Tag: 2012

A new year and a new decade have arrived. Many of us will look back at the last 10 years and recall the impact Wesleyan had on our last decade. Personally, I am grateful for the foundation provided to me on the Hilltop and the influence it still holds on the journey I am on today. Now a look into what a few our classmates have accomplished in the last year of the decade:

Nate Mondschein started a music production company, Echo Base Production, received the 2019 ASCAP Robert Allen Award for his songwriting and production work and released his debut solo album, . . .And the Sky, under his artist name Best Mann. Nate is working on a few new projects, including some Wesleyan-adjacent songwriting and production work with Spencer Hattendorf and Matt Bernstein ’11, and co-producing Josh the Word’s (aka Josh Smith ’11) upcoming collection of singles. Take some time to listen in on Nate’s debut album.

Benjamin Kaufman started a new job this year at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Benny is the associate director for Team Fox, the grassroots fundraising arm of the foundation.

Tess Minter got engaged in 2019 and will be tying the knot over Labor Day weekend in Santa Cruz. Her fiancé is Craig Lahti, who is from Minnesota and graduated from St. Thomas. They met when they were both working in a homeless youth shelter in 2012.

A few of our classmates ended the decade with an adventure. Noa Borkan, Anne DeBoer, Ally Wang, and Saumya Chatrath ’13 visited Rachel Levenson in Nairobi, Kenya. They road-tripped across Kenya, including visiting national parks and ringing in 2020 by the Kenyan coast. Rachel continued the Wes-in-Nairobi reunions, spending time with Nathan Mackenzie and Yinka Taiwo, who were visiting Kenya.

As for me, I am enjoying the newlywed life and coastal living. Wishing the entire class of 2012 an incredible year and decade to come.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

It should come to no surprise that 2019 has been an exciting year for the class of 2012.

Andrew Dominguez has had a wonderfully Wesleyan summer, spending time with new friends from the class of 2012 and his younger sister, a Wes sophomore. Andrew spent a week teaching filmmaking at the nonprofit Camp Hollywood Heart. Andrew then capped off his summer with a week of volunteering up at the Telluride Film Festival, where he was reunited with Adrian Rothschild, who has been working at the festival every Labor Day weekend for seven years since graduation. Andrew ran into over a dozen other Wesleyan people (from the classes of 2009, 2015, many from 2019, and even a new professor in the film department). Andrew is looking forward to the fall season, when he will be working with Raghu Appasani, Geoff Mucha, and Heidi Ransohoff on an event in Los Angeles with The MINDS Foundation for the annual World Mental Health Day.

Raghu Appasani moved to LA last year and is doing a psychiatry residency at USC, loving the sunshine, beach, and mountains.

Rebecca Snelling just started a master’s in management degree program at the CU Denver Business School through her company. She is looking forward to diving more into the business and people aspects of her environmental remediation work. Rebecca is also excited to start another hockey season in the South Shore Women’s Hockey League on a team with former Wes teammates Ann Wheeler, Sydney Morgan ’14, and Cait Bray ’15, MA’16.

Lucas Turner-Owens is the fund manager of The Ujima Fund. Launched in 2018, the fund has raised $1 million to date from over 150 investors. The fund is designed to aggregate investments from working class and wealthy investors to fund businesses based in Boston’s working-class communities of color. Uniquely, the fund requires that all investments be voted on and approved by 51% of the members of Ujima who live in Boston. Ujima has 500 members, 250 of which identify as working class people of color in Boston.

Christopher Fragoso is a computational biologist at Verinomics, an agricultural genomics startup in New Haven, Conn.

Chris Russell co-founded Project77 out of Columbia Business School in 2018 to support education and social sector organizations with data analytics tools and services. He is a member of the Columbia Startup Lab accelerator in NYC. He is the proud partner to Doris Martinez ’10 and the proud fur parent to Tali and Brigitt. Chris is always willing to grab coffee and/or drinks with Wes family and can be reached at chris@project77solutions.com or by text 860/539-9284.

Ashley Garrett just left the U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General as an analyst and transfered to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of the Inspector General as an analyst in audit.

Love was in the Wes air with many weddings this year. Liz Dalton and Ben Rose were married in September among several Wes friends. They’re living in Oakland, Calif., where Liz is an interior designer for restaurants and hotels.

