Class Notes

Hey fellow ’96ers. Hope this message finds you all well in our 25th Wesleyan Reunion year. It warmed my heart to see so many of you at the Reunion festivities.Thanks to the Reunion committee that put together a superb program to reconnect us all.

Over the summer months I have connected with other Wes folks that crossed paths with us in 1996—Lucius Outlaw ’93 and Brande Fulgencio ’97, Andy McGadney ’92 and Robert “Bobbito” Garcia ’88.

   Stacey Samuels sends news that she joined a Midwest college tour with Kristen Worrell and her next generation college students—both her twins. Of course their first visit was to dear old Wesleyan at the start of the process.

   Tracie Broom is happy to report that the branding and marketing agency she co-founded in 2010, Flock and Rally, made it through the pandemic and recently was honored with five South Carolina Public Relations Society of America Mercury Awards of Excellence and three Palmetto Awards of Excellence from the South Carolina chapter of the International Business Communicators of America. Tracie and her business partner were just recognized by the regional alt weekly paper in its “Power List” of the top 30 people who shape Columbia, South Carolina’s culture, and the firm just landed a two-year contract to provide communications services to the National Science Foundation’s new Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA). When she’s not practicing the fine art of delegating at work, she can be found chilling in the pool with her partner Scott and his teen daughter, harvesting zinnias, okra and eggplant in her garden, and making long overdue travel plans to visit fellow Wes alums like Kate Baker in Mexico.

   Shola Olatoye and Matthew Strozier send news that they moved their brood of three (15, 13 and 6) kids to the West Coast during the pandemic from New York City. Matthew is still with The Wall Street Journal and Shola is heading up Oakland’s housing and community development department. They scored housing by renting Susan Yee and her husband’s lovely house. Their Oakland Wes “campus” saw socially distanced visits from Jake Ward and his family and Phil Cho ’95 and his wife. They have since bought their own place in this crazy Bay Area housing market (someone should really do something about that!). They have frequent Zoom cocktails with Tracey Gardner, Randy Slaughter and Aisha Cook, who all now live in Westchester County.They look forward to a fall holiday trip East where we can see all our Wes peeps in real life!

   Cathy Thomas writes that she is an assistant professor in the Department of English at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She writes, “My research and teaching covers Caribbean literature and carnival culture, Black feminist thought and play, comic books, science studies, TV/visual and media culture.”

   Danièle Côté (formerly Daniele Bucar) writes that she made the move to Maine about 15 years ago, got married, changed career to nursing, and now has two kids—an 8-year-old girl and a 6- year-old son—with her husband who is an occupational therapist. She’s worked in a number of areas of the nursing profession but is currently a circulating nurse for a local hospital’s surgical department.

She keeps in touch regularly with a few of our 1996 classmates and one of her best friends who is class of 1997, but if anyone is in the Maine, New Hampshire, or Massachusetts area, she would love to hear updates on her fellow New Englanders!

That’s all for now and I am sticking with it—I always enjoy catching-up with all of you so feel free to always drop me a line with news to update folks with!

Yours in the MoCon bond.

Hello fellow ’95ers!

Bo Bell writing here with updates, starting with some sad news from Danny Greene, Leslie (Katz) Genova, and Sarah Hirzel: Our dear friend and classmate Andy Neiman passed away in June. Leslie, Danny, Sarah, Gregg Osofsky, Jennifer (Scheff) Ransburg, Tomer Rothschild ’94, and Jessica Sharzer ’94 gathered in St. Louis to remember him at a memorial service, with many more Wes friends joining online. Many of you will remember Andy’s energy, creativity, and his pie-themed parties. He was a one-of-a-kind person and friend, and we miss him terribly. Donations in Andy’s memory may be made to the National Alliance of Mental Illness, the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, or to his family. We hope everyone will see a Shakespeare play and eat a slice of pie in his memory.

Former class secretary Dwayne Busby was recently appointed to the board of directors of JSC Federal Credit Union, strengthening that institution’s connection to University of Houston–Clear Lake, where Dwayne is executive director of Strategic Partnerships. Dwayne said that he’s so excited about this, because JSC FCU recently finalized their new strategic plan that aimed to become more of a digital resource to the community to which it provides financial resources; his joining the board is helping the credit union become more agile in that way. Nice work, Dwayne!

