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CLASS NOTES
Robert Hardt Jr. Columbia College Today used to come out at a leisurely pace, much like an old uncle who would meander down the road, sit on the porch, smoke his pipe and chat for a long while. But that, gentle reader, is all part of our college publication's sweet avuncular past. Today, the magazine is like an amped-up chipmunk, burying nuts with fervor and coming out six times a year with scary efficiency. That means that you, sweet classmates, must heed this new crazed call for news by rapidly e-mailing information about your exciting lives. Otherwise, I'll be forced to write about the contents of my basement crawlspace in every issue, and nobody wants that. It's a rare column that starts out with a Barnard alum, but bear with me. The fabulous Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, '91 Barnard, played hostess to me in January at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where we stargazed and watched too many movies. (No, the tragicomedy screenplay about our class hasn't sold — yet.) Kiersta and her longtime beau, Justin Lundgren, are resident physicians in physical medicine and rehab at UC Davis' medical center near Sacramento. Kiersta and Justin (who was working at the hospital while I visiting) informed me that there's a strong rumor that our former class president, Karl Meyer, is contemplating attending business school. John Chun has been named partner at the Seattle law firm of Mundt MacGregor, where he's a litigator. Tom "Mort" Morrissey writes, "After an 11-year exile from civilization (med school in Syracuse, residency in Pittsburgh, and fellowship the last three years at the University of North Carolina), I will be returning to New York City, or close to it, anyway. In August, I'll be starting as an attending gynecologic oncologist at North Shore Hospital on Long Island, with an academic appointment at NYU. I'll be bringing my wife, Lynn (sister of Lisa Berger '89), and our 1-year-old daughter, Julia Ann." Mort adds that he can't wait to wear his New York Giants jersey in public again without being ridiculed. Of course, it's hard to imagine anyone being ridiculed by Carolina Panthers fans. Intrepid West Coast correspondent Tina Fitzgerald has no news in her mailbag but is begging Mark Blacher and Jose Benitez to get in touch with her through the UCLA English department. Drop me a line as well. OK, peeps, that's it for this issue. Send me your love — or at least the Cliff Notes version of your life for the past 11 years.
Jeremy Feinberg It's amazing what happens when you put a bunch of College graduates in a room to discuss how to plan a reunion. They reconnect, they rejoice in shared memories of campus, and, oh, yeah, they also put their heads together and work toward a wonderful 10th reunion. Such was my experience late last year, when I joined Patricia Ireland, Negi Ahkami, Tonya Keusseyan and Manu Rana in a conference room at Salomon Smith Barney to plot and plan for May 30-June 2. It was, to say the least, a lot of fun. I won't spoil surprises, but it's going to be a great weekend. One of our tasks was to identify others interested in planning reunion. From the looks of the second round of e-mails I received, these efforts were successful. Among others, I noticed that Wah Chen, Ben Lawsky, Evan Ambinder, Frank Cicero, Karl Cole-Frieman, Mignon Moore and Randa Zakhary are now in the loop. If you're interested in joining the group (or just hearing more about it), please feel free to contact me or Patricia Ireland (patricia.n.ireland@rssmb.com). At the very least, it's a good way to stay in touch with any of the folks listed above. Patricia also sent me an e-mail, in her capacity as a member of the executive committee of Columbia College Women, that on March 13, that group will bestow its 11th annual Alumna Achievement Award. CCW honors female graduates who've made substantial professional strides and contributions to their communities. The event will have a "snazzy keynote speaker" and a student a capella group. On a related subject: I received an e-mail from the Society of Columbia Graduates, an organization that includes and honors Columbia alums at least 10 years out, who have made significant contributions to Alma Mater since graduation. I was asked to nominate '92ers for inclusion in this honorable group, and have submitted some names. There is no reason, however, why I should have all the fun. If you know of another '92 graduate who is deserving of membership, let me know, and I'll pass it on. Heck, while you're at it, feel free to send some news. I'd love to hear from you. Be well.
