Tag: 2013

It’s been a year since the Class of 2013 bid Wesleyan adieu. A year full of spontaneous adventures, not-so-spontaneous work/school schedules, old and new friends, and the promise of constant transition.

Kristen Raddatz moved to Chicago last September for an assistant position in the publicity department at the University of Chicago Press, and was promoted in August. Now a promotions manager at UCP, she handles their Asian studies, anthropology, cartography, and literary criticism titles, as well as publicity for their clients, Unicorn Press and Zed Books. Ally Bernstein and Audrey Kiely also write in from Chicago, where they are questioning their life decisions. They’re finding solace in comedic television programs and bubble tea, but unfortunately the restaurant forgot to add the bubbles. Way to go, Chicago.

Andrew Perlmutter is a management and technology consultant for McGladrey. He has been traveling around the country, helping businesses select software and refine processes to support their cloud computing strategies. He lives in Sherborn, Mass., where he walks his neighbors’ dogs and also works in his garden with his parents. He is training his dog to compete in the 2015 National Dog Show. Andrew Lieberman has been coaching football at Rutgers University as a player development/offensive assistant since January. Julia Bond lives in Boston with Jessica Jordan and Matt Adelman, and works in academic journals publishing at John Wiley & Sons. Julian Applebaum is a software engineer on Squarespace’s e-commerce team. He plays bass in Sirs&Madams, and stays actively involved with WesHack. William T. Davis has successfully started his own gardening business based out of his Brooklyn apartment. Peter Horton and Croy Salinas have officially signed a domestic partnership agreement, which Mark Popinchalk was extremely proud and happy to serve as the primary witness. Ethan Grund left Wesleyan without a specific career path in mind, but has finally decided to follow up his general academic accomplishments by applying for an equally broad second degree as a MD/PHD in neuroscience. All five of them are based in Brooklyn, N.Y.

On the West Coast, Claire Dougherty is living life big out in Californ-i-a! When she isn’t working as a professional off-leash dog walker and trainer in the beautiful Oakland hills, she dedicates herself to producing content for the East Bay Car Project, a digital homage to rectangles and rims. Claire moved in with her best friend, John Schmidt, and enjoys spending her time watching MTV and searching for NY pizza in all the wrong places. Find her on LinkedIn!

Max Ward just finished up a one-year masters program in TV, radio, and film at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in Syracuse, N.Y. He has since moved to Los Angeles and started an unpaid internship at a production company called Pantheon Entertainment. His goal is to become a screenwriter; he has a feature written and submitted to several film festivals. Lindsay Kosasa writes in from the Aloha state, where she is currently a TFA corps member teaching special education, world history, and creative dance at Waipahu High School in Oahu. She established the dance program at Waipahu, turning the dance club into a for-credit class. Lindsay plans on teaching past her two-year TFA commitment.

Jess Seward is in her second year as a college counselor in China. She spent three months in Southeast Asia this spring and is planning to return next spring to SE Asia for six to nine months to volunteer/work following China. Peter Myers has spent much of the past year in Valparaíso, Chile, as an English teacher. Highlights include: having lots of barbecues, navigating the labyrinthine, slang-filled universe of Chilean Spanish, feeling several 6.0+ earthquakes, and being bitten by a stray dog.He also had some poetry published in the Berkeley Poetry Review. James Gardner has been meeting up with many Wes travelers in the Berlin region since his last post. He is in the process of assuming the chief operations officer (COO) position at his company, and plans to put his career aside in a year or so to study for his master’s in Berlin. After spending a year teaching high-school English in the Austrian Alps, Adam Rashkoff has returned to Austria for a second and final year in the same fellowship program. He will be working at a school in the capital city of Vienna and also studying towards an MA in comparative literature at the University of Vienna. Any Wes classmates who find themselves in the area are more than welcome to give him a shout if they are looking for a place to crash or simply for suggestions of which cafés and bars to hit!

Prince Emenalo writes in about starting a graduate program at Georgia State University. He is pursuing a master’s degree in public health with a concentration in management and policy. Amanda Morrow just started physical therapy school in Denver at Regis University. After spending a year working at the Pancreas Center at Columbia University Medical Center in NYC, Taryn Murray has moved back to Ohio to attend medical school at Northeast Ohio Medical University. Matt Motta is beginning his second year of PhD work at the University of Minnesota, studying American politics and political psychology. This past spring, Matt won a three-year graduate research fellowship (GRFP) from the National Science Foundation. While on fellowship, he will conduct research focused on better understanding how Americans’ implicit racial attitudes shape public opinion, and work on developing empirical tests designed to improve the quality of data collected from online survey research.

Vivianne and Benjamin (Abravanel) Swerdlow graduated. “Married. Moved. Worked. Quit. Got degus: Fred V and George V. Watched Buffy. Spent time with family. Worked. Quit. Spent time with family. Repeat last three as necessary for the next 40 years, then expect a reevaluation.”

