Tag: 2016

Max Dietz and Anna Cocuzzo got married in June!

Torie White lives in Oakland, Calif., where she spends her days working at a community-minded café called The Well. Her afternoons and evenings are spent organizing with Resource Generation, a group that engages young people with wealth and/or class privilege to radically redistribute their resources to social justice movements. She’s also writing a screenplay and making space for as much fun, play, and pleasure in her life as possible. Hit her up if you’re about any of that.

Max Winter is training to go on American Ninja Warrior and firmly believes 2020 is going to be his year!

Lainey Hellman is entering her third year of teaching special education at an elementary school in Baltimore. She completed her master’s at Johns Hopkins. She is much more patient with her students than she was with customers at WesWings. If you are interested in supporting her classroom, visit donorschoose.org/hellman.

Taran Carr and Sarah Mi tied the knot on July 28 and live in Baltimore. Wedding party included Ethan Quinn, Jack Trowbridge, Emerson Obus (Taran’s roommates at Wes), Scarlett Harris, Melissa Leung, Mariam Torres ’16, MA’17 (Sarah’s roommates at Wes), and Deborah Mi ’14 (Sarah’s sister). Their wedding rehearsal ended up being Wes themed, thanks to Melissa, Scarlett, and Mariam, who drove to Wes the day before to pick up Wesleyan gear and banners. Most important, Melissa hit up Wes Co-Op’s local bakery in Connecticut and brought five delicious, fresh loaves of garlic asiago bread to share at the reception.

Sophie Breitbart is entering her second year as a PhD student in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto. She’s investigating how urbanization influences the evolution of urban-dwelling plants, like the monarch butterfly’s darling common milkweed. She may extend her study to other cities, so if your area is a milkweed hub, she’d love to hear about it!

Lili Borland celebrated her marriage to Manan Dhulia on July 27 near her hometown in sunny California. The two met in Boston while working at Amadeus, and fell in love skiing and snowboarding the Northeast. Big shout out to Denise Francisco, who was a phenomenal bridesmaid and choreographed the couple’s first dance. Lili and Manan will move cross-country to the Bay Area.

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

After completing law school in May, Nina Gurak is languishing in Philly libraries studying for the July bar exam. She is moving to Nashville soon and would love to connect with local alumni.

Zach Larabee has been living in South Boston the past three years with Jake Smith ’14. He’s been working happily as the enterprise sales coordinator for two years at Toast, Inc. along with fellow Cardinals Abby Cahn-Gambino ’18, Beau Butler ’18, and Alex Kamisher ’17. In his off time, he bowls with Cameron Rahbar ’15 and carries Jonathan Coombs ’15 in Fortnite on PS4. No one really knows what year Zach actually graduated.

Gabe Rosenberg is working at WOSU Public Media in Columbus, Ohio, where he’s been the digital news editor for the last few years. He won journalism awards for his pun-filled headlines and for a series of stories he did on the city of Columbus tearing down a beloved kangaroo crossing sign—a tragedy that he accidentally caused himself. “All’s well that ends well though!” he notes. You can also occasionally read his reporting on NPR. “Oh, and I started a food blog called Oy Sauce, just for fun, and because the name was too funny to pass up,” Gabe adds.

Madeline Keane’s days have consisted of waking up at 6:25 a.m., eating cheese for breakfast, doing some paperwork, and then later taking a nap. Afterwards, she has an espresso and then goes on her daily stroll around Boston.

Pierre Gerard likes to ride his bicycle(s). He’s interning with the City of Oakland’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Program to develop safer streets, and crunching the numbers with a worker-owned bicycle cooperative in Berkeley. He dreams of a day when we all stop driving.

Zarek Siegel is living on a cliff by the sea in La Jolla, Calif., finishing up the first year of his PhD in neuroscience at the University of California San Diego. He was living in NYC for two years, doing computational biophysics research at Weill Cornell Medicine with Mike LeVine ’11, and sharing an apartment with Mike Glasser and Conor Hunt. He definitely misses New York, especially his roommates and Central Park, but he’s finding it pretty difficult to complain about San Diego.

