Class Notes

Hello, ’08! It was so great to see so many of you at Reunion and meet some of your families. Here are some notes from those of us who couldn’t make it back and from those of us who made good on promises to submit.

Nick Benacerraf is working towards a PhD in theatre and performance at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His directorial debut, Seagullmachine, premiered at La MaMa in April and May. The show was created by The Assembly, including alumni from the Class of 2010). His set-designing practice (nickbenacerraf.com) had shows at Brooklyn Academy of Music and Lincoln Center. He was sad to miss Reunion, because “finals suck,” but sends love to friends.

Peter Hill writes, “After eight years fighting the good fight in the nonprofit sector and NYC government, I returned to grad school to get an MBA and explore ways to make cities work better using technology. I graduated from Harvard Business School the day before our 10th Reunion, and I’m moving out to Ann Arbor this summer with my husband. He’ll be teaching there, and I’ll be consulting at McKinsey in Detroit. I’m new to Michigan so would love to connect with any Wes people in the area. First, though, I’m enjoying a rare summer off to travel the country and reconnect with old friends.”

Adam Tinkle has been appointed director of the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative at Skidmore College, where he has been teaching since 2014. He writes, “One of the great joys of working here has been in working with visiting fellows for our annual Documentary Storytellers’ Institute, which I’ve helped to steer since its 2015 inception. Among these fellows are Jake Nussbaum ’10, Asa Horvitz ’10, Gedney Barclay ’09, and Sylvia Ryerson ’09. Anyone with any connection to nonfiction media and the documentary arts should look me up in Saratoga—it’s an incomparably lovely place to spend a summer.”

Last summer, after almost a decade of grad school/post-doc in Ann Arbor, Leah Weinberg and Scott Horowitz ’07, MA ’09 finally packed the cat into the car and drove west to start the next chapter in Colorado at the University of Denver. Both are loving the Front Range life, and cordially invite any Wes folks passing through Denver to drop them a line. 

Alpay Koralturk couldn’t make it to Reunion due to an urgent business trip in Turkey, but wrote, “My first company, Gram Games, just got sold to Zynga.” Grace Overbeke is pursuing a PhD in theater and drama at Northwestern University, and this July, will be marrying Mr. Matthew McMunn! Evan Barton just joined a new gym and is writing an essay about rereading the Harry Potter series.

Lyz Nardo, COO of Tipsy Scoop, celebrated the first anniversary of the Tipsy Scoop Barlour in Kips Bay. She writes, “In addition to 15 year-round flavors of boozy ice cream and sorbet, we are serving up lots of seasonal offerings including an entire summer of rosé wine-based flavors and collaborating with many restaurants like American Cut.” In May she was married outside of Florence, Italy, and is expecting her first child on Nov. 30.

Lucy Bickerton finally closed the books on the classroom portion of her medical education at SUNY Downstate and took the first step of her licensing exam two days before her baby boy, Calvin Vara, showed up one month early! Ilona Kramer, Elena Feroz, Stephanie Calvert, and Stephanie Fungsang celebrated at the baby shower just a few hours before she went into labor. She is loving motherhood and is excited to start clinical clerkships in July.

Another applicant to the class of 2040 arrived in April—George Fredric Jones Cruickshanks was born on April 4 to Francie Jones and Lauchlin Cruickshanks. Proud grandparents include Karen ’77 and Don Cruickshanks ’75.

Nick Weiss-Richmond and three collaborators, have created My Astronaut, an eight-episode mockumentary web series that answers the question of what one dim-witted boyfriend does to keep his girlfriend and his life from changing forever. Episode one was released on May 3. Season one starts with two bewildered filmmakers arriving to profile Maggie Placek, an underdog candidate for a civilian mission to Mars, but they soon find that her boyfriend, Micah Pevsner, might hold the key to a story far more compelling than a simple 30-second candidate bio. Episodes will be released on YouTube and Vimeo every Thursday, and the series has already received positive press from Staten Island Advance and The Daily Fandom.

Alicia Collen Zeidan | acollen@wesleyan.edu

Hi, fellow 2009s. Here are a couple of updates on our classmates. Ray Ward and Lucas Hoeffel both launched new media ventures, Opalite Media and Lucas Hoeffel Photography, each focused on digital media production. They’ve kickstarted several photography/film collaborations while Ray lives in Boston and Lucas in NYC.

