Class Notes

It has been great receiving many RSVPs to our Reunion this spring from all around the world. Micha Balf and Rachel Helfer, from Israel, plan to attend. Jim Lyons from Germany and Wendy (Brown) Giardina from Switzerland are also looking forward to returning to campus.

I had a chance to spend quality time with Wendy last November. We met up in Paris where I was visiting with my family and friends in honor of my mom who passed away last summer. We spent a few days museum viewing, walking the grand boulevards, and joyfully eating fine French food. Wendy was a great sport for being part of my family for the whole time.

Back to Jim Lyons: He is living happily in Frankfurt these days, and is still active writing and directing in the German theater scene. Recently he directed the European premiere of Dinah Was, a musical biography of the singer Dinah Washington. Jim’s e-mail: jamesedwardlyons@gmail.com.

Louise Hazebrouck and husband Steve Rome ’78 are currently teaching English in Dajia, Taiwan, after having traveled around Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand for six weeks. This is the first of many adventures for the retiring public school teachers.

Jerry Caplin is the proud parent of three kids who will be attending Duke University next year. The three are accomplished fencers. Jerry remarked that, while thinking of three kids in college at the same time is a bit numbing, at least he will not have any issue surrounding parents’ weekend.

Janet Malkemes in Charlotte is busy hosting a bevy of friends and family.

Bob Glasspiegel is thankful for many good things this past year. Bob and wife Sue are especially thankful for traveling to see many friends/relatives. They began a new tradition of spending Januarys in another part of the world. They had a fabulous trip to New Zealand and Australia recently.

John Fink, from Hawaii, writes asking for good, danceable, 1970s music at our Reunion event(s). I certainly second this sentiment. The month prior, John will be visiting with Peter Guenther and Rick Dennett in New York. Otherwise, John makes sure to visit Oregon to spend time often with his grandson, as well as his son and daughter.

Speaking of Hawaii, Jason Baron and his wife celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary there.

It is always fun when you run into a friend when you least expect it. That was the case when I visited with Sarah Kendall at an art exhibit opening at the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass., last fall. Sarah came south from Nelson, N.H., to support an artist friend who was featured in the show.

Wes Protheroe and wife Robin are enjoying what they are calling their “pre-tirement.” Wes serves on two Boards—the advisory board of a Research Triangle-based pharma firm specializing in developing Alzheimer drugs, and the Atlanta Humane Society. He is also executive coaching and consulting with private equity and venture capital firms focused on direct-to-consumer financial services. I am intrigued to learn that Wes and Robin participate in “team trivia” weekly with friends. Jeopardy! cannot be far behind.

Doug Green met up with Iddy Olson before the holidays in Chicago (Evanston precisely). Doug and wife Katie were in town to celebrate the graduation of their son from Northwestern.

By the time we read this, Susan Jacobson will have attended the Women’s March in January in D.C., connecting with many friends there from WesU. Susan’s great quote: “Our class was always told we missed the glory days of student protests. Well, what do you know? Now we have another chance!”

Doug Hauschild, Jody (Cosgrove) van Geldern, and James Udelson each expect to be at Reunion. Everyone is looking forward to being together in May. Just a reminder, Reunion is over the weekend of May 26-28. We are expecting a record number of classmates in attendance at our 40th. You won’t want to miss out!

Gerry Frank | Gfrank@bfearc.com

Hello, mates! Let’s start with Rob Miller, who is living in Chappaqua, N.Y., “on the other side of the tracks from the Clintons” and has two sons: Joshua, 13 and Daniel, 9. “I had my own entertainment agency for the past 12 years representing production companies mostly in the television world.” He sold the company at the end of 2015 to Creative Artists Agency. “The new pressure is not running a business, but rather my wife bugging me to retire,” he says.

He’s taken an annual Wesleyan ski trip with Thomas Parkinson, Andrew Parkinson ’80, Bruce Bunnell ’81, Earl Mix ’80, Greg Makoul, Danny Softness, Gordon Cooney ’81, Ed Stearns, and Bruce Crain, for more than 20 years, and says, “the competitiveness and camaraderie remain ever present.”

