Terrance Agbi joined Forbes magazine as a senior product owner for their digital team last summer. (“We’re hiring! Please reach out if you’re interested,” he said.) He also got engaged to long-time girlfriend, Liane Membis, and will be married in June.

Dani St. Pierre was promoted to senior food/drink editor for BestProducts.com at Hearst Digital Media. She said, “It’s a young e-commerce, news, and product review site—and one of the top-performing e-commerce sites and revenue drivers in the Hearst network.” She was previously an associate food/drink editor.

Becky Eidelman just started a master’s program in urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts.

Mike Rosen continues to use the platform WESlam gave him to speak internationally on topics of mental health, masculinity, and sexuality. He is an official storyteller for The JED Foundation, and is earning his master’s at the University of Pennsylvania. He jogs in Fort Greene, where he often sees Josh Smith walking his two blind shihtzus and spends time with Samantha Sherman ’09.

Graham Gnall and Kaitlin Ashley were married on June 1, in a Brooklyn ceremony officiated by Ingrid Parl ’10. Attendees included many Wes varsity athletes, fraternal organization and student government members, and surprise guests, including Topanga Cage ’10, marched along Manhattan Ave., to a bacchanal celebration reminiscent of High Street in its heyday.

Cheryl Tan is “still in Singapore, where things have stabilized in terms of visas and money and houses, all your general 30-year-old stuff. Signed with an agency, shortlisted for a Women of the Future Award, featured in a list of 25 Amazing Women in Marie Claire’s 25th Anniversary edition. Did a new play about humanitarian aid workers that was very intense, and a lot of TV that was not super intense. Contemplating the whole balance thing of acting-for-a-living as opposed to making fulfilling art. Also contemplating more training. Thinking about money a lot.” Watch out for her in a teeny-tiny role on an HBO show out soon. Instagram: @cherylchittytan.

Julian Sonnenfeld married Gia Stagliano on May 18 at Wave Hill Public Gardens in the Bronx. He is in his final year of orthopaedic surgery residency at Columbia University Medical Center–New York Presbyterian Hospital, and soon will be starting a sports medicine/shoulder and elbow surgery fellowship at OrthoCarolina in Charlotte, N.C. in August.

Colin Small is working at The Met and writing a novel.

Julia Heffelfinger married Rick Maynard on June 22 in Weekapaug, R.I. The couple has been together since their senior year at Wesleyan and were both film studies majors.

Eliza Gordon just became the principal at a public school in North Austin called Wells Branch Elementary. This is her first principalship after spending the last eight years as a teacher, instructional coach, and assistant principal in Austin Public Schools as well.

Lastly, Tim Morley and I (Allie Southam) were married on Sept. 21 in Los Angeles. Close friend A.J. Chan married us overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Several other Wes alumni were in attendance. We’re living in Northampton, Mass., while Tim is completing his general surgery residency at Baystate Medical Center. I’m working as a neurologic physical therapist for Hartford Healthcare.

Allie Southam | asoutham@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

Kristen Salustro is working on her fourth book and is expecting to publish it in 2020. Her debut novel was awarded a silver medal in the Readers’ Favorite Book Awards in the sci-fi category, which made her so excited she accidentally bounced her partner awake at 6 a.m. on a weekend before shoving the announcement under his nose. She just passed her third-year mark at her day job and has been officially named someone’s manager.

Bryce Hollingsworth’s custom traditional dry stone construction business has been going really well. He spent two months this winter working with a certified dry stone Master Craftsman down in New South Wales, Australia, building a huge 600-foot long slate wall which was awesome. Since then, Bryce received the Preservation Trades Network’s International Trades Exchange grant, and used that to spend two weeks working with a Master Stonemason in Galway, Ireland. Later this fall, he will be traveling down to Lexington, Ky., to work with the Dry Stone Conservancy, a nonprofit organization focused on preserving the craft of dry stone walling. This year has been insanely busy, but he’s been loving every minute of it.

Benjamin Smith completely missed chances to script supervise Batwoman and Utopia and is seeking forgiveness from himself. He completed his short film, Bump in the Night, in September, and is making plans to force it on audiences around the world. He likes to call it a short film, as if he really knows what he’s created. You can also find Ben performing improv and sketch at Second City in Chicago. He’s trying to have more friends and stuff. Improv is good for that. Need life advice? Improv, friends.