Mike Repplier writes, “I tell the stories of people in extraordinary circumstances as a producer for the primetime newsmagazine 20/20 on ABC News. As a booking producer, I manage the people whose stories we tell and am often the first line of reporting. I won my first Emmy Award for my work on a town hall special with President Obama on race and law enforcement. Most recently I helped produce an exclusive interview with Tammie Jo Shults, the hero Southwest pilot who landed her plane after an engine explosion and saved 148 people on board.”

Thanks for your submissions and please keep them coming!

Alejandro Alvarado | ale.alvarado12@gmail.com

Greetings, Class of 2010! I hope you enjoy these updates from our classmates around the world. Sam Schilit got engaged to Jeremy Rosenweig and former 48 Home housemates Emily Hoffman and Franni Paley said “I do” to being bridesmaids. Sam is the 2019 laboratory genetics and genomics fellow for Harvard Medical School’s American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics training program.

Lauren Valentino married Amol Yadav in Mumbai, India, in a multi-day ceremony that included lots of Bollywood dancing, delicious Indian food, and traditional rituals. Lauren and Amol met while in graduate school at Duke University, where Lauren is finishing her doctorate. They tied the knot in front of 500 of their closest friends and family, with strong representation from the Wesleyan contingent: Isabel Huston, Alice Maggio, Becky (Weiss) Roberts, Nistha Shrestha, and Tony Zosherafatain were all in attendance. And yes, the fight song was sung!

Katie (Zackin) Roose and Rob Roose ’04 have lived in Portland, Ore., for two years now. Katie is a pediatric nurse practitioner at a busy primary care clinic. They are expecting their first child in December.

Yun Wang now calls the Lone Star state his home. He completed his MBA in Austin from Texas McCombs and is moving to Dallas as a management consultant for Deloitte. He will use his newly-learned business jargon and over-hyped data science to help companies signal that they are winning at the game of capitalism.

After completing her MBA last year, Hallie Coffin-Gould joined the general management track of Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Graduate Leadership Development Program. She has just started her second rotation working in digital marketing and sales management. Hallie and her fiancé bought a house together in Pittsburgh and look forward to getting married this fall.

Colin Campbell married Carly Robinson in a beautiful ceremony in Bristol, R.I. The surf and turf dinner was positively decadent and the ceremony was well attended by the Class of 2010 with the likes of Woody Redpath and Eliza Newman, Lonny Blumenthal and Cate Haring, Gavin Brennan, Zac Rosensohn, Mark Murphy, Sam Robinson, Ram Sivalingam, Jon Killeen, and Sam Campbell-Decock. These Cardinals did a great job of showing a similarly large contingent of Williams College grads how to party, how to eat macarons, and how to dance.

Gina Yeomans and Nate “Shakedown” Green ’09 welcomed their son, Auggie, to the world on March 8. He’s been growing like crazy and is almost ready to wear the Wesleyan onesie given to him by grandparents Alison Zaeder ’83 and John Green ’81.

Jonna Humphries is leading marketing at Moog Music, Inc. and is on the path toward a MBA through Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Alice Maggio has moved to Brooklyn to work an internship with Phil Thompson, deputy mayor of strategic policy initiatives.

After completing her MFA in art writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Emma Drew moved back home to San Francisco where she is coediting a book on public art and strategizing for life as a freelance writer.

Kait Halibozek got engaged! She and her fiancé both work in the film industry in Los Angeles and are planning a fall 2019 wedding.

Casey Simchik married Robbie Shaw in Napa, Calif., in June on National Rosé Day. The ceremony was spectacular with beautiful (albeit windy) weather and picturesque examples of the Napa Valley’s legendary viticulture scene. The dance floor barely survived the moves of Woody Redpath, Eliza Newman, Jon Killeen, Meredith Holmes, Anika Fischer, Sarah Hoefle, Matt Ward, Erin Fitzsimmons, Ellika Healy, Kyle MacDonald, Ingrid Parl, Mark Murphy, and Jeremy Kaminer.

Finally, a big congratulation is in order from the Class of 2010 to the coaching staff and players of the Cardinal Men’s Lacrosse team, which won the 2018 Division III National Championship in Foxborough, Mass., this past spring. The atmosphere was “lit” at Gillette Stadium and the Class of 2010 was well represented in a crowd of well over 1,000 alumni, friends, and family who cheered the Cardinals to victory.

That’s all for this issue! Here’s hoping everyone is well and as always, feel free to pass along your life updates anytime.

David Layne | dlayne@wesleyan.edu

Hi, Class of 2011. Hope this finds you doing well! Lots of exciting things from our classmates.