Elena Cabral Here's the news, short and sweet. Eliza Gallo, a former neighbor of 108th Street and Broadway, in the hippest building around, has moved to the Los Angeles area. The lifelong New Yorker says that she is enjoying the slower-paced style of life in Santa Monica, and appears to have traded in her Manhattan grit for a green thumb. She reports that she is growing "all sorts of ridiculous plants straight out of the Garden of Eden." And of course, there's the beach. Eliza reports that Jeff Sweat '95 also made the coastal switch a month before she did, investing in a gorgeous Craftsman house with his wife, Sunny Cannon. Alan Cohn was married on March 24, 2001, to Rebecca Aimee Levin. Becky, formerly a healthcare regulatory analyst and lobbyist, is a third-year law student at American University. Alan is an associate in the labor and employment practice at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C. Alan's father, Peter Cohn '58, led a delegation of his classmates at the wedding, an event that somehow made it into the magazine two issues ago. The wedding party included Becky's brother, Mark Levin '91; Alan Freeman, who came with his wife, Remy; Joel Lusman; Dan Donshik, who was there with his wife, Karen; and Jennifer Ross '95, a friend of Becky's from high school. Also at the wedding were Andrew Ceresney and his wife, Rachel Levine, '92 Barnard; Andy Schmeltz and his wife, Dayna; Adam Towvim '92; Nina Abraham; Jake Novak '92 and his wife, Adar; Alex Hillson (a friend of Alan's from high school); and Alan's cousin, Corinne Marshall, '02 Barnard. A week after the wedding, Alan and Becky bought a house in Potomac, Md., outside Washington, D.C. Alan notes that like the rest of us, he was horrified by the terrible losses of September 11, but that he also shared the sense of pride in those from our family of alumni and faculty who helped in the rescue and recovery effort. That's all the news that made it to Miami. Write soon.
Leyla Kokmen J. Shawn Landres writes of his August wedding to Zuzana Riemer. It took place in KoŠsice, Slovakia, and was the town's first public Orthodox Jewish wedding in six decades. Kim Worobec, who had been traveling the world in a post-law school trip, attended. In October, Shawn was a guest at the San Francisco wedding of Mason Kirby and Amanda Kahn '95. Paul Bollyky was best man, and other '94 classmates in attendance included Rica and Jon Orszag. Shawn and Zuzana have made other trips to San Francisco, spending time with Ben Oppenheimer, who is leaving UC Berkeley for a position at the Museum of Natural History/Hayden Planetarium, and Derek Coppoletti, who works in international business development. Shawn is still with the Department of Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara, and NYU Press has recently published Personal Knowledge and Beyond: Reshaping the Ethnography of Religion, an academic title that he co-edited and contributed to. John Jennings is working on the bond trading desk at The Vanguard Group in the Valley Forge area of Pennsylvania. He also is attending Villanova University's M.B.A. of Finance program. John and his wife, Carolyn, recently went to Chicago for the surprise 30th birthday party of Adam Yeloushan, which Jeremiah Stoldt and Casey Blair also attended. Steve Chu has resurfaced in New York, where he has founded Omnifex Film and Video Productions, which specializes in digital filmmaking. He says he'd love to hear from fellow Columbians, and can be reached at steve@stevechu.com. Another classmate who is glad to be back in the city is Jorge Salva, who writes that after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in May 2001, he passed the New York State bar exam. He works as a corporate associate for the Manhattan law firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky and Walker and can be reached at jorgesalva@paulhastings.com. Richard Waterfield writes that National InterBank, the bank that he and his brother founded in 1997, has formed a joint venture with Juno Online Services, which was founded by Charles Ardai '91. Richard explains that National InterBank powers the Juno Banking Center and invites Columbians to check it out at www.juno.com under "online banking services." Finally, Stephanie Paulk writes about her ongoing art project, the "Synthetic Memory Project," for which volunteers are contributing memories and that will be combined to create a synthetic biography. Stephanie makes an appeal for more contributors. You can get more information at www.jsassociate.com. Thanks for all the updates. If you didn't see your news in this column, we'll do our best to get it into the next one!