After nearly four years gallivanting around Asia Pacific, Julian Azaret is finally moving back to the USA! San Francisco and Cambridge have even odds. Zach Libresco just moved from Brooklyn to Harlem to be closer to his new job, modeling for the National World War I Memorial. His theater company, The Humanist Project, is remounting their devised clown show, centered on quantum physics and Russian fairy tales, in November and December at The Tank in Midtown! He is very happy to have moved closer to his best friend, Emily Hunt.

After spending five years in Washington, D.C., working on environmental policy for the National Wildlife Federation and later as a U.S. Senate staffer, Taran Catania moved to Burlington, Vt. She’s pursuing a Sustainable Innovation MBA at the University of Vermont with plans to confront environmental challenges in new, better ways. (And yes, she still loves birds. In fact, she’s the seventh-ranked top birder in D.C. for 2018—including #1 female birder and youngest in the Top 10.)

Victoria Chu is an entertainment finance/corporate associate at Akin Gump in Los Angeles. She would love to connect with other Wes alumni in the entertainment/legal industry. Evan Hazelett is studying the spatial and racial politics of food and farming as well as critical urban histories and theories as a master in urban planning student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He hopes to pursue a PhD in human geography after this program. He’s also the editor-in-chief for The Urban Review, the student journal of urban studies and planning. On the side, Evan is trying to publish short stories and poetry, and at home he cooks himself to the ground. Shira Gaudet (formally Shauna Pratt) is pleased to announce her marriage to Amelia Atwater-Rhodes on June 2. She now has two children, Rebecca (4) and Michael (1). Both children attended the wedding; Michael slept through the whole ceremony. The couple’s first dance was actually a singing duet, “I’ll Never Tell” from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, “Once More with Feeling.” Rubber ducks abounded.

Laura Yim | Lyim@wesleyan.edu 

Zaki Iqbal began his medical school journey at Quinnipiac University’s Frank H. Netter School of Medicine along with Joie Akerson ’17 and Derek Groskreutz ’13.

Jasmine Masand moved to North Carolina in August to pursue her master’s at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. As a Duke-Margolis Scholar, Jasmine is focusing on health care policy and is exploring exciting new models for value-based care in Medicare.

Emily Garvin is happy to be returning to New England to start a new position teaching and coaching at Loomis Chaffee, just up the road from Wes.

Catherine Chase has moved to Seattle and is starting her PhD program in classics at the University of Washington.

Gabe Frankel married Aliya Yule on Sept. 3 in Chicago. They met in 2013 when Gabe studied abroad at Oxford where Aliya was a student. (Big shout out to year-long study abroad programs!) He’ll be moving to London in early 2020 and looking forward to connecting with Wes alumni there; reach out at gabefrankel@gmail.com.

Gordon Petty and Camille Casareno are engaged! He proposed in June, about seven years after they met at Wesleyan. And though they are Cardinals through and through, they are both pursuing post-grad studies at Columbia University. Gordon is entering the third year of his neuroscience PhD and Camille will be starting her MPH this fall.

After more than three years in San Francisco, Hannah Jenkins finally escaped the marine layer, moving across the bridge to Oakland, Calif. She co-founded a holistic healing and wellness center with some other badass women and feels alive and in her purpose more often than not. If you are in the Bay Area, check out The Heartbeat Collective!

Jenna Starr | jstarr@wesleyan.edu

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

Hello, class of 2018! For this round of class notes we will be featuring Aylin Garcia. After graduating Wesleyan, Aylin stayed at Wesleyan for three months to work on astronomy research with Professor William Herbst. She is writing a paper for that research, which is in its final draft.

She then worked at MIT for Professor Sara Seager and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission for around 10 months. TESS is a NASA/MIT mission launched last year. Its purpose is to search for planets around other sun-like stars. She worked as a research assistant, teaching people how to find exoplanets and managing the team and the public-facing and conference websites. This fall she will be attending Dartmouth College for an astronomy PhD.

Write in next time for a chance to be featured and to stay connected! Go Wes!

Najwa Anasse | nanasse@wesleyan.edu
Garett Larivee | gslarivee@gmail.com

Hey, class of 2019. Hope you all are doing well and had a great summer. Here are some updates:

Steven Fields is staying at Wesleyan for another year, finishing up the BA/MA program in psychology. He’s excited to have the opportunity to continue his education at Wes.

