Tag: 2017

Categories Class Notes, Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2017 | 2023 | FALL ISSUE

Submitted by Nat Warner: Erica Arensman graduated law school from Michigan after winning a whole bunch of awards for oral advocacy and helping lead the law school’s public defense organization. She lived in LA for several months where she got the worst sunburn of her life, watched The Wire for the first time, and saw a million Wesleyan people. She took the bar exam in July and is starting work as a public defender in D.C. for PDS in November. She also got engaged in January!

Over the past couple of years Mark Otdelnov has tried working as a brand manager, product manager, and (of all things) a teacher since he has had a pretty good track record at that from his time at Wesleyan and graduate school (from elsewhere). That said, he does want to get a real industry job so he asked his brother to get him an interview at an investment bank (he’s well connected). Now he’s just sitting tight waiting for an offer to come by (“at my expense, of course, since I have some debt left over from his failed business project, but it’s a whole another story”). Overall, things are good. His family is supporting him and he loves them very much.

Zach Lambros is currently in Virginia after a brief stint in Arizona. No girlfriend found in either. He’s running out of states.

And ending on this sad note, in between issues of the Class Notes, we received news of the passing of David Schwartz last spring. His obituary said he loved living in California and enjoyed, among other things, piloting drones/aircraft. In 2015 David was featured in a Wesleyan Connection article about founding the Wesleyan Radio Control/Drone Club. Our condolences to his family and classmates.

Categories Obituaries, Obituaries | 2010-2020Posted on

David Rogers Schwartz ’17

David Rogers Schwartz ’17, age 28, of South Hadley, Massachusetts, and McLean, Virginia, passed away in April 2023. He graduated from Amherst High School (Massachusetts) in 2013 and from Wesleyan University (Connecticut) in 2017 with honors. He completed courses at the London School of Economics and worked on wind technology. He had a passion for computer technology and built his first computer in 2009.  He loved living in California, travel, skiing, piloting drones/aircraft and scuba diving. He was employed in cybersecurity for a national security agency and wanted to be an advocate for disabled officers. He leaves behind his parents, Eugene Schwartz MD and Susan Sturgeon, his fiancée, Tiffany Luong, and many friends and family members who he loved and who loved him dearly.

Photo by Olivia Drake

A tribute to David can be found here:

https://memories.lifeweb360.com/david-schwartz

  

Categories Class Notes, Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2017 | 2023 | SUMMER ISSUE

Lili Kadets and Ben Marvin-Vanderryn are getting married this May. Shout-out to Professor  Franklin-Fowler’s Advanced Media Analysis class!

Erica Arensman and Nat Warner got engaged! Also, Erica got a job that starts after she graduates law school: she’ll be a public defender with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia.

Noah Mertz lives in Albuquerque. He researches the culture industry and teaches French at the University of New Mexico. Soon, he will be on exchange in Paris. He tries to floss at least three times a week, but sometimes he forgets.

Categories Class Notes, Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2017 | 2023 | SPRING ISSUE

Cloie Logan has been working ridiculously hard to unionize her workplace, Allandale Farm, in Brookline, Massachusetts! (Follow us at Allandale Workers United on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook!) After a whirlwind campaign, she and her co-organizers secured 75% of employee signatures in three days for a petition for a union election. Three weeks after Allandale Workers United filed the petition with the NLRB, the employer voluntarily recognized the union!! She is now heading into potential affiliation and eventual contract negotiations. Anyone in the Boston area looking to help out (pro-bono labor law advice? local union rep connections?), or anyone in a similar industry looking to unionize their own workplace, please reach out at allandaleworkersunited@hotmail.com.

Lydia Ottaviano has spent the past 14 months as a digital nomad, working and traveling around the country and the world alongside her partner of five-plus years. She’s a product manager for a fintech start-up based in Cleveland, Ohio, where she had been living full time until throwing her stuff in storage and beginning her adventures. Highlights of her adventures have included spending two months in Mexico City and Playa del Carmen, a second-annual ski month in Salt Lake City, weddings and graduations in California and Colorado, summering in Cleveland with new and old friends, familiar beaches and family time on Fire Island, five European countries in five weeks, and late-fall southwest hiking with family. 2023 is still shaping up, but you can definitely catch her back on the slopes of SLC in February and March, and eventually reminiscing at the weddings of close friends, including one of her oldest and best Wesleyan pals, Keyonne Session, and his new fiancée Ketrah Mugambe ’18 (“Congrats!!!”).

I’m very happy to announce I got engaged during November’s Homecoming weekend at Wes to Ketrah Mugambe ’18. Luckily, Wesleyan photographer Tom Dzimian caught the moment on camera.

