COMMUNITY ALUMNI | CLASS NOTES
11 Raleigh Holmes ’07 After graduating from SAAS, Raleigh immediately began pursuing her multiple passions for theatre, music, and visual art. Based in Los Angeles, Raleigh is a working actress and has appeared in films such as thriller “Crawlspace,” and the indie-festival award-winning film noir comedy “Kill Me, Deadly!” She is an A2 member of Los Angeles’ premier classical theatre company, the Antaeus Company, and has appeared in multiple stage productions including the U.S. premiere of “Peace in our Time.” In addition to acting, she is a singer/songwriter. Raleigh has toured regionally, composed soundtracks for video games and released two albums of music with the alternative-folk band The Scarlet Furies, opening for such acts as Leon Russell and The Zombies. Her new solo album, “River’s Mouth,” is due for release later this year. When she isn’t performing, Raleigh works as a visual artist and sells her paintings though private commission and Etsy. She is a cancer survivor; grateful for a new lease on life and a beautiful future together with her fiance, Graham. You
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12 can check out her work and other activities at www.raleighholmes.com. 12 Connor Fallon ’08 After SAAS, Connor attended Carnegie Mellon University where he majored in Creative Writing, but took many classes in art, computer science, and theater in order to pursue his goal of becoming a game designer. In school, Connor managed the Game Creation Society Club where he worked with artists, programmers, and other designers to create short games. After graduating, Connor was recruited by Schell Games where he worked on a diverse set of projects, collaborating with Fred Rodger’s Company and Daniel Tiger’;s Neighborhood and working at the forefront of VR development with the award-winning “I Expect You To Die”. He recently moved back to Seattle and started a new job at ArenaNet, where is he is a designer on the multiplayer game Guild Wars 2. In addition to his day job, Connor and a group of his closest friends from GCS work on a number of independent projects, which have been very successful. These games have included Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher, a free riff on the popular Ace Attorney series which pits you in a semi-comical debate against several classic philosophers. Connor and his GSC team also worked on Elsinore, a game where you play Ophelia from Hamlet and you are trapped in a Groundhog Day style loop
as you desperately try to find a way to escape the play’s tragic fate. Elsinore is planning for a release early next year, has completed a successful Kickstarter, and has been featured at multiple festivals such as IndieCade and the Level Up Awards. In ten years, Connor hopes to be doing more of the same, continuing to use games to tell odd interactive stories, though hopefully with more skill and in a more diverse industry. 13 Toma Kraft ’08 and 14 Sam Stelle ’08 both graduated from SAAS in 2008 and now work together on a generalized analytical platform at Stratifyd that specializes in understanding text. Sam works as a Sr. Data Engineer and Toma is the VP of Engineering. After their families moved onto the same block back in 2005, Sam and Toma formed a strong friendship that began in 9th grade at SAAS. Toma was a top tier squash player in high school and went on to study Computer Science at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York Sam attended University of British Columbia Okanagan, outside Kelowna British Columbia. After a year there, he took a year off in Seattle and transferred to Western Washington University to study Computer Science. While Sam finished up his BS degree, Toma was working towards his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina Charlotte where he, his