Japan Storm - Columbia College - Columbia University

More documents

Recommendations

Info

CLASS NOTES COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY Christine Kwak ’07 and Edward Kim ’08 were married in May. Columbians in attendance included, among many guests, bridesmaids Jane Park ’07 (front row, third from left) and Michelle Kwak ’12 (front row, fifth from left) and groomsmen (front row, to the right of the groom, left to right) William Kim ’08E, Michael Lee ’08E, Brian Kim ’08 and Benjamin Koo ’08E. PHOTO: CLY CREATION the summer in Kibale National Park in Uganda collecting data for my master’s thesis on redtail monkey nutrition and behavior. Now I’m back in New York finishing my master’s program at CUNY Hunter.” Joyce Hau is now a Googler in Beijing. She writes, “If anyone comes by this way, let me know!” Negar Kordestani spent three years as a program coordinator for the National Center for Learning Disabilities in Washington, D.C. She now is attending Villanova Law and looks forward to becoming a practicing attorney. Kasia Nikhamina shares, “I’ve been volunteering at Compost for Brooklyn (compostforbrooklyn. org), a community compost garden in my neighborhood, Kensington/ Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. The garden is now in its second year. In July alone, we diverted nearly 3,000 pounds of organic waste from landfill. Our garden attracts local pollinators, and we use the resulting compost for neighborhood planting projects. Check out our website and feel free to get in touch with us (compostforbrooklyn@gmail.com) if you’re interested in starting a similar project in your area!” Thank you all again for your submissions! 08 messages you would like me to include in the next issue. We love hearing from you! Jason Bello completed a Ph.D. in political science at Oxford and is moving to Washington, D.C., to join McKinsey & Co. Caroline McNamara says, “Although my fellow Columbians may be disappointed in my fickle allegiances, I swapped my Columbia Blue for Violet this fall. I started an interdisciplinary masters at NYU through its Draper Program. I’m excited to continue the studies that I began at Columbia.” Satjot Sawhney has a special message for our classmates: “It took me four years at Columbia to figure out that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. It was a better-latethan-never moment. I’m writing this note because the most helpful people after college in my entrepreneurial endeavors have been fellow alumni. Thank you all!” Carmen Jo Ponce graduated this past May from Duke Law. “I recently took the bar exam, and I am preparing to move to Houston, Texas, to begin my new job at Baker Botts law firm. It has been a busy and exciting year for me!” Chenni Xu is a guest researcher at Tsinghua University in Beijing, working on an environmental governance project, especially focusing on women’s roles in environmental gerly awaiting the publication of his article, “Next Millennium Falcon: Redefining Loss-of-Chance,” which sadly is more about legal loss-ofchance doctrine and less about Wookies than the title might imply. In July, Elizabeth Grefrath left the Columbia Center for Oral History to take a position at the national headquarters of the American Civil Liberties Union. She will be the special assistant to the legal director, Steven Shapiro ’72, and will focus primarily on the ACLU’s work in the U.S. Supreme Court. Although she will miss Columbia and Morningside Heights (especially Thai Market!), Elizabeth is looking forward to working in downtown NYC. She celebrated her one-year wedding anniversary in October. At some point she will do the necessary paperwork to legally hyphenate her last name. Rachel Belt is the logistics coordinator for a trauma and critical care hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. “I began work here in March and even as we approach the second anniversary of the earthquake, a large number of the people who lost housing in the earthquake still live in tents, and although there is a newly elected president, the prime minister still is not approved and there is no functioning government.” 