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CLASS NOTES
Robert Hardt
Jr. The mailbag wasn't particularly heavy this time around. Perhaps my long and somewhat tedious pitch for Alan Keyes and Amway Products turned off some of our classmates. Folks, I'm really trying to be a uniter, not a divider. Speaking of division, I really ticked off Joel Rubenstein by accidentally leaving him out of the last edition of our class notes. Here's his big news: Joel graduated from the London Business School last summer and is now an associate product manager for Warner-Lambert in Morris Plains, N.J. Joel lives in Hoboken with his wife, Katrine. They had their first child, Kirsten Mary Rubenstein, on October 28. In other news that didn't make the last column, Phil Rodgers, who is living in Ann Arbor, Mich., is a member of the University of Michigan's department of family medicine. "No marriage, no kids, no dog, no power tools," Phil writes. "I'm attempting to spoil the hell out of my brand new niece (mostly to aggravate my brother) and entering my 15th year of learning how to play the piano." Jodi Lev is a project manager for a website in Ephraim, Israel and hopes that classmates will visit her if they're in town. Justin Kerber is living in Boston with his wife, Hope, whom he met through a mutual friend at Boston College Law School. Justin is practicing corporate law - "something I never thought I'd be doing." Hope teaches third grade in the town of Littleton, Mass. Dave Wacks (who was the best man at Justin's wedding) is studying for a Ph.D. in Spanish at Cal-Berkeley. Jacqueline Harounian and her husband, Maurice, had a baby girl, Deliah, last Aug. 14. She also has a daughter, Tamara, 4, and son, Aaron, 8. Jacqueline is an associate at the law firm of Jerome Wiselman in Great Neck, L.I. and concentrates on family law. Susie Wood sent me a helpful and chatty e-mail which will run almost in its entirety: "I just returned from a work trip to San Francisco where I hung out with Ingrid (Stabb) Dev, and her husband. Raj Dev. They got married this past July. I was a bridesmaid and Marcellene Hearn was a guest. Miki Hong was at my table - she's heading off to Michigan to study public health. Ingrid works at Charles Schwab and graduated from the Yale School of Management last May. Marcellene is an attorney at the NOW Legal Defense Fund in New York. I also saw Matt Freedman, who had just moved to Berkeley with his fiancée, Linda Busching. Matt graduated from Harvard Law last May, took off on a whirlwind tour of Southeast Asia, and proposed to Linda on a beach in Thailand! Matt is now working at a public interest law firm in San Francisco. "As for me, I've been living in D.C. for the past four years since I got back from my Peace Corps stint in Turkmenistan. I've been working at the Peace Corps headquarters for the past two years and am also getting my M.A. in international development at American University. 1999 was my year to travel - I went to Russia, China, Mongolia and the Republic of Georgia! Don't know what 2000 will bring, but Kyrgyzstan and Switzerland are in the works. "Also: Evan Schultz, Matt Segal and I attended the wedding of Mike Socolow and Connie McVey this summer. I think the entire Columbia heavyweight crew team was there! I also see fellow classmate and friend even from before Columbia, Lawrence Kaplan. Larry lives a few blocks away and is frequently spotted walking his dog, Bailey, around the streets of Dupont Circle. Larry is the executive editor of The National Interest and is doing a ton of freelance writing. "Oh, one last thing, my great friend, rock climbing buddy and housemate of two years, Peter Cole, is now living in Boise, Idaho! He's a history professor at Boise State University." I ask all of you to keep those letters and checks coming. To quote the warm and fuzzy Dan Rather, courage.
Jeremy
Feinberg Wow! It's every CCT columnist's dream (or nightmare) to have more letters, e-mails, etc. than can fit in one column. Yet, that's precisely what you folks did to me this time. So thank you. Let me start with a little housecleaning from last issue. Mignon Moore was good enough to provide lots of information last time, two snippets of which inadvertently never made it to print. Galia Austin-Leon finished medical school at Downstate and is currently working on her residency at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. Ezra Zuckerman was among those who obtained Ph.D.s in sociology from the University of Chicago. Now the new material. Eric Garcetti wrote with loads of news. Eric returned to Los Angeles in January 1998 after five years in Great Britain, Africa and California. He was initially at Oxford, but transferred to the London School of Economics and Political Science to do his Ph.D. on Eritrea, the world's newest country (it's on the Red Sea coast in Africa). Since January 1998, he's been teaching at the University of Southern California as a visiting instructor, and at Occidental College on the subject of international relations. In the "free political advertising" department, Eric indicated that he's also considering a run for the Los Angeles City Council in 2001, noting that his experience sitting through CCSC meetings would leave him well prepared. While in England, Eric spent much time with Nicholas Diamond, who is now a solicitor in London for a large firm. Nick's duties recently took him to Hong Kong. Eric also said that his former CCSC colleagues Wah Chen and Yoshi Maruyama '92E are both in Los Angeles, having made it in on the ground floor at dot.coms. Eric, Wah, Yoshi and Meredith Norton (more below) were all in attendance at Tomoko Yamamoto's wedding in New York last year. Eric describes it as a "great affair (very intimate) at the Polish-American Society" followed by a