At the beginning of August, Michelle Fisher moved to Madison, Wis., to start a new job at Epic, working as a technical services engineer.

Carina Flaherty moved back to her hometown of Philadelphia, where she is a clinical research assistant at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, specializing in asthma care.

Zachary Obstfeld is working at Tufts’ Fletcher School doing data analysis and visualization for a publication called Econofact that focuses on the dissemination of economic news and research.

Hannah Bolotin is living in Boston where she works as a research lab manager for Professor Katherine McAuliffe’s social and developmental psychology lab at Boston College.

Sahil Shah is working full-time at a mid-market private equity firm called CX Partners in New Delhi, India.

Maya Dorn has been working part-time as a barista at Uncommon Grounds Coffee & Bagels and just started as a laboratory assistant at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Rensselaer, N.Y. She tells us, “Upstate New York is where it’s at!”

Rhoen Fiutak has started a position as a math teacher at Northfield Mount Hermon. During this time, she will also be working towards a master’s degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania as a part of their independent boarding school fellowship program. She is looking forward to this new journey in Western Mass!

Aaron Cheung has started at Berkeley Law School.

Amabel Jeon moved to LA to start her first year as a PhD student in social psychology at the University of Southern California. Her research focus will be mainly on the role of culture on cognition through understanding the consequences of cultural fluency and honor.

Yahya Ladiwala has started working at a charter high school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and is teaching AP U.S. government to high school seniors. He has relocated to New York and is living with Josh Lane. He also wants to give a shout out to his amazing girlfriend, Cassie Morales ’20, who is about to start her senior year at Wesleyan.

Jennifer Gagne is living in Buffalo, N.Y., pursuing a master’s in urban childhood education with a specialization in TESOL (Teaching English as a New Language) while teaching ENL (English as a New Language) in Buffalo Public Schools.

Andrew Jacono is heading to Lyon for TAPIF (teaching assistant program in France) for the next seven months. He plans to do a lot of writing there to get a jumpstart on his writing career. He’ll be searching for a permanent job while abroad for when he returns in May 2020.

Sydney Riddick is pursuing a Sc.M. in biotechnology from Brown.

Devon Cooper moved to Worcester, Mass., where she is working as a laboratory research assistant in the department of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She is helping to conduct research on a specific chemoreceptor and its potential role in microglial activation as involved in the progression of neurodegenerative disorders.

As for me, I just relocated to New York City, where I work as a paralegal for the Urban Justice Center. There I am an advocate for low-income folks who struggle with mental illnesses, helping them get the help and health care that they deserve.

And last but not least, Erin Angell and Max Wimer have gotten engaged and are set to have their wedding in May of next year!

Special thanks to everyone who reached out with their life updates.

Justin Campos | jxcampos@wesleyan.edu

Wendy Wickwire PhD’83, professor emerita in the department of history at the University of Victoria in Canada, has published a new book called At The Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging. The book is about James Teit, an ethnographer and Indian rights activist. Her book received praises and accolades, with one of the notable reviewers, author Julie Cruikshank saying, “Wendy Wickwire’s groundbreaking historical investigation places James Teit as a key figure in early North American anthropology, but also as central to historical Indigenous rights activism in British Columbia.”

Greetings, Class of 2010!  Please enjoy the following updates from our fellow Cardinals.

Kait Halibozek married Jack Fitzmorris in October in Palm Springs, Calif. Her bridesmaids included Katie Boyce-Jacino, Rebecca Weiss Roberts, and Lauren Valentino Yadav. The wedding was also attended by Dave Bachy, Tony Zosherafatain, Rose Agger, Emily Rasenick, Heather Stanton, Brenna Galvin ’11, Carrie Cohen Smolen ’12, Lindsay Keys ’11, and Danielle Klimashousky ’08.

Justin Papermaster reports that “Gary Garofalo and I have started a new company called LoudCrowd in Austin, Texas. Our software helps consumer brands turn their regular customers into advocates. Our platform makes it possible to incentivize and measure customers to create more user-generated content about them on social sites like Instagram. We raised our pre-seed funding round in October, led by Active Capital. We actually work in the same building as a company called People Pattern founded by Ken Cho ’94, so lots of good Wes stories get shared at office happy hours!”