Vincent Bonazzoli has been named a Massachusetts Super Lawyer, an honor given to only the top five percent of attorneys in the state. Vinnie, who specializes in estate and elder law, lives in Swampscott, Mass., with his wife, Paula, and their two children.

Roger Hale has published a new novel, New Watering Holes, that explores the cultural intersection between India and China. As Roger describes it on the book jacket, the story delves into “some of the complexity of interpreting culture and cultural artifacts: Who has the right to interpret the culture of others?”

Toby Ewing writes, “After some 20 years working at Iowa State University, I moved to the Seattle area and now work for the Climate Corporation, a leader in digital agriculture.”

Laura Fraser and Peter Eckart ’86 were married at San Francisco City Hall on March 24. Laura says she wonders why she didn’t have the sense to marry a Wesleyan guy a few decades ago, but better late than never. After the ceremony, they partied at a neighborhood wine bar with friends including Wesfolks Mary Roach ’81, Jonathan Weber, Lawrence Comras, Maria Mead ’84, and John Baker ’84. Then they took off for an undiscovered beach in Mexico which they will not reveal.

Kaja McGowan wrote from Cambodia after wrapping up a “transformative” two weeks teaching a course for Cornell, where she is an associate professor. The course, Performing Angkor: Dance, Silk, and Stone, took Kaja and her students to Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, including a visit to the religious site, Kbal Spean.

After writing for television for a decade, Peter Blauner has a new novel coming out, Proving Ground, which he says has gotten “kind words” from the likes of Stephen King, Richard Price, and Dennis Lehane. “It’s a modern day Hamlet revenge story set in Brooklyn,” he says. Reach him at slomoriot@gmail.com.

Beck Lee writes glowingly of later-in-life fatherhood and of his 6-year-old son, Truman, a Cub Scout, vegetarian, and animal lover, with two geckos, a fish and a frog. “My hat’s off to those with kids who’ve graduated college already, some of whom I daresay have kids of their own who are older than my Truman. But, I get to enjoy my son’s development in my dotage. There’s nothing better.”

Jennifer Rosenberg is in private psychiatry practice two days a week. “I live in Cleveland and will have been married to Samy Rosenberg for 30 years this August. Our oldest son, Eitan, lives in NYC and works for Spotify, our daughter, Michal, lives in Chicago and is pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology, and our youngest is a junior at Barnard.”

Martin “Chip” Shore writes, “After becoming a certified financial planner last year, I’m working on integrating financial planning into investment management. My wife, Shari, is practicing orthodontics in Brookline. Our son graduated from Vanderbilt last year and is gainfully employed in Chicago as a management consultant. Our daughter decided to go back to my roots and is in her first year at Colorado College. I’m looking forward to Reunion this spring and catching up with everyone!”

Congrats to Jim Stutz and his wife, Rosemary, soon to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary. Jim has been on the move, taking in various “awesome” music concerts with his kids (Guns ‘n’ Roses and Bonnie Raitt). His recent exploits included a scuba diving trip in Cozumel, Mexico, in 2015 and an African photo safari in February.

Matthew Capece and wife Alexis traveled to Crete for a friend’s wedding and were waylaid in Heraklion, where they passed the time amiably at a local taverna. “Live traditional Greek music,” Matt wrote. “Best flight delay in my life.”

Margaret Morton says she is “working at Eversource Energy and having the time of my life.”

Richard Klein is “a partner at the firm Romer Debbas LLP in Manhattan, heading up their co-op/condo and litigation practices.

John Johnson is the director of the Madison Square Boys and Girls Club in Brooklyn, serving over 300 kids a day. He is involved with the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), speaking to school groups and civic organizations. “Having lived with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder since age 17, my message of coping with and overcoming obstacles is a message of hope and acceptance,” he writes.

He keeps in touch with many Wes grads from our class, including Kweku Forstall, Ron Comrie, Cheryl Stevens, Robyn White, Kim Holt, and Billy Stephens.

Friends, I am signing off as your class correspondent. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to hear from old friends and to make new ones via these notes. Keep sending; I’ll keep reading!

Stephanie Griffith | stephaniedgriffith@gmail.com

[Ed. Note: We thank Stephanie for five years of service to Wesleyan, and we warmly welcome Laura Fraser as she returns to her role as class secretary. Laura can be reached at laura@laurafraser.com.]