reception overlooking the Hudson River. Karl Cole-Frieman, having married Wanda Cole B'94, is working for a law firm in the San Francisco area. Randa Zakhary is working at UCSF, having completed her work on both her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees. John Marciano was in Los Angeles in December 1999 to give a speech and have a gallery opening for his new book, Madeline in America. John's book contains the life and art of his grandfather, Ludwig Bemelmans, the author of the original Madeline series. Finally, Eric said that Meredith Norton, mentioned above, is finishing her third year of teaching eighth grade U.S. history in the San Francisco Bay area and will be starting at Cal Tech on her post-baccalaureate work towards a master's in aerospace engineering. (And that's all from one e-mail - thanks Eric!) David Weisoly also e-mailed, bringing back fond memories of basketball gym class at Levien Gym. After graduation, Dave spent two years as a molecular biology research assistant at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He then entered medical school in Kansas City, graduated in 1998 and is now a second-year pediatrics resident at the University of Texas Medical School/Hermann Children's Hospital/M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. David also reported that he is now married to his long-time friend and high school sweetheart, Jeannie Lamb. The wedding took place in December 1995, with Michael Shaw as one of Dave's co-best men (Dave's brother Scott being the other). Dave said he'd love to get back in touch with his '92 friends, and offered his e-mail, weisolydavid@netscape.net. Rob Carey was recently promoted to senior business editor at Successful Meetings magazine, a national trade publication. Rob has been with Successful Meetings since graduation, saying that it's been a terrific job with lots of writing, editing and travel. Couldn't be all that different from Rob's days as a stellar football reporter for the Spectator. Deborah Frey (Horowitz) and her husband, Andreas Frey '90E, had their first child, Daniel Alexander Frey, on July 28, 1999. Karen Kang wrote from the Northwoods of Maine, where she "went for a two-week vacation and two years later, am still here." Karen, who has devoted herself to sculpting since 1995, spent three years working at the Art Students League on 57th Street in Manhattan. There, she won the Nessa Cohen Grant and participated in group shows at New York galleries. Jacob ("Jake") Novak has been working at New York 1 News producing the morning news since 1997. As a big fan of that news program myself, I was pleased to hear that "the station has a very young workforce (I'm already way older than the average age here), and we have a lot of fun on the morning show." Jake graduated with a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern in 1994, and previously produced news in Bangor, Maine; Decatur, Ill.; and Cleveland. Jake plans to be married to his fiancée, Adar Kaplan, in August, after which the couple plans to move to Forest Hills, Queens. Andy Contiguglia is now the proud papa of Alexander Sebastian Contiguglia, born March 12, 1999. Andy, who promises that Alexander will be in the class of 2021, married Tiffeni in November 1996. He is currently working at Miller & Steiert, a law firm which focuses on commercial litigation. Anyway - on that note - thanks to all of you for helping me get so many responses for this column. Keep 'em coming, and I'll make the next column even longer. Cheers.
Elena
Cabral It's just wedding bells all around. Jennifer Hays, now Jennifer Hays Woods, married Don Woods in Indianapolis and practices law there. After college, Jennifer worked at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in New York before finishing law school at Georgetown. Nina Abraham, a lawyer, helped to make Jennifer's nuptials a success. Jennifer still sees many of her neighbors from the 12th floor of Carman. In October '99, Jennifer went to Joe Saba's New Jersey wedding to Jennifer Fetner B'93 along with Risa, Jamie, Nandita Gupta Kamdar '93E, Sebastian Sears, Patrick Archdeacon, Seth Pinsky, and Sang Lee '93E. The wedding appeared to have been the event of the year. It took a separate note forwarded by the alumni office to cap off the guest list, which included Neil Turitz, Russ Singer '93E, Evan Ambinder '92, Chirag Ghandhi '93E, Anne Fitzgibbon B'93, Manu Saluja B'93, Kristen Kubacki Krauss B'93, Carin Lueck Elam B'93, Leah Shankman B'92, Rob Feeney, Steve Reese '93E and Chris Mansfield SIPA '94. Joe is president and co-founder of VideoHelper, a TV music production company. Jen Fetner Saba finished a master's degree and is working on her Ph.D. in psychology at NYU. She and Joe live in Manhattan. Jennifer went to Martha's Vineyard to watch Kiersten Nauman marry Adam Lupu-Sax (now Connor-Sax). Jennifer visited Jen Friedman, Scott Levine '93E and Alyson Berliner. Michael Beecher lives in Milford, Conn., with his wife, Diana, and son, Aaron Michael Antonio. Michael was married in April 1998 and his son was born a year later. After graduation, Michael taught bilingual social studies in Elizabeth, N.J. for three years. Later he taught humanities at a high school in the Bronx and earned a master's degree in bilingual education from Seton Hall. Today he works at the United Way of New York. Michael can be reached at mbeecher@uwnyc.org. Arik Zaider is starting a fellowship in rheumatology at the Hospital for Special Surgery at the Cornell University campus in N.Y.C. Jacob Kramer worked for Foreign Affairs magazine from 1995 to 1998, where he rose from intern to associate editor. He finished a master's degree in U.S. history at Columbia and is now working toward a Ph.D. at CUNY. Send more letters and be among the names in bold.