Dan Bloom moved to Seattle in 2015 when his company, Slope, received investment from Microsoft. Dan and his business partner grew Slope (work management software for marketing and creative teams) in Seattle for the last few years, raising money from Wesleyan alumni like Strauss Zelnick ’79 and Frank Sica ’73, and other investors in the Pacific Northwest. In January 2019, Smartsheet Inc. acquired Slope. Dan has been working at Smartsheet for a year now and the Slope technology has been added to Smartsheet’s core capabilities. Dan still lives in Seattle with his fiancée, Laura.

Seth Rosen moved to Brooklyn a few months ago after four years in the Bay Area. He is preparing to start teaching game design as an adjunct at NYU while continuing to work on a few game development projects of his own, one of which Seth hopes to release this year.

Exciting news from Jess Brownfeld Spierer! She and Eric Spierer welcomed their son, David Ari Spierer, on Dec. 5.

J.P. Valette contributes the following: “I completed my family medicine residency at the University of California San Diego in June and I’m halfway through my sports medicine fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. I’m about to finish the hiring process for my first job in primary care sports medicine in San Francisco, where I’ll be moving in August. I’m excited to move back home and finally get my career in medicine started after a long journey of training. Shout out to anyone already in the Bay Area. I would love to reconnect when I get there. In Wesleyan-specific news, I’ve been hanging out with Jed Rendleman ’12 and together we’ve been getting back into Ultimate Frisbee by playing in a recreational men’s winter league and pickup games. We both played on the club team Nietzsch Factor while at Wesleyan. In other news, I’ve been to Burning Man for the past two years and am looking forward to going back this year for another amazing time.”

Katherine Kitfield Bascom is working as a writer-designer creative lead for the analytics and behavior change marketing team at Aetna-CVS Health in NYC. On the side, she is still pursuing her passion for all things fitness. Katherine is happily engaged and living in Jersey City.

Finally, you may have heard that our classmate and friend Pedro Ventura was shot last October by a stranger outside of a nightclub in North Carolina. Pedro suffered major injuries to his spinal cord as a result of this senseless act. Many of you know Pedro as a dear friend, a fighter, and a joy to all who know him. As he embarks on the long road to recovery, our friend is now in need of support. More details on Pedro’s story and his recovery can be found here: gofundme.com/f/hope-for-pedro. If you can, any contribution would go a long way.

Thank you as always for the wonderful updates, and as always, feel free to send them anytime.

David Layne | dlayne@wesleyan.edu

I hope 2020 is off to a great start for the Class of 2011. Some exciting updates from our classmates below.

Isabel Magowan writes, “I am a working artist and photographer based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and married last June. Thinking of all my fellow Wes classmates and hoping they are doing well!”

Christopher Ceccolini and Jordan Gratch ’13 finally tied the knot, nearly 10 years after first meeting at Wesleyan. The two were married on Oct. 19, at Gedney Farm in Massachusetts. They were surrounded by many close family and friends, including 26 Wesleyan alumni from numerous graduation years (2010-2014). Jordan is now a first-year associate at Latham & Watkins LLP in New York and Chris is a clinical fellow in psychology at Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Chris looks forward to joining Jordan in New York when he finishes his PhD in counseling psychology next year.

Amanda Faraone lives in Austin, Texas, with husband Alex Anthony ’10, and their son, George. She is the new development director for American Short Fiction and is at work on her novel about teenage girls and love magic.

Becky Eidelman writes, “In the fall, I began a two-year master’s degree program in urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University.”

Jared Gimbel became a member of the International Association of Hyperpolyglots (HYPIA) in late 2019. With his video game about Greenland, Kaverini Nuuk Adventures, slated for a 2020 release after many delays, he has begun working on the expansion.

Cheryl Tan writes, “I am still in Singapore! Last year I did four screen projects and a difficult play called Displaced Persons’ Welcome Dinner, about humanitarian aid workers in conflict zones. It premiered at the Singapore International Arts Festival and took up 13 weeks (two workshop sessions before the full production). It’s a semi-devised work, very tiring.”

Marshall Johnson reports, “Back in September I started a new job in astronomy as a staff scientist at Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) in Santa Barbara, Calif. LCO operates a network of 23 robotic telescopes at seven observatory sites around the world, and, in my new position, I’m working with our NRES high-resolution spectrographs that we operate at four of those sites, in addition to conducting my own research. I now work closely with Tim Brown ’72, among others.”

Last but not least, Jennifer Spero writes, “I will be marrying Tristan Tully ’09 and moving to London!” Congrats, Jen and Tristan!