     “Meanne” Jeanne Bonner writes: “All is well in Connecticut where I moved in 2017 with my partner and my son, Leo, who is now 9. I’m headed to New York in August for a short-term fellowship I won at the New York Public Library to do some research on an Italian writer who survived the Holocaust and whose work I am translating into English. I still work part-time as a news editor at CNN while also teaching writing and literature part-time. I sometimes even teach at Wes! When I returned to campus in 2019, I felt as though I was walking with the ghosts of Jeanne Past! It was actually a thrill, and the campus has changed in some very good ways. Lots of benches to sit back and enjoy!”

     Scott Rubin just started a new position as Assistant Vice President of Development at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. Looking forward to advancing Einstein’s social justice mission and raising funds for groundbreaking research and top-notch medical education.

    Cheryl Mejia continues her work in interventional pain management, working several offices in rural western Maryland, with ownership in surgery centers on the horizon. She’s still supporting LGBT, diversity, and inclusion programs through her wife’s job as LGBT nurse navigator at Hopkins, and she also volunteers, does board work, and helps charities.

     Tavia Nyongo is still teaching at Yale, where “I was recently named chair and William Lampson Professor of Theater and Performance Studies. I’m also active in American Studies, African American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. After a busy year teaching remotely, I’m looking forward to returning (safely) to the classroom soon.”

     Jason Segal reports, “After 13 years working in climate-related finance, our business, Javelin Capital, is overwhelmed with opportunity as investing in ESG themes has become mainstream. I hope to connect with more fellow climate finance travelers from Wes. Kids (Julia 7, Ari 6) continue to be enjoying life in and around NYC with plenty of time at the beach this summer. Very happy to see them growing up in NYC and attending public schools here—something I never had the opportunity to do. We are pulling for NYC and hanging in through these choppy waters.”

     Ryan Knox was recently named Dean of Students at New Haven Academy, an urban, collegiate-prep charter school.  He’s also in final negotiations to publish his book about his experience during the student protests in Hong Kong, where he also taught and resided as an expat from 2011 to 2015. Ryan lives with his partner, garden, and goldfish in the Little Italy section of New Haven, Connecticut.

     Josh Gilbert writes, I’m happy to let everyone know that my and Carey Bartell’s daughter, Eloise (’25), is now a frosh at Wes, exactly 30 years after we all matriculated! Excited to have great excuses to get back on campus. Also, Temperance Beer Co. (the brewery I founded in 2013 but is perhaps better remembered as the official beer of our 25th Reunion) once again hosted our four-day outdoor concert, Out of Space, on Labor Day weekend. It’s kind of like Spring Fling but without Foss Hill. This year’s acts were Big Boi, J.D. McPherson & the Drive-By Truckers, Neko Case, and (former Spring Fling performer) George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic.

Greetings from Chicago! The pandemic continues with the Delta variant causing increased anxiety and higher infection rates around the country. I hope that everyone and their families, friends, and loved ones are all safe. Summer came to an end and my two daughters returned to in-person school. They are now in the 7th grade!  I caught up with my sister Humera Syeda ’90 in Albany, New York, with her kids and our parents over the summer.

     Suzie Purcell Byers ’94 and Carl Bradford Byers ’93 moved to Spain in September 2020 so that Suzie could begin serving as Head of School at Madrid Montessori. Because of the pandemic, Carl was able to do his venture capital work at F-Prime Capital and his teaching of entrepreneurial finance at Harvard completely online. Also, their older two children decided to take gap years from college so that they could join them. Their son, Jacob Purcell Byers, will graduate from Wesleyan with a BA in Film and English in May 2022, after having earned his masters in Spanish TV writing at ECAM in June 2021. Their older daughter, Emily Purcell Byers, began her undergraduate degree at Amherst College in August 2021. Their younger daughter, Katherine Purcell Byers, just finished a year at American School of Madrid and will continue her high school years at Concord Academy in Massachusetts.