Class of 1990 Scholarship 

Kathryn Toner ’20, Doylestown, PA

Hi everyone and Happy New Year! Here’s the latest from our class.

Alfredo Viegas has been back to Wes a few times this year because his daughter, Alessandra ’20, started in September. Al got a surprise at the Alumni-Legacy reception when he ran into Shawn ’88 and Ellen Burgess ’88, as “Shawn had been my freshman RA in Butterfield C, and his daughter, Ramsay ’20, was also starting. It was great seeing Shawn and Ellen again and knowing that the Wes legacy continues for our kids.

Two major announcements come from Joy Challenger. First, in May, Joy graduated with a D.Min. from Duke University’s Divinity School in Durham, N.C. Second, in September, Joy married Brian Slaughter on Martha’s Vineyard at the home of classmate Denise Jefferson Casper. Joy has moved to the D.C./Northern Virginia part of the country.

Carol Lynne Booth is the director at Jewish Baby Network, a small nonprofit outreach organization that builds community connections for Jewish families with babies and toddlers in the Bay Area. “We have really expanded our programs and community partners and just added an SF chapter. We host a variety of events at many different Jewish institutions as a way to connect families to each other and to the wider Jewish community. I meet wonderful people, help them make friends and find their place while holding lots of babies, so I am having a great time!”

Carol’s other piece of big news is that she and her husband, David Booth ’91, will be celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary this June. “So crazy! Our days of running around Wes together do not feel that long ago, so I guess it is true that time flies when you are having fun. Continuing the milestone theme, my son, Josh, is living in Seattle and will be 21 in March. My daughter, Naomi, just turned 18 and most likely heads off to college in the fall, and my daughter, Maytal, is now 15 and just got her driver’s permit. It makes me realize that I must be getting older and leaves me wondering where the time has gone. I wish the whole class of ’90 a very healthy and Happy New Year!”

Amy Morgenstern spent the second half of 2016 on sabbatical in Oaxaca, Mexico, with her wife and 9-year-old daughter, “all of us making lots of art, writing, and improving our Spanish. Then, as tempting as it was to stay outside the United States forever, it was back to my work as minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, where I’ve been for 13 years.”

Victor Khodadad is a recent co-founder of New Camerata Opera, which is a new opera company based in New York City. NCO produced its first main stage production, The Count of Luxembourg and Other Tales: A Viennese Pastiche, in October, which played to rave reviews and sold-out audiences. Victor was invited to give a TEDx Talk in December about innovation in the arts which featured New Camerata Opera. More information is available at newcamerataopera.org.

Ben Robertson continues to live in Keene, N.H., where he is working as a Web designer with his company Menadena. Interested classmates can learn more about Ben’s work at menadena.com.

Finally, I just heard from Lara Laurence, for whom the Women’s March in D.C. turned into a Wesleyan event. “First, on my Amtrak train heading south, the woman sitting across from me turned out to be a Wes grad from the Class of 1980—too bad I never asked for her name. Then, in D.C., my daughter, a sophomore at Bryn Mawr, Colleen McKiernan ’89, and I stayed with Ladeene Freimuth ’89. After the march, my daughter and I headed to Sarah Leavitt’s (’92) house for dinner. Also, there were Michelle Elisburg ’92, Jessica Feierman ’92, and Susannah Beals-Simon ’92.”

That’s all for now.  Thank you to those who wrote. As always, please e-mail me anytime with news.

Vanessa Montag Brosgol | vanessa.brosgol@yahoo.com

Jackie Freed moved back to LA and got her real estate license a month after graduation. She joined the family business, BKF Properties, and is looking forward to helping fellow Cardinals find a place to land out in Cali!

Trisha Arora just moved to Boston where she is working for Epsilon as a business systems analyst. She also just adopted a kitten named Legolas.

Rachael Metz is moving to Santiago, Chile, with her twin brother (Jordin, Tufts ’16), from September to May to immerse herself in the Spanish language and Chilean culture. Her goal is to be fluent (or close to it) by the time she returns home. They will both get their international certifications to teach English, then will look for jobs in teaching and tutoring English. If any Wes alumni are in Chile, please reach out!

Miranda Haymon has jumped right into rehearsals as the directing fellow at Arena Stage in D.C. If anyone is in D.C. and wants to see a show, let her know!

In August, Abby Gruppuso moved to Taiwan to teach English through the Fulbright program. She is living in Taichung, the third largest city on the island, and is teaching fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. Abby recounts, “Taiwan is beautiful, the food is amazing, my students are unbelievably cute, and my coworkers have been super welcoming.” She is excited for the year ahead.

Instead of spending all of August au pairing in Istanbul as planned, Melissa Leung took up a new German friend’s offer to accompany her to her home in Germany. This spot served as Melissa’s home base for the days she didn’t spend touring Europe. Melissa met up with Wy Ming Lin in Cologne, too! Now Melissa is in East Asia traveling with her two sisters (one a Wes ’10), stopping in Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou. She just signed her lease with Sarah Mi.

 Samantha Hellberg has been working as the program coordinator for the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She has been really enjoying her first few months, even though she started just off the heels of graduation (within less than a week!). She’ll be working there for approximately two years, as she develops her research and clinical skill sets further, and applies to clinical psychology PhD programs.

Caroline Shadle moved to Manhattan to start a new position at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea. She is living in an apartment with two Wes alumni, as well as across the street from two other Wes alumni—reminiscent of Home Avenue.

Nina Channing is pursuing her MFA-2 in interior design at the New York School of Interior Design after spending a fulfilling summer helping with Dylan Fernandes’ successful primary campaign for the state representative seat in Falmouth, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket.

Former housemates Alessandra Cervera and Liyan Yao are having post-grad separation anxiety, and miss each other dearly. Sandi is doing cognitive development research at Yale, and Liyan has been accepted to med school, deferring to January. In the meantime, Liyan plans on taking some time off to spend with friends and family.

Emma Buford moved back to NYC to pursue the arts. She loves being in her hometown and continues to spend time with family and fellow Wes alumni. She will be in a production at the Joyce Theater this October, thanks to a connection made by Caroline Shadle, and will also be singing at a fundraiser in November.

Hannah Sokoloff-Rubin has picked up her stuff and moved across the country to Portland, Ore., to see what the whole “West Coast” thing is all about. She’s working for Planned Parenthood as the community education and outreach coordinator in Washington County and hopes to spend as much time in the outdoors as possible.

Jack Reuter just got a job working at a golf course as “the person who drives around in that little cart picking up balls from the driving range.” Jack reports, “That’s about it. Living at home, job hunting. Life is good.”

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

Andrew Yin is a first year at Cornell Medical School in NYC. He has been trying to stay afloat amidst the loads of work and uses every chance he gets to explore the city or catch a baseball game.

Katherine Gibbel started her MFA in poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop this fall. Mackenzie McPike is now an analyst at Jane Street Capital in NYC. Alicia Gansley joined an e-commerce startup called Zola in Manhattan where she is a software engineer.

After working in litigation for almost a year in Boston, Ming Zhu is now going to a master’s program in entrepreneurship at Babson College’s business school to pursue his passion in the agri-business/food-tech business. Also, if any alumni or current students are interested in the food business, especially plant-based beverages, they should reach out to him!

Mateusz Burgunder is working at Accenture in Switzerland, where he is focused on big data and business intelligence.

Five years after meeting on the first floor of 200 Church, their freshman dorm, Marianna Ilagan and Jimmy Nguyen got married in Professor Alice Hadler’s backyard in New Haven, Conn. They are moving to Ann Arbor, where Jimmy is starting his master’s in biostatistics at the University of Michigan.

Michael You Rong Leung has been enjoying summer in Chicago since passing level one of the CFA program. He has been taking sailing classes and traveling around the country. He managed to meet up with Leslie Lai ’14, David Mai, and Jenna Starr in his most recent trip to Wesleyan!

Ibironke Otusile has left NYC Health and Hospitals on Rikers Island, a jail complex in Queens, where she worked in the medical records department, serving the underprivileged jail population. She is an MS candidate in biomedical sciences at Barry University, in Hollywood, Fla. In her free time, she creates videos for her new YouTube channel, Ibironke Otusile.

Jenna Starr | jstarr@wesleyan.edu

Greetings and happy fall, class of 2014! Here is what some of your classmates are up to:

Jessica Titlebaum is back in Michigan for her second year of veterinary school at Michigan State University. She is hoping to focus on small animal medicine upon graduation, and toys with the idea of specializing in neurology.

Lucy Finn moved back to San Francisco and is a business consultant for Kaiser Permanente. She is missing New York, but it’s been fun being back in the Bay.

Jennelle Herrick reports: “After working as a paralegal in trust and estates and at real estate law firms, I have taken a break from the legal setting and joined the private real estate developer, Discovery Land Company, on one of their newest projects on Maui, Hawaii, located at the Makena Golf and Beach Club. Although it was hard to say goodbye to Connecticut—the state in which I was born, raised, educated, and started my career—it’s safe to say I have fallen head over heels for paradise. I am in the final stages of completing my Hawaii real estate license and I am looking forward to witnessing our project grow from the beginning stages.”

Rachel Fox has been quite busy. She completed a master’s in narrative medicine at Columbia University in August 2015, spent the 2015-2016 academic year as an adjunct professor at Rutgers and Sarah Lawrence, and is now getting her PhD in communication and science studies at UC, San Diego. Rachel is living in La Jolla.

In other news: “Nick Petrillo, Keegan Dufty, Sky McGilligan, Ben Kafoglis, Remy Lieberman, and Casey Lasda all live in NYC where they are working on a scene-for-scene, shot-for-shot remake of Dirty Dancing. Most of them are single.”

After graduation, Simon Riker worked mainly as a freelance musician, most notably as associate music director for Summer Theatre of New Canaan, and as music director and marketing associate at PGT, a nonprofit children’s theater in White Plains, N.Y. He is an assistant choirmaster at Christ’s Church (Rye, N.Y.) and associate product manager at Axial, a fintech startup in Manhattan. Simon is stoked to share that his Wesleyan senior thesis, Me Prometheus: Caveman Love Story, had a second student production at William & Mary, and will be having its New York premiere as part of the New York Theater Festival in next summer.

Julian Theseira completed a master’s in international history at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Since he left Wesleyan, he has presented his research at the inaugural global history student conference at the Freie Universitäet Berlin, the inaugural world history student conference at King’s College London, the inaugural Yenching Global Symposium at Peking University, Beijing, China, and the British Postgraduate Chinese Studies network annual conference also at King’s College London. Outside of academia, Julian has interned with the Permanent Mission of the Sovereign Order of Malta to the United Nations in Geneva, during which time he managed external communications and reported on sessions of the UN Human Rights Council, UNHCR Standing Committee, the UN ECOSOC Humanitarian Affairs Segment, and other international meetings. He is interning with the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva, where he manages external communications on social media.

Keep the notes coming and enjoy your PSL’s. Much love,

Mary Diaz | mcdiaz@wesleyan.edu 

With the arrival of fall comes the realization that it’s already been three years since the Class of 2013 graduated from Wesleyan. During this time, we’ve traveled the world, earned an additional degree (or two), and settled into an exciting new chapter of our lives. Keep reading for a snippet of our adventures!

Jim Curley is the director of state relations at Boston University. He is also working towards an MBA at BU. He sees his fellow classmates Derek Lukin and Carmen Boscia in Boston. Amanda Simmons relocated to Philadelphia from NYC to study at Penn Law. She is joined by her partner, Adam Jaskol, who works as a management consultant and engages in casual sax(ophone). Amanda and Adam are hoping to reconnect with Wes friends, so reach out if you’re in Philly. Sarah Cassel finished her master’s in criminology at the University of Cambridge this summer. She wrote her dissertation on higher education in prison, and is working at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. Anna Swartz is still living in Brooklyn and is a staff writer at Mic, where a few coworkers are also Wes grads. From her office in One World Trade she can almost see all the way to Connecticut! Happy to say that she still sees Wesleyan friends at least once a week, if not more.

Kristen Salustro missed LA by a couple of thousand miles and wound up in Chicago, which is just fine by her. She is a writer for bswift, an Aetna company, and is working on her third novel. Her first two books, published under the name K.N. Salustro, were nominated for the Chanticleer Book Reviews Cygnus Awards for science fiction and speculative fiction. Sydney Lowe is also living in LA. After working as an associate producer at HBO in New York for three years, she joins the staff of HBO’s upcoming fall comedy, Insecure, as producer’s assistant to show creator, Issa Rae. Sydney continues to work as a photographer and creative producer on several video projects, documentaries, and branded content campaigns.

Despite tenacious efforts to avoid gainful employment in 2016, Evan Carmi ended up with a new job, joining Airbnb’s Portland engineering team. After failing to muster the courage to take Drawing 1 at Wes, he signed up for a local drawing class this fall. Zach Schonfeld delivered a Drunk Ted Talk on the subject of Nicolas Cage appreciation. He still works for Newsweek, and he hasn’t gotten stuck in an elevator since 2014. Julian Azaret moved to Melbourne, Australia, where he’s run into a few Wes alumni. He has been racing bikes, climbing mountains, and consulting in the SaaS industry all over Asia-Pacific. Things haven’t changed much in the last three years. Anyone passing through that part of the world should give him a holler!

After finishing her master’s in sustainable engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, Alissa Santucci has been working at Xerox Corporation in the environmental, health, safety, and sustainability department. Alissa was promoted to environmental technology program manager and is excited for all of her new responsibilities which can help shape the environmental sustainability future of the company. Katie Havlovic writes in from D.C., where she transitioned from working for Congressman Beto O’Rourke to the Opportunity Finance Network, where she advocates for the interests of community development financial institutions throughout the United States. While she continues to explore the D.C. food truck scene, nothing can beat the falafel and grilled cheese trucks back at Wes.

Brooklyn is full of entrepreneurs! Noah Masur ’15 has started a humane pesticide business (very popular in Williamsburg), and William T. Davis has taken his experience in the coffee industry and now runs an online exotic coffee bean store on the deep net. Sora Akiyoshi ’14 and Chloe Rinehart ’14 began a volunteer outreach program that offers ultimate Frisbee classes for those in senior housing, and Peter Horton and Croy Salinas are still making sweet music together as they enjoy the start of their fourth year of happily living together. Mark Popinchalk enjoys keeping tabs on his friends, both in Brooklyn and afar, including Ethan Grund, who is starting his second year working on his comprehensive lake survey of Minnesota.

Matt Lichtash, much like Andrew Perlmutter is wont to do, is also working away, doing all things BKE. Aside from pursuing all forms of football except for the actual thing (fantasy, flag), Matt has also embarked on a new creative venture: a website dedicated to presenting information about climate change in concise posts containing three bullet points or fewer. The site, thecarboncapital.org, is easily digestible, shareable, and nonpartisan, and posts info to motivate anyone to take climate action.

Evan Okun (aka E. Oks) performed a solo show at the NYC’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe alongside Sam Friedman and other members of his Chicago collective. The show celebrated the release of his new single (soundcloud.com/eoks). The next morning, he flew back to Chicago to continue his work with Circles & Ciphers, a hip-hop infused restorative justice organization led by young people who are court-, gang-, and DCFS- involved.

As for myself, I wrapped up three years at Apple and transitioned to Fitbit to work in advanced product development. When I’m not searching for the latest and greatest technologies to apply to future Fitbit products, you’ll find me traveling, watercolor painting, and (still) eating my way through the wonderful city of San Francisco. Would love to reconnect with any Wes alums living in or traveling through this area!

Laura Yim | Lyim@wesleyan.edu 

As many of you know, or perhaps some of you are in denial (like myself), 2017 marks our five-year Reunion. That’s right, it has been five years since that beautiful spring day on Foss Hill when we threw our caps in the air. Similar to time, the class of 2012 has not slowed down.

Alex Ketchum is finishing up her PhD in the department of history at McGill University, focusing on feminist restaurants and cafés in the United States and Canada. She coaches lacrosse and teaches in Montréal where she lives with her husky/lab mix, Bubbles. Laura Bliss is a staff writer for CityLab, the Atlantic’s urban affairs vertical, also based in Montréal.