As always, thank you for your updates!

Allie Southam | asoutham@wesleyan.edu

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

Zach Schonfeld celebrated the one-year anniversary of the time he got laid off, got a book deal, and went to see the repulsive 1975 film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom all on the same day. He is nearly finished with his first book, a 33-1/3 volume chronicling the story of the widely sampled funk band 24-Carat Black. He lives with Rebecca Vaadia in New York City, right near the diner from Seinfeld.

Peter Horton has been living it up in Japan for the last year but came back to Brooklyn on New Year’s to see his friends The Strokes. Croy Salinas has moved to a Park Slope adjacent neighborhood and is remembered fondly by his friends. Ethan Grund is loving the trials and tribulations of being a Midwest farmer at his homestead in Minnesota. Will Davis is loath to admit he has a new hobby, and Mark Popinchalk is looking to reinvent his identity as we enter the next decade by introducing an extra consonant into his name. Noah Masur ’15 has found clarity, Sora Akiyoshi ’14 wants to rue the day, Chloe Rinehart ’14 has been there, done that, Susanna Banks is happily employed, and Natalie Robichaud ’14 falls in love almost daily.

Matt Motta is starting his second semester as an assistant professor of political science at Oklahoma State University. Matt joined OSU after finishing his PhD at the University of Minnesota in 2018 and completing postdoctoral work at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (University of Pennsylvania and Yale University) in 2019. Matt teaches courses on political campaigns, public opinion polling, and statistical programming. His research tests the effectiveness of strategies aimed at helping scientists communicate more effectively with the public about controversial environmental and public health issues. His work has been published in academic journals like Nature Climate Change and has been featured in press outlets like Newsweek, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Matt lives in Tulsa, Okla., and would love to meet up with alumni in the area!

This fall, Nick Orvis returned to Connecticut, where he’s begun working on an MFA in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at the Yale School of Drama. For the past five years, Gabriel Urbina has been living and working in Brooklyn. In that time, he has created, written, and directed a series of award-winning audio fiction podcasts, including Wolf 359, Time:Bombs, and Zero Hours, often collaborating with various Wesleyan alumni. In 2020, he’s excited to dive into new work, including finishing the manuscript for a novel and continuing to produce new original audio content through Long Story Short Productions, the company he runs along with Zach Valenti ’12 and Sarah Shachat ’12. Gabriel also works as a freelance writer, teacher, and public speaker. Ally Bernstein and Audrey Kiely continue to seriously question their life choices as they embark on adventures in other peoples’ problems as newly minted MSWs. They routinely call each other crying, wondering why, oh god why, would they choose to do this work? They could have done those demos for cookware at Costco or given duck boat tours. Instead, they spend their days listening to endless detail of trauma, prompting coping skills, and having things thrown at them. Ally and Audrey have also discovered their dogs are a force dyad, so that’s cool.

Haley Sacks was in the New York Times and on Good Morning America. She is a financial pop star that makes keeping up with the Dow Joneses as fun as Keeping Up with The Kardashians.

Zoe Muller moved to Philadelphia a little over a year ago with her fiancée, Ivy, and two dogs, Roosevelt and Quinn, to start a new job in urban planning and design at WRT Design after graduating from MIT’s master’s program in urban planning. She bought a house in West Philly and went full HGTV on it, complete with surprise basement flood, bathtub leaking, neighbors trimming trees without permission, weekends full of sanding and painting, and beautiful hidden historic fireplaces to help reassure her this wasn’t a crazy idea. It is now a functional and beautiful home with most of the kinks worked out and a handful of half-complete projects. Zoe is looking forward to a year of getting back into more physical activity and outdoor time, spending more time and energy making ceramics, and making time to visit and reconnect with friends.

Laura Yim | Lyim@wesleyan.edu 

Some great class news coming your way:

Julian Theseira started a new job with Deloitte Consulting Southeast Asia and is based out of the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, office. Outside of work, Julian volunteers actively with the Malaysian Youth (Climate) Delegation, with whom he co-organized the only Local Conference of Youth (LCOY) in Southeast Asia in 2019, part of a global network of LCOYs that gathered youth input about climate change governance in the leadup to COP 25 in Madrid. Julian has also been catching up with other Wesleyan Freeman Asian Scholar alumni in Malaysia and Singapore. He is active with the Taizé ecumenical movement and attended the 42nd annual Taizé European Meeting in Wroclaw, Poland, alongside 15,000 other pilgrims. His testimonial about the spiritual impact of the philosopher Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) was translated into Polish and featured by the Edith Stein House Foundation in Wroclaw.

Remi Ojurongbe happily reports: “Alexander Mehner and I got married last month and were lucky enough to celebrate with lots of Wes Folks!” Congratulations to you both! #gowes

Jason Shatz writes: “In August, I finished up my master’s degree at the University of Chicago for software engineering while working for a consulting firm called Cognizant. I have been relocated to the Raleigh area for a Big Data project. I hope to return to the NYC area soon, but I will let you know of my whereabouts whenever they change.”

Adele Bubnys received her PhD in biomedical sciences from Rockefeller University last spring. After traveling around Europe over the summer and stopping by Wesleyan for our five-year Reunion, she started a postdoctoral position at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT. There, she is using novel 3D cell culture techniques and self-assembling “mini-brains” to model neurodegeneration in a dish.

I always look forward to hearing updates from our awesome class. Keep them coming.

Your Class Secretary,

Mary Diaz | mcdiaz@wesleyan.edu 

Ryan Gardner moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco and started working in video games and interactive tech.

Peter Cornillie wrote in to say that he has been working way too much and not drinking nearly enough.

Jessica Seidman recently passed the Connecticut Bar Exam and was sworn in as a licensed attorney. She is now working at an asbestos litigation law firm in New Haven, Conn.

As a passion project, Julia Chanin, Andrew Hove, and Zia Grossman-Vendrillo have formed an experimental dance company inspired by the lives of primordial beings. Their first installation explores themes of sentience and godliness. They can be spotted in urban centers across the upper-middle West Coast over the summer.

Katherine Lu spent the holidays in South Africa and Madagascar with Maurice Lee, where she saw lemurs and whale sharks and realized she much prefers the great indoors. She also started a new role at Taco Bell to redesign its website. She still hasn’t been to a Taco Bell.

Jenna Starr | jstarr@wesleyan.edu

Melissa Leung spent Thanksgiving with Taran Carr’s family which presented both a turkey and duck and let her assist in putting up the Christmas tree! Thereafter, she took on the honorary title of third roommate to Sarah Mi and Taran, making delicious quiches and apple pies at the Carr-Mi residence in Baltimore. Melissa stopped to say hello to Lars Berg at the University of Maryland, Baltimore library. “Shout out to Whole Foods delivery for making the cooking sessions possible,” says Melissa.

Last summer, Jamie Ember and Arthur Halliday got engaged. Jamie is working as an associate casting director, with credits on Hulu and CBS and upcoming on Netflix, TBS, and CBS All Access, while Arthur is in his first year at Columbia Law School. Their dog, Stanley, is perfect.

Willie Zabar is pursuing stand-up and character comedy in New York City. He is currently developing a comedic one-man show as part of a fellowship with LABA: A Laboratory of Jewish Culture. The performance will take place in April.

Rohan Shriram got a new puppy named Laddu. His older dog, Waffles, likes to steal Laddu’s toys and then lie on them. Tim Israel and Atreya Sinha saw all this firsthand when they visited Rohan in Delhi.

Ellen Paik | epaik@wesleyan.edu

On Christmas Day 2019, Liam Tran, 25, informed his friends that he had been diagnosed with cancer. Four days later, he passed with his family at his side.

He was a four-year board member of AASC; cofounder of SHADES, Wes’ SOC theater collective; senior interviewer; and a friend and chosen family to more than can be named.

At Wes, he was the first friend to so many. As a tour guide, admissions intern, and senior interviewer, often he was the first person a baby cardinal ever met. If you attended WesFest during his tenure as a student between 2014-2017, then you met him or benefited from his organizational handiwork.

You heard him before you saw him. Sometimes, you just heard him because he was belting Rihanna in the shower while everyone had left for Thanksgiving break. From Olin to Exley to Foss, as part of the Spirits, you could catch his tenor voice reverberating, hurtling at you like the most loving vocal body slam.

It’s a social faux pas to self-declare your test scores as a sign of your intelligence, but maybe if a friend does it, it’s not as cringeworthy. He was a Questbridge scholar who aced every single test he took. You wanted to hate him because he was a music major taking organic chemistry for fun and skewing the curve while you were crying your eyes out in the Butts lounge studying until the sun rose.