    Kate Gordon ’94 writes that she joined the U.S. Department of Energy as a senior advisor to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. In this post, she will be working to implement President Biden’s executive order calling for an equitable and just energy transition in coal, oil and gas, and power plant communities. Kate previously served for two and a half years as the director of the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, and a senior advisor to Governor Newsom on climate policy.

    Jessica Sharzer sent this heartbreaking update: “Wesleyan has been very much on my mind these days. I was a transfer student so I had my orientation with the incoming class of 1995.  I bonded with a guy named Andy Neiman ’95 and we remained friends for the last 30 years.  When he had a psychotic break right after he graduated, I flew out to Saint Louis to see him in a psychiatric hospital. Andy struggled for years with mental illness and died by suicide in June.  I recently traveled to Saint Louis for his memorial and burial and saw a half dozen Wesleyan folks. Although it was tragic circumstances, it was nice to bond with old acquaintances and exchange memories about Andy.” Deepest condolences to Andy’s family and friends.

As you can see, I received few updates.  I know people keep in touch on other social media platforms but please continue to send in updates so that we can include them here too. Stay safe everyone!

Hi Wes friends. Thank you so much for writing in, and sharing your news. In the space below, you will find updates about careers, cross-country moves, a new college president, and the launching of a political campaign. Please continue to share your news with us!

     Micah Cormier emails, “I can report I’ve moved with my family to a quintessential New England town on the Connecticut shoreline, about 30 minutes from Wesleyan. My wife Melissa and I work at Yale, where I make short films to promote research and scholarship at the university (drawing on my past experience working on documentaries for television). I spend the rest of my time trying to be a good dad to my daughter Sadie (12) and son Lucas (8), developing my own documentary projects, and taking beginner piano lessons.”

     Anna Balivet Jordan writes, “I am in the Seattle area working as a celebrant specializing in celebration of life and memorial services. I write and officiate ceremonies across the life cycle including weddings. My website can be found at ritualarrangements.com. I’m also working toward a funeral director’s license and hope to use my directorship to advocate for family directed funerals, and green burial practices.”

     Dan Kapelovitz was a candidate for governor of California in the 2021 recall election.

     Camille McGadney writes, “We are moving to Galesburg, Illinois, where Andy ’92 is the new president of Knox College.”

     Jodi Samuels writes, “Last October, I moved into a new position as director of strategic support for colleges and scholars at the Foundation for California Community Colleges. The position was created to launch the new Finish Line Scholars Program, which provides scholarships to economically disadvantaged students who are at least halfway through their educational program and emergency aid to students facing unexpected financial hardships. The program was created thanks to a pledge of $100 million over 20 years from the Jay Pritzker Foundation, representing the largest gift ever to community colleges! I’m also overseeing two grant programs that support projects for nursing education and real estate education and will be gradually taking over responsibility for the Osher Scholars Program, which provides scholarship support for all 115 California community colleges. Given the current conversations happening nationally and at the federal level about community colleges, it’s an exciting time to be working in this field!”

Greetings and salutations from Washington, D.C.

It was great to check in with my old housemate Ralph Martin from Berlin. He is busy with his German wife, three German-American kids, and a German screenwriting gig writing shows created in Germany aimed at an international audience including Hackerville, which he created and is now on HBOMax. HBO is also the place to catch White Lotus, a six-episode soap-satire, written and directed by Mike White, that the New York Times recently called, “a captivating, sharp, and soulful series.” Meredith Tucker is the casting director for the series. So even more reason to watch.

Jonathan Soros just completed a trip across the country. On a bike. He and three teammates from Athletes Unlimited competed in Race Across America (RAAM), logging 3,000 miles from Oceanside, California, to Annapolis, Maryland, in about 6.5 days. The trip included a crazy day of 115-degree temperatures (described as “sitting in a sauna then blow-drying your face with a hair dryer”) in Arizona before climbing into the mountains of Colorado, crossing the flats of the Midwest then racing through the mountains of West Virginia. It was super exciting to see him and his team arrive at 3:00 a.m. in Annapolis. I’m also looking forward to Jonathan’s upcoming visit to the Maryland/Washington, D.C. area to launch Athletes Unlimited Women’s Pro Lacrosse league this weekend. Quite a summer, Jono.

