Class Notes

After 20-plus years in educational theater, Andrea (Wilson) McCoy recently joined the mass exodus of public school teachers to take on a new position as head of children’s services for a town library. Although it’s an adjustment not having summers off, she’s enjoying a better work-life balance with her spouse, two kids, and two dogs.

Leslie Spencer, née Burns, and her family of four—Izaac, Reid (11), and Cole (8)—had an amazing July in Costa Rica! They met every monkey and swam in every waterfall.

Matt Kushner just marked his two-year anniversary at Illuminarium Experiences, where he was recently promoted to director of software. In addition to Atlanta and Las Vegas venues, a new Illuminarium opened in Toronto at the end of the summer, a joint venture with Secret Location. More venues are on the horizon, both nationally and internationally, at the end of 2023 and into 2024. Meanwhile, Lauren Kushner (Brown ’04) continues to enhance the American Museum of Natural History’s museum experience with her animations, most recently in the brand-new Gilder Center where the insect interactives she collaborated on are featured. Kids, Mimi and Tessa, are thriving, enjoying summer camp, and ready to enter third and first grade respectively in the fall.

Ryan Garbalosa was recently honored with the Hilton P. Terrell Teacher of the Year Award by the McLeod Residency Program for his dedication to medical education. In May he teamed up with Greg Ferrucci and Carmen Carrillo to make the trek back to Wes for the 20th Reunion, making sure to visit their old rooms at La Casa and reminisce on the hill with fellow ’03ers. Along for the ride was wife, Lucy Garbalosa, and soon-to-be-born Rafael R. Garbalosa, making his first of many trips to Wesleyan!

George Obulutsa is still going strong as a journalist at Reuters News based in Nairobi.

Here’s this edition’s notes from our classmates!

Paul Smaldino, who lives in Sacramento, wrote: “In my academic career, I published a book—a graduate-level textbook on modeling social behavior, out this fall. I also have a band, The Small Dinosaurs, and we just put out an album called Dad Songs [released in August]—a garage/art rock album about the milieu of fatherhood. I have two kids and a wife.”

Jenny He sent along this news: “The exhibition John Waters: Pope of Trash, curated by Jenny He and Dara Jaffe ’09, MA ’12, is on view at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles from September 17, 2023, through August 4, 2024. It is accompanied by a 256-page catalog edited with text by Jenny and Dara. The book includes an essay by Jeanine Basinger and the exhibition features loans from the John Waters Archive housed in the Ogden and Mary Louise Reid Cinema Archives at the Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies.”

No Accident, a film Michelle Rabinowitz Carney produced for HBO Documentary Films, premiered on MAX October 10. It follows the civil suit against the organizers of 2017’s deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and features fellow Wes alum Michael Bloch ’00, who represented the plaintiffs.

Jed Rosenbaum and his wife, Jillian, welcomed baby Zachary to the family in March. They live in Lexington, Massachusetts. Four-year-old Wesley keeps asking when he will get to see the tennis team play again—he attended last fall’s Alumni Pro-Am and a match at Tufts and very much enjoys the “Go Wes” cheers.

Steve Scribner is still living in Denver, co-principal of Shape Architecture Studio. His partner in crime, Morgan Law, is married to Kathleen Jones ’03. Morgan and Kathleen live in Leadville, the highest elevation town in the country, and have two kids and a husky and several bikes, as you do in a mountain town.

Steve wrote, “We’re heading to the East Coast tomorrow, and on the way to see my folks in Maine, will visit Dina Levi in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she is a diversity and inclusion director at Amherst College. She has an awesome wife and two amazing kids, one of whom can play the violin better than you, dear reader. If we’re lucky we may also see Josh Blumenstock and Annie Youngerman ’03 AND Marcel Paret ’00 and Jessie Mandle, who all may just happen to also be visiting Massachusetts. Josh and Annie are living the dream in Berkeley—he’s a professor and she’s a landscape architect. Marcel and Jessie are living the dream in Salt Lake City—he’s also a professor and she’s program director for the Healthy School’s campaign. They have two kids and a sweet old house and a really organized woodshop.”

