www.andover.edu/intouch
2009 5th REUNION June 13–15, 2014 Alexander McHale 30 Waterside Plaza, Apt. 29J New York NY 10010 703-786-3330 arxmchale@gmail.com Deidra Willis 550 East Holly Ave., #39 Pitman NJ 08071 347-342-7447 willis.deidra@gmail.com
It’s official: The Class of 2009 has started adulthood, with most members in new jobs and careers, traveling the world, pursuing further academic endeavors, or simply enjoying life. At the end of the summer Louise Ireland hosted a kickoff party for the Addison Contemporaries, a group for Addison supporters under the age of 40, which we encourage everyone to join. Countless members of the classes of ’07 to ’13 were in attendance including Zoe Weinberg, Alex McHale, Menelik Washington, Malik Jenkins, and Deidra Willis. Scott Dzialo and Courtnie Crutchfield enjoyed the art and caught up as well. Alex McHale bumped into John Grunbeck at a Chipotle in NYC; John now works at the Waldorf Astoria. Alex also saw both Andrew Pohly, who is now a commodities trader at Morgan Stanley, and Dominick DeJoy ’07, at Ph-D, the lounge at the Dream Hotel, on a random Monday night before Christmas. Alex spent a lot of time this summer bequeathing his Rolodex of Columbia bartenders to Max Abitbol, who is now pursuing a PhD degree in physics there. Alex also works with Vincent Jow and Sol Jin ’07 at Evercore, an investment bank in New York. A few members of the Class of 2009 went up for Andover-Exeter weekend to watch Andover crush Exeter in the last minute in the football game. (It’s good to be back on top—reminds us of our junior through upper years.) Mike Discenza and Larry Zhou stayed with Eliot Wall ’07 and Henry Frankievich ’07 and drove up to Exeter for the day of festivities. There are some ’09ers on campus, as a few of us—including Jill Kozloff and Sarah Boylan—are now teaching fellows, as is Murphy Temple ’08. Shout out to the Andover boys’ varsity water polo team on beating Exeter and winning Andover’s first-ever New England Championship! Over the Thanksgiving holidays in NYC, Larry also met up with Ishan Kapoor and Steven Lee-Kramer for dinner with family. Charlie Dong and Angelica Jarvenpaa ’11 joined them later that night. There was also an Andover Toast the Holidays event at the New York Athletic Club that many classmates attended, including Larry, Shaun Stuer,
and Max Abitbol, along with John Twomey ’08. So many ’09ers are now in NYC, and we’re sure it was great for them to catch up and reminisce. Our class rang in the new year a few different ways. Alex McHale attended a party at Jack Walker, Matt Gorski, and Andrew Pohly’s apartment, with 160 of their closest friends. “It was definitely one of the better parties [I’ve been to] in New York,” McHale writes. From Taylor Hall, Alex ran into Spencer Rice, Marvin Blugh, Graeme Clements, and Max Abitbol, as well as countless other Andover alums. For New Year’s, Larry Zhou enjoyed an Andover-filled excursion with his brother, Jeff Zhou ’06, who organized a five-day ski trip to Mont Tremblant in Quebec that was absolutely spectacular. Andover people present were Eliot Wall ’07, Dave Cuthell ’07, Henry Frankievich ’07, Mai Kristofferson, Ishan Kapoor, and Tahir Kapoor ’12. The group reports that on a day with a high of 10 degrees below zero and a low of 25 below, they planned to seek out someplace warmer for next New Year’s! It’s hard to believe it has already been five years, but our Fifth Reunion is just around the corner. Alex has begun helping out the alumni office in trying to prepare for the event and Deidra is superexcited to see everyone once again. Plan ahead! We implore all of you to attend and enjoy our beautiful campus, like the good old days. In the meantime, however, there remains an open invitation to grab drinks in New York with Alex. The same goes for anyone in the Philadelphia area and Deidra. We hope to see you all later this year and encourage everyone to stay in touch and keep sending class notes! Much love from your class secretaries. P.S. If any of your friends from Exeter are counting, 69-53-10. That’s all.
2010 Sascha Strand Metcalf Hall W205 Tufts University Medford MA 02155 316-371-9053 (cell) Sascha.Strand@Tufts.edu Courtney King 343 15th St. Santa Monica CA 90402 310-984-0882 (cell) courtney.king116@gmail.com Faiyad Ahmad 978-289-3584 (cell) faiyad_ahmad@brown.edu
We want to start off with a big congratulations to all our December college graduates! Enjoy the “real world,” ladies and gents! Geoff Kwok spent the summer working in finance in Hong Kong, where he ran into Arnold Wong, Mike Ma, and Minyoung Kwon ’11. Geoff is studying neuroscience and medieval and
renaissance history at Trinity College. He also met up with Charlie Walters in NYC. Andrew Townson spent the summer in LA working at Universal Pictures in the creative advertising department, where he worked with Jeanne LeSaffre ’03. He hung out with Courtney King but, tragically, did not get to meet her dogs. Lucy Arnold graduated early from Cornell. She planned on sticking around for one more semester as a research assistant for a government professor and applying for positions and fellowships for the upcoming year. Then she’s headed for graduate school, probably to pursue a political science PhD degree. Will Brooke just finished studying abroad in Brazil and says he had a great time. He’s back at Middlebury now, and looking forward to going skiing. He’ll graduate next fall, along with Celia Cadwell, both part of a mini class of students who took a gap semester before starting at Midd. Ely Shapiro graduated from Barnard this past December with a degree in biology. She’s now working at Citi doing biotech equity research. Taylor Clarke is happy to report that she saw Mat Kelley, Avery Stone, Catherine McLaughlin, Helen Lord, Caroline Kaufman, Sam Lawson, and Tom Hamel in Andover during winter break, and that everyone’s doing well. Frederick Shepard attends Amherst College and says that he runs into his roommate from Andover, Erik Christianson, quite frequently on campus. He’s had a chance to see some friends from PA over the past two summers while he played in the Cape Cod Baseball League, a summer baseball league located in Massachusetts. He and Kristina Ballard ’11 have had the opportunity to travel a lot over the past year, visiting “Zürich, Brussels, Amsterdam, Geneva, and even the Super Bowl in New Orleans!” Sam August is graduating from Penn State this spring with a double major in English and philosophy, while finishing his fourth letterman year on the baseball team. He’s applying to graduate school at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., to pursue a professional career in music. Matt Renner reports that this past year has been “a journey with many ups and downs.” He left NYU to pursue his dream of becoming a tattoo artist, and, after three long years, “It’s finally happened.” Matt is excited to report he’ll be apprenticing at Blood and Iron Tattoo in Greeley, Colo., and will be a professional tattoo artist in two years. This winter, Kelsey Lim interned part time at Corey McPherson Nash, a national branding and design firm in Watertown, Mass. Additionally, she worked as a teaching assistant for a course she cocreated that deals with election design in Rhode Island and beyond. The curriculum is based on research she conducted with a classmate last summer as part of a Maharam STEAM Fellowship she was granted. RISD’s Maharam STEAM fellows work in arenas not typically associated with art and design students and have the opportunity to effect Andover | Spring 2014
117