But you couldn’t hate him even if you wanted to because he would be there at the end of midterms, hosting an AASC self-care night at AAA house, offering you a plate of Vietnamese spring rolls with a heap of peanut and hoisin sauce.

In a world where fighting the good fight for humanity is too often draining and seemingly impossible, he would slide in with a smile and witticism to keep you going. He was a laugh-and-a-half, a day-one-er, a ride-or-die, a build-with-you-from-the-ground-up kind of guy.

Post-Wes, he spent two years at another NESCAC school working as an admissions counselor, doing the college-access work he was so passionate about. He left Maine for his hometown of Houston in pursuit of the big stage. If you missed the opportunity to see him shine on stage, some of his performances can be viewed on the Wesleyan Spirits’ YouTube channel.

He is missed by his mother, brother, sister, best friends, 260 Pine St. housemates, and all those whose lives he touched. If you want to help continue his legacy, consider donating to MECA, a Houston-based nonprofit organization providing underserved students access to the arts.

On behalf of AASC Board 2013-2017, we love you dearly, Liam. You will never be forgotten.

Keyonne Session | ksession@wesleyan.edu 

Hey, Class of 2019! Hope everyone is doing well. Here are some updates. George Poulos is working on his YouTube channel and clothing brand, Arrow Skate Co, in NYC. He is rooming with Maddy Paull and Izzy Creavin this year.

Kati Young is living in NYC where she studies DNA repair as a lab manager for Professor Lorraine Symington at Columbia University.

My favorite former housemate, Dom Vazquez, has moved to Berkeley, Calif., and is roommates with Aaron Cheung (again). He is teaching seventh-grade world history and science at a public charter school in Oakland, and he is looking into starting a teacher credential program in the summer, though he’s not sure where yet. He is enjoying life by the Bay and is filling his free time with hiking and SAT/ACT tutoring. Meanwhile, Aaron is still in law school. He sends his regards to the class of 2019.

Rachel Williams is starting her second semester as an English teaching assistant in Segovia, Spain, where she works with primary school kids from second to sixth grade. She will be in Spain at least until June and potentially for another school year after that before making her return stateside.

Adam Wells has started working as a content manager at a digital music distribution company called AudioSalad in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

Nikolas Ortega has been living in Ann Arbor, Mich., since July working full time as a business consultant at Google. Through his work, Nikolas partners with countless small to medium-sized businesses throughout the U.S. to fuel their long-term growth—via Google’s products and solutions. He’s been making the most of living in the Midwest.

Jordan Legaspi has been spreading Christmas cheer in Taipei, Taiwan, where he is teaching English as part of his Fulbright Grant with Fulbright Taiwan. He shared with us a photo of a very tender moment where he sang the song “Silent Night” in English while his students responded singing “Silent Night” in Chinese.

Big thanks to everyone who chose to share their life updates with us! Watch for my next email for the next edition of the alumni magazine.

Justin Campos | jxcampos@wesleyan.edu

When It’s Leaving Time by Ang Pompano CAS’95 has been nominated for a Best First Novel Agatha Award. The book was launched last October at the Wesleyan R.J. Julia Bookstore. Ang has been writing mystery for more than 20 years.

Tucker Griffith MALS ’10 joined Lathrop Gage in Boston as a partner in the Intellectual Property Transaction group. He has 20 years’ experience in intellectual property law, previously practicing with a Connecticut-based boutique intellectual property firm.

Jorge Arévalo Mateus PhD’13 and Bill Carbone MA’07 are executive directors at The Association for Cultural Equity/Alan Lomax Archives and TeachRock/Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, respectively, located in New York City. The two organizations announced a partnership. The Association For Cultural Equity in conjunction with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress is providing content to TeachRock to be utilized in creating lesson plans and other teaching resources. The cultural materials collected by Alan Lomax, one of the most celebrated folklore collectors and musicologists in America’s history, provide an engaging and powerfully personal basis for looking at history through the music that past generations took joy and comfort in, stretching back to the Colonial period and beyond. The two become friends as graduate students in Wesleyan’s ethnomusicology program.

John Bednark ’63 passed away on Feb. 24, 2020. An obituary will be posted when it becomes available.

Arnold J. Hendrick ’72 passed away on May 25, 2020. An obituary will be posted when it becomes available.