Key proposed to Ketrah on the patio in front of the Office of Admission during Homecoming weekend 2022.
Categories Class Notes, Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2017 | 2022 | SPRING ISSUE

Ali Felman works in, on, and around people as the senior people associate at Intersection, an out-of-home media company. She is basically a professional RA, but with fewer cool parties and more emails. Per her last class note, you can find her in Brooklyn, with everyone else.

Noah Mertz has been bopping between the mountains of California, Mexico City, and Boston for the past few years, where he has been working in outdoor education and local political organizing. He’s settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to begin graduate studies in French literature and philosophy, and to work with a friend on an environmental project called we.grow.eco (www.wegroweco.org), through which they facilitate youth education and coalescent community events that prompt folks to reconsider the way we act and interact with and within our ecosystem. He tries to pick up one piece of trash (at least) a day.

Adam Rochelle is in LA producing and performing with Matan Koplin-Green ’15 as the delusional pop duo Paper Idol. He also makes jazztronica music and glitch-pop remixes as PRNDL, and is still joyfully producing for Kidz Bop. Additionally, he has completed his transformation from dog person to cat person.

James Wilson and Luke Lira started a company called reUser (https://www.reuser.app/) together! reUser makes it easier for universities, hospitals, corporate campuses, and their members to reUse takeout packaging, while saving money and reducing their environmental footprint in the process. They just helped Wesleyan relaunch the Eco-to-go program at Summerfields to start reUsing again on campus. Now, once each student is done with their container, they use the reUser app to exchange it for a digital token that they can keep conveniently on their smartphone until they need a new container. They are super excited to be able to give back to Wesleyan and come together to fight for a better future!

From left to right: Jordan Stone, Evan Hull ’19, Jake Cronin ’18, Ben Kurtz, Liana Mathis, Meghan Kelly, Abby Wheeler, Meredith (Smith) Mehr, Andrew Mehr, Mitch Ryan, Becca Phillips, Leah Giacalone, Zac Cuzner, Sean Patterson, Shayne Kaminski ’18, and Steve Sobo

And finally, Meredith Smith and Andrew Mehr married May 22, 2021. Many Wes classmates were in attendance.

Categories Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2017 | 2021 | ISSUE 1

Taylor Matthew just watched the “Food and Your Senses” interactive program put on as a collaboration between the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Museum of Food and Culture. The program was co-hosted by Rachel Waugh, director/founder of the Museum of Food and Culture.

     The program description reads: “Gather the kids in your family and friend circles for a virtual variety show featuring food and your senses! Get ready to put your taste buds to the test, using food you have around the house to create wacky taste combinations, watch what happens when a science educator and chef stir up a recipe you too can do from home, and make some art with spices you have around the house! Follow along with us during tonight’s event using the detailed Cereal Treat Recipe, Sensory Spice Painting Guide, and Explore Your Five Tastes Tasting Worksheet.”

     Alas, not all loves are the love. Zach Lambros is once again accepting girlfriend applications.

     Anne Cooperstone’s short fiction “Floaters” was selected to appear in the Best Microfiction 2021 anthology, and is available in bookstores worldwide in June.

     Surprising everyone, Sam Shillet actually moved out to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

     Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll already know that Ali Felman got a dog. His name is Ponyboy, and he’s perfect. She’s still working at the Trevor Project, but now she’s also fishing cigarette butts and pizza crusts out of her dog’s mouth as a second job.

Categories Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2017 | 2020 | ISSUE 3

Rachel Kaly starred in the season finale of HBO’s High Maintenance, is learning how to make rugs, and has been rejected from 22 jobs.

Ali Felman moved to Brooklyn, New York three years later than everyone else and started work at the Trevor Project as a training coordinator. She would like to be eating more bagels, so please say hi if you’re in the area to help her do that!

Rachel Waugh launched the Museum of Food and Culture based in Denver, Colorado. The museum’s mission is to inspire curiosity, creativity, and excitement for food, history, and culture. She is currently working on food and social justice (virtual) programming.

Anna Lu is remotely finishing up her last credit for the master’s in health science degree from Clark University. Her graduate research has been on cultural medical anthropology, as she worked within the urban Worcester community. She’s been able to follow her passion, working part-time at UMass Medical School while developing policies for the growing cannabis culture in Massachusetts. She’s awaiting her candidacy with Clark’s psychology PhD program to continue her work and research in providing more mental and behavioral health help and opportunities for the growing Asian and Asian American populations in urban settings. She wishes everyone well!