Samantha Hellberg, a graduate student in clinical psychology, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Award. The award recognizes outstanding graduate students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Samantha will be recognized at the 2020 Graduate Student Recognition Celebration, hosted by UNC Graduate School.

Caroline Shadle will be starting a master’s program in dance studies this fall at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

After a stint in consulting, Michelle Li realized she really missed being a student and will be starting her PhD in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Becca Winkler returned to Philadelphia after living in Thailand for two-and-a-half years working with Mahouts Elephant Foundation, a U.K. charity dedicated to improving conditions for Asian elephants and the communities that coexist with them. She will begin her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in September studying cultural anthropology. She will the assist foundation part-time with the development of their projects and is excited to begin this new chapter in Philly!

Tim Israel visited San Francisco in May and went to a party, where he met four Wesleyan alumni he didn’t know. “They were chill,” he says.

Melissa “Melysaur” Leung has been roaming Germany searching for the best beer and pretzels with Wy Ming Lin. She has been studying German and learning about the dual health care system by working at Sana Klinikum. Sarah Mi was a lovely visitor but decided to fly just short of Germany, and instead went to Spain.

Bulelani Jili is in Cambridge, U.K. He earned an MPhil from Cambridge University, where he studied as a Standard Bank Africa Chairman’s Scholar. His work examines the relationship between China and African countries, like Ethiopia, that have adopted its model of economic development and surveillance. This fall he will be starting a PhD at Harvard University.

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

Micaela Kaye was chosen by the Knowles Teacher Initiative as a member of its 2018 Cohort of Teaching Fellows. The Knowles Teaching Fellowship is an intensive and cohesive five-year program that supports early-career, high school mathematics and science teachers in their efforts to develop teaching expertise and lead from the classroom.

Ellen Paik left her job in investment banking and joined New Story, a San Francisco nonprofit that aims to pioneer solutions to address global homelessness. New Story helped develop a 3D printer that can print homes in less than 24 hours and will hopefully be putting this technology to use soon!

Tim Israel lives in Portland, Ore., and started exploring a newfound passion for karaoke. Reach out to Tim with any great go-to karaoke songs.

Chris “Gla” Glabicky is alive and well. Gla is working with Pierre Plantevin, Dara Mysliwiec, Theodore Eugene Sullivan, G. Foley, and Nicole Roman-Johnston on another full-length album. Stay in touch through pdgworld.net.

Abby Gruppuso is opening a liquor distillery in Patchogue, N.Y., The Better Man Distilling Co., with Peter Cornillie ’15. Doors open this summer!

Mike Greenwald is starting another year at the Westminster School in Simsbury, Conn., teaching math (calculus and algebra) and coaching lacrosse and basketball, and is planning to attend a graduate program at the Bread Loaf School of English up at Middlebury this summer. Mike is still running marathons and did a trail running vacation to New Zealand. Mike’s next big race will be the Burlington Vermont City Marathon in May, and the weekend after that he will be running the Covered Bridges Half Marathon with Liz Weinstein, Jordan Sapnar, and Greg Goldstone.

Tabitha Gillombardo is in Cleveland and totally stoked about the Browns. She is the John Lewis Fellow and paralegal at The Chandra Law Firm—a civil rights and constitutional rights law firm. She is learning every day from the firm’s high-stakes litigators, who—with co-counsel—secured the largest settlement in Cleveland history on behalf of Tamir Rice’s family.

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

Melissa Leung wined and dined with Son Tran ’95, Taran Carr, and Sarah Mi before watching Hamilton on its opening night in D.C. 

Ceci Cereijido-Bloche is in rehearsals for a show called The Hunt, going up at HB Studio in July. It’s a series of five one-acts, each with a different take on the idea of a sci-fi world with different gender dynamics (think Handmaiden’s Tale).