Christopher Ceccolini and Jordan Gratch ’13 are thrilled to announce that they are finally engaged, eight years after first meeting at Wesleyan in the Alpha Delta Phi living room. They reside in Brookline, Mass., where Chris is a third-year doctoral student in counseling psychology at Boston College and Jordan is a third-year law student at Boston University. “We are really excited to start this next chapter of our lives together even as we juggle so many other life changes and responsibilities.” Chris hopes to have a completed dissertation proposal by their wedding in late 2019, while Jordan completed a summer associate position at Latham & Watkins in New York, where he will begin full-time in October.

Lindsey Davis writes, “I gained employment as a research associate handling rare books and manuscripts, largely dealing with abolition, African-American, and women’s history, as well as the transcendentalists’ and Lost Generation’s works.”

Austin Woolridge reports, “My company (playerslounge) that I started with Zach Dixon ’12 went through ycombinator, and we have raised around $2 million from funds and angels including: Comcast, RRE, Marissa Mayer, Strauss Zelnick ’79, and more. We also have the founder of Fanduel as a very close advisor.”

Simone Plummer writes, “I’m starting my second year at New York College of Podiatric Medicine; I graduate in 2021. I also got engaged to Evan Huggins ’10 last November! Mallory Cruz spoke at the UN for international autism awareness day back in April, specifically about the abuse of autistic girls and women.”

Corrina Wainwright reports, “I graduated from the Harvard School of Public Health with a master’s in health policy this May—although I finished coursework in December 2017. During the gap, I started a health equity consulting business, working on various projects with NYC agencies. My biggest client is the Center for Health Equity (CHE) in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. I’m working with CHE to add critical historical, political, and economic lenses to the social determinants of health approach. I’m excited to return to NYC but will miss my community and the social justice library at Harvard. I founded the library with strong inspiration from my time in the Center for African American Studies’ DuBois Library—taking Wes with me wherever I go.”

Thanks for the updates! Always nice to hear from everyone!

Allie Southam | asoutham@wesleyan.edu

The Class of 2014 still continues to shine. Take a look at their updates: Sarah Burkett has acted in multiple short films with a handful of other projects. Her most recent role was the lead in the feature film, Phaedra. Phaedra was one of five projects selected for Robert Rodriguez’s show, Rebel Without A Crew: The Series, based on his book of the same name documenting his experience creating his first film, El Mariachi. Phaedra had its world premiere screening at a special press event during SXSW. The project has been submitted to film festivals and will be featured on the El Rey Network later this year. She and her two crazy cats will be moving from Houston to Los Angeles this fall to continue acting.

A little blurb on the series: “The series coincides with the 25th anniversary of Rodriguez’s groundbreaking film, El Mariachi, which he made for just $7,000 without a crew, across just 14 days of filming. In the show, Rodriguez gives five independent directors the same amount of time, and the same amount of money, with a few advantages of having the legendary director involved (gear, costumes etc.), to make a brand-new feature film.”

When not at her day job at Ballet Hispánico, Cynthia Tong is a producer for two Wesleyan-related projects: If Sand Were Stone, a new musical created by Carly Feinman ’16 and Cassie Willson ’17, and choreographed by Nora Thompson ’15, which is making its off Broadway premiere at the New York Musical Festival in July; and Reflux, a new play written by Carly Feinman ’16 and directed by Miranda Haymon ’16, which is premiering at the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival in August.

Simon Riker’s NYC premiere of Me Prometheus: Caveman Love Story was a success. The three-night run at the New York Theatre Festival was extended to four based on strong ticket sales; ultimately every performance sold out. The festival nominated it for Best Musical Score, and leading lady, Korra O’Neill, for Best Singer. Simon is a product manager at Axial and is always happy to connect and talk tech and startups. This summer, he will be traveling to England as a staff singer with the Christ’s Church Choir of Rye, N.Y., where he sings weekly with Nathan Repasz ’14.

Josh Krugman performs year-round with the Bread and Puppet Theater (B&P), touring nationally and internationally, and spending summers in residence at B&P’s farm in Glover, Vt. He encourages Wes alumni to come up to enjoy a weekend of performances in the summer, and to look out for B&P performances in a city near them. Josh is also B&P’s booking manager, so if you’d like to bring this radical theater company to a venue or institution near you, reach out to him.

Jeremy Edelberg is living in Hong Kong and working at Myriad Asset Management, a Hong Kong-based multi-strategy hedge fund. “I welcome all to drop me a line if they ever find their way out to HK!”

Since graduation, Leo Liu has been living in D.C. and working in the progressive election movement. He’s the lead scientist at Analyst Institute, where he runs randomized experiments with progressive groups to learn about how the movement can win more elections. He lives with Emma Golub ’16 in a group house called The Burrow, after the Weasley family home. Although 2018’s going be hectic, when you stop by D.C. you should visit him anyway! He misses his Wes peeps a lot and is eager to plot and strategize around next year’s five-year Reunion.

Your Class Secretary,

Mary Diaz | mcdiaz@wesleyan.edu 

Sara Guernsey graduated with her MFA from the producer’s program at UCLA in June and works at ABC Studios in the comedy development department.

Kate Gibbel graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in May. She will be teaching poetry and traveling in New Zealand in January. Will you be there? Want to meet up? Or give some recommendations?

LaDarius Drew is teaching history, coaching football, is the director of Black Student Union (BSU), and the director of student activities at The Gunnery in Washington, Conn. In May, he took the BSU kids to the Ebony Singers concert and they had a great time. Meanwhile, he planned and hosted his first event as student activities director, and it went well.

Peter Cornillie was commissioned to do a beer and food pairing for a restaurant in Detroit.

While not at her day job as an administrator for multiple dance organizations and artists, Nora Thompson is working as a choreographer and movement consultant for two Wesleyan-related projects: If Sand Were Stone, a new musical created by Carly Feinman ’16 and Cassie Willson ’17 and produced by Cynthia Tong ’14, which is making its off Broadway premiere at the New York Musical Festival in July; and Reflux, a new play written by Carly Feinman ’16 and directed by Miranda Haymon ’16, which is premiering at the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival in August.

Tim Gallivan is teaching math and DJing on the side.

Rebecca Caspar-Johnson finished her first year at Columbia Law School and will be spending the summer in Harare, Zimbabwe, interning in environmental law.

Silvia Diaz-Roa is a project manager for a tech startup-type law firm. It’s pretty cool because they are working on how law will change with technology. This fall she starts grad school at Yale, so she will be back in Connecticut.

Adin Vaewsorn will be attending the Master’s Entry Program at the University of California San Francisco School of Nursing to become a psychiatric/mental health nurse practitioner.

Grace Nix is petting pit bulls in New Orleans on the set of Pit Bulls and Parolees and making clown-y intramural theater with a bunch of sweet clowns. #wrestlemania

Steve Susaña-Castillo will be attending the Yale School of Public Health under the department of epidemiology of microbial diseases this fall.

Orelia Jonathan will be moving to Boston next year and starting a PhD in education at Harvard University.

Jenna Starr | jstarr@wesleyan.edu

Melissa Leung wined and dined with Son Tran ’95, Taran Carr, and Sarah Mi before watching Hamilton on its opening night in D.C. 

Ceci Cereijido-Bloche is in rehearsals for a show called The Hunt, going up at HB Studio in July. It’s a series of five one-acts, each with a different take on the idea of a sci-fi world with different gender dynamics (think Handmaiden’s Tale).

Matt Chilton just finished a run of eight performances of an original production of An Iliad as The Muse, a role bridging improvisation, composition, and acting, at D.C.’s Atlas Performing Arts Center. He is working on sound for Specially Processed American Me, a multimedia play and workshop series focused on Spam in Korean and Korean-American food, culture, and memory, while playing electric sax in a femme-domme math rock ensemble, Wasabi Fox, and working in nonprofit admin.

Eki Ramadhan has been working for the Southeast Asia office of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab for almost two years. He had a chance to work with Jenna Juwono ’09, who is now pursuing a graduate degree in the Netherlands. He deferred his admission to a grad school in the States to 2019 and is working as a senior research associate and eager to welcome recently-graduated Aqila Putri ’18 to the J-PAL team at the end of June .

Mads O’Brien is wrapping up her job(s) at Stanford University, where she works part-time as library GIS support (basically being a QAC tutor all over again) and part-time at the front desk of the Rumsey Map Center for rare and antique maps. She gets to geek out over really awesome cartography everyday—ask her about it! This fall, Mads is heading back to Connecticut to pursue a master’s of environmental science at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, where one of her personal goals is to learn how to fly drones for aerial photography. Mads is excited to reconnect with her people on the East Coast.

Since graduation, Sean Mihaljevich has been working as a research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York but will soon be returning to his home state of California to pursue a JD at Stanford Law School. He comments, “It is unfortunate that I have to leave many of the close friends I made at Wesleyan behind, but I am excited for what the future holds!”