Kenny Feder was married this year in May and finished his PhD. in public health. He is working for the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service program as an epidemiologist for Maryland Department of Health.

Dana Levy married Reiss Clauson-Wolf ’13 on Sept. 1 in Rhode Island. Julian Silver and Mattison Peters ’13 were members of the bridal party. Father of the bride, Harold Levy ’75, and uncle of the groom, Daniel Wolf ’79, were in attendance.

A little Cardinal joined the nest. Tasmiha Khan and her husband welcomed their first son. Tasmiha also was published on MTV.com.

As for me, I jumped on the bridal bandwagon and got married in May. Wishing the entire class of 2012 all the best in the next year to come.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

AhDream Smith wrote, “I was accepted into the Class of 2022 for the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s MFA acting program in conjunction with the Playmaker’s Theater Company. I will be heading there in the fall and am excited about this next chapter.”

Gemma Doll-Grossman completed her MFA in cinematography from the American Film Institute Conservatory. She lives in Los Angeles, working as a cinematographer.

Harry James Hanson is producing, directing, and styling photo/video shoots in Brooklyn. This spring, his photo series Legends of San Francisco, featuring drag elders, was published on Vogue.com.

Tasmiha Khan wrote, “I just completed my master’s in social impact and looking forward to next steps as a coach in the nonprofit sector and corporate world while taking on a new interest in writing.”

Han Hsien Liew received his PhD in history and Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University. He will be joining the Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute as an assistant professor of arts and humanities this fall.

Nate Mondschein is doing production and recording work with artists Spencer  Hattendorf and Josh Smith. He produced the debut album Young and In Debt for his band Old Flame, released in May. He recorded the album with Andrew Oedel at Ghost Hit Recording and in his own studio, Echo Base. It was mastered by Andy Casella of Shape Recording. This fall, he’s releasing his debut self-produced solo album . . . And The Sky under the artist name Best Mann, also recorded at Echo Base and Ghost Hit and mixed by Andrew.

Matthew Figueroa is pursuing a poetry and spoken word career more seriously. He’s been featured at different NYC events and artist showcases. He piloted a creative writing poetry workshop which highlighted the therapeutic benefits of artistic expression as mental health. It was done at a couple middle schools and he’d like to get more on board this fall.

He also published his first poetry book Adolescence. His book “focuses on the anxiety and depression I struggled with in high school,” he explained. “I wanted people to know that they aren’t alone in the problems they face; that none of us need to strive for ‘perfection.’ And, most importantly, that healing becomes possible once you accept and talk about your demons. It’s a domino impact that empowers others, while silence only feeds self-destructive beliefs.”

2019 marked the tenth anniversary of David Wei, Noah Feingold, Peter Frank, Julian Silver, Phil Hall-Partyka, Kevin Walters, Jeremy Koegel, and Adam Ilowite’s first Warfish games, with Kevin introducing much of the eight to the website freshman year at Wesleyan. The group has played 300-plus games of Warfish almost nonstop and has met for tournaments in places like New York City and Cape Cod. As the eight have spread out around the country, Warfish has evolved to become an important way for the group to stay connected and acts as a welcome respite during the day-to-day.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

Hi, Class of 2011. Hope this finds you doing well! Lots of exciting things from our classmates.

Christopher Ceccolini and Jordan Gratch ’13 are thrilled to announce that they are finally engaged, eight years after first meeting at Wesleyan in the Alpha Delta Phi living room. They reside in Brookline, Mass., where Chris is a third-year doctoral student in counseling psychology at Boston College and Jordan is a third-year law student at Boston University. “We are really excited to start this next chapter of our lives together even as we juggle so many other life changes and responsibilities.” Chris hopes to have a completed dissertation proposal by their wedding in late 2019, while Jordan completed a summer associate position at Latham & Watkins in New York, where he will begin full-time in October.

Lindsey Davis writes, “I gained employment as a research associate handling rare books and manuscripts, largely dealing with abolition, African-American, and women’s history, as well as the transcendentalists’ and Lost Generation’s works.”

