Congratulations to the Class of 2017 on your recent graduation! We’ll be reaching out soon for your news, which will appear in the December issue of this magazine.

Congratulations to the Class of 2017 on their recent graduation! We are excited for them to join us as the new additions to the Wesleyan alumni community.

Nikku Chatha completed Wes’s BA/MA in math and is working at Andrew Davidson & Co. in New York. She was glad to see so many ’16ers during R&C weekend!

Celia Joyce has been working at New York County Defender Services, a public defense office, since last fall as a corrections specialist. She makes referrals to charitable bail funds, plans and executes regular trips to Rikers and similar corrections facilities across the boroughs, and serves as a liaison between attorneys and social workers, clients and families, and various DOCCS employees. She is preparing to take the LSAT and GRE in hopes of pursuing a dual degree—a JD/PhD in psychology.

Melissa Leung and Sarah Mi frequently ring in Kellyn Maves and Taran Carr throughout their perpetual hunt for authentic Chinese food in Rockville, Md., because Kellyn and Taran have cars, while Melissa and Sarah do not. The group also visited Wes for Commencement, and is planning camping and winery trips for times ahead.

Melissa has moved onto a supply chain management project with IBM, completed a flag football season with her IBM start class, plays on their softball team, toured Rome with her gospel choir, and works on portrait in her oil painting class.

Matthew Stein is a software engineer at YouTube in Mountain View, Calif. In his free time, he plays violin and viola with the Google orchestra, a klezmer trio, and a string quartet, and designs puzzles and puzzle hunts.

Tim Israel is in Portland, Ore., and says, “come chill.”

Michael King has been building a startup that aims to make language learning efficient, organized, and enjoyable: a dynamic curriculum that adapts to your level and your content, placed on top of personalized music and media, language exchange, and spaced repetition flashcards.

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

Jenna Starr has switched positions at Wesleyan! She is now part of the alumni and parent relations team. Keep your eyes open for fun event invitations, and, as always, keep sending her your class notes.

Katherine Lu works in human resources at the Mission Neighborhood Health Center in San Francisco. She enjoys hearing more Spanish than English, and is putting her HISP major to the test.

Peter Cornillie earned his certified cicerone, which is the equivalent of a beer sommelier, or someone who knows way too much about beer.

Marissa Castrigno accepted a job writing for the public affairs department of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She will also be attending the 2017 Wesleyan Writers’ Conference during her time off between positions, and looked forward to a spending few days of early summer back on campus.

Michael Leung gave a presentation on behavioral science at Morningstar Investment Conference—the flagship conference for Morningstar, Inc.—to a crowd of 200 finance professionals! He enjoys his work of incorporating behavioral science methods into software development to help people reach their goals

Since graduating, Catherine Chase works at the San Antonio Museum of Art and is the assistant to the director for a little over a year. She reunited with her former Wes roommate, Katherine Du. They met up at Reunion and Commencement and ate a lot of dumplings at Tibetan Kitchen.

After two years of sharing a wonderful apartment together, Diana Lin, Angela Yoo, and Elaine Tsui are ready to take the next step in their careers. Following her role as a senior consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, Diana is looking forward to attending Penn State College of Medicine. Likewise, after spending two years at the NIH, Angela will be heading off to medical school this fall. Elaine will miss them dearly, but is excited to return to academia and attend Princeton’s chemistry PhD program. We are glad to have shared so many great memories over the last two years and look forward to our next Reunion!

Virgil Taylor and Gabe Gordon recently took the Staten Island Ferry. In the stormy Friday evening light, they could see for themselves the possibilities offered by a life at sea. Taylor and Gordon live as one in Brooklyn.

Aletta Brady is moving to Jordan in September for a research Fulbright studying the intersection of drought, water scarcity, and the refugee crisis.

Rebecca Caspar-Johnson is starting law school at Columbia in the fall.

Mateusz Burgunder has not changed much since the last issue. He still lives and works in Switzerland. He has met many Wesleyan friends around the U.S., Europe, and on Skype, and he looks forward to more conversations. He is also very impressed by how many of his Wesleyan friends finished marathons.