During the pandemic, Jody Sperling continued creating dances with her company, Time Lapse Dance, shifting focus from the stage to producing street festivals, virtual programs, and dance films. Her work has continued to engage with climate and environmental issues—her short film Single Use, a response to plastic pollution, was recently screened in person at The Harlem International Film Festival. Jody lives with her partner and almost-10-year-old daughter in New York City.

Jody’s work is featured in E. Shura Pollatsek’s new, beautifully illustrated book, Costume in Motion: A Guide to Collaboration for Costume Design and Choreography (Routledge, 2021), with photos by Mitch Wilson. The book continues the studies on collaboration in costume design begun in her first book, Unbuttoned—The Art and Artists of Theatrical Costume Design. The book also includes an interview with Robin Shane ’94, assistant professor of Dance Iddrisu Saaka, about West African dance and about her work in sustainable costume design.

Kevin Prufer’s newest book, The Art of Fiction: Poems, has just been released by Four Way Books in New York City.

Joy Rhoden, senior vice president of the American Hospital Association, and her bichon frisé are about to be empty nesters. Her son Nolan (’25) is starting at Wes this fall. He was one of three recipients of the 2021 Hamilton Prize award for creativity and plans to major in neuroscience and Chinese, and minor in studio art, at Wes.

Danae Oratowski is enrolled in a program to become a nurse practitioner. She is currently working as a nurse at NYU Hospital in the acute GI surgery unit and looking forward to seeing everyone next May.

Speaking of our 30th Reunion, be on the lookout for events in your area. Chris Arndt and Oliver Ryan are leading the way with a special mini-reunion, concert and fundraiser planned for January in NYC to kickoff Reunion season. Details are still in the works—Bowery Ballroom, Joe’s Pub, Irving Plaza, and Madison Square Garden are all being discussed—but what we know is it will be a great party for Wes alums and feature the music stylings of Chris, his bass guitar, and his new band of Nashville-based musicians performing their upcoming album Lost Bags, a tribute, in part, to Baggage Claim and those days at Wes.

Looking forward to seeing you in New York City this January and at Wes next May!

It’s truly amazing to think that 30 years ago we had just scattered from campus, looking to find our way in the world. Technology brought us back together for our extended 30th virtual Reunion celebrations, from hangouts and discussions on Zoom to epic trivia to nostalgic frosh hall gatherings on gather.town to a full-on dance party with DJ legend Frank Tuitt. During Reunion, I took no notes of what everyone is up to, so just a few things for now—please write to me with your news!

Big props to Fro Rosqueta who customized the gather.town platform for our Reunion—it’s still there for us to use for gatherings! Check back to Reunion emails for the link, share with friends and go get brunch at MoCon.

Now, onto the news . . . Michael Nachmanoff, as of this writing, serves as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, and has been nominated to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Tracey Osborne, the University of California presidential chair in management of complex systems, has been recognized for her pioneering work in climate change mitigation and its relation to social justice. Tracey leads the Center for Climate Justice at University of California at Merced, though the center will build collaborations across all the UC campuses.

Several of our classmates have joined the Biden-Harris Administration: Narda Jones serves as Legislative Affairs Director for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Spencer Boyer serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy.

Joshua Samuels continues to practice medicine (kidney disease) and teach at the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science in Houston and received promotion to tenured professor in 2020. He’s been on faculty since 2003, and “yes, it took that long from Wes graduation to actually finish training!” Joshua’s distinctions include his annual Houstonia Top Doctors designation and the Dean’s teaching excellence award, received every year since 2015.

Dan Levine, Laura (Lu) Schiavo, and I worked with University Archivist Amanda Nelson to get a digital archive repository for the Class of 1991 initiated. Our class was 100 percent analog, and although many of us share our memories in digital format, those shares are on private company servers, have blurry privacy policies, are not accessible to everyone, and do we know what might happen if the company goes away?

Amanda created a straightforward solution for helping our class via a  form; you can reach out to Amanda directly (anelson01@wesleyan.edu) if you have a much larger collection, or a lot of textual documents or ephemera to donate. She’s also available to answer questions about copyright, privacy, and the take down policy. This project is just getting off the ground, and we’d love to know what you think!