Janet Frankston This column is almost entirely composed of first-time writers to CCT. With the magazine coming out six times a year, it's always a challenge to include new people. So if you've been thinking about sending an update, now is the time. Because Grant Dawson didn't know many of the people included in past CCT columns, he decided to write in. We need more people like him! Grant, a classics major and varsity fencer, is an attorney with a flourishing career. He finished his first year in the litigation department at Proskauer Rose; he's now a third-year associate after a clerkship at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces after law school at Georgetown. "The work here is pretty sexy; I've worked on a lot of entertainment IP litigation, including the MP3.com and Napster litigation," he writes. "I also published a scholarly article last year in the New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law on the International Criminal Court." In his article, he advocated for the United States to sign the Rome Statute, setting up the International Criminal Court. "I'm excited to report that former President Clinton (signed it) on the last day of the deadline," Grant says. "This was significant because it ensured our ongoing formal participation in the multilateral negotiations that are shaping the court." Another first-time contributor and lawyer, Sue You, is doing well in New York. Sue, who has the best name for an attorney, has been practicing law in the city for the past two years. Her field is commercial and trademark litigation, and she's enjoying life downtown in Nolita. Ingrid Michelsen works at Institutional Investor as the executive producer of the company's 42 financial news Web sites. Most of her career has been as an Internet development consultant/strategist, but she's moved over to the client side. "It's lots of fun being part of a news organization," she writes. "It was particularly interesting during the anthrax scares in New York City because we suddenly had all of our subscribers demanding digital delivery of every publication. (They didn't want to open their mail.) I guess that the Internet is here to stay." Ingrid has seen several Columbians recently. She attended the wedding of Amanda Kahn in San Francisco and spent Thanksgiving with Tom Bollyky '96 in South Africa. Tom won a Fulbright scholarship to work with the AIDS Law Project in Johannesburg. During the trip, Ingrid hit Cape Town, Kruger National Park, Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe side, Robben Island (the prison that held Nelson Mandela) and the townships outside Cape Town and Johannesburg. "South Africa is a beautiful, natural, resource-rich country that has gone through so much political change in the past 10 years that I couldn't help but attempt to tap back into all my old political science classes at Columbia to figure out why there wasn't some kind of massive revolutionary war required to end apartheid, but rather a relatively peaceful transition led by Mandela," she writes. "Amazing." Up in Boston, Ivette Motola is now a doctor, according to her sister, Niza Motola '93. After graduating from Columbia, Ivette went to the University of Rochester Medical School, where she graduated with honors. She is doing her emergency medicine residency at Harvard at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham & Women's Hospital. She would like to get in touch with classmates in the Boston area. Brian Lang said he felt inspired to write in after attending his 10-year high school reunion. For the last year, he's been working for a Canadian bank in London, trading European and Japanese equity derivatives. "To clarify, I am a European and Japanese convertible bond arbitrage trader for the Royal Bank of Canada, London," he writes. "On the weekends, I have been doing my best to see the world (or at least Europe), which has been great fun." He's been going to graduate school part-time and training for a marathon. And speaking of marathons, congratulations to Brian Frank, who ran the Honolulu Marathon last December. He trained with the Leukemia Society of America and raised more than $8,000 for research. Next, he will run the Anchorage Marathon in June. If you would like information to start training or about the Leukemia Society's Team in Training program, e-mail him at bhf2@columbia.edu. His wife, Laura Margolis Frank, recently appeared on an episode of The Drew Carey Show and will star in an upcoming production of a revival of Arthur Miller's After The Fall. Thanks again for writing in, and please keep the news coming.
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