09 Neda Navab 08 7 Soldiers Field Park, Apt. 7C protection. She also writes for womensworldwideweb.org. Alidad Damooei c/o CCT 09 Columbia Alumni Center Boston, MA 02163 At Michigan Law School, Maxi- 622 W. 113th St., MC 4530 nn2126@columbia.edu Hey, Class of 2008! I have a nummilian Bulinski has been accepted as a fellow with the Australian Law Reform Commission. In addition to New York, NY 10025 damooei@gmail.com ber of exciting accomplishments rewriting outdated laws in the land Gary Mesko and Feryal Hirji ’09 and updates to share from our of marsupials, he looks forward to Barnard were married in a beautiful classmates. I hope you enjoy read- living in Sydney for six months and wedding, which took place over ing them, and please send me any learning to SCUBA. Max also is ea- four days, on the island of Zanzibar, WINTER 2011–12 92 Tanzania. The official ceremony was on July 16. There were many friends and relatives present, including a whole group from Columbia. Three groomsmen were from Columbia: Ralph DeBernardo, Gene Kaskiw and Stefan Savic ’08. A great time was had by all, especially when the bride and groom were serenaded on stage with a special presentation of the Temptations’ “My Girl” sung by Ralph, Gene and Stefan with the ladies as backup dancers! [See photo.] In June, Maxime Glass got engaged to Evan Harnick. The happy couple plans to get married in July 2012. Dan Blank completed a master’s in English at Oxford and began a Ph.D. at Princeton this fall, focusing mainly on Shakespeare and the early modern stage. The past year has been filled with travel, mostly Down Under: In February, he gave a paper on a fragmentary manuscript in the Bodleian Library at the 2011 ANZAMEMS Conference in Dunedin, New Zealand. He returned to the Southern Hemisphere in May, traveling in Australia through Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Dan’s excited to jump back into academia, though he probably will spend much of his time at Princeton trying to find a theater company that’s at least half as much fun as the King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe. Jeff Petriello is producing his first feature film, Druid Peak. It’s set in West Virginia and Yellowstone National Park. With the help of Josie Keefe and executive producer James Franco, this tale of a troubled teen and a bunch of wolves surely will be a beautiful testament to the practical applica-
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY CLASS NOTES Jared Hecht ’09 Reinvents Mobile Communication Jared Hecht ’09 does sleep. Some nights. As for how many hours a day he works? “All of them,” he says. Many 24-year-olds living in New York would sympathize. But few can say they’re running their own start-up valued at a reported $80 million. In May 2010, Hecht co-founded GroupMe (groupme.com) with 29-year-old Steve Martocci as a group text messaging application that allows any phone (smart or otherwise) to function like a chatroom. Users form groups and can see and respond to all the text messages sent to each other. A year-and-a-half later, the app boasts users in more than 90 countries with at least 100 million messages sent per month. Like many inventions, GroupMe was inspired by love. Hecht’s now-wife, Carrie Weprin, didn’t have a good way of keeping in touch with friends at a concert; festivals are notorious for shaky phone and Internet service. Hecht knew they could solve the problem over basic text. He enlisted his good friend Martocci, the lead software engineer at Gilt Groupe, and a few weeks later, they developed a group messaging prototype. Within a week, the app had changed the way Hecht and Martocci communicated. By August, they had quit their jobs at Tumblr and Gilt Groupe, respectively, met with venture capital investors and raised $850,000. In September, they launched the beta version of the app and users skyrocketed beyond what they ever imagined. What started out as a convenient way to keep in touch with friends at music festivals evolved into a life-changing system for stopping crimes in a neighborhood watch and coordinating relief efforts after natural disasters. By December, Hecht and Martocci had raised another $10.5 million of financing from investors. Then, almost a year after the launch, and with competitors such as Facebook, Google and Apple working on their own group messaging services, GroupMe was acquired by video phone giant Skype for a reported $80 million. “What was most important to us was making sure people all over the world can experience GroupMe, and we wanted to take every competitive advantage we had to make sure that happened,” Hecht says. Though his baby face and typical sweatshirt-and-jeans attire suggest an amateur, Hecht has been honing his entrepreneurial skills since college. Working his senior year as managing director and publisher for Columbia’s student-written and produced guidebook, Inside New York, provided him the foundation for running his own company. As part of the Center for Career Education’s (CCE) Student Enterprise program, Inside New York was founded B y y e l e n a shuster ’09 WINTER 2011–12 93 to develop management skills through student-operated businesses. “I was running a business with real revenue and a real product that was distributed with sig- nificant impact,” Hecht says, reminiscing about receiving his own copy during freshman year orientation, which he referenced throughout college. Dean of Career Education Kavita Sharma and senior associate director Beth Vanderputten served as GroupMe co-founder Jared Hecht ’09 at his sleek Flatiron office. PHOTO: GROUPME mentors. “They were the safety net, and that was a rare opportunity to have in business,” Hecht says. Vanderputten was not surprised at all that Hecht achieved success so quickly after graduating. “The level of maturity he brought as a manager usually takes a lot more coaching,” she says. Hecht’s editor-in-chief at Inside New York, Joseph Meyers ’10, seconds that opinion: “Jared possesses a rare combination of traits — a gleeful, boyish enthusiasm and a hard-nosed pragmatism — that made him a great publisher to work for.” The political science major oversaw finances, managed a core staff of 20 daily as well as 30–50 freelancers, built a sales team and entered new markets. Under Hecht’s leadership, Inside New York evolved into the intercollegiate guidebook to NYC with writers contributing from schools such as Fordham, Pratt and NYU. In addition, Inside New York finally developed a digital presence beyond a static Contact Us page. For the first time, all reviews were published online, along with a blog that was refreshed throughout the academic year. “We wanted to be competitive with Spectator and Bwog — something students paid attention to day in and day out — and not just Columbia students,” Hecht says. Aside from inspiring him to one day start his own business, the experience had a more direct effect: Hecht was personally recruited by Tumblr president John Maloney to join its tech start-up after Maloney heard about Hecht’s leadership with the publication. After a year of accumulating tech savvy as Tumblr’s business development manager, the idea for GroupMe came along. Since then, the life of this young entrepreneur has been both exhilarating and exhausting: “Some nights you are on top of the world and think you’re building the best thing ever, and then other nights you think that some horrible competitor is going to knock you off the face of the earth.” Even so, he would never trade the inherent risks for a typical office job. “We’re helping change the way people communicate,” Hecht says. “That is the best feeling ever.” Yelena Shuster ’09 is a freelance writer whose work has been featured in Manhattan magazine, The Fiscal Times and Cosmpolitan.com.
Page 1 and 2:
Columbia College TODAY Winter 2011-
Page 3 and 4:
20 Tohoku Diary A firsthand account
Page 5 and 6:
Dear Columbians, In my first three
Page 7 and 8:
Piero Weiss ’50, ’70 GSAS have
Page 9 and 10:
“I’m looking forward to helping
Page 11 and 12:
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY AROUND THE Q
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 24 and 25:
JAPAN AFTER THE STORM COLUMBIA COLL
Page 26 and 27:
Page 28 and 29:
Page 31 and 32:
Sensei and Sensibility After 73 yea
Page 33 and 34:
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY JAPAN AFTER
Page 35 and 36:
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY JAPAN AFTER
Page 38 and 39:
Page 40 and 41:
ABBE LOWELL ’74, ’77L COLUMBIA
Page 42 and 43:
[ COLUMBIA FORUM] WINTER 2011-12 40
Page 44 and 45: THE BAUHAUS GROUP: SIX MASTERS OF M
Page 50 and 51: C C A A B O A R D O F D I R E C T O
Page 52 and 53: OBITUARIES COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY F
Page 54 and 55: Bookshelf Jacques Barzun [’27]: P
Page 56 and 57: Class Notes 25 40 Columbia College
Page 58 and 59: CLASS NOTES COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
Page 98 and 99: In the mid-1960s, the captain of th
Page 100: COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY Columbia Uni
show all

Japan Storm - Columbia College - Columbia University

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?