As for me, I’ve finished up my first year at Apple as an engineering program manager. I spend my free time perusing farmers markets, eating my way through the Bay Area, and traveling whenever possible. Thanks to my classmates for all the contributions, and best wishes to everyone!

Laura Yim | Lyim@wesleyan.edu

With the arrival of spring (after what seemed like a perpetual winter) comes the epiphany that it has been almost a year since my fellow classmates and I graduated from Wesleyan. It’s hard to believe how quickly time has flown by! While some of us are settling into the daily routines of corporate life, others are embracing the return to graduate school, transitioning jobs from one field to another, or simply embarking on new adventures around the world.

Ex-Wesleying editor Zach Schonfeld recently left his fellowship at The Wire to take a job at Newsweek, where he reports on many topics, some of which include Wesleyan. In March, one of his tweets was linked in a post on Gawker. He is enjoying Brooklyn, but occasionally misses Olin 3A. Danielle Craig writes in from Manhattan, where she is working as a paralegal at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She lives with fellow Wes ’13er, Lily Kaplan, in an apartment that is only moderately decked out in red and black. She is learning an enormous amount about the criminal justice system and federal prosecution, and law school or a master’s in public policy is (somewhere) on the horizon. In her free time she plays squash in an adult league with college teammate Grace Zimmerman and has started to volunteer at an animal shelter in Chinatown. She still hasn’t eaten at every restaurant in New York City, but she’s certainly trying. Also in NYC is Miriam Kwietniewska who works in child welfare crisis management at a foster care agency in Queens called Forestdale Inc. While it is mentally and emotionally challenging, the life and work experience has been invaluable. When she is not working, Miriam is combining her passion for dance and social change. She started movement workshops at the agency for birth parents and their children in order to help them through the trauma of being in the foster care system. They are partnering with the Gibney Dance Company to start the workshops this July.

Singing sensation Emma Daniels writes in from the nation’s capital, and is currently working in the Latin American and Caribbean division of an NGO that promotes democracy and international governance. She also moonlights as a wedding singer—those hoping to crash a wedding in the DC area, please contact her! Roomies Evan Baum, Barbaralynn Moseman, and Hannah Reuman are living together happily in New Haven. Barbaralynn is doing clinical research in Alzheimer’s disease, Hannah is doing clinical research in autism spectrum disorders, and Evan is working for a private material sciences company. After work, they make sure to cuddle and reminisce about Wesleyan memories. Kelsey Muller moved to Bozeman, Mont., last summer to enjoy a year off from school. There, she works in a lab, skis as much as possible, and loves training her new border collie puppy. She is deciding which grad school to attend next year to get her master’s in biomedical engineering—possibly USC where she could hang out with her good friend and fellow ’13 grad Becca Koppel. Suat Kilic writes in with big news of tying the knot with Sarah Moustafa ’11! He is in his first year at Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School and Sarah will be starting at the same school in the fall.

In January, Evan Okun performed a solo show at the NYC Bowery Poetry Club alongside other Wesleyan students and alumni (Lily Myers ’15, Mel Hsu ’13, Sam Friedman, Nate Mondschein ’12, and more). The event was such a success that the venue offered him a follow-up show in June. These performances build on his work with Circles & Ciphers, a restorative justice organization in Chicago that uses hip-hop to engage young men (court-and-gang- involved) in critical discourse. Budding author Kristen Salustro just published her sci-fi novel, Chasing Shadows, on amazon.com in February. This has been a huge project for her for several years now, and it is both terrifying and exhilarating to finally have made the book live. She is already working on the sequel to Chasing Shadows, which was the first installment of a trilogy. In her spare time, Kelsey participates as a writer in a project called Story Shift, where readers get to vote on a choice presented at the end of each story’s installment and then the writer develops the next chapter from there. Evan Carmi also just published a new e-book on internships. Since graduating, he has moved to Portland, Ore., where he works remotely as a software engineer for Brewster, a NYC tech startup.

On the other side of the world, Alex Lough is teaching English and music in Thailand. One of his pieces was selected by the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States to be featured on the album SEAMUS Electro-Acoustic Miniatures 2013: Negative Space. The title of the piece is “What’s Left Behind” and the album is available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, etc. Alex plans to move to Miami in August to begin his master’s in music technology at Florida International University. Janet Cushey moved to Seoul, South Korea, after graduation, where she teaches ESL at an after-school academy called Chungdahm Institute. She has also been volunteering with Liberty in North Korea’s English tutor and culture exchange program, working with a North Korean refugee in one-on-one sessions on a weekly basis. Tom Lee is leaving his job in London and moving back across the pond to oversee the mid-season harvest of both organic wildflower honey and of course artisanal-grade beeswax at Wakefield Apiaries in Deer River, N.Y. By the sound of things it should be a big year, as forecasts show that harvests should be up by about 3 to 5 percent.

Anwar Batte notes that postgrad life has been filled with viral content aggregation, streamlined integrated deliverables, and maximizing shareable content. Here’s to synergistic, agile disruptions and Total Information Awareness in 2014!