Hello, all.  It was nice to hear from a bunch of new people this time around. Here’s the latest:

Alexis Roberts writes that she, Chris Roberts ’89, and 16-year-old India are moving to Los Angeles for Chris’s new job at the UCLA School of Law (daughter Beatrix ’22 is a senior at Wes and daughter Willa is a sophomore at McGill). They are looking forward to spending lots of time with Liza Maizlish, Ted Skillman ’91, Dan Partland ’92, Ben Brand ’92, and other Wes friends!

In March, John Rasmussen and Krittika Onsanit ’91 met for dinner with another Wes couple, Carolyn Clark and David Patterson, who were in Richmond on one stop of their daughter’s college tour. “We picked a large redbrick restaurant with columns for dinner, so that we could pretend we were on the Olin steps.”

Jonah Pesner’s “happiest update is that my daughter Noa Pesner ’24 had a great first year, culminating with a trip to NCAA finals as part of Wes Women’s Crew who placed fourth overall!”

Meg Steele has launched a walking tour business in her town of Bath, Maine, which was just named one of the “best small towns in America” by Smithsonian Magazine! (Website and social media are Embark Maine Tours.) Meg invites all Wes friends that find themselves nearby to come for a tour!

David Steingart is living in Tallahassee, Florida. “I am a practicing psychotherapist and I have a nine-year-old son. It’s hot.”

Victor Khodadad will be singing the role of Turiddu in New Camerata Opera’s live, fall production of Il Borgo Siciliano. This production will be a unique, 90-minute version of the popular operatic double bill of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The score was prepared by stage director John de los Santos, conductor Sam McCoy, and dramaturg Cori Ellison, and was presented on September 23rd, 25th, 30th and October 2nd at The Muse in Bushwick, Brooklyn. More information is available at www.newcamerataopera.org.

Jennie Bauduy recently got to catch up with “my still dear friend Rona Cohen, who lives with her family in Montclair, New Jersey, and educates and advises state officials on clean energy and climate policy. I generally keep close tabs on my buddies Meg Fry ’91 and Mike Novak, both doing well with their teenage son in Queens, New York, and planning their next adventure biking trip. I am also very happy to still be in touch with Professor Alex Dupuy (we discovered we were cousins at Wesleyan), who is doing very well with his wife in Middletown. My own son is headed to Brown in the fall. He has some longtime friends headed to Wesleyan, so I’m expecting some back and forth between the two campuses. I’ve been working as a journal editor for many years in Washington, D.C., and have recently returned to focusing on my own writing. This year, I published a memoir essay in the Maine Review.”

Carolyn Vellenga Berman, who is associate professor of Literature, chair of Literature and co-chair of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School, wrote to say that she and her husband Greg (’89) “were delighted to attend the in-person graduation of our daughter Hannah ’21 from Wesleyan this spring. Our daughter Milly ’24 will be a sophomore this fall; she’s looking forward to a post-vaccination campus life.” Carolyn’s second book, Dickens and Democracy in the Age of Paper, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2022. “I enjoyed stopping by the Center for the Humanities on campus, remembering how I first got a taste for the life of a scholar.”

Finally, on July 2nd, just as I was wrapping up these notes, I received the wonderful news from James Rosenblatt that “this morning we welcomed our first grandson!  Theodore Rudy Preblich was born to our daughter and her husband. Everyone is happy and healthy but a little tired.”

On that happy note, I wish all of you happiness and health and, as always, look forward to hearing from you.

Our collective class of ’89 good-newsy update is . . . we’re still here. Seriously, cheers to that y’all.

Life is still being lived and we’re going to celebrate this thankful fact with news from some of our classmates:

Lesley Savin reports that she is no longer snowboarding y’all. She is living full time in South Florida now and is currently working as a realtor for Illustrated Properties—selling beautiful homes of all shapes and sizes while making people’s home-owning dreams a reality! (Me next please, Lesley!)