Leyla
Kokmen Few things are as unlikely as getting someone to visit Minnesota in the middle of winter, but lucky for me, Ayanna (Parish) Thompson was being wooed for a teaching fellowship from Carleton College, so I reaped the benefit of spending some time with her in the Twin Cities. Thank goodness that snowstorm veered off in another direction! Ayanna, still at Harvard, has about a year of work left on her English literature dissertation and has been applying for fellowships that will allow her to research, write, and possibly teach. As ever, I'm amazed by her determination and drive - not only is she completing her scholarly work, but also she's been busy finishing her first novel (with a second one already begun). Her husband, Derek, is in the middle of his internal medicine residency and is applying for cardiology fellowships in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. Elizabeth (Berke) Vickery is surviving a hectic first year of business school while still working at a small investment firm in New York - she was recently promoted to Marketing Manager at Towneley Capital Management. Even more exciting, she and her husband, Jason, are planning to hightail it out of the city and apartment life in time for summer, with a scheduled May closing on their new house in the suburbs just north of the city. Other changes are in the works for some of our classmates. Imara Jones is no longer working for Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, the United States Trade Representative. While his original plan was to leave Washington, D.C. for San Francisco in April, at Barshefsky's request he's staying on for several months to coordinate a group that's working to create "permanent normal trading relations" with China. Imara is directing the team that's defining the administration's positions on economic and non-economic policies dealing with U.S.-China relations. While he says the project is running into its share of bumps, it could be wrapped up as early as June. He plans to make the move out West in August. Sanjiv Jhaveri e-mailed his activities for the past five years. After 212 years of study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, Sanjiv has been acting professionally, doing shows in New York and some small TV work. He also spent August through December 1999 in Washington, D.C. performing three different roles in a sold-out production of Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink at the Studio Theatre, which he called "an amazing experience." That's it for this round. Take care and keep the news coming.
Janet
Frankston I knew I should have saved some goodies from the prodigious update in the last issue. Here's a smaller report. Arun Kristian Das, who is known to most of his friends at Columbia as "Aki," is a part-time student at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, where he is concentrating in broadcast. He also began a new job at the financial paper, the Bond Buyer; Aki says he sees Mike Stanton, the paper's editor and a former Spekkie. Aki reports that his girlfriend, Wendi Winkler, is now attending Brooklyn Law School. She made the switch after working for several years at PaineWebber. In addition, Nashrid Kibria is going for a graduate degree in economics at NYU. Maurice Dyson graduated from the Law School in May 1999 and is working for a big firm, and Naina Sinha earned her M.D. from Columbia in May and is doing her residency in New York. Her boyfriend, Eddie Hernandez, has a J.D. from Fordham and is practicing in New York. On to more lawyers: Danny Ackerman (I think he may go by Dan now) is finishing up law school at USC and will join the Riverside County DA's office in September. On the opposite coast, Elise Feldman will graduate this spring from NYU Law; she's in the criminal defense clinic there. "It's a great deal of work, but very interesting, and actually quite fun," she writes. She's hoping to do public interest law in New York. Elise traveled to Ecuador in December for a Spanish language program. "I had a great time - stayed in Quito, got to go to the equator, to the jungle, and to the big market in Otavalo near Quito," she writes. She also traveled to Japan last summer. Elise is living in Brooklyn and plans to attend our reunion this June. Our class president Bryonn Bain is doing well. From his temporary home base in Boston, he's been keeping busy with his hip-hop/spoken word group. "We're at SOB's every month (were at CBGB's Gallery till last month, but needed a bigger space) with a show called Blackout that I started while at NYU," he writes. The show is made up of performance artists of color doing everything from hip-hop to ballet and working with public schools and community centers in Harlem and Brooklyn to encourage kids to explore the arts for self-expression and empowerment. The show has expanded to Blackout Boston this year, and has played at places like Hard Rock Miami and Liberaci's Las Vegas Mansion. "Believe it or not there was a hip-hop concert there last year!" Bryon writes. He said they've been offered a couple of records and are just holding out for the right one to come along. "Other than that, law school is law school," he says. The Harvard Law student will graduate in 2001, and hopes to be doing something in entertainment, "instead of with law firms like the rest of my class," he says. Bryonne says he misses New York so much that he's considering being a visiting student at Columbia for his last year. Steve Miller, who wrote in last year, has been living in Camden, Maine for the last three years working for MBNA America. He is a vice president and runs the travel services department in Maine. "Bought a house a few months back and am enjoying the 'way life should be' in Maine," Steve writes. Finally, while I was working on a story in Baltimore earlier this year, I got to catch up with Danny Franklin, '94, who married our classmate, Ruth Halikman. I know Leyla Kokmen wrote this in her column last time, but I thought we owed Ruth a mention here. Ruth is working at The New Republic. Don't forget that our reunion is the weekend of June 2-4. Hope to see everyone there, and please keep the news coming.
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