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CLASS NOTES
Ana S. Salper Thanks to Omar Sayed for compiling your reunion
questionnaires. I received an overwhelming amount of news to share.
Thank you for sharing your information, folks. Makes my job a lot
easier. Let’s begin with our Ph.D. candidates. Samuel
Shanks is working on a Ph.D. in theater at the CUNY Graduate
Center, Dorota Ostrowska is finishing her Ph.D. at Oxford in
French literature and cinema, Amber Seligson is a doctoral
candidate in political science at Cornell and a fellow at
Princeton’s Center for the Study of Democratic Politics,
Marcel Agueros is in graduate school in Seattle and
Joanna Giuttari is Gilleece Fellow in the department of
comparative literature at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Our budding businesspeople include Tina Hsiao, who
graduated from Harvard Business School last year and is working in
the Bay Area for Intuit; Moha Desai, who is in business
school at Yale; and Terrence Jenkins, who is a second-year
M.B.A. student at Stanford. After spending four years working in
investment banking in Korea, David Lee moved to Hong Kong
where he works in the distressed assets division at Merrill Lynch.
David writes that Bruce Chung is an investment banker at
Salomon Smith Barney, Mike Choi works in the private equity
area in Boston with FA Tech Ventures, Mike Robbins is
finishing up his first year at Wharton along with Nettana
Samroengraja, Steve Yoo works in investment banking at
JP Morgan in Korea and James Chang is leading business
initiatives for Newbridge Capital Group in Korea. Burt
Galleno also is in Hong Kong, working at Goldman Sachs. David
would love to hear from people, as he has been out of touch for a
long time. You can reach him at david_lee@kr.ml.com. Sameer Ahuja is a second-year M.B.A. student at Harvard.
Other ’96ers in his class are Jeff Li, Henry
Tam and Sonny Hong. Last August, Sameer married Sima
Saran ’96 Barnard, and many Columbians were in attendance,
including Parag Gandhi, Neil Kothari, Chris
Glaros, Dino Capasso, Poorni Bid and William
Norman. Parag married Raina Bhatt ’97 Barnard last June
and is doing his ophthalmology residency at Mount Sinai. In other wedding news, Jason Chechitelli got married in
December to Annie Rawlings ’98E in Upland, Calif. After Jason
completed his M.A. in American studies at Columbia, he and Annie
moved to California, where Jason teaches English and coaches
swimming at Bishop Amat High School. A slew of Columbians attended
Jason and Annie’s wedding, as the above picture
attests. Tom Kitt performs in the NYC area and beyond. Lydia
Markoff (née Hilton) is a Web content editor in San
Francisco, Nina Pozzi teaches photography at Ossining (N.Y.)
High School, Susan Lopez is a senior analytical chemist for
3M and Linda Pyo works at Pfizer as a marketing manager for
the atherosclerosis disease management team. Sarah
Ndyajunwoha is finishing her studies at Case Western Reserve
School of Medicine and intends to go into primary care, either
pediatrics or family medicine. Neera Kimmel also is a
medical student studying in the pediatric field. Catherine
Miller works as an administrative assistant at the Florida
School Boards Association, working half-time for the Board
Development Program (training school board members) and half-time
for the Labor Relations Service. Hilda Ramirez is a systems
analyst and recently began taking courses towards a master’s
in computer science. Dorothy Cadet is a real estate agent who owns 11
properties, launched a childcare center and expects to launch three
more in the coming months. She would love for anyone interested in
real estate or investments to e-mail her at daczion1@aol.com. Amy Ellenbogen, who
graduated from the School of Social Work in May 2000, started a
peer diversity facilitation program called ROOTED (Respecting
Ourselves & Others Through Education), which is now thriving on
the College campus. She is a social worker at Women Helping Women
Services in Los Angeles. Steven Hill is studying at MIT’s Sloan School of
Management where he is concentrating in financial engineering.
Mitra Sexton is getting her master’s in mechanical
engineering at Stanford. R. Branden Emmerson is a manager of
the information technology and computer networking departments for
a nationwide Internet company in San Diego, and Patricia
Merino works in San Francisco creating user-centered interfaces
for Web applications. Thomas Humphries works in the New Orleans office of
McGlinchey Stafford and practices general litigation and aviation
law. Peter Freeman is an attorney and lives in Maryland with his
wife, Jill That’s all for now, my faithful readers. I wish everyone a
joyous spring, and leave you with a thought that non-conformists
will especially appreciate: “I passionately hate the idea of
being ‘with it.’ I think an artist always has to be out
of step with his time.” — Orson Welles.
