April 2012 - Alumni News - Williams College
April 2012 - Alumni News - Williams College
April 2012 - Alumni News - Williams College
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“As for my regular life, I’m still<br />
teaching at Choate and enjoying<br />
it a lot.”<br />
Caleb Balderston reports that<br />
his second year in Teach for<br />
America has been “so much”<br />
better than the first. “It is still<br />
more challenging than anything<br />
else I’ve ever done, but knowing<br />
what to expect, more or<br />
less, makes all the difference.”<br />
Caleb teaches math at Austin<br />
Business & Entrepreneurship<br />
Academy in the western reaches<br />
of Chicago.<br />
Cat Vielma is now “exclusively<br />
underwriting all real-estate<br />
investments west of the<br />
Rockies.” In November, she<br />
“ditched” homecoming to see<br />
Liz Pierce ’08 and Ryan Belmont<br />
’05 in Boston, where she also<br />
ran into Sammy Sawan ’06 and<br />
Maggie Tucker ’09. In December<br />
she enjoyed hosting a Christmas<br />
party with various Ephs living<br />
in the Chicago area.<br />
Christophe Dorsey-Guillaumin<br />
celebrated the New Year by<br />
moving to a new city: Chicago.<br />
Here, he works on the Obama<br />
campaign in the analytics<br />
department. “It’s super fun,” he<br />
wrote, noting that he enjoys the<br />
company of “tons of incredibly<br />
smart, politically well-informed<br />
and all-around nice people who<br />
really care about what we’re<br />
doing.” The combination of<br />
math and politics is his dream<br />
job, “and I couldn’t be more<br />
excited!”<br />
Tommy Coleman gets bonus<br />
points for writing in while being<br />
out and about in NYC with fellow<br />
alumni. He spent a January<br />
evening traversing the streets<br />
of Brooklyn and Manhattan<br />
with Vince Powell-Newman, Alex<br />
Mokover, Samim Abedi, Dave<br />
Kulik, Jim Dunn, Julia Reiser,<br />
Rachel Rosten, Cristina Diaz,<br />
Jimmy Nguyen and Jonathan<br />
Galinsky. Yours truly is looking<br />
forward to Tommy visiting<br />
Chicago from his current home<br />
in Missouri, where he is a<br />
PhD student in mathematics at<br />
Mizzou.<br />
Since I last wrote, I have<br />
thoroughly enjoyed coaching<br />
high school basketball with<br />
Maggie Scannell (formerly<br />
Miller) ’07. Other important<br />
updates include downloading<br />
and then listening to a Rick<br />
Ross mixtape, hanging out with<br />
Tanya Zhuravleva in Boston and<br />
the steady upward progression<br />
of my quest to make the perfect<br />
kale chip.<br />
Marco Sanchez wrote in with<br />
the following note: “I’m still<br />
in Switzerland, cleaning and<br />
waxing cars by day and making<br />
music dressed as a gnome<br />
by night (it’s that time of the<br />
season).”<br />
2011<br />
Caroline Chiappetti<br />
2090 Frederick Douglass Blvd.,<br />
Apt 2C<br />
New York, NY, 10026<br />
2011secretary@williams.edu<br />
So many of you wrote in this<br />
time that I have hardly any<br />
room to editorialize or wax<br />
poetic on your lives. I wrote<br />
most of this batch of notes at<br />
a coffee shop next to an older<br />
woman who mistook me for a<br />
writer (granted, I was writing)<br />
and proceeded to offer me some<br />
wonderful unsolicited advice.<br />
(“Make sure your editors know<br />
they work for you!”) When I<br />
told her I was in fact writing<br />
up class news for my college’s<br />
alumni magazine, she was most<br />
impressed I had volunteered for<br />
the position, so thank you to<br />
all of you who contributed and<br />
make this job pleasurable.<br />
To continue the tradition<br />
of beginning the notes with<br />
those who most deserve our<br />
recognition, Steph Berger was<br />
commissioned as an ensign<br />
in the U.S. Navy on Nov. 18.<br />
She is a surface warfare officer<br />
