turnbull, Claude Szyfer and his wife Elana, Laurie Malkin, and Iriss Shimony. It was a lovely sendoff. If people are ever out this way, come visit!”

Thanks to those of you who wrote. That’s all for now.

Vanessa Montag Brosgol | vanessa.brosgol@yahoo.com

Class of 1989 Scholarship

Joanna Korpanty ’21, Chemistry

Newlywed Anjulika Chawla writes that after 15 years and four kids together (ages 6, 10, 12, and 17), she and her now-husband Ron decided to “take the plunge and get married”—which they did on Sept. 2 at the Rhythm and Roots Festival. “The ceremony was 20 minutes, and the party about 11 hours.” Anjulika is a pediatric hematologist oncologist at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, and an associate professor at Brown University. She stepped down as the interim chair of the division after four years, and has cut her time to about 10 percent. She is joining a biotech firm in Cambridge to work on a project using gene therapy to treat sickle cell disease.

In Boston, Abby Smuckler ran into Russ Cobe at Shabbat services at the Union for Reform Judaism’s biennial! Quite a feat considering there were about 5,000 people in the convention hall, and they hadn’t seen each other since graduation. Russ lives near Charlotte, N.C., and Abby is outside Boston in Needham.

Marisa Cohen spent 13 months on the road with her daughter, Molly—who was in the national tour of Matilda the Musical. They returned to New York last summer and got right back into the swing of things. Now Marisa is freelancing at Real Simple. In November she had “an amazing visit to Wes” for Alumni Sons & Daughters Weekend with her older daughter, Bellamy—who got to sit in on a class with Marisa’s old music professor, Neely Bruce, and is excited to apply for the class of 2023. (Sidebar: 2023? I give up. We’re speaking in Blade Runner-esque graduation class years at this point. Can we pace ourselves please?! Geez!) Marisa says she genuinely “loved catching up with so many classmates who are also going through the nerve-racking college admissions game with their kids while I was there.” Solidarity, sis!

Robin Alexander has been living with her husband in Brooklyn for the past 10 years after having lived in Jerusalem for five. She works as a therapist and clinical social worker, and, most recently, as a mental health consultant for child protective services and the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services.

Peter Knight has assumed volunteer leadership in his appointment to the board of directors for Connecticut Legal Services. The agency is dedicated to helping low-income families and individuals meet their basic needs and be assured equal access to opportunities and justice. This new role is in addition to Peter’s role as the chair of the Pro Bono Committee of the law firm Robinson+Cole—where he’s a member of their Environmental, Energy and Telecommunications Group.

Jim Levine marked his 50th birthday by moving to Alaska. You guys, ALASKA…from Middletown, Conn., where he had been living. I love everyone’s updates. And this one too…so much! In his own words: “After 15 years back in Connecticut, working around the corner from WesU, the younger of my two kids graduated from high school and flew the coop. So…I sold my empty nest and moved solo to a rural area in southcentral Alaska, three hours from Anchorage, where I’m working in the emergency department of a small hospital, in a town called Soldotna. It’s beautiful here, and life is definitely slower and quieter. I’ve been here almost a year now.”

Susan Turkel is working part-time as a social sciences librarian at Villanova University. “It’s a very different environment from Bryn Mawr College and the University of Michigan, my beloved previous institutions, but I like it! My other major preoccupations are square, English, and contra dancing, and weekly visits with my parents (they’re 87 and almost 83, still living independently despite health challenges). Is anyone else going through the elderly parent struggle? It goes from frustrating to rewarding and then back again…but I’m grateful that they’re still around, that we’re close, and that I can be helpful to them.”

Topiary Landberg is in her fifth year of a PhD at UC, Santa Cruz in Film & Digital Media, working on her dissertation about urban landscape documentary and a media project about San Francisco. She is “loving being at Santa Cruz, teaching, researching and somehow becoming a full-fledged academic. Next stop: job market.

Next year is our 30th Reunion, y’all. Why don’t we round up our fellow ’89 Wes friends and head to campus next year? We’ve got a year-ish from now to plan our long-weekend escape and Wes campus takeover. I think we should take over the dorms. Seriously. Pajama-jammy-jam anyone?! We can fire up some ’80s tunes (“It Takes Two” by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock anyone?) and dance it out together!