Sarah Katz This edition of Class Notes is chock full of news — thanks
to all of you who wrote in, particularly those who sent in news for
the first time! Everyone is up to so many interesting and different things
Kenya Massey has an ensemble role in the Broadway production
of Aida. Seth Unger and Allison Jaffin worked on Mike
Bloomberg’s campaign for mayor and are working with him at
City Hall, where they have been joined by a number of people from
the CU family, including Professor Ester Fuchs, Ethan Davidson
’99 and Leah Yoon (SIPA). Greta Angert lives in Los
Angeles, earned her master’s in counseling psychology and
does therapy at two agencies. Aleem Mawji is a vice
president in the structured capital divison at JP Morgan in NYC.
Rachel Goldenberg is in rabbinical school at Hebrew Union
College and has one more year until ordination. She has a monthly
pulpit in Waldorf, Md., and is busy getting her thesis proposal
ready as well as coordinating the soup kitchen at HUC. She and Jim
Talbott ’99 were married on August 12 and are happily living
in Brooklyn. Wayne Steward is finishing his Ph.D. in
psychology at Yale this spring. And Daphna Gutman is a
first-year third grade teacher in East New York, Brooklyn. Benjamin Rand moved back from Walden, Colo. (the moose
capital of the world), where he was advising the owner of a Moose
Creek Cookhouse (serving such rustic delicacies as elk) on how best
to increase profits and keep customers coming back. Walden is in
North Park, Colo., about an hour southeast of Steamboat Springs and
two hours from Boulder. He and his fiancée, Lisa, have
returned to Brooklyn. Kyuli Oh moved to London and works as a capital markets
associate for Shearman and Sterling. She’s enjoying being in
London aside from the weather and the food and plans to be there
for at least two years. Stephanie Sirota moved to London
last July. She’s working at Lehman Brothers in mergers and
acquisitions and absolutely loves London. There will certainly be lots of doctors in the house at the
reunion! Benjamin Lederer graduates from Penn Med this month
and then starts an internship at an Air Force hospital in D.C. in
preparation for four years of scholarship payback. Eric Wolf
is graduating from P&S this month and will be doing his
residency in ophthalmology at Columbia’s Edward Harkness Eye
Institute beginning in July 2003. Manish Parikh graduated
medical school in May 2001 and is in his first year of general
surgery residency at NYU Medical Center/Bellevue Hospital. Oren
Lerman graduates with an M.D. from NYU this month and will
start his residency in July, specializing in plastic and
reconstructive surgery. He married Sandy Schwartzberg ’97
Barnard in 1998. Ross Zeltser graduates from
Rochester’s medical school this month and is applying for
dermatology residency. And lest you need business advice, Cristina Bonaldes
graduated in April from the University of Michigan with an M.B.A.
in marketing and corporate strategy. Plans for the summer include
additional course work in Koblenz, Germany, and a little European
traveling with Catrell Brown, who is working on her
master’s in London. She starts work with Pfizer Consumer
Health Products at the end of the summer in Morris Plains, N.J.,
and is graduating with Mark Arnold ’96E and Rayman Bovell
’96E. Neil Soman is in the class behind her; he is
part of the first Michigan M.D./M.B.A. program. Michael
Savini recently started at the University of Chicago getting
his M.B.A. in finance. He is president of the Columbia University
Club of Chicago as well as vice president of Oak Brook Bank. He is
getting married in September to my longtime friend Laura Stokely.
Dan Evans and Jon Spier ’97E just visited him in
Chicago, and they are doing well. Raji Kalra was accepted to the Business School and will
be starting in the fall, so she will be back in NYC and is looking
forward to reconnecting with the N.Y. contingency. She recently got
in touch with Haidee Cabusora, who graduated from Cornell
Law School this month and is a tax attorney in Boston. And for legal advice, Maggie Lewis is a 2L at NYU Law.
She will be working at Cleary Gottlieb this summer (first half in
NYC and second half in Hong Kong). Marisa Goldstein
graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in December
2001. She is interning at the WTO in Geneva until June. I am a 2L
at Penn Law, looking forward to spending the summer in NYC with a
Public Interest Fellowship from the law firm of Swidler Berlin
Shereff Friedman. I will spend half my summer working for the firm
and the other half working at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education
Fund. Matt Morningstar is a first-year associate at Mayer,
Brown & Platt. Hans Chen and Sandie Angulo Chen ’98 had a baby!
