stay connected... kids.” Victoria also met up with Kealy O’Connor Murray ’96, who, Victoria says, lives nearby in Marin. Victoria mentions that she will soon be joining the Andover Bay Regional Leadership Team, so Bay Area alums “will be hearing from me soon!” Tiffany Thomas Turner is “enjoying our first Christmas as a family of four and our last Christmas in Alabama.” She writes that they are moving to Denver next year to grow her PR business, and her husband’s career as a “healthy soul” private chef. Tom Barros-Wing got married at the Grand Canyon in October. He and his new wife have bought a Dutch Colonial house—“our first, and hopefully only”—in Belle Mead, NJ, near Princeton. Tom says that for the first time since he left for Andover, he watches TV. Karl Hutter and wife Jen are “fully occupied” raising “two crazy little ladies and running two crazy companies.” Laurie Coffey spent a week this past fall in Cancun, “trying to make up for all those missed spring-break trips because of crew,” and will have moved to Naples, Italy by January for a two-year Navy stint. Chris Barraza started a new job at a law firm in lower Manhattan, relocating from DC. “The fam,” writes Chris, “has moved from the mean streets of Chevy Chase to the mean streets of Greenwich.” Liz Campbell Kelly has started a landscape gardening firm called Hudson Garden Studio LLC and is “excited to kick off a DIY garden kit project to bring ecologically sustainable and wildlife-friendly plants to the Northeast.” Her son Eli began kindergarten this year, and Liz has been volunteering as a “garden parent,” bringing his class outside into the garden once a week for some ecology-oriented and creative-minded outdoor education. Liz has also started to work with two teams of sixth-graders, creating a master plan for the school that reimagines the entire campus as an outdoor classroom. Liz says her team will be looking at the recent Andover master plan for inspiration. “It feels great,” she writes, “to be digging into the local community and contributing to the local public school. Non sibi remains a guiding principle!” Margot van Bers Streeter worked as the geopolitical and economics advisor to Gen. Lord Richards, the former Chief of the Defence Staff of the United Kingdom, until the day Margot’s daughter was born—then took two years off to be with her. But “this seems like a pretty all-handson-deck sort of period,” writes Margot, so she has decided to head back to work in security in the New Year. It “feels strange,” she says, “but I want to leave her a safer world than the one we’ve got now, and I’m willing to throw my efforts behind getting us there. Putting my time where my mouth is, as it were—as are a lot of you. Non sibi, y’all.” With non sibi in mind, we get news from Sebastian Frank that he is in rural Vermont chairing a seven-town, 15-member committee attempting to merge school districts in compliance with
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Andover | Summer 2017
Tricia Taitt ’96 recent state legislation. “For over a year now,” writes Seb, “we have been traveling from village to village, holding forums and hearings where hundreds of people, young and old and long-practiced in the town meeting tradition, debate the enduring human issues of democracy, equity, history, and opportunity. It has been difficult to stay neutral as chair, but it has been equally rewarding to help foster this authentic public debate.” Vanessa Kerry is running Seed Global Health, which collaborates with the Peace Corps to provide medical support in resource-limited countries. Vanessa writes that the organization is now in five countries including Swaziland, which has the world’s highest HIV rate, and Liberia, to help rebuild after the Ebola outbreak there. She also has a son and a daughter now, and still does clinical work at Massachusetts General Hospital. Vanessa sometimes runs via work into Loyce LaShawndra Pace, executive director at the nonprofit Global Health Council. Vanessa also sees Caitlin Fawcett and John Fawcett, who have three boys, Morgan Nickerson, who has three girls, Stefanie Santangelo, Delphine Rubin McNeill, and Abby Harris ’96. As for me, Erik Campano, I am also in the field of global health, helping out at Emergency, a Milan-based NGO that provides nonpartisan medical assistance in war and post-war zones around the world, as well as to migrants crossing the Mediterranean into Italy. As always, I am delighted to see PA people, so drop me a line if you are passing through Milan and have a little time to spare.