As always, thanks for writing and best wishes to all my fellow 2013ers! Anyone who is around the San Francisco area, please get in touch!

Laura Yim | Lyim@wesleyan.edu

It’s been a few months since graduation, and the Class of 2013 is already busy taking the world by storm. We’ve been off working, teaching, studying, traveling, and embracing everything that life has to offer. Although there is the bittersweet realization (often accompanied by poignant nostalgia) that we are no longer in college, we’re also excited to dive right into the next chapter of our lives.

Many 2013ers can be found residing in New York. Catherine Taibi is an associate media editor at The Huffington Post. Her job includes managing the media page, writing and editing stories, creating viral content, managing the Facebook and Twitter accounts for HuffPost Media, creating photo posts and slideshows, and tracking site traffic. Kevin Curtin is living on the Upper East Side and working for JP Morgan’s investment bank. Isabella Cucchi is living in West Harlem and working in the South Bronx as a site coordinator for Reading Partners, NYC. She also works with children on their reading skills at the Metropolitan Lighthouse Charter School. Isabella loves hanging out with other Wesleyan folks in her free time. Sarah Cassel is a corps member at Avodah, a Jewish social justice group. She also works at The Bronx Defenders and spends her free time volunteering at the Homebound Leadership Institute in Harlem, where she works with young men of color on professional development and leadership through identity-based education. Senior speaker Anna Swartz is rooming with Paul Silverman in Brooklyn. She is writing and looking for full-time work, while he works as a kindergarten teacher. Joining Anna and Paul in Brooklyn is Julian Applebaum, who is a software engineer at Squarespace, where he researches, designs, and codes new tools and workflows for e-commerce merchants. In his spare time, he plays bass in the Sirs & Madams, a five-piece folk/singer-songwriter group.

In other parts of the country, 2013ers are also settling into their new jobs and embarking on new adventures. Chris Pao writes in from Boston, where he is working as a remote services consultant at ServiceNow, a growing IT enterprise cloud management software company. He helps clients with their software platform post-implementation with fixing anything that’s broken, not functioning properly, or even adding new functionality per the client’s request. He hopes to become a technical consultant after graduating from the two-year program. When he is not working, Chris enjoys playing in an adult hockey league, an indoor soccer league, and also exploring what the city has to offer. Robert Vance is living in his hometown of Birmingham, Ala., working for Impact Alabama, a community service nonprofit, and writing for Onyx Path Publishing. He’s planning to attend law school next year, focusing on public interest and civil rights law. Ashleigh Corvi writes in from Wesleyan, where she is working as an assistant dean of admission. She lives nearby with her girlfriend (and fellow ’13er) Tori Redding, who also works at Wesleyan as an assistant field hockey coach. They both love staying in touch with friends and professors while being a part of the community in a different capacity. Lisa Sy writes in from the Bay Area, where she is a full-time designer at a Web and mobile application consultancy in San Francisco called Thoughtbot. She works with clients that include start-ups and technology companies to build profitable products and services for their customers. Her day-to-day tasks include interfacing with clients, creating mock-ups and wireframes, leading product design sprints, collaborating with other Web developers, and coding/designing the websites. She is excited by the amount of learning she gains everyday, and is always open-minded to collaborating with other Wesleyan people on interesting projects. Also in California is film aficionado, Michael Steves, who is in post-production on his first feature film, Clinger, a low-budget horror-comedy he directed and co-wrote starring Vincent Martella (Phineas and Ferb, The Walking Dead, Everybody Hates Chris). The cast and crew included about 20 Wes students, including ’13ers Stefan Skripak, Leah Rosen, Paulie Lowther, Becca Kitsis, Sam Barth, Scott Kan, Chris McNabb, Sam Korda, and Ben Smith. Now living in L.A., Michael is co-producing another horror feature with director/producer Jon Hess (American History X) and second-unit directing a horror feature starring Terrance Howard. He also opened a production house specializing in music videos and commercials with two of his high school friends.

On the other side of the world, James Gardner is working as a project assistant for an Afro-German organization that focuses on integration, education, and social work for the Afro-German and African immigrant communities in Berlin. He has been given the opportunity to give presentations on Afro-German history and has also created a “WesGermany” Facebook group for Wesleyan alums and current students in Germany. They had a small event in October and are looking for more friendly faces to join. Shoot him an e-mail (jgarder@wes) if you are in the area! Nearby, Adam Rashkoff is serving as an English language teaching assistant at two different high schools in western Austria on a fellowship funded by the Austrian government and administered by the U.S. Fulbright Commission. He is enjoying teaching and working with high school students, as well as adjusting to the Alpine lifestyle. Any Wes peers who find themselves traveling in Europe and have a desire to go skiing and snowshoeing, eat tasty food and drink superb beer and mulled wine, and explore Roman ruins and medieval cities are welcome to come visit and stay on his pullout couch.

As for me, I’ve settled back at home in the Bay Area and am working for Apple as an engineering program manager. Thanks to everyone for the contributions and wishing all the best to my classmates!

Laura Yim
Lyim@wesleyan.edu