Elias Henry Angulo Chen was born on February 3, nearly four weeks
early. Despite that, he still weighed 7 lbs, 4.6 oz. Hans is a
first year at Fordham Law. An early Class of ‘97 reunion took place around the
wedding of Lainie Perlman and Steven Weiss in Miami over New
Year’s. The couple will graduate from law school this spring,
she from NYU, he from Fordham. Cheering from the sidelines were
Priti Patel, a fellow NYU 3L; Katherine Mack,
pursuing a Ph.D. in comparative literature at UC Irvine; Eva
Subotnik, a second-year law student at Columbia; Nusrat
Choudhury ’98, working for Spence-Chapin Services to Families
and Children; Laura Chittick, hard at work for Credit
Lyonnais; and Graham Goodkin, who works for News America
Marketing. Keep sending me your updates. I look forward to seeing all of you at the reunion, May 30–June 2.
Sandra P. Angulo Chen Congratulations to Adam Mansbach, whose critically
acclaimed debut novel Shackling Water (Doubleday) hit
bookstores in February. I noticed that Adam was scheduled to give a
reading at the Park Slope Barnes and Noble, so I dug up some
information about the book. According to Adam’s publisher,
the book follows a jazz saxophonist as he moves from Boston to
Harlem in search of his musical hero and his muse. Here’s what Professor Robert O’Meally
(director of the Center for Jazz Studies) had to say about
Shackling Water: “How fast and fluent is Adam
Mansbach’s prose; how reminiscent of Baldwin’s,
Ellison’s and Baraka’s ways of creating new rhythms
with new ways of dancing words and attitudes. Here is virtuoso
storytelling with a musical insistence and a drive to discover what
it means to make art against the drift and noise of everyday life
in America. Here is writing that seems to know the whole tradition
but still seek to rhyme with today and tomorrow. Here is a novel to
make clear that the tradition of jazz writing at its finest is
alive and kicking!” Sorry this issue’s notes are so short, but I have a good
excuse: I had a son, Elias Henry Angulo Chen, on Super Bowl Sunday,
February 3. Hans ’97 and I hope Elias will be a member of
Columbia’s Class of 2024. I’m in dire need of updates, especially now that
CCT comes out six times a year!
Charles S. Leykum
Prisca Bae Hello again, dear classmates. The summer is approaching and we
are looking at our two-year anniversary as alumni of Columbia. Can
you believe it? Before I get into the details of some of our
classmates’ lives, I remind and encourage you to e-mail me
with your latest news, whether it be a new job or even just to say
hello. I am always happy to hear from you! I begin with news from our nation’s capital, where I had
the great pleasure of running into Jane Garrido at a
birthday party in Mount Pleasant and Avi Weisberg at a young
alumni event in Dupont Circle. Rhonda Henderson is teaching
ninth grade U.S. history in the District at an Edison school, loves
teaching and may have found her calling. Rhonda lives in her very
own condo (purchased last summer) and plans to work on a summer
program in Cuba. Also in D.C. are Jael Humphrey-Skomer ’01, Jorge Herrera
’01 (whom she ran into at a club) and Leah Aden ’01,
who is teaching at a D.C. public school. Other alums in the area
include Charlotte Sanders, James Alexander, Juliet
Ross and Dan Burstein. Charlotte is winding down as a
paralegal at Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights
& Urban Affairs before attending law school in the fall. James,
after moving to D.C. from Atlanta, is in the Dominican Republic
teaching English; Juliet works for a social work research
organization; and Dan will work for a D.C. judge this summer.
Charlotte reports that Brian Walsh is at JP Morgan in New
York City, and Cliff Kwang, who moved to Atlanta after
graduation, is with Bain Management Consulting, where he works with
the Atlanta Zoo. Will Van Cleve is at the University of Chicago Medical
School. Also at Chicago is Rodney Dale, who passed his Ph.D.