We do really enjoy hearing from each of you and appreciate you sharing your news with all of us! Cheers, classmates! Until then, so happy to hear from you. Keep the updates coming!

Jonathan Fried | jonathan.l.fried@gmail.com 

Michele Barnwell | fishtank_michele@yahoo.com

Bruno Oliver has been living in LA for two decades now: “Certainly not the place I anticipated ending up back in ’88! Working as an actor on TV, voice over, and some film. I’m the current board president of The Sacred Fools Theater Company and have been kept very busy shepherding the company’s transition from our old single theater space to a new, multi-venue home in Hollywood. The company has been my passion for many years. If you live in LA or are just visiting, hit me up and I’ll give you a tour…and we can have a drink in our (just about to open) theater bar.”

Stephen Morison shares: “My family and I have returned to the U.S. after 10 years overseas in order to be within driving distance of our daughter (where she is on the same dorm as Steve Pryor’s daughter—it has been great to catch up with Steve and his lovely wife, Leslie). We are enjoying our experiences working at Cape Cod Academy in Osterville, and we are getting used to driving American roads again. I’m still writing for Poets & Writers Magazine. We occasionally catch dinner with Kim Carr Hare and Jon Hare ’87 who live in Falmouth, and of course, we look forward to seeing Paul Gosselin, Steve Kullback ’89, Wendy Blum ’87, Nancy Nachbar ’89, Drew Davis, and other Wes folk at Paul’s annual summer Cape gatherings.”

Dave Grotell writes: “I have taken a position as professor of videography at  the University of Alabama in Huntsville. I never thought I would say this, but I’ve moved to the Deep South! It’s quite interesting. I got a chance to canvas for U.S. Senator Doug Jones and enjoy the victory party on home turf. And I am working to create a program in film and video where none had existed. If you’re in Alabama, say hello!”

John Stein chimes in from Burkina Faso in western Africa. “We are in Ouagadougou. Loving it. The littles are playing in local soccer clubs and/or learning to drum.” John’s Chi Psi brother Tim McCallum updates that he is “happily running my Pilates studio and trying to keep up with my 15-month-old son. Two full time jobs, plus Tai Ji school, and the avocation of life on Maui. It’s a beautiful blur.” In his first unforced class notes submission since graduation, Stuart Ellman claims he “is looking forward to hanging out with Peter Bond at the 30th Reunion.”

Greg Wolfe reports: “I started working with a new client last year, The Forward, a Jewish news magazine and website, and it turns out their editor-in-chief, Jane Eisner ’77, also taught at Wesleyan. It was great meeting her and talking about Wesleyan.”

Hannah Doress updates us: “It has been an exciting year serving on the Steering Committee of the Resilient Communities Initiative—where I was able to bring lessons learned through Shore Up Marin (the equitable climate—especially coastal flooding & sea level rise—adaptation organization I co-founded in 2013) to San Francisco Bay Area efforts. I would love to connect with others in the Wes community who are working on climate, social equity, and voting rights issues. Emily and I celebrated two decades together not long ago and our son, a gifted mechanic and musician, is now in eighth grade. I made a whirlwind trip to New York and managed to sneak in a visit with David Milch ’89 while there.”

Kara Stern advises: “I am freshly relocated to Tel Aviv and would love to connect with anyone who might also be here! sternkara@gmail.com.” Joanna Martin shares: “I have spent the past 30 years in Berlin, Germany, and enjoy watching world history unfold from this vantage point.”

Bobbito Garcia is cohosting What’s Good With Stretch and Bobbito, a new National Public Radio podcast. Garcia is working again with his collaborator from the ’90s, DJ Stretch Armstrong. Garcia was on campus this fall to speak in the Sociology of Music in Social Movements class, taught by John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology Rob Rosenthal. Garcia spoke on the role of the music industry in presenting artists whose work has an underlying political theme.

Robert Wrubel’s Financial Freedom for Special Needs Families has been named a finalist in the 30th annual Independent Book Publisher’s Association Benjamin Franklin Award program.

Finally, Jenifer McKim lets us know she co-taught a class a writing class at Wes this spring which was “pretty fun.”

Peter V.S. Bond | 007@pvsb.org 

Hillary Ross | hrossdance@yahoo.com