Matt Chilton just finished a run of eight performances of an original production of An Iliad as The Muse, a role bridging improvisation, composition, and acting, at D.C.’s Atlas Performing Arts Center. He is working on sound for Specially Processed American Me, a multimedia play and workshop series focused on Spam in Korean and Korean-American food, culture, and memory, while playing electric sax in a femme-domme math rock ensemble, Wasabi Fox, and working in nonprofit admin.

Eki Ramadhan has been working for the Southeast Asia office of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab for almost two years. He had a chance to work with Jenna Juwono ’09, who is now pursuing a graduate degree in the Netherlands. He deferred his admission to a grad school in the States to 2019 and is working as a senior research associate and eager to welcome recently-graduated Aqila Putri ’18 to the J-PAL team at the end of June .

Mads O’Brien is wrapping up her job(s) at Stanford University, where she works part-time as library GIS support (basically being a QAC tutor all over again) and part-time at the front desk of the Rumsey Map Center for rare and antique maps. She gets to geek out over really awesome cartography everyday—ask her about it! This fall, Mads is heading back to Connecticut to pursue a master’s of environmental science at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, where one of her personal goals is to learn how to fly drones for aerial photography. Mads is excited to reconnect with her people on the East Coast.

Since graduation, Sean Mihaljevich has been working as a research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York but will soon be returning to his home state of California to pursue a JD at Stanford Law School. He comments, “It is unfortunate that I have to leave many of the close friends I made at Wesleyan behind, but I am excited for what the future holds!”

Ellen Paik placed second with her team in the Global Finals of the Goldman Sachs Analyst Impact Fund, securing a grant for a nonprofit called New Story, an organization that aims to incorporate 3D printing technology to alleviate global homelessness. The grant will go towards constructing the first ever 3D-printed community, to be built in El Salvador by 2019. Check out the amazing work of New Story on their website!

In August, Madeline James will be leaving D.C. and moving down to North Carolina to start a PhD program in history at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Aaron Morgan works in D.C. for Fund II-UNCF STEM Scholars Program, a $48 million Initiative that supports African-American students pursuing careers in STEM and technology.

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

Miranda Haymon is an artist-in-residence at the Roundabout Theatre Company in NYC, serving as assistant director for two off-Broadway shows and one Broadway show, as well as developing her works-in-progress through Roundabout. She’s always looking for audience members so if you’re curious to see what she’s up to, hit her up!

Lizzie Paquette is finishing up the dual-degree engineering program at Columbia and graduating with a B.S. in computer engineering. Last summer she worked as a software engineer at Facebook, but come this fall, will be starting a job as a software engineer at a Y Combinator startup called Pagedraw in San Francisco.

Michael King and Abby Gruppuso are in Huatulco, Mexico, to work on a language learning startup. They have been eating a lot of tacos. They are also looking to collaborate with a product designer, so if anyone has experience, reach out!

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

After graduation, Rhys Langston Podell returned to Los Angeles, his hometown, and has spent his time painting, writing, and performing/recording music. His album Full Frontal Incumbent, an Incongruous Mixtape, was released last November and earned him the cover story of L.A. Record’s fall issue and an in-depth feature with LA Weekly. He is performing on both coasts, promoting his new album, Aggressively Ethnically Ambiguous. He remains the poet laureate of his living room.

Scarlett Harris is attending The George Washington University for an accelerated bachelor’s degree in nursing, and is pursuing her long-time career goal of becoming a nurse-midwife. She been working multiple jobs, including attending births with a home-birth midwife in California. She reflects, “I cannot help but appreciate my time at Wes and acknowledge how much my experiences and relationships there shaped the path that I’m currently on.”

After a year working in the healthcare industry, Mike Greenwald is now teaching calculus at the Westminster School in Simsbury, Conn. Since graduating, he competed in several marathons, including the Chicago and New York marathons. He writes, “I’ve carried the lessons that I have learned at Wesleyan both into the classroom and out on the roads: community, perseverance, and hard work are second-to-none companions when aiming towards success.”