Orelia Jonathan just graduated from UPenn with her master’s in education. She plans to teach English in China for the summer before heading back to The Lawrenceville School to teach and coach as full-time faculty.

Geneva Jonathan is headed off to Northwestern University in the fall to start a PhD program in clinical psychology in Dr. Evan Goulding and Dr. Cynthia Dopke’s Bipolar Technology Lab.

Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell began singing together at Wesleyan and formed a band called Overcoats. They released their debut album, Young, via Arts & Crafts in April, and performed an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. itunes.apple.com/us/album/young/id1199218160 and youtube.com/watch?v=pXtAhfQhEG4.

Jenna Starr | jstarr@wesleyan.edu

The beloved class of 2014 has taken 2017 by storm. Read below for the latest on what they’ve been doing!

Will Dubbs spent the last two years working for Hillary’s presidential campaign, but has now moved to Prague.

After a few years of doing nonprofit and startup work, Alex Cantrell is happily employed as a UX design consultant in Watertown, Mass. He regularly draws upon his liberal arts background during client calls, using authoritative, fluffy language to justify why the website header should not have a lime green drop shadow. He lives in Brighton with his gecko, running shoes, and beer fridge. He accepts one freelance design gig each quarter—feel free to reach out!

Rob Roth, a third-year ENL/ESL K-12 public school teacher in the NYC Department of Education, as well as a recent NYC teaching fellow and Hunter College MA TESOL program graduate, looks forward to embarking on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant to Bogotá, Colombia, where he will support Universidad Nacional students in acquiring English proficiency.

Grace Smith writes, “I just started law school at the University of Michigan and want to do international environmental law right now, but what, exactly, you want to do changes during the course of school. I was a ski instructor in Colorado for two years before this.”

Ellen Alexander just completed her master’s in geology at UCLA, and is continuing in her PhD program.

Maddy Oswald just finished her first year of a PhD program in developmental psychology at The University of Chicago.

Nick Petrillo, Keegan Duffy, Sky McGilligan, Ben Kafoglis, Remy Lieberman, and Casey Lasda ’13 have “completed a feature length, shot-for-shot, low-budget, high-passion remake of Dirty Dancing, which premiered at Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn on May 23. Emily Nussbaum (New Yorker) described it as ‘sexy, funny, and lovable.’ Barstool Sports described it as ‘an outrageous idea.’ Nick’s mom said, ‘Don’t show Dad.’ The New York Times had no comment. You can find the film on Youtube under ‘Boiz Club Fancy Pants Presents Dirty Dancing’.”

Richie Starzec has been traveling around Bhutan for the last few months. He connected with a selective training society, where he is learning the arts of ninjutsu, jujitsu, and mixed kung fu.

Henry Cheung writes, “After three years of teaching high school mathematics through Teach For America, I am transitioning to a management consultant position at Oliver Wyman. I will miss teaching, but am looking forward to the travel and the change of pace. If anyone is interested in pursuing teaching through Teach For America (or not) or consulting, feel free to reach out!”

Jason Shatz is moving to Chicago to earn a master’s in computer science at the University of Chicago. He writes, “Yes, there is a summer ‘immersion’ program for liberal arts students and others without the proper background. In other words, I’m making up for the computer science studying that I should have done at Wesleyan (at least if I wanted a decent job afterwards)! I still plan to write on the side.”

Maggie Feldman-Piltch is getting a master’s from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in the security studies program and started her own national security consulting company called Unicorn Strategies. In March, she led a trip of retired U.S. admirals and generals to Havana, Cuba, to meet with members of the Cuban government on issues of security cooperation. She writes, “On a perhaps less serious note, I recently won the mojito-making contest at the Cuban Embassy here in D.C., and have been declared Best Mojito Maker. Anything else I do in my life will pale in comparison.” She adds, “All other things are normal. Still having my life over run by two obnoxious pit bulls. Still seeing too much of Julian Purkiss. Still seeing just the perfect amount of Izzy Rode.”

As for me, I will be putting my love for the show Suits on the side, and will be starting at Fordham Law School in the fall where I will be focusing on litigation. Have a wonderful summer, and keep the notes and all of the wonderful things you are doing, coming.

Your Class Secretary,

Mary Diaz | mcdiaz@wesleyan.edu