Fun fact: Two of our classmates now have daughters who will also be classmates. Kim Slote and Stephanie Dolgoff bumped into each other (virtually) at an orientation for the parents of incoming students at Sarah Lawrence. Each of their daughters—Kim’s daughter Kate and Stephanie’s daughter Vivian—are now freshmen there.

Stephanie is the mom of twins. So she did the drop-off drill twice and says this: “I’m outrageously proud of my kids Leo and Vivian for earning their places in School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Sarah Lawrence, respectively. But I’m also really proud of myself for only voicing a version of ‘back when WE went off to college. . . ‘ 13,000 times, instead of acting on the urge closer to 13,033 times. My reward is I can go into their room and retrieve everything they ‘borrowed’ from me over the last 18 years.”

My own freshman Foss 6 roommate, Michele Chase, was back on Wesleyan’s campus this year to drop off her son Alessandro—Wesleyan class of 2025. Woohoo, let’s GO! Sidebar: Yes, the Wesleyan housing overlords put two “Micheles-with-one-L” (one from California and the other from New York City each with an interest in some sort of science major at the time) together in a two-room double freshman year because . . . Wesleyan has jokes. I made a friend for life though. So, #winning!

Hearing about students starting college has me in my (good, warm, fuzzy) feelings and thinking about the company that Elizabeth “Betsey” Schmidt has launched!

Betsey is CEO and Founder of MeshED. Imagine a company that engages students of all backgrounds in project-based learning experiences and archives them. So by the time that student gets around to applying to colleges (and/or pursues a professional position somewhere), they have an archive of their works of imagination, social justice, environmental stewardship, etc. So good and also I’m pretty sure I’m glossing over the good they do. So read up on them!

Til next time y’all!

Anna Beane writes “after 25 years of teaching at every type of school (e.g., Wesleyan, a maximum-security prison), I am making a career change to educational technology. Teaching theatre to middle schoolers this past year over Zoom has done me in. A weekly video meet has maintained my sanity with Shirley Suzuki, Barbra Silver, Rachael Nusbaum, Cara Haft, and Diane Purvin ’89. Shirley, Barbra, Cara, and I lived on Foss 6 frosh year, so we’re going on 23 years of life together.”

Ben Junge was promoted to full professor at State University of New York–New Paltz in the Anthropology Department, and had a book come out (called Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair and Resistance in Brazil). I’m excited to be starting a sabbatical year and will spend most of it at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, writing up research about politics and cultural memory in Brazil. Bronwyn Poole, a Santa Fe resident and fellow Class-of-’88er, will be my neighbor!

Desiree Ralls-Morrison was recently named the General Counsel of McDonald’s Corporation, and her son graduated Wesleyan this year.

David (DJ) Hallett lives with his husband in Jackson, New Hampshire; they also spend time at a second home in Marblehead, Massachusetts. David’s a lawyer (30 years in practice) handling residential and commercial real estate transactions in New Hampshire and Massachusetts with his own company. On weekends, he helps out at his husband’s chocolate shop, and eats lots of chocolate.

He writes: “In August 2018 I attended the Wesleyan Writer’s Workshop after I finished a young adult novel I had written—it was amazing being back on campus for that week and made me miss my time there like you wouldn’t believe. The ‘Book’ is still ‘in process.’ trying to find the time to finish getting ready to publish is hard, and I have begun ‘Book 2’ of that trilogy—hope to finish before I retire from my day job. It was also fun attending a workshop during the conference by our very own classmate Steve Almond who is a very successful writer himself—I purchased some of his work and enjoyed it, and laughed a lot!

“Several years ago I started on another path as well— joined an international order of druids, The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids (OBOD), and have been on a multiyear training program, of which I’m halfway through—travelling to Glastonbury, U.K. for meetings with thousands of others going through the training each year. It’s a nature based spirituality and Celtic history course, and something I needed for myself as the more common spiritual options no longer resonate. It’s really gotten me in touch with nature, and myself, and made me much calmer.”

Thanks for staying in touch everyone!

After submission of these notes, we received the news of the passing of Tyler Holt. Tyler was a foreign service officer with the United States Agency for International Development. We extend our sincerest condolences to his family and classmates. A full obituary can be found here.