preliminaries last summer and has settled down in a developmental
cardiology lab. He says he loves Chicago, even if it is not New
York. Rodney ran into Sarah Case in the physics department
Since then, they hang out every once in awhile. Rodney saw Blair
F. Goodlin in November on a layover at O’Hare. Blair is
doing great and is still the same great “Logicboy” who
everyone knows and loves. Finally, Rodney writes that he hears from
Ngoc (Kerry) Nguyen every so often. She is doing well and is
still with American Express. Toward the end of a long day in the office, it was especially
nice to receive an e-mail from Jared Wakeman, who is a Web
designer in New Orleans for a local hospital, the Ochsner Clinic
Foundation. He is having a good time and especially enjoyed New
Orleans around Mardi Gras. Thanks for the break, Jared! Lystra Batchoo ran into fellow freshman-floor member
Sean Boggs. Sean lives in Astoria and works for a small
publishing company in Manhattan. Chip Moore recently graduated from the Massachusetts
Police Corps Academy, a new federal program founded to create a
better trained and more well-rounded police officer. Life after
college certainly has changed for this former track athlete. Chip
reports that in his police academy trainings, he 1) was often
sprayed with pepper spray before having to subdue attackers; 2)
slept in homeless shelters in order to understand, at least partly,
what the homeless experience; 3) mentored at-risk youth; 4) got
beat up by at least four or five instructors at a time, to learn to
never give up; and 5) received advanced firearms instruction and
high speed pursuit driving. He and his classmates stayed at the academy overnight six nights
a week, and went from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. Chip graduated
first in his class and will have the opportunity to go back to
future Police Corps classes as an instructor, to which he is
looking forward. He is a police officer with UMass Amherst and
loves every minute of it. He admits that it stinks to break up the
keggers, but the UMass kids get a little wilder than Columbia
students. Overall, living in Western Massachusetts has been
different, but he’s adjusting. Thanks for the updates, everyone, and take care!
Jonathan Gordin Spring is here, and believe it or not, soon a full year will
have passed since we graduated! I’m not sure what’s
more surprising — that we’ve been out of school for
that long or that some of you haven’t written in to tell me
(and your classmates) what you’ve been up to. Come on —
stop waiting, and write something! Jonathan DeLord reports, “After graduation, I
accepted a job at KRC Research & Consulting as an associate in
New York City, but I realized after a month that I wasn’t
going to be able to afford to live in New York on my paltry salary.
I ended up quitting my job and heading back home to Austin, Texas,
to look for work. After living with my parents for six months, I
landed a job as the director of marketing and research for
Telefutura television in Austin. I’m pretty much enjoying
life and have gone from being the ‘typical wild ZBT frat
boy’ to the ‘typical wild bachelor.’
” Rachel Fleishman wrote in to, among other things,
complete the partial list I had included of those attending Albert
Einstein College of Medicine: herself, Danielle Novetsky,
Naomi Frankel, Jeremy White, Sheila Nazarian,
Haviva Malina ’01 Barnard, Rebecca Zausmer ’01 Barnard
and Adam Jacobi. According to Rachel, this group is getting
to know very well “exactly where that 2 train goes when it
leaves 96th Street.” Daniel Lee is at New College, Oxford University, doing
graduate work in political theory. Daniel says, “I grew fond
of debating at Columbia, so I’m continuing with that at the
Oxford Union. I’m also continuing with my music by singing in
the choir of Oriel College and playing my cello at every
opportunity.” Daniel hopes to return to the United States to
finish his graduate studies, and Columbia is one of his top
choices. My Carman 11 pal, Kate Campion, works at the Council of
Fashion Designers of America in midtown. She moved to Hoboken in
November and lives there with her sister, Joan Campion ’92,
and some hometown friends. She is happy to report that her
’01 friends — Liz Salamy, Sofia Berger
(still at Columbia finishing up the 3/2 program), Julie
Breslin, Ellen Werner, Bill Martinez ’01E and Rob
Goodman ’01E — are doing well. Also on the Carman 11 front, I heard from Reema Kapadia
and An Pham. Reema works at CSFB and lives in Murray Hill
with Rabia Saeed, who works at Morgan Stanley. Matthew
Kim and Helena Tse are doing well and work with Reema at
CSFB. An has been busy working at Merrill Lynch in Princeton. He is a
high yield analyst covering the cable, telecom and media, leisure
and entertainment industries. He enjoys his job and is learning a
lot; surprisingly, he finds that the “the hours are not
interfering with my social life at all.” He manages to see
Vipin Kalra ’01E and Alvin Khan ’01E once in a
while. Julie Grinfeld is at Harvard getting her master’s
of arts in education. This summer, she’ll teach dance at
Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. Julie enjoys bumping
into fellow Columbia alums around Cambridge and the greater Boston
area. On January 28, I attended my first-ever lecture as a member of
the Columbia Club. Many of you have written in to tell me how you
enjoy meeting fellow ’01ers at the Club, so I wanted to put
in a few good words about it: It is in midtown and has great
facilities and programming, including a gym that is truly
affordable. I urge all of you in the area to check it out (www.columbiaclub.org). presented
a lecture on New York and its future. Also attending were Artie
Harris, Jon Rick, Kerry Constabile, Bergin
O’Malley ’01GS and, of course, the lovely Jamie Rubin
’01 Barnard. Jonathan Ferrantelli has been working at Good Machine (a
film production company) since graduation, doing a variety of
things he describes as “not glamorous, but educational and
generally enjoyable.” Some of Good Machine’s films
include The Ice Storm, In the Bedroom and The Tao of
Steve. This past summer, Jon did the Northeast AIDS ride, which
is a 350-mile bike ride through upstate New York, Connecticut,
Rhode Island and Massachusetts that raises money for various AIDS
charities. He raised about $2,200 — a nice amount for a
worthy cause! Jon reports that Alex Baker works at The Century
Foundation, a public policy foundation/ liberal think tank. Meegan
Neeb ’01E is working in the production office for HBO’s
screen adaptation of Tony Kushner ’78’s Angels in
America, which stars Al Pacino and Meryl Streep. Richard Werksman ’54 informed me of a connection made in
CCT: He was aiming to line up a student speaker for the
February meeting of the Columbia College Alumni Club. After reading
CCT, he contacted Jorge Herrera to be its speaker. Richard
encourages all D.C.-area alumni to get in touch with him to find
out more about the club. (Information about regional alumni clubs
can be found at www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/uar/clubs.html.) Liz Griffith reported on her “status change”
since the last issue: She has been promoted to assistant editor for
the Financial Yellow Book. Congratulations! Dael Geft
is studying at Sackler Medical School in Tel Aviv. He says,
“It is quite something to be living in the middle of all that
is going on in the Middle East, but I think that it helps to put
things in perspective, especially during med school.” His
friend and classmate, David Stern ’00, also is studying
there. His old roommate, Daniel Gorlin ’00 (married to Ashlyn
Nussbaum ’01 Barnard), is finishing his second year at
SIPA. John Vang is doing well. He is out of the country at an
undisclosed location, “because of the nature of my
work.” John was able to provide some great updates on his
pals: Kevin Kim is teaching English in Korea on a Fulbright
Scholarship. Mike Morefield just returned from Tajikistan
where he was teaching English. Chi Mgbako headed off to
Ghana to teach English. Leah Aden is teaching in the D.C.
public schools. Jane Shamaeva got married in Spring 2001 and is
undertaking a Ph.D. in Russian literature at UC Berkeley, where her
husband, Kostya, is getting a Ph.D. in physics. Elizabeth Cabot works at an investment banking firm in
Hong Kong, Tricia Beckles works at a law firm in NYC,
Mustafa Faruki is preserving local art at the Brooklyn
Museum and Stephanie Hsu is preserving Asian American
history at the Museum of Chinese in America in NYC. John, thanks
for all those updates. Yafit Yonay is a first year at the Law School and will
work at the United States Attorney’s office for the Eastern
District of New York this summer. Jason Johns is a first year at the University of
Pittsburgh School of Law. The workload keeps him busy, “so I
haven’t been in touch with many College classmates, but I am
proud to say that my girlfriend, Claire Chang ’01E, will be
going to the Boston University School of Dental Medicine in the
fall.” Finally, last but not least, I must apologize for an error that
I made in the last issue. Sybil Dodge works for Deloitte
Consulting. She noted that 25 percent of the entering class at
Deloitte came from Columbia: herself, Kim Harris, Brian
Gum and Jean Leng. Keep in touch.
Ishwara Glassman Dear Class of 2002, I introduce myself to you as the Class of 2002 correspondent for
CCT. I already have the privilege of knowing many of you
through activities in which I have participated, such as the
Columbia College Democrats, the Economics Society and student
government. I look forward to staying in touch with all of
you. I will be working at Bridgewater Associates, an investment
management firm and hedge fund in Westport, Conn., for the summer,
before finishing my second year of a master’s in
international affairs at SIPA next year. As you finalize your post-graduation plans, please e-mail me so
that I can share them with classmates. The column’s success
depends on you. In the immediate future, the best way to reach me
is via e-mail: ikg3@columbia.edu. I look forward to hearing from you in the coming months and
years. Take care and stay in touch.
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