Tag: 2003

Becca (Joffe) Filson, NP ’03, found herself working as a hospitalist with Jim Most ’89 MD at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, Vermont, where they enjoy talking about Neon Deli orders and giving their Williams College colleagues a hard time. 

Roberta Pereira was recently appointed the Barbara G. and Lawrence A. Fleischman Executive Director of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, located at Lincoln Center. The library holds one of the world’s most extensive research collections in theater, film, dance, music, and recorded sound, as well as a wide array of circulating and reference materials. Roberta lives in New York City with her six-year-old daughter, Bianca, who also loves going to The New York Public Library and using her Spider-Man library card.

John Graham lives with his wife and three children in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he runs a cultural and hiking travel business. When traveling to Vermont this past summer, he saw Ari Wolfe, Adam Tuck ’05, and Josh Dankoff ’02.

Matt Kushner is currently working on installing Illuminarium Experience’s fourth venue, this time in the Wynn Hotel in Macau, China, after a successful opening of the first international venue in Toronto, Canada, in August. Lauren Kushner (Brown ’04) continues to create interactive animations at the American Museum of Natural History and is preparing for the production of the next planetarium show. Kids, Mimi and Tessa, are doing great in third and first grade respectively. They are both performing in dance and winter showcases at school.  

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.

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.

George Obulutsa is still going strong at Reuters news in Nairobi, where he works as a breaking news correspondent for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Tejas Desai’s latest novel The Dance Towards Death has won 12 literary honors. Despite being hit by an inattentive driver while on his “Road Trip across America” in May 2022, he has continued work on his latest book, Bad Americans (The Human Tragedy, Volume 2). During his research, he has received valuable assistance from many Wes alumni from across the world. Among others, Rachel Luria gave him a tour of the Hamptons; Bianca Sultana called him from Brazil to provide the inside dope on the NYC modeling world; and Vanessa Levine-Smith ’04 has advised him from Michigan on the rigors of social work. He’s deeply appreciative of this feedback and knows more Wes buddies will aid him in developing a great fifth book!

I’m looking forward to our 20th Reunion this spring and hope to see many of you there!

Kate Reder Sheikh lives in San Francisco with her husband and two kids (future Wesleyan grads?). She is a partner at Major, Lindsey & Africa and a member of Chief.

Kate Standish just moved with her family back to Managua, Nicaragua. She continues working for Boston University in the Family Medicine Department (mostly remotely), doing clinical and health services research on breastfeeding among high-risk and underserved populations, as well as clinical breastfeeding medicine. Her son Noah is seven years old.

Anna Seastrand will be spending the academic year (2022–23) as a fellow in garden and landscape studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., working on her second book, Trees and the Ecologies of Sacred Art in Southern India. She’d love to catch up with anyone in the area.

Ryan Garbalosa has been elected to the Board of Trustees of the South Carolina Medical Association representing his district. He still currently serves as the chief of medicine at Prisma Health Tuomey hospital in Sumter, South Carolina, and was named “Best Cardiologist” in Sumter County for 2022 in the annual “Best of Sumter” awards hosted by the Sumter Item recognizing professionals in the area.

Ami Boghani has been living and writing in Los Angeles since 2018. She’s currently working on a to-be-announced DreamWorks show that will air on Apple TV next year.

Matt Kushner has been working as the head of VFX Technology for the past year at Illuminarium Experiences, an immersive entertainment company based in Atlanta. Matt has worked on Wild (an African safari show) that premiered in summer 2021, Space (an outer-space show) that premiered in summer 2022, and has helped integrate a Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective and Waking Wonderland, a narrative Alice in Wonderland sequel. Illuminarium also opened a second location in Las Vegas’s Area 15 in spring 2022, which is a haven for immersive content. Matt still lives in Jersey City and works mostly remotely for Illuminarium. Lauren Kushner (Brown ’04) is still working at the American Museum of Natural History and is in the process of building interactive AR content for an insectarium that will be part of a brand-new wing to the museum. Kids Mimi (seven) and Tessa (four and a half) will be entering second grade and kindergarten respectively in the fall.

Joey Wender left Capitol Hill after working there for nearly 13 years and started as director of the Capital Projects Fund at the Department of Treasury, working to ensure all communities have access to high-quality, affordable broadband. Joey also continues to enjoy his frequent conversations with Adam Lachman, who, as a longtime staffer for Senator Angus King, helped create this connectivity program.

Emily Teitsworth recently became the executive director of the Honnold Foundation, supporting community-based solar energy access around the world. She lives in Oakland, California, with her partner, two stepkids, and son Jai, who turned one in January. She’d love for any Wes alums working in renewable energy to reach out!

Bayard Templeton and his wife Alex welcomed their second child, Jamie, to their family on February 4th. Issie (8) is excited to be a big sister.

Alexander Yellen and his wife Kelli McNeil-Yellen have had a busy year, buying their first home in LA and recently wrapping their first feature together, an indie road trip movie called Daruma, starring two lead actors with disabilities in a story that is not about disability.

Tejas Desai reconnected with a few old Wes friends, including Jessica Stewart, who recently moved to NYC from San Francisco, and went to a Mets game with Bayard Templeton. He performed a musical version of his novel, The Run and Hide, in the New York City subway system with Blues Hall of Famer/Tampa Bay Lightning Fiddler Greg Holt, aided by a City Artist Corp grant in partnership with MTA’s Musical under New York Program; the virtual version was broadcast on the Queens Public Library’s Facebook Live platform. His latest book, The Dance Towards Death, won a Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence and was a bronze medalist in the Readers’ Favorite International Book Contest. He completed the first draft of his new book, Bad Americans, fulfilling his New Year’s resolution, at a whopping 300,000 words in length. He’s currently revising it.

I am very sorry to be sharing the sad news that Daniel Moger passed on March 13, 2022, due to complications from COVID-19 and an underlying blood condition. He is survived by his wife Julie and daughter Georgina. Daniel was a former U.S. Treasury Department official and most recently Asia Pacific Sanctions director for Citibank. In Dan’s memory, his family asks to consider gifts to OutRight Action International in support of human rights and dignity of LGBTIQ people everywhere, and Phillips Academy where donations will be directed to supporting disadvantaged students. I extend my sincerest condolences to Daniel’s family and friends.

(Editor’s note: Daniel’s mother, Angela Moger, was the first woman employed in the professional Wesleyan administration (1969) as the University entered co-education. Ms. Moger was also an adjunct professor of French during the several years she was at Wesleyan.)  

Michael Lewis and his husband, David Scott, adopted a baby boy, George Scott Lewis, earlier this year. They have enjoyed bonding with him by taking long walks around their neighborhood in Berkeley and a few road trips around California.

     Matt Kushner has been slowly emerging from the cocoon of isolation with Lauren Kushner (Brown ’04) and kids Mimi (6) and Tessa (3.5). Matt has been freelancing at Radical Media as the head of pipeline/CG supervisor on a new immersive theater experience called Illuminarium (www.illuminarium.com) whose first show, Wild, premieres on the Atlanta Beltline in July. He’s also excited to have been a small part of Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s ’02 In the Heights, getting to do some visual effects on the film adaptation, now in theaters. Lauren is a staff CG artist at the Museum of Natural History in NYC, where she created 3D and 2D screen content for the renovation of the Gems and Minerals exhibit, which opened in June. Mimi is completing a year of virtual kindergarten, while Tessa is finishing home preschool, and both are excited to attend in-person summer programs and first grade and pre-K in the fall. Matt and family are looking forward to re-engaging in the world, and attending some mini-Wes reunions this summer.