Austin Woolridge reports, “My company (playerslounge) that I started with Zach Dixon ’12 went through ycombinator, and we have raised around $2 million from funds and angels including: Comcast, RRE, Marissa Mayer, Strauss Zelnick ’79, and more. We also have the founder of Fanduel as a very close advisor.”

Simone Plummer writes, “I’m starting my second year at New York College of Podiatric Medicine; I graduate in 2021. I also got engaged to Evan Huggins ’10 last November! Mallory Cruz spoke at the UN for international autism awareness day back in April, specifically about the abuse of autistic girls and women.”

Corrina Wainwright reports, “I graduated from the Harvard School of Public Health with a master’s in health policy this May—although I finished coursework in December 2017. During the gap, I started a health equity consulting business, working on various projects with NYC agencies. My biggest client is the Center for Health Equity (CHE) in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. I’m working with CHE to add critical historical, political, and economic lenses to the social determinants of health approach. I’m excited to return to NYC but will miss my community and the social justice library at Harvard. I founded the library with strong inspiration from my time in the Center for African American Studies’ DuBois Library—taking Wes with me wherever I go.”

Thanks for the updates! Always nice to hear from everyone!

Allie Southam | asoutham@wesleyan.edu

And just like that, we’ve entered into a new year. The days are long, but the years are short. Even in these short years, the class of 2012 is still foraging new adventures.

Andrew Dominguez is back in his hometown of Manila, Philippines. He plans to found a Wesleyan and NESCAC club in Manila. He hopes to bring the fun tradition of GOLD parties, NESCAC mixers, and Summer Send-offs to Manila (complete with free giveaways of buttons and flags and stickers, and pleas for donations to the alma mater). If anyone would like to help Andrew found the club, please reach out.

Just an ocean away from Andrew, Sarah Schorr is in graduate school at Cal State Los Angles. Upon graduation, Sarah will head off to D.C. to join her boyfriend.

Abaye Steinmetz-Silber is a work team leader at Gould Farm in the Berkshires.

Peter Frank and William Schragis live in Brooklyn. William is the national director for Barrell Bourbon and Peter is a co-founder of dev.to, an online community for programmers. John Snyder works at Vimeo in data analytics, and occasionally teaches at General Assembly. He also drums in a few Wes-originated music groups. Haley Baron received her master’s in food studies from NYU, focusing on sustainable food systems. Haley is joining the pineapple NY team, a collaborative community for women who care about food. John and Haley will be married in 2019.

Another Wesleyan couple who deserve a celebratory toast are Hannah Berkman and Luke Erickson. Hannah and Luke were married on Nov. 11 in Alexandria, Va. They were joined at the celebration by Casey Reed, Becky Baskin, Tom Oddo, Richard Leuchter, Matt Stinson, Sky Stallbaumer, Benjie Messinger-Barnes ’09, Jamie Sandra Messinger ’11, Julia Alschuler ’11, Lauren Goldstein ’11, Nick Scotto ’13, Alissa Santucci ’13, Justin Metz ’13, Ryan Sblendorio ’15, and Jane ’77 and Tim Klemmer ’77.

As for me, I will be ringing my own wedding bells with Derek Sellhausen (Skidmore ’12) next spring. Wishing the entire class of 2012 continued health and happiness.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

As the Class of 2012 rounds out another year, they are proving to make a difference in the medical field.

JoAnna Bourain was awarded the National Health Service scholarship to dental school this year. She’ll begin at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry and will work for four years in an underserved community as a dentist. JoAnna says, “It was highly selective this year (3.8%); my Wesleyan experience definitely helped me to prepare for this experience.”

Lennox Byer is living in San Francisco and attending UCSF School of Medicine. Lennox was awarded funding for a clinical research fellowship. In 2018, after completing this fellowship, Lennox will return to the school of medicine to complete his final year of medical school and will be applying for residencies in neurology.

Katherine Mullins is in her last year of medical school at the Georgetown University School of Medicine and is applying to residency programs in the field of internal medicine.

Sunil Chulani graduated medical school this year and is a resident at Rutgers University hospital in New Jersey. With his busy schedule as a first-year resident, he still manages to make trips to NYC to see Wesleyan classmates.