Max Winter and Max Jones (also known as “Mad Maxes”) ran the Chicago Marathon on October 8th on behalf of the American Cancer Society. All donations went towards cancer research and treatment.

Mia Kolomatsky spent a year working as an English teacher in Madrid, Spain, and is now serving as an AmeriCorps member with City Year in Boston.

Glenn Cantave started a group called Movers & Shakers that uses virtual reality, augmented reality, and the creative arts to execute direct action and advocacy campaigns for marginalized communities. Their current campaign aims to remove Columbus-related imagery from public spaces, streets, and institutions. The group’s performance art piece at Columbus Circle had a $40 budget, and recordings of the performance received more than one million views online.

For a year, Madeline Keane worked at Prehype, a venture capital development firm and incubator. With the company she helped open a problem-based learning private elementary school called The Hudson Lab School in Westchester, N.Y. At the end of July, she left for Sauðárkrókur, Iceland, to play for a soccer club called Tindastóll. At the end of that season, Madeline signed with an Italian team and now plays for ASD Catania Calcio Femminile in Sicily.

Maria Massad has been enjoying her time in Chicago and celebrated her one-year anniversary working on the digital advertising side at Tribune Publishing for their Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, and San Diego Union-Tribune properties. She has done some freelance film production work for a local documentary company and volunteered to do e-mail copywriting for a gubernatorial candidate in Illinois. She enjoyed having Jessica Seidman ’15 in town for the summer and reuniting with Hope Kabel ’14 during the spring. She notes, “I’m just loving life!”

Tabitha Gillombardo started a new job as a strategist for a female and minority-owned consulting firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. She was featured as her high school’s September/October Alumna Spotlight. The interview can be accessed on her LinkedIn page.

After graduation, Samantha Hellberg started as the program coordinator for the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorder and Complicated Grief Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. A manuscript, based on the work she conducted at Wesleyan as part of her honors thesis under the mentorship of Dr. Mike J.F. Robinson, was accepted for publication in Behavioural Brain Research. She is applying to doctoral programs in clinical psychology in hopes of building upon her education at Wesleyan and MGH to further examine the mechanisms and treatment of anxiety and stress-related conditions.

Kobi Bordoley lives in NYC with fellow classmates Noah Gup and Gabe Lipton Galbraith. He works at the Civilian Complaint Review Board, investigating allegations of police misconduct with Gabbie Carpenter and Rachel Ellman ’15. Surprising no one, he and Miranda Haymon continue to plot daily. He is seeking more endorsements for “Opening Jars” and “Augury” on LinkedIn and notes, “Don’t be a stranger and please stop by!”

Tim Israel recounts a fond memory—hitting a home run in an intramural softball game, and then going to Taco Bell to celebrate.

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

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

Jackie Freed moved back to LA and got her real estate license a month after graduation. She joined the family business, BKF Properties, and is looking forward to helping fellow Cardinals find a place to land out in Cali!

Trisha Arora just moved to Boston where she is working for Epsilon as a business systems analyst. She also just adopted a kitten named Legolas.

Rachael Metz is moving to Santiago, Chile, with her twin brother (Jordin, Tufts ’16), from September to May to immerse herself in the Spanish language and Chilean culture. Her goal is to be fluent (or close to it) by the time she returns home. They will both get their international certifications to teach English, then will look for jobs in teaching and tutoring English. If any Wes alumni are in Chile, please reach out!

Miranda Haymon has jumped right into rehearsals as the directing fellow at Arena Stage in D.C. If anyone is in D.C. and wants to see a show, let her know!

In August, Abby Gruppuso moved to Taiwan to teach English through the Fulbright program. She is living in Taichung, the third largest city on the island, and is teaching fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. Abby recounts, “Taiwan is beautiful, the food is amazing, my students are unbelievably cute, and my coworkers have been super welcoming.” She is excited for the year ahead.