on the USS Pearl Harbor and<br />
went on deployment in early<br />
January. To send Steph goodies<br />
while she’s away, check out the<br />
Adopt-an-Eph program about<br />
which I emailed you information<br />
a while ago.<br />
Faisal Khan embarrassed himself<br />
on co-worker Alex Mendel’s<br />
first day of work on his team at<br />
Booz Allen in DC by asking him<br />
what school he graduated from.<br />
Otherwise, Faisal is enjoying<br />
DC and hangs out with the<br />
<strong>Williams</strong> people he recognizes.<br />
After spending all summer and<br />
fall working as a farm manager<br />
for her parents, Casey Lyons<br />
started a fellowship at the FDA<br />
in Bethesda. Though still living<br />
at home in the DC suburbs,<br />
Casey plans to move into the<br />
city soon with hopes of reviving<br />
her social life. Nevertheless,<br />
Casey has managed to see<br />
Candace Gibson, who is studying<br />
for an MA at Georgetown, Thuy<br />
Pham and a contingent of Ephs<br />
at the Keystone XL Pipeline<br />
protest in November, and Abby<br />
Martin, Laura Staugitis and Jay<br />
Cox-Chapman ’09 at a holiday<br />
party chez Chandler Sherman<br />
n 2010–11<br />
and Julia von Hoogstraten.<br />
Casey regretfully shared that<br />
her fellow Milham housemates<br />
Ellen Stuart, Nick Arnosti, Aaron<br />
Bauer and Jake Levinson see<br />
each other frequently in San<br />
Francisco without her. True to<br />
Casey’s word, Nick and Ellen<br />
spent Thanksgiving weekend<br />
in Berkeley with Aaron Bauer,<br />
Jake Levinson and Dave Moore<br />
’10. Nick spent two months<br />
this summer traveling around<br />
Central Europe and improving<br />
his German before heading to<br />
California, where he finished<br />
his first term as a Stanford<br />
graduate student. Ellen joined<br />
Nick in Palo Alto and works as<br />
a research assistant at Stanford<br />
Law School.<br />
Nick and Ellen also joined<br />
classmates Peter Gottlieb,<br />
Marissa Pilger, Camille Chicklis<br />
and Steve Rubin to watch the<br />
<strong>Williams</strong>-Amherst game at the<br />
San Francisco alumni association’s<br />
homecoming party. Steve<br />
started a PhD in computer<br />
science this fall at UC Berkeley.<br />
He reported that Camille works<br />
south of San Francisco, Peter<br />
is in grad school at Stanford,<br />
and Marissa and Julian Suhr live<br />
nearby in Berkeley.<br />
Also in Berkeley are Sasha<br />
Macko and Morgan Goodwin<br />
’08. Sasha works for the<br />
Alliance for Climate Education<br />
with a fellow Eph (Class<br />
of 2000) and a bunch of<br />
Middlebury alums. After a<br />
three-month long cross-country<br />
road trip, she is “enjoying<br />
exploring San Francisco and<br />
the Bay Area and running into<br />
random old friends from<br />
the East Coast who all happen<br />
to be out here basking in the<br />
mellow winter.”<br />
Will Slack, who is working<br />
in Madison, Wis., is one such<br />
friend who enjoyed seeing Sasha<br />
and Morgan as well as Diego<br />
Flores on a recent business trip<br />
to California. He also writes<br />
that, on a recent warmer day in<br />
Madison, he put on a <strong>Williams</strong><br />
sweatshirt before heading out—<br />
the first person he ran into that<br />
day was a <strong>Williams</strong> ’06 wearing<br />
a purple hoodie!<br />
Sarah Dewey is still holding it<br />
down in <strong>Williams</strong>town along<br />
with Corey Baldwin, as they<br />
both received teaching fellowships<br />
at the Pine Cobble School.<br />
They both live on the PC campus<br />
along with Sarah’s recently<br />
acquired dog, Gunner.<br />
“Still being in the Purple Bubble<br />
has allowed us to kick it with<br />
some other alums in the area,<br />
aPril <strong>2012</strong> | <strong>Williams</strong> PeoPle | 111
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