Steve continued with more updates: “Ryan Huggins is still living in Durango, Colorado, and being a badass—we recently saw her in Denver after she completed yet another half Ironman (yes, she’s also finished a couple of full Ironman’s). She has a house and a huge garden and chickens and a business doing green energy consulting and makes time to enjoy the mountains. And in an incredible alignment of the stars, both Bajir Cannon and John Gordon were sighted (not by me) at the same time and in the same place in North Carolina! Bajir lives outside Kyoto and John is still living in Shanghai. They both have their own companies: if you want to learn bridge talk to Bajir, if you want to learn Chinese, talk to John. Has anyone seen Erik Dawe? He’s still living in D.C., working way too much on really interesting engineering projects.”

As for me (your class secretary), I recently earned a News and Documentary Emmy nomination for a short film I produced called The Sentence of Michael Thompson, which was co-distributed by MSNBC Films and the AVOD/FAST that I co-founded, Documentary+. Another film I produced, The Territory (Nat Geo/ Disney+), was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards and won the entire film team a Peabody Award this year, including me and our esteemed editor Carlos Rojas. Also, Gasoline Rainbow, a hybrid scripted/documentary film I produced, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, and will come out on MUBI later this year. Lastly, another film I produced, Periodical, about menstrual justice, the stigma surrounding periods, and two incredible young women fighting to repeal the tampon tax state by state, premieres theatrically in October in LA, NY, Canada, Miami, and the UK, and will premiere on MSNBC and Peacock in mid-November. It’s a great film, please support!

Keep sending notes my way!

Our 2001 class is as busy as ever.

Emily Barth Isler and husband Jim Isler just celebrated 19 years of marriage and four years of living in Los Angeles with their two children. Jim created a kids’ series for PBS about the origin of animal idioms, which is premiering this fall. Emily, author of AfterMath, an award-winning book for middle school–aged kids and adults, has written two more books that were recently announced. The Color of Sound is a middle-grade novel that will be published by Lerner Book Group in March 2024, and Emily’s first picture book, Always Enough Love, will be out from Penguin/Nancy Paulsen Books in 2026.

Will Engel is writing a novella! Will tells us that it’s a comedic story about Santa Monica neighbors during the quarantine. The working title is, I Live in Sweatpants: the Life and Times of Jamie Jordan. Will is putting the finishing touches on his novella and hopes the story can translate well into television.

After a series of adventures, Somachi (Chikwe) Kachikwu is back in Maryland working as a curriculum director for a training agency while pursuing her doctorate in education. Life has taken Somachi to Nigeria and England since graduation, but now she’s back home. Somachi looks forward to reconnecting with many of our fellow classmates soon.

Lisa Weinert’s recently published book, Narrative Healing, offers a new paradigm for personal growth, self-care, and community action through an embodied writing practice. Her six-step process of healing through storytelling—awaken, listen, express, inspire, connect, and grow— incorporates somatic practices, creative prompts, and mindfulness exercises to guide readers in releasing stories held within their bodies.

Thanks so much to everyone who shared their news. We love hearing from you.

Best,

Aryn and Mara

From Chinelo Dike-Minor: “Still very much in touch with my Wes girls, Shakira Adams and Karen Alvarez ’02. Living in Birmingham, Alabama, with my husband and two boys, and teaching law. My PSA: I have recently learned that roasted broccoli is truly quite delicious. Who knew?”

Claudia Cruz visited Miami, Florida, in July for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Convention where she moderated a panel on the need for more Latino business reporters to help close the wealth gap in the U.S. A past-president of the NAHJ San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, she now teaches journalism courses at the University of Nevada, Reno. While in South Florida, Claudia met up with Anne Janet “A. J.” Hernandez Anderson (formerly De Ases). A. J.’s daughter Sienna’s 10th birthday brought the two former Hi Rise roommates together after more than a decade. A. J. is a senior supervising attorney at Southern Poverty Law Center where she helps develop and litigate individual and federal class action cases.

From Lauren Anderson: “I’m sending an update on behalf of the husband and mutual friends of a Wes friend who recently passed. . . . Yi-wen Huang  passed away on June 16, 2023. Her Wesleyan achievements included earning a Freeman Scholarship, Phi Beta Kappa, and University Honors in Chemistry. She is missed dearly by her loving husband, Bor-rong Chen, her boys, Aiden and Brandon, and the many friends she made at Wesleyan and beyond. A full obituary can be found here.”

Serena Jones is “working as a book editor at Holt and living in Rye, New York, with my three boys.” She attended a gathering of Eagle’s Nest Camp alums in Asheville, North Carolina, and had the pleasure of reuniting with former staffers AND Wes alums: Ami Student ’00, Katie Barge Paris ’01, Erin Malone ’03, and Margot Wallston ’98.