Instead of spending all of August au pairing in Istanbul as planned, Melissa Leung took up a new German friend’s offer to accompany her to her home in Germany. This spot served as Melissa’s home base for the days she didn’t spend touring Europe. Melissa met up with Wy Ming Lin in Cologne, too! Now Melissa is in East Asia traveling with her two sisters (one a Wes ’10), stopping in Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou. She just signed her lease with Sarah Mi.

 Samantha Hellberg has been working as the program coordinator for the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She has been really enjoying her first few months, even though she started just off the heels of graduation (within less than a week!). She’ll be working there for approximately two years, as she develops her research and clinical skill sets further, and applies to clinical psychology PhD programs.

Caroline Shadle moved to Manhattan to start a new position at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea. She is living in an apartment with two Wes alumni, as well as across the street from two other Wes alumni—reminiscent of Home Avenue.

Nina Channing is pursuing her MFA-2 in interior design at the New York School of Interior Design after spending a fulfilling summer helping with Dylan Fernandes’ successful primary campaign for the state representative seat in Falmouth, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket.

Former housemates Alessandra Cervera and Liyan Yao are having post-grad separation anxiety, and miss each other dearly. Sandi is doing cognitive development research at Yale, and Liyan has been accepted to med school, deferring to January. In the meantime, Liyan plans on taking some time off to spend with friends and family.

Emma Buford moved back to NYC to pursue the arts. She loves being in her hometown and continues to spend time with family and fellow Wes alumni. She will be in a production at the Joyce Theater this October, thanks to a connection made by Caroline Shadle, and will also be singing at a fundraiser in November.

Hannah Sokoloff-Rubin has picked up her stuff and moved across the country to Portland, Ore., to see what the whole “West Coast” thing is all about. She’s working for Planned Parenthood as the community education and outreach coordinator in Washington County and hopes to spend as much time in the outdoors as possible.

Jack Reuter just got a job working at a golf course as “the person who drives around in that little cart picking up balls from the driving range.” Jack reports, “That’s about it. Living at home, job hunting. Life is good.”

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

Newly equipped with Wesleyan diplomas, the Class of 2016 continues to venture into post-grad life. We’re traveling to new cities, signing our first leases, and getting used to no longer wondering how many meal points we’ve got left.

Miranda Haymon is enjoying time with her family at home in Boston before moving to Berlin, Germany, for the summer. She will be taking on this adventure with Lynn Ma and Russell Thomas ’17. Miranda also plans on meeting up with a lot of other alums while there. Afterwards, she’ll head to D.C., to be the directing fellow at Arena Stage.

Matthew Siegelman, doing cognitive neuroscience research at MIT, has moved into a house with a cat.

Celia Joyce is traveling around Europe for the summer, visiting 10 countries and 19 cities throughout her adventures.

Melissa Leung is prepping to take her driving exam, and also au pairing in Barcelona and Istanbul this summer. In the fall, Melissa will be traveling to Southeast Asia before moving from New York to D.C., where she will be joining IBM as a consultant in the public sector.

Bulelani Jili will be a member of the 2016 class this fall at the Yenching Academy, an elite interdisciplinary graduate leadership program at Peking University in China. The academy hosts a program designed to cultivate global leaders with broad critical thinking skills and a cultural understanding of China. Bulelani is excited for this opportunity, and believes that this experience will greatly add to his understanding of politics and its ills, and also to his passion for crafting concrete public policy solutions, especially for a geopolitical landscape that continues to shift increasingly towards China.

Madeleine Junkins is a research associate in the neuroscience department at NYU Langone Medical Center. She’ll be moving to Brooklyn with Nina Stender and Alyssa Glanzer, and is excited to meet up with Wes alums in NYC!

Ellen Paik moved to Manhattan and started work in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs. Ellen is still getting used to the bustle of New York City, but enjoys the abundance of delicious pizza, New York bagels, and fellow Wes alums. Ellen also continues to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat.

Thank you to those who wrote in! Hope to see many of us during Homecoming Weekend later this fall!

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu