Class Notes

Please send news and updates to classnotes@wesleyan.edu.

Please write your class secretary.

Please write to your class secretaries.

After 15 years in Boston, Samantha (Gillombardo) Larson and her family relocated to her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, in July 2021. Samantha started a home organizing business in Holliston in 2018 and has recently reopened in Shaker Heights! In March 2021, she, Emily Teitsworth, and their families reunited in southern Arizona for a visit punctuated by hiking, swimming, admiring Saguaro cacti, and consuming record-breaking amounts of guacamole. It was perfect.

John Graham lives with his family in Tbilisi. They welcomed a third child, Ilian Diasamidze-Graham, into the family. John is running a tourism company featuring hiking and cultural tours in Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, and Ethiopia; www.JohnGrahamTours.com.

While she still tries to think of herself as a New Yorker, Coe Will Hoeksema is back in her hometown of Hartford after living in Brooklyn for 17 years. She left her NYC architectural marketing job and joined a tech firm based out of San Francisco that focuses on knowledge management for architecture firms. She and her husband Craig work remotely and spend their limited free time fixing up their 115-year-old house and chasing after their three sons, Owen Calder (7), Luca Sinclair (5), and Eliot Wilder (2). She welcomes Wes friends to reach out if you’re ever passing through Hartford, there’s plenty of room for guests!

After two-and-a-half years of training, Ariana Mufson recently earned her AASECT certification (American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists) as a sex therapist and is proud to add CST (certified sex therapist) to her credentials. She works as a psychotherapist in private practice out of Newton and Brookline, Massachusetts.

Please write to your class secretary or send news to classnotes@wesleyan.edu.

It’s strange, the class notes that came in just happen to be only from good friends. It’s almost as if I forgot to do any outreach whatsoever and sent a pleading SOS out to them the night before the notes were due. If that were the case, I’d be very grateful. Maybe someday I’ll have the opportunity to thank them for some situation like that, but probably not since it would never happen!

Ben Stanko has spent the last 15 years working for Philadelphia Parks & Recreation as an arborist and is currently managing the Street Tree Management Division of the department. He is very excited to help with the implementation of the new Philly Tree Plan, the city’s first strategic urban forestry plan (https://www.phila.gov/programs/philly-tree-plan/). He lives in the neighborhood of Mount Airy with his wife Kim and their two sons, Theo (10) and Louis (5). He is always happy to see other Wesleyan folks at the schoolyard of the local public elementary school.

Jesse Kudler has been active in political organizing in Philadelphia, currently volunteering with progressive candidates for city council and mayor. He has been enjoying returning to live musical performance and has been a part of the Balinese gamelan ensemble the last few years. He’s recently taken up a bit of rock climbing as well.

Joey Conover has moved on from building houses to helping others buy and sell houses, currently including a couple of Wes alums who have a cute, two-bedroom renovated and centrally located house with a dependency out back coming on the market this spring. She is at Nest Realty. Give her a call if Charlottesville is tempting you!

Here in Boston, I’m still recovering from the intense effort of baking a (kind of weird looking) cake in the shape of a giant Lego head for my son’s seventh birthday. The things we do for love.

Sending my best wishes to everyone,

Mara

Please send news to your class secretary or send news to classnotes@wesleyan.edu.

Kabir Sen is living in Belmont, Massachusetts, with his wife, Rebecca, and three children—Eva (13), Julia (11), and Ethan (7). They are doing well and playing lots of basketball! He is in his 24th year teaching music at the Shady Hill School, and he plays live music residencies in Cambridge at the Lizard Lounge and the Plough and Stars (first and third Saturday of each month). He still makes beats and records lots of music, too, and has been releasing new songs each month. Give him a listen at https://linktr.ee/kabirsen!

Danielle Lazier is thrilled to announce that she is celebrating her 21st year in business as a Realtor in the San Francisco Bay Area with her own company, Vivre Real Estate. It’s always interesting, and she is grateful for all the clients, including many Wes alums who have trusted her to help them. On the home front, Danielle and her family are excited to celebrate their twins’ seventh birthday this summer. It’s hard to believe how fast time flies! They’ve been enjoying the NorCal lifestyle but are also looking forward to a trip to NYC to catch up with their Wesleyan friends and fellow alumni.

In March another Cardinal became a Bobcat. Leana Amaez ’02 joined Bates College as the vice president of equity and inclusion. Prior to Bates, Leana spent eight years at Bowdoin College as associate dean of students for diversity, equity, and inclusion. She has also led diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at an international insurance company and at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. Leana began her career as a public defender in the Bronx, and later directed pro bono services for Maine’s civil legal service provider, Pine Tree Legal Assistance. I look forward to working with Leana to ensure that the college’s commitment to equity and inclusion is reflected authentically in campus culture, policies, and practices. Besides Leana, Matt Coyne ’12 (head football coach) and Stephen Engel ’98 (professor of politics and associate dean of the faculty) are at Bates too. Anyone else want to join us?