Ellen Paik placed second with her team in the Global Finals of the Goldman Sachs Analyst Impact Fund, securing a grant for a nonprofit called New Story, an organization that aims to incorporate 3D printing technology to alleviate global homelessness. The grant will go towards constructing the first ever 3D-printed community, to be built in El Salvador by 2019. Check out the amazing work of New Story on their website!

In August, Madeline James will be leaving D.C. and moving down to North Carolina to start a PhD program in history at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Aaron Morgan works in D.C. for Fund II-UNCF STEM Scholars Program, a $48 million Initiative that supports African-American students pursuing careers in STEM and technology.

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

Sam Shillet says that Sam Beck lives in Brooklyn and is generally dissatisfied with the F train, as he must take it every day on his dull and monotonous way to his mundane writing job. Sam Beck also wants everyone to know that he has a boring job in New York and is still single.

This past year Yael Horowitz has been dealing with the standard and classic issues of existential dread, despising capitalism while being a full-time participant in it, and watching the world fall apart in front of her over and over again.

Alyssa Domino is working as a paralegal for a law firm in D.C. called Norton Rose Fulbright. Her boss is a 71-year-old Wes alumnus with so much Wes pride that it sometimes feels like she is still on campus. The firm is an international corporate law firm, and Alyssa is most involved in two practice groups: mergers and acquisitions and “project finance” or energy law. There has been a learning curve—it was not until about a month into this job that she grasped that not all lawyers are litigators—but so far, it’s been so good!

Fred Ayres is a pharmacology lab technician at the University of Michigan Medical School and a therapist on a public health intervention in Flint to reduce adolescent substance use. This fall he begins work as a City Year service member in Detroit and providing academic and social support to struggling teens. He’s excited to be involved in efforts to revitalize the D! He’ll spend the summer applying to medical schools and training for his eighth marathon.

Alexandra “Zandy” Stovicek works at a reproductive health nonprofit and volunteers as a full spectrum doula in NYC. This fall she will attend Yale School of Nursing’s MSN program to become a nurse-midwife and women’s health nurse practitioner. In denial that she is about to learn a ton of science, she spent three weeks this summer on a cross-country road trip and self-drive safari around South Africa.

Harry Rafferty is a Lyft driver in Ann Arbor, Mich., chasing his dream of playing professional basketball. He volunteers for many organizations at the University of Michigan. All Wes family members have a place to stay in Michigan if they need one.

Nick Miceli spent seven months living in Adelaide, Australia, working as a bartender and playing professional baseball over the fall and winter, and is now in his living in Bremen, Germany, playing professional baseball in the Bundesliga.

Catherine “Cassie” Willson’s musical, If Sand Were Stone, opened off Broadway this summer in the New York Musical Festival. Music was done by Cassie, book and lyrics by Carly Feinman ’16, and choreography by Nora Thompson ’15.

Nick Daley is living in NYC. After recovering from a knee surgery in his senior year, he has begun his career as a dancer in New York in collaboration with choreographer Lane Gifford, the excellent Eury German ’16, and many others, while apprenticing under the tutelage of renowned teacher, Max Stone. He is also a tutor to help pay the bills, so he is putting that Wesleyan liberal arts degree to work. Find him on the stage, in the studio, or at the library brushing up on some good old Latin grammar.

Ali Felman is spending the summer driving through flyover country (her homeland) to start at Synergy School in San Francisco. She’s teaching middle school English so that she can stay hip on all the style trends while staying true to mechanics.

Sam Stern, in New Hampshire, is working as a software engineer in test. He spends his weekends volunteering and exploring the local trails. He discovered that his city plays host to the self-proclaimed largest taco tour in the country every year, and he’s since seen the proof. Anyone in or around Boston is welcome to visit.

In July, up your aesthetic toured the Northeast, Philadelphia, and D.C. It was the combined capstone of Jess Cummings, Constance Des Marais, Nola Werlinich, and Cheyanne Williams and they took it on the road this summer with collaborators, Katherine Paterson ’18 and Chloe Briskin ’18. up your aestheticis a short, powerful retelling the Greek stories of the Amazon warriors told in an intimate setting through ritual, song, and dominoes.

Keyonne Session | ksession@wesleyan.edu

Congratulations, Class of 2018! The past four years flew by and we are excited to check in soon to see what amazing things our classmates are up to.

Najwa Anasse | nanasse@wesleyan.edu
Garett Larivee | glarivee@wesleyan.edu