Nisha Grewal started her PhD in astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh in September, and she is very excited to study dark matter and the evolution of the universe. If you are traveling to Edinburgh in the next few years, she is happy to show you around! Feel free to email her at ngrewal@wesleyan.edu. 

Leneil Roderique officially became an ADCOLOR FUTURE, a program dedicated to developing the next generation of leaders in the advertising, marketing, and tech industries, after being rejected the year before. He was also promoted at work, from a creative to senior creative at VICE Media Group. This is all to say, he doesn’t sleep and will probably crash soon.

Cam Arkin somehow made it into medical school and is now attending the University of Utah School of Medicine. 

Jackson DuMont can in fact say that winter is indeed colder in Russia.

Alexandra “Zandy” Stovicek is in her third year and final semester at Yale School of Nursing. She has become a midwife and women’s health nurse practitioner after falling in love with patient care through the Wesleyan Doula Project! With any luck she will be beginning “Integration” in January, a full-time residency of sorts (location still unknown due to COVID-19) before graduating the program. One day at a time!

“Erica Arensman just started law school at University of Michigan which is ‘incredible and exciting!’”—Nate Warner (I didn’t think she would submit a note about herself)

Hilary Brumberg is still living in the Costa Rican rainforest as a Princeton in Latin America Fellow. She manages community-based conservation initiatives at a grassroots nonprofit, including creating a collaboration with NASA DEVELOP to assess the impact of policy on land management. Hilary hosts undergraduate interns from Wesleyan every summer through the College of the Environment to expose students to careers in conservation. She is grateful to use the skills she learned in her double-major in earth and environmental sciences and Hispanic literatures and cultures every day.

Keyonne Session | ksession@wesleyan.edu 

Categories Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2017 | 2020 | ISSUE 2

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Jake Lahut moved from New Hampshire to NYC in February and started working for Business Insider to cover the 2020 election and national politics.

Katie Holbert will be starting her PhD in philosophy at Boston University in the fall. At this point, Katie intends to focus on 19/20th century continental and classical philosophy, especially Nietzsche and Plato. Katie and Jake Rosenberg will get married at some point in the near future and will finally adopt a kitten companion for their senior cat, Itty Bitty Bean.

In the fall, Anthony Dean will be attending The New School, pursuing a master’s in media studies. For the last few months, he has served as the creator, sound designer, and co-producer for the New York Neo-Futurists’ new podcast Hit Play, which the New York Times praised as “cathartic” and “a treasure chest.”

Zach Lambros ’17, MA ’18 is back in Colorado and now has a girlfriend. Applications for the position are no longer being accepted at this time.

Liz Farrell is quarantining with their family in San Antonio, Texas, and recently launched their own digital writing and arts publication, Lizard Letter (LizardLetter.com).

After graduating, Taylor McClain completed the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs in New York City. Since the fellowship, she has worked in urban planning to support inclusive economic development in cities across the country. In March 2020, she moved from Brooklyn to Atlanta to prepare to attend the University of Georgia School of Law. She is engaged to AJ Wilson ’18 who will be starting law school at UGA alongside her in August. You can reach her at taylorfmcclain@gmail.com.

Callie Monroe is combining her passion for mathematical analysis and skincare as a CX operations analyst at Glossier. This is her second time working at a start-up since graduating, and she’s loving the experience of working for a smaller company.

Hyunji Ward helps brands stay relevant and connect to pop culture through her role in entertainment marketing at United Talent Agency. She works in talent strategy and management for Covergirl and helps oversee a program created in partnership with Queen Latifah, Procter & Gamble, and Tribeca Studios that empowers female filmmakers of color to tell their stories on the big screen, supporting their projects from concept to distribution.

Leneil Roderique is crafting stories that help brands make an impact in the world. As a creative at VICE Media Group, his work sits at the intersection of human-centered storytelling and audience insights to ultimately create powerful narratives for brands. At the moment, he is creating a documentary series that highlights COVID-19 essential workers for Mailchimp.

Sofi Taylor is glad her documentary series, (413)Art, premiered on Feb 28 instead of even one week later. This is her first major film project post-Wesleyan. She was lucky to have help from fellow Wes folk: Dylan Beckman, Ben Goldberg ’13, Josh Rode ’19, Alex Fabry ’18, Ellie Black, and Sarah Corner. The nine episodes on different Western Massachusetts-based artists are available on saltboxfilms.squarespace.com.

The Racquets (Sam Beck, Ryan Breen, Jared Fineberg, and Jeremy Freeman ’18) released their debut EP and played their first New York show at the Mercury Lounge in January. The EP is streaming on all platforms.

Keyonne Session | ksession@wesleyan.edu