Tasmiha Khan and Jisan Zaman are also continuing their impact. Tasmiha has returned from Bangladesh and is working as a maternal justice consultant for MomsRising. Tasmiha is looking for any lawyers who deal with religious discrimination cases in higher education. Jisan has gotten involved with grassroots progressive activism in his adopted hometown of Arlington, Va. Jisan is working at a small startup called Dynamo Technologies in the D.C. area. Despite moving jobs and apartments, Jisan has made it to all his Wes friends’ weddings.

Lila Becker is pursuing her MFA in (theater) directing at the University of Iowa. She has enjoyed meeting other Wes alumni in Iowa City and is acclimating to the earnestness of the Midwest. She is looking forward to traveling to Japan with former Wesleyan taiko professor Kaoru Watanabe in November. Her first production, a new play called bad things happen here, opened at the University of Iowa in November.

Congrats to Ernest Turner who started a new job as a senior Android engineer at Synchrony Financial in Stamford, Conn.

Hannah Berkman and Luke Erickson were married on November 11 in Alexandria, Va. They were joined at the celebration by Casey Reed, Becky Baskin, Tom Oddo, Richard Leuchter, Matt Stinson, Sky Stallbaumer, Benjie Messinger ’09, Jamie Sandra Messinger ’11, Julia Alschuler ’11, Lauren Goldstein ’11, Nick Scotto ’13, Alissa Santucci ’13, Justin Metz ’13, Ryan Sblendorio ’15, and Jane ’77 and Tim Klemmer ’77.

Finally, Abaye Steinmetz-Silber is living and working on Gould Farm in Monterey, Mass. Abaye shares, “If you’re in the Berkshires, hit me up!”

As for me, I celebrated my one-year anniversary at Bridgewater Associates and am looking forward to what the new year brings.

Wishing the entire class of 2012 continued success, health, and happiness.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

I’ll begin by congratulating all my fellow Cardinals on five years from the nest. I think I speak for all when I say that this time has gone by in a blink of an eye. It comes as no surprise that within these five years, our classmates have been busy changing the world around them.

Hannah Monk graduated with her doctorate in clinical psychology from William James College in Newton, Mass. Congrats Hannah!

Michaela Swee received her master’s and is going on to complete her PhD at Temple University’s clinical psychology program in Philadelphia, specializing in the research and treatment of adult anxiety and depressive disorders. She fills her spare time doing the voiceover for Hera, an intelligent computer operating system that runs the Haphaestus station. Michaela is also working on Wolf 359’s fourth and final season with fellow Wes alumni Gabriel Urbina ’13, Zach Valenti, Sarah Shachat, Emma Sherr-Ziarko ’11, Cecilia Lynn-Jacobs ’11, Zach Libresco ’13, Noah Masur ’15, Michelle Agresti ’14, Scotty Shoemaker ’13, Ariela Rotenberg ’10, Alan Rodi ’12, and Jared Paul ’11.

Julian Silver is working in film and writing with Reiss Clauson-Wolf ’13. When not writing, he is also keeping the LA coffee market afloat with Reiss’ better half, Dana Levy ’12.

Adrian Rothschild is working at Nickelodeon on interactive preschool content for Noggin, which just launched as a revamped iOS app. Adam also started as the director of digital content for the Children’s Media Association, a nonprofit network of producers, writers, artists, and researchers in the children’s media industry.

Grace Ross is living the New York life as a literary agent at Regal Hoffmann & Associates. She recently moved to Brooklyn, and in her time away from reading, she sings in the Grace Church Choral Society.

JoAnna Bourain is starting dental school at the University of Minnesota in the fall. In four years’ time she will be JoAnna Bourain, DDS.

Jake Walkup is teaching at the middle school of his youth in Manhattan. When he is not shaping the minds of our future, he is coaching the school’s first Ultimate Frisbee team, which is vying for a championship in its debut year. Dan Verdejo and Gabriel Finkelstein are also teachers who teach math, writing, literature, science, and social studies classes, among other things. As a previous educator, I can say confidently that this is no easy feat!

Raghu Appasani is finishing up his final year of medical school in Massachusetts, but continues to make frequent trips to NYC to visit his old roommates from Wesleyan. He runs the MINDS Foundation, along with the involvement of many Wesleyan community members and spends as much time as possible in India.