In New Jersey, David Amrhein has been working at TAG Optics, a recently acquired startup spun out of research at Princeton University, making ultra-fast focusing liquid lenses for microscopes and laser systems. Also on the East Coast, Kenny Feder is in Baltimore doing his PhD in public health at Johns Hopkins. Kenny studies how parents’ mental health and substance use challenges can spill over and affect the well-being of children.

Down in Texas, Katie Silver is a support manager at Atlassian, a software company. She is getting married in this spring, and Benny Kaufman is officiating!

Jed Rendlemen is an independent naming consultant. While he works out of his hometown of Portland, Ore,. he partners with businesses around the world to help them create strategic, memorable brands.

Julia Mulhern just finished her PhD in geology at the University of Utah and is moving to New Orleans to work for Shell this fall.

Out on the West Coast, Henrik Cotran is a sector lead at the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), based in San Francisco. SASB is chaired by Michael Bloomberg, former New York mayor, and is developing sustainability accounting standards. Outside of work, Henrik can be found mountain biking, backpacking, skiing, or volunteering at a youth reading program in Oakland.

After working for a year in Denmark and nearly three in D.C., Adam Fishman is now enrolled in a master of environmental management degree program at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Kwasi Ansu ’09 and Nate Kaufman ’08 are in the same program.

After co-founding an independent record label in NYC called Par-ka Records, Charlie Hanna is now working at Paradigm Talent Agency to rebuild the brand partnerships department. You can check out his work in the IBM commercial featuring Stephen King. Charlie is not slowing down anytime soon. He is applying to MBA programs to continue building the knowledge and skills necessary to fulfill his aspirations of one day creating a business at the intersection of media and technology.

After beginning their romance in the basement of Psi U, Anna Brugioni and David Sedgwick finally got engaged. They’re also both at Stern Business School.

Kurt Lyn successfully graduated from Columbia Law and is gainfully employed as a lawyer. Erin Kelly received her MPH from Columbia and is working for the NYC government to improve health.

As for me, I am trapezing between NYC and Connecticut as I have started a new role with Bridgewater Associates in Connecticut. As always, wishing the best to the entire class of 2012!

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

Class of 2011, I hope you all are well. Lots of exciting news from our classmates including weddings, graduations, and graduate school!

Both Leah Coe and Rebecca Friendly got married! Leah writes, “I got married on Aug. 20 to Tom St. Marie in Milwaukee, Wis. Rhee Soo Lee (she officiated the wedding), Jill Reynolds ’12, and Jaime Bonner ’12 were there to celebrate with us.”

Rebecca Friendly graduated from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business with a master’s in social entrepreneurship. She then joined Age of Learning as the communications and public affairs specialist, and is focused on driving the social impact aspect of their mission to help children build a strong foundation for academic success. In July, she married her longtime boyfriend of 10 years.

Joella Jones reports, “I started a new job in May as the communications and Web manager at the Heyman Center for the Humanities and the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University.”

Congratulations to Marshall Johnson who defended his PhD in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin in July. “My research focuses on planets around stars more massive than our own sun. I have now moved to Columbus, Ohio, where I am a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University.”

Jamie Thabault graduated from the University of New England in Portland, Maine, with a bachelor’s in nursing this spring. She is now working on a cardiac progressive care unit at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington and enjoying the beginning of an exciting and challenging new career!

Alicia González-Gross is excited to have begun her MSW studies at the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Alicia hopes to work as a bilingual social worker for Chicago Public Schools upon completing her degree.

Corrina Wainwright writes, “I moved to Boston to start at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the Health Policy and Management program.”

From Reunion Chair Joe Giaimo, “On behalf of the Reunion Committee, thank you to everyone who donated to our class gift in 2015-2016 and to everyone who made the trip back to Middletown for Reunion and made it a huge success. It was great to reconnect, be on campus, and see some familiar faces. We successfully raised $7,163 from 208 donors (30.45 percent of our class), which was 41 donors and $1,500 more than 2014-2015. We hope we can keep up this trend into next year! Lastly, a big thank you to all of our volunteers who help with getting classmates to contribute to the class gift every year, help with career mentorship of undergrads and young alumni, who interview prospective students, and who are involved in many different ways across campus!”

Thanks for the updates!

Allie Southam | asoutham@wesleyan.edu