From Leora Wien, reporting from Los Angeles: “I met with Tony Ducret one dark and stormy night at a bar in North Hollywood. We both felt good about the outdoor air circulation and had a lot to catch up on. In June, happily gave Jessica Sanders ’99 a fabulous in-person hug. This August, I had long overdue quality time with Laura Plageman ’99 et famille in the Bay Area. As an educational therapist, I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with language arts and social studies teacher Sarah Chaskes ’91.

As the Class Notes were going to press, we were saddened to learn about the passing of our classmate Andrew Silverman. Please read more about him here.

#BallerAlert! Leander (Altifois) Dolphin was named to Corporate Counsel Business Journal’s inaugural list of “50 Women to Watch.” Leander was elevated by her firm to the role of co-managing partner in 2021, and then to the role of sole managing partner in 2022. She is the first African American woman in the firm’s history to lead as managing partner. As you can read in this press release on her recognition, this is only one of many accolades she’s received for her groundbreaking work. Way to go, Leander! (I can proudly say I knew you back when we were RAs in our junior year).

Chad Bartell is staying busy practicing business law in Madison, Wisconsin, by day and playing gigs by night with Panchromatic Steel—the steel band he founded in 2016. The band recently performed with steelpan luminary Andy Narell and is working on a recording that will feature a composition originally performed at Wesleyan’s CFA for the senior thesis recital of his Uncle Trouble bandmate, Kabir Sen.

Rachel Afi Quinn spent a year on sabbatical in NYC as a fellow at the Schomburg, working on a black feminist biography of mixed race pianist and journalist Philippa Duke Schuyler, seeing friends and lots of art and theater, and sharing her first book, Being La Dominicana: Race and Gender in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo, with many interested readers in the Northeast. “Enjoyed my time in the city and you may see me back in the city some summers.” Rachel also received a 2023–24 fellowship from the National Endowment of the Humanities to continue that writing. “In this era of remote work, I will spend my fall with family in Ghana and spring with friends (who are like family) in the Dominican Republic, while finalizing the translation of my first book.”

Alison MacAdam is still living in D.C. and working in audio journalism. “Most recently, I edited a podcast called The 13th Step, about sexual misconduct in addiction treatment. In lighter news, I have a 13-year-old who has fallen in love with ultimate Frisbee (how Wes-ish!), and I’ve enjoyed reuniting on the soccer field with my Wesleyan teammate, Alison Brody ’97. I have also had some lovely visits with old Wesleyan friends, including Sahra Halpern and Dan Engler, Scott Cavanaugh and Ashley Grant ’00, Greg Brodsky, Leila Buck and Adam Abel ’98, Sean Bowditch, Ilya Marritz, and Marisa Kurtzman.”

Abbie Goldberg is still a professor of clinical psychology at Clark University but has also joined The Williams Institute at the UCLA Law School as a faculty affiliate. This has helped her to leverage her research on the effects of anti-LGBTQ legislation such as the Don’t Say Gay law in Florida. Her work on this issue has been featured in many mainstream news outlets including The New York Times. She has also published a few books over the past few years, including LGBTQ Family Building: A Guide for Prospective Parents (2022) and The (Mis)Representations of Queer Lives in True Crime (2023).

Arthur Baraf is in his 18th year as a public school high school principal at The Met, in Providence, Rhode Island. In November he’ll be a Fulbright Leaders for Global Schools scholar in Germany, where he’ll be visiting Jed Koslow in Berlin. Arthur is still married with two teen daughters, and still plays ultimate like he did for Nietzsche Factor but much slower.

Kevin’s company, Virta Health, was recently featured in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Companies of 2023. “While they surprisingly gave the cover of the print issue to Kim Kardashian instead of us, it’s great to see recognition for what we’re building to address the obesity and diabetes epidemic in the U.S.! Wish my mom and dad were still with us to be able to see my name in print in a publication that they would have heard of.”

Anthony Veneziale wrote in to say he saw a LOT of our classmates as he went to the 25th Reunion at Wes and it was awesome. He saw soooo many amazing humans—too many to name! Since last he wrote, his show Freestyle Love Supreme (which he created along with Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02, Hon. ’15 and Thomas Kail ’99) won a special Tony Award and then did a national tour, which reopened many of the national regional theaters after COVID. The tour included nine major cities and fellow Wes alum Andrew Bancroft ’00. Sadia Shepard ’97 (now professor of film at Wes), Ashley Knaysi, and Anthony organized a Gag Reflex reunion show for the 25th Reunion along with current Gag Reflex members in the World Music Hall. They had an absolute blast performing and doing a talk back afterward about improv in our lives.

Sachita Shah is enjoying the Seattle summer, working as an ER doctor in both Seattle and Anchorage, and loving taking care of her two daughters and pup Cookie. She’s been in contact with Caleb Langsam ’99, who has an awesome dog named Max and lives in Portland, Oregon; and Matt Downes, who, with wife Kim, just had a second kiddo, and lives in Geneva, Switzerland!

Rev. Dr. Yolanda Denson-Byers has been called as the senior pastor of Shepherd of the Hills (SOTH) Lutheran Church in Edina, Minnesota (sothchurch.com).  She will be formally installed in September 2023.

And Dana M. Peterson was so very honored to receive the prestigious Wesleyan Distinguished Alumna Award in Recognition of Outstanding Achievements and Service at the May 2023 Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association.

Hi Everyone,

We are heartbroken to report that we have lost another member of our class. Mike Mittelman wrote, “In sad news, Brandon Cook, who was class of ’97, lost his fight with leukemia on Easter Sunday of this year. There were many members of our class who had a chance to visit him and say goodbye in San Francisco this winter. Two of us, Adam Rodnitzky and I, spoke at his celebration of life. He was a huge personality and we all miss him terribly.”

Andrew Frishman reached out to share a few of his recent Wes-related connections. “Leigh Needleman ’96 and I are still loving living in Cambridge near Central Square—our kids (age 10 and 13) are attending the Cambridge Public Schools, where they are classmates with the daughter of Laura Warren ’98, who lives a few blocks from us. It’s been great to have our families hang out together. Leigh and I attended a Wesleyan event at an alum’s home who is a professor at MIT—they hosted an introduction to the proposed new design for the newest addition to the Wesleyan CFA . . . . Sounds like they are planning on converting (and expanding) an existing building into a new dance (and theater?) complex not far from Low Rise? . . . . It was interesting to see the ways in which they were seeking to create something new while also preserve some of the building’s original architecture . . . . Speaking of architecture, I recently had a phone call with Alex Jermyn in Berkeley, California, and his architecture firm/studio has been taking off and building all sorts of super-cool houses (particularly up in the mountains) that have been celebrated and featured in a number of prestigious architecture publications—check it out here: https://www.aj-a.co/. I had a phone call with the inimitable Sasha Cooke, (Wes alum and squash coach) who is currently in Tucson, Arizona, and anticipates relocating to Vermont sometime in the coming year(s).”

Andrew wrote, “My work as co-executive director of ‘Big Picture Learning’ continues to be invigorating and inspiring. If there’s anyone out there interested in collaborating to create new forms of public education that focus more on interest-driven real-world learning situated in the community beyond the walls of the classroom/school, I’d be glad to [re]connect.”

Sadia Shepard wrote, “I just finished my third year as an assistant professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan, and I am loving the chance to engage with the Wesleyan community in a new way. If you are back on campus, please drop me a line! You can always find me at sshepard@wesleyan.edu.” Congratulations, Professor Shepard and good luck with your fourth year!

And for our latest update . . .  Ashvin Shah “still doesn’t have his shit together.” We get it, Ashvin—don’t most of us, if not ALL of us, feel the same way, despite all of the adulting? We wish everyone the best, always. Thank you for sharing.

Sending positive energy to you all as we continue to navigate 2023 together.

Sasha and Jess

1996ers family: As we leave the summer months behind, I wish all my classmates well as we look forward to all the fresh blessings of the fall season. Now on to some great updates from folks!

Emily (Merowitz) Tedeschi writes in that after working for 18 years at the largest health system in New Jersey, she joined CommonSpirit, one of the largest health systems in the country, working in their national foundation office as system director of prospect development and research. She asks any of her classmates who are fundraisers or people who work with fundraisers, “let me know; there are always jobs opening up in our 80-plus hospital foundations, mostly on the West Coast.”

Dacque Tirado had dinner and drinks with Dan Mirsky ’97 in Silver Spring, Maryland—the two caught up on all the happenings in their lives, shared pictures of their kids, and recounted great memories from their Middletown days. He also writes that he had an epic summer of international travel as he chaperoned a cultural immersion trip with his students to Buenos Aires, Argentina (magical city), in June. Then was off to Spain with other high school educators where he walked the Camino Ignaciano—selected spots along the way from Bilbao to Barcelona.

Jullia Chowdhury–Quazi and her husband are finally done with the years of tireless educational advocacy. Their son, Kairan, graduated from Santa Clara University in June, at age 14, as the youngest grad in the institution’s history, joined SpaceX in July as the youngest software engineer on the planet, has been featured in thousands of media pieces across the globe, and will soon be inducted into Guinness. Jullia took a three-year break from a career in health-care M&A and looks forward to the next chapter as the family returns to some form of normalcy.

After nearly 25 years in network news as an award-winning reporter and TV and podcast producer, Stacey Samuel has branched out and started her own firm producing podcast series for streaming services, nonprofits with a mission, and global clients.

Christianne Rennke Phillips has taken her two decades as a holistic fitness instructor and nationally titled/winner competitor and certified chef and is now working on a book combining food and culture, drawing on her Chilean heritage and family.

Danny Atwood has taken to writing short stories with his writing group (books selling on Amazon), joined the furry community and attended conventions in character, even managed to learn digital art making. But best of all is the moonlighting gig taken on as the “Real Bearded Santa,” being hired out as a Santa Claus Christmas performer to spread joy and good cheer. “What started out as a lark, buying a Santa suit from Amazon and wearing it out into my neighborhood during the pandemic to bring a little magic to neighbors who desperately needed it, has turned into something much bigger. Getting old and fat isn’t so bad after all!”

In July 2023, Tracie Broom enjoyed a vacation reunion in Italy at the MacZoni Recanati Estate with a bunch of Wes grads. Jason Walchli, his wife, Pamela Bock, and their two kids, Eli and Casey, came from Portland, Oregon. Tony Schloss ’97 and Juno Shaye ’98 came from Brooklyn with their three kiddos, Cy, Uno, and Paloma. Diego Gutierrez ’97 and Kim Diaz ’97 came from LA with their two kids, Bruno and Dahlia. (The MacZoni estate is owned by their dear friends, Mariah Maclachlan and Peldi Guilizzoni, who are known well to many Wes friends around the country.) Back home in Columbia, South Carolina, Tracie and Debi Schadel, the co-owner of her marketing and communications firm, Flock and Rally, were both honored on the Free Times’ “Power List 2023: 30 People Shaping Arts, Culture and Food in Columbia” and they have been successfully delegating most agency operations to their CEO in the last year—a real milestone for entrepreneurs! Tracie and her partner, Scott Nuelken, spent the rest of the summer getting his daughter, June, ready for freshman year at Wofford College in South Carolina. Tracie is deep into gardening and loves to see nerdy gardening posts from fellow Wes folks on social media.

Please write to your class secretaries.

Caissa writes for this issue.

Hello, all! I hope that this message finds you well. My prayers go out to everyone impacted by the wildfires, storms, earthquakes, and other recent incidents. May you and your families be safe.

On this front, my family is well, and all are accounted for, thankfully. As August comes to a close, it feels like another summer flew by rather quickly. Happily, aside from work, I have been enjoying the beautiful weather; spending lots of time with family; and painting with acrylics, as often as possible. This native Bronx girl even took in a Mets game recently and was pleasantly surprised when they won.

In other news . . .

Holly Bennet writes, “As (one of our) class agents, I want to thank you all for your show of support to Wes this year! Great things are happening AND we have a monumental reunion coming up next year—30! (Brooke Singer, you better finally get back to campus.)” She is still out in Southern California and is now building robot cars to “save us from ourselves and to improve our communities and the climate crisis.” Holly adds that she is also grappling with the fact that “our daughter, Eleanor, is going all the way to The Other Coast for college. I’d be totally wretched except she is going to WES! She has already made off with all my ‘vintage swag.’”

Kate Foster shares that she has started a new job working for the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy as their Mid-Atlantic director of Trail Development, which is based in Baltimore. She adds, “my two daughters are in college, so I’m learning how to do the empty-nest thing after two decades of having kids at home.”

Joseph Mahoney and Deborah Levin Mahoney ’96 write, “Our son is heading to Wesleyan this fall to be a 2027 grad.”

Well, that is all for now. Congratulations to all and a warm welcome to our future Wesleyan alumni!🎊