CLASS NOTES

1970s

Keith Himmelman (’73) made the trip from Napa to join our first Bay Area Alumni Reception in more than a decade. He had many wonderful stories of Overlake’s earliest days, as he attended classes on all three of our historic campuses: Redwood Manor, the YMCA, and the present campus.

to the West Coast for our Founders Day celebration, where his Uncle Caspar “Cappy” Clarke was honored as the first chair of Overlake’s Board of Trustees. Cappy is the brother of Overlake’s founder, the late Charlie Clarke.

1980s

Chelsea Slosky Miller (’89) attended the NYC Owl Reception in February. She is the Director of Development for The Hechinger Report, which covers innovation and inequality in education.

1990s

Kate Rabinowitz (’78) is helping to organize the James Reber Callaghan Scholarship Endowment Fund to honor the legacy of Jim Callaghan, who served as Overlake’s Board President and was a tireless champion for the school in its start-up era. Jim is also the father of John (’75), Kevin (’76), Leigh (’78), Mark (’79), and Maria (’81). Jim passed away recently, and the Overlake we enjoy today was made possible in no small part by his vision and leadership. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the entire Callaghan family at this time.

Jeff Hillman (’91) and his son Noah visited campus from their home in the Boston area, where Jeff is a consultant. They were pleased to see the Denver Ulery Woodshop still going strong in the Art Barn!

2000s

Congratulations to Zach Carver (’00), whose movie The Race to Alaska is now available on most streaming services. Learn more at r2akthemovie.com.

Andy Schneider (’00) attended the Bay Area Alumni Reception and is busy doing music and high tech.

Michael Armstrong (’01) joined us for Making a Life Day, presenting his path to becoming a product manager for Upwork. Puget Sound Business Journal named Sahar Fathi (’01) one of its 40 Under 40 for her work as Policy Director in the Washington State Attorney General’s office.

Cebert Noonan (’79) was among more than 50 Owls and guests who attended the New York City Alumni Reception in February. And more recently, he came out

Jenny

, despite being 37 weeks pregnant, gave two Making a Life Day presentations on the nonprofit she founded, Doggone Seattle, which rescues and places dogs that would otherwise be euthanized with foster and forever homes. Of course, she brought one of her beautiful dogs to campus, much to the delight of the students who attended!

Thanks to Beckley Mason (’04) and Calla DiPietro (’08) for co-hosting our successful NYC Alumni Reception in February! Their knowledge of local watering holes and good taste made all the difference.

Ryan AuYeung (’09) participated in Making a Life Day and gave engaging sessions on his journey working for United and Alaska Airlines. Ryan is current Head of Competitive Strategy at Alaska and serves on our Alumni Board.

KOMO News featured a story about Jordan Griffith (’09) for her work supporting her students at Broadview Thompson K-8 School by purchasing school materials out of her own pocket.

2010s

Stephanie Roush (’10) attended the NYC Owl Reception. She updated us on her work producing, directing, and writing independent films. One of her projects was recently featured on Netflix. She also participated in Making a Life Day in April, sharing her journey and experience in the world of filmmaking with our Upper School students.

Simone Alene Gabriel-Scherief (’12) shared her journey to becoming a professional musical theater performer at Making a Life Day.

Bob Gardner (’12) and his fiancé Nicole both attended the NYC Owl Reception. Bob is a software engineer at Adobe in New York.

Kirsten Parris (’12) presented at Making a Life Day about her work as a lawyer; Kirsten is an Associate Attorney at Gordon Thomas Honeywell and serves on our Alumni Board.

Madi Clelland (’14) and George Birch (’17) also attended our Bay Area Alumni Reception. George has been working in high tech and Madi is in healthcare.

Bradley Furber (’15) recently joined the private Overlake Alumni Connection LinkedIn group, and reports that he is currently pursuing his master’s in finance at Seattle University.

Nessa Kent (’15) reports that she has founded Mess Arts, a nonprofit community-based art program for all ages, based in New Orleans.

Samantha “Sam” Paley (’15) attended the NYC Owl Reception. She is an actor, songwriter, singer, and performing artist, and has recently released her debut single entitled Two Front Teeth.

The New Yorker recently added a short documentary film by Nic Kuklinksi (’16) entitled Thank You for Your Service to their permanent online collection. The film was Nic’s thesis project for his degree from Chapman University in 2022.

Elizabeth Riffle (’16) joined the Bay Area Alumni Reception in May. She was at Microsoft until recently and is now actively seeking a new position in the product management, team leadership, UX, or customer development space.

Shirya Syal (’16) and her sister Divya Syal (’20) made the trip up from the South Bay to the Bay Area Alumni Reception by train. Shirya is a Life Science Research Professional at the Stanford Cancer Correlative Science Unit, and Divya is a Computer Science and Engineering student at Santa Clara University.

Nelson Ngouenet (’17) took the train up from Philadelphia, where he is pursuing graduate studies in the School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at Penn, to join the NYC Owl Reception. He and two colleagues are developing a portable solar powered water purification system for the 2.1 billion people living mostly in the global south, who lack access to safe clean water. Nelson shared some of his journey so far with Upper School students during Making a Life Day in April.

Devika Chipalkatti (’18) and Maria Russinovich (’18) also participated in Making a Life Day. Devika is working in software engineering at Disney and Maria is in marketing at RocketDocs.

Grace Fujinaga (’19) is a member of the Penn Women’s Lacrosse team that won the Ivy League. Congratulations to Grace and her team!

Andrea Wynn (’18) also made the journey to the NYC Owl Reception. Andrea is a machine learning scientist working on her MSE at Princeton. She also serves on our Alumni Board.

Faculty & Staff

Bella Steedly (’19) was named D-III Ultimate Frisbee Rookie of the Year! She is currently at Wellesley.

Lisa Orenstein joined us for our New York Alumni Reception, thank you so much for joining us!

Long-time performing arts faculty member Sarah Fitzpatrick attended the Bay Area Alumni Reception recently, at the invitation of hosts Fabien Heitz (‘02) and Madeline Klineman (’15)

Keep those stories coming; we love to hear from you!

If you have an update you would like to share, please email alumni@overlake.org.