In the last issue, Kevin reported that the daughter of Avi Spivack and Nataly Kogan ’98 is at Wesleyan in the Class of 2026.  For those of you who have children in high school, let me know if you have any questions about the college application process or if you are planning a visit to Bates College. Happy to help in any way I can!

Earlier this year, Kevin had the chance to grab a drink with Alister Adams ’00 while he was in NYC on business. It had been a long time, and one of the blessings of travel picking back up is the opportunity to see more long-lost Wes friends.

Kevin and I would love to hear from more of you for the next issue. So, send us any updates or stories to share. In the meantime, we hope you are enjoying the summer!—Darryl

Hi fellow classmates,

Hopefully by the time you’re reading this, everyone who went to our 25th (what?!?) Reunion will have had a fabulous time reliving the glory days on Foss Hill and kvetching about what’s changed since our time. . . .

In individual news, your previous Class Notes collector, Jason Becton, and his family (husband Patrick, daughters Marian and Betty) recently moved about 20 minutes south of Charlottesville to North Garden, Virginia, for an even quieter life in the country. Jason and Patrick still own MarieBette Café & Bakery, and their second location Petite MarieBette, in the “city” of Charlottesville. Jason is looking forward to catching up with everyone at Reunion this year!

Nicole Macotsis lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, with her two kids and pandemic dog.  She was happy to get paid a trick-or-treat visit by Laura Polonia and her son, who also live in the hood, last Halloween. She sees Annie Ackley as much as she can and aspires to see long-lost Luiselle Rivera by the time this is in print. Nicole got a second MA at Goucher in cultural sustainability but has been transitioning out of public folk arts work (due to her full-time single parenting gig) and is now a movement teacher, offering sessions to women for pelvic floor and core health at macotsismovement.com.

Last summer Georgia Silvera Seamans met up with Nadia Wynter and her family—yay! She is excited to be seeing more of Carrie Seabury. She is happy to be teaching a course about the environmental and cultural history of urban parks and using two public parks in NYC as her muse, and is the creator and host of the Your Bird Story podcast, now in its third season. If you’ve got a bird story based in a city, she wants to know about it!

In April Lynn Chen screened her directorial debut I Will Make You Mine (that her husband Abe Forman-Greenwald edited) on the Wesleyan campus with a Q&A. The movie also features John Newman and is currently streaming on Paramount+ and VOD.

Cassie Mecsery wrote in with a bit of heartache. After a two-year battle with glioblastoma (the most deadly form of brain cancer), her husband Sean passed away in May 2022, leaving her to run his family business started in 1945, Cos Cob TV & Audio in Greenwich, Connecticut. Cassie has children from her marriage to Sean: Calista (7) and Westley Stephen (4). The GoFundMe which was used for Sean’s medical treatments and caregiving, has transitioned to help pay for future expenses for their children in the coming years. Cassie writes, “Sean’s diagnosis in 2019 with stage 4 brain cancer, glioblastoma, rocked our world. One day I was at home with our two kids, and the next I was being told my husband had months and, if lucky, a couple years to live. We got two years, but not without a lot of grit and challenge. We are still struggling to come to terms with his death, but are learning to live life with gratitude for the time we had. I see life a bit differently now, and am working on how best to live out his legacy.”

That’s it for now. Be well all and be kind to yourselves and others.

Best,

Abby

Here are the latest updates. . . .

Alek Lev is directing the opera Orpheus & Erica (an adaptation of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice), with a mixed cast of hearing opera singers and deaf actors with Victory Hall Opera in Charlottesville, Virginia. Alek notes that considering that he was a theater major at school with a focus on directing and began his acquisition of American Sign Language in ASL 1, it seems as though he is actually working in a job that leverages precisely what he studied at Wesleyan. As he says, “it’s a liberal arts miracle.” The performance will be available to stream after the end of the run on VictoryHallOpera.org. We saw the video trailer, and it looks phenomenal! We are looking forward to watching the performance online.

Madeleine Perez writes from LA, where she has been with her husband and son for 12 years now. She is a Realtor at Compass and was named as one of their top 25 agents in 2021 and 2022. Congratulations, Madeleine! She would love to hear from other Wes people out here so please reach out! And she says it really did snow in LA in February.

Sasha’s family got a puppy, who is very cute but wakes up sooooo early. But again, so cute, so all is forgiven.

We wish everyone here and all your people (and puppies and friends and nonhumans) the absolute best. And please email us your updates.

Best,

Jessica and Sasha