1996 John Swansburg 396 15th St. Brooklyn, NY 11215 john.swansburg@aya.yale.edu
1997 20th REUNION June 9–11, 2017 Jack Quinlan 514 S. Clementine St. Oceanside, CA 92054 760-415-9054 illegalparietal@gmail.com Kelly Quinn 3512 NE 23rd Ave., Apt. 1 Portland, OR 97212 919-949-0736 illegalparietal@gmail.com
Happy spring, everyone! As you’re reading this, Andover is celebrating its 10th anniversary of Non Sibi Day. To honor this, several of you shared stories
of how you live and embody non sibi’s true meaning. We kick off this set of notes with a few of those. Outside of his real estate development business, Michael Brown spends a great portion of his time helping people with substance abuse issues get sober. He’s also had the good fortune to help start and serve on the board of Ocean Healing Group, which provides free adaptive surfing adventures in Costa Rica to paraplegic children and their families. Faye Golden expanded her office and recently became executive director of A Dove’s Love, Inc., a nonprofit 501-c3 devoted to health care and health care education. Faye delivers health care to the uninsured, underinsured, and underserved by forming ministry partnerships with various churches in the community and obtaining donations from likeminded philanthropists. More updates from Faye in a little bit. … Carrie Leiser-Williams joined the movement at the Oceti Sakowin Camp in North Dakota to help protect the water and protest the development of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Also doing her best to protest radical change was Maggie Dickson, who participated in the efforts to preserve what was left of North Carolina’s democracy in late 2016. Maggie caught up with Shirley Mills, who happened to be in NC for a quick work trip, and Hillary Seith, who, after receiving an MBA, has been working at Vanguard. Maggie reported that everyone is doing fabulously well and looking forward to seeing more people at reunion. Rasaan Ogilvie gathered June Arrington, Natalie Grizzle, Margaret Doles, and Tamika Guishard in New York for an Andover brunch at his Bronx apartment last fall, during which he reports many mimosas were consumed and many PA memories were shared. Circling back to Faye…in addition to all of the amazing things she’s doing for work, her son completed his first semester of college in December and her daughter is midway through her second year as a visual arts major in a local magnet program. Faye keeps in close touch with Matt Magrone, Krystle Dunwell Leigh, Jerry Bramwell ’96, Nashira Washington Layade, DeMarco Quindell Williams ’96, Pam Smith ’96, Kyra Williams ’96, and a slew of other Andover alumni via phone and Facebook. And while she wouldn’t spill the beans, she let us know someone in this group (not herself) is about to get married. Nashira Washington Layade started a new job in July 2016, as chief information security officer, and, in the words of Rihanna, all she does is “work, work, work, work, work.” But all kidding aside, Nashira said life is very good. We received a wonderfully lengthy update from Kel O’Neill just as he was about to head out on new adventures for the year. Kel spent 2015–2016 working as the senior fellow at The Economist’s Media Lab, where he steered the magazine’s immersive media strategy, wrote and produced their first virtual reality (VR) pieces, and helped launch The Economist’s VR
app. Kel also serves as the VR and immersive filmmaking mentor for the U.S. Department of State/ Film Independent program Global Media Makers, which brings midcareer Middle Eastern filmmakers to the U.S. to study American-style production methods. Which brings us to Kel’s new adventures for 2017. First, Hulu is licensing The Ark, the VR piece Kel and partner, Eline Jongsma, premiered at Tribeca last April. It will launch in 2017 as part of Hulu’s first venture into VR content. Second, Kel headed to Taiwan in early January as a 2017 Eisenhower Fellow. During the fellowship, Kel met with policymakers, artists, and corporate leaders responsible for the country’s VR boom. For those of you who kept on top of world economics during Brexit and the 2016 presidential election, you likely saw or heard Megan Greene providing valuable insight on several news and economic talk shows. In quick updates, we hear Eddie Rodriguez is living in the Netherlands with his family and that Mozhan Navabi Marnò continues to find success on NBC’s The Blacklist. Fall 2016’s Andover-Exeter match brought out a few members of the Class of ’97. Jack Quinlan; Luis Angel Gonzalez and wife Lauren; David Constantine and wife Molly, who introduced their son, Oliver, to the weekend’s traditions; and Todd Boling and wife Keena all caught up with one another. After working for six years as a Muslim chaplain, first at Dartmouth and later at Brown, Dave Coolidge is now teaching an undergraduate course at NYU on contemporary Islamic law and ethics. Rob McNary is living in LA with his wife and three kids. Rob plans to attend reunion in June and is excited to bring his eldest, a fourth-grader,
www.andover.edu/intouch
Taking a Chance: Business School to Broadway and Back
F
or Tricia Taitt ’96, Andover was a place where she could take a chance. Whether it was playing on the girls’ JV3 lacrosse team, singing her first solo with the Cantata Choir, or studying abroad in Spain, Taitt, a first-generation Trinidadian-American from Brooklyn, felt comfortable feeding her curiosity here “Andover let me know it was OK to take the road less traveled,” says Taitt. “I was able to take chances doing things I’d never done before.”
Richard Werner
Taitt excelled in math, specifically BC calculus with instructor Paul Murphy, and when it came time to apply to colleges she focused on those with strong finance programs. She landed in the Wharton undergraduate business program at the University of Pennsylvania. While there, she sought to balance her finance classes by joining the African Rhythm dance company. “It reconnected me to what I loved,” says Taitt. “I had these very cerebral and intellectual classes and then I was able to balance that with body movement and dance.” After UPenn, she moved back to New York and took a job at Merrill Lynch. Dancing fell by the wayside until she decided to pursue an MBA degree at Duke. It was there, in North Carolina, that she reignited her passion for dance after meeting Chuck Davis, a pillar of the African and modern dance community worldwide. Taitt was offered a position at Citigroup postgraduation, but deferred for a year to dance with Davis and his ensemble. Taitt saw that many of the dancers had a hard time managing their finances and often took on additional jobs to make ends meet. A few years later, while dancing professionally in New York and touring with the Broadway musical, FELA!, she noticed the same thing. This time, she decided to do something and began providing financial consulting to dancers, other creatives, and performing arts organizations. “I thought, ‘Wow, I can really make a business out of this!’” Taitt says. Taitt’s company was launched in 2014 in New York City and caters to a growing base of clients including wellness providers, graphic designers, cleaning companies, and others. She describes her company, The Art of Money Matters, as providing “outsourced accounting and financial consulting for growth-oriented small- to mid-sized businesses. “To me, numbers tell a story. I work with clients who don’t necessarily have a financial background, to help bring them along and reveal the story behind their numbers.” Taitt credits Andover with encouraging her to stretch beyond the comfortable or predictable. “Andover allows you to explore your interests,” she says. “I could have been a dancer or worked in finance, but instead I combined both to realize a whole new opportunity and direction in my life.”
Scott Michael
Jones
—Marisa Connors Hoyt ’99 Andover| |Summer Summer2017 2017 Andover
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