Finally, Peter Frank, Stephen Nangeroni, Drew Hudson, Sam Tureff, and Bill Walen bested Alex Meadow, Robert Troyer, Malcolm (Mac) Schneider, and Zach Dixon in the championship game of their 4v4 soccer league. May the best team win!

Allegra Heath-Stout married Laura Heath-Stout ’11 in October, and has been enjoying married life in Somerville. Allegra runs a fellowship program at JOIN for Justice in Boston, training Jewish young adults in community organizing.

As for me, I am approaching my one-year anniversary at Bridgewater Associates and enjoying the East Coast summer. Wishing the entire class of 2012 continued success, health, and happiness.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

Nathaniel Draper writes in, “The Syros International Film Festival will be held on July 14-19 in Greece. Now going into its fifth edition, the film festival was started by Cassandra Celestin ’13 during her senior year at Wesleyan, along with Jacob Moe (Pomona ’13). It was a self-funded endeavor the first year, and was subsequently joined by Aaron Khandros ’13 and myself, with the four of us making up the core organizational team.

“The festival has since grown to one of the most important art and film events in the region, and has earned recognition in the film world throughout Europe and further abroad. The festival is held every summer on the island of Syros, the capital of the Cycladic islands located just south of Athens, and embeds a rigorous curation of new and old films into many reconstituted spaces on the island, in open-air cinemas purpose-built for the experience. All of which is quite special, since the quality of the programming and the unique experience and community tend to turn guests into devotees who come back again and again.” You can learn more about the festival at syrosfilmfestival.org.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

As many of you know, or perhaps some of you are in denial (like myself), 2017 marks our five-year Reunion. That’s right, it has been five years since that beautiful spring day on Foss Hill when we threw our caps in the air. Similar to time, the class of 2012 has not slowed down.

Alex Ketchum is finishing up her PhD in the department of history at McGill University, focusing on feminist restaurants and cafés in the United States and Canada. She coaches lacrosse and teaches in Montréal where she lives with her husky/lab mix, Bubbles. Laura Bliss is a staff writer for CityLab, the Atlantic’s urban affairs vertical, also based in Montréal.

In New Jersey, David Amrhein has been working at TAG Optics, a recently acquired startup spun out of research at Princeton University, making ultra-fast focusing liquid lenses for microscopes and laser systems. Also on the East Coast, Kenny Feder is in Baltimore doing his PhD in public health at Johns Hopkins. Kenny studies how parents’ mental health and substance use challenges can spill over and affect the well-being of children.

Down in Texas, Katie Silver is a support manager at Atlassian, a software company. She is getting married in this spring, and Benny Kaufman is officiating!

Jed Rendlemen is an independent naming consultant. While he works out of his hometown of Portland, Ore,. he partners with businesses around the world to help them create strategic, memorable brands.

Julia Mulhern just finished her PhD in geology at the University of Utah and is moving to New Orleans to work for Shell this fall.

Out on the West Coast, Henrik Cotran is a sector lead at the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), based in San Francisco. SASB is chaired by Michael Bloomberg, former New York mayor, and is developing sustainability accounting standards. Outside of work, Henrik can be found mountain biking, backpacking, skiing, or volunteering at a youth reading program in Oakland.

After working for a year in Denmark and nearly three in D.C., Adam Fishman is now enrolled in a master of environmental management degree program at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Kwasi Ansu ’09 and Nate Kaufman ’08 are in the same program.

After co-founding an independent record label in NYC called Par-ka Records, Charlie Hanna is now working at Paradigm Talent Agency to rebuild the brand partnerships department. You can check out his work in the IBM commercial featuring Stephen King. Charlie is not slowing down anytime soon. He is applying to MBA programs to continue building the knowledge and skills necessary to fulfill his aspirations of one day creating a business at the intersection of media and technology.

After beginning their romance in the basement of Psi U, Anna Brugioni and David Sedgwick finally got engaged. They’re also both at Stern Business School.

Kurt Lyn successfully graduated from Columbia Law and is gainfully employed as a lawyer. Erin Kelly received her MPH from Columbia and is working for the NYC government to improve health.

As for me, I am trapezing between NYC and Connecticut as I have started a new role with Bridgewater Associates in Connecticut. As always, wishing the best to the entire class of 2012!

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu