ClassNotes 1983 Class Agent: Jamie Hole
Class of ’83 Alumni Reunion Weekend Wrap-Up, May 3 & 4, 2013 30th Reunion The Class of 1983’s 30th Reunion Weekend was a great success. Over the course of the weekend, close to half of our class returned to spend time together, many with their spouses. Some of us see each other regularly, and some of us haven’t seen each other in 30 years. The mix made for a fun dynamic. I am happy to report, too, that not a single classmate has matured beyond the age of 13 (which is consistent with EA’s assessment of us in May of 1983). Kathy and Michael Jacoby hosted a class party at their home Friday evening. During the day Saturday, our classmate James “Bruiser” Flint gave the keynote address on campus for all reunion classes. Bruiser did a great job conveying to everyone in attendance how special his Episcopal experience was and how well it prepared him for success in his adult life. Later that day, we all enjoyed the reunion reception and dinner on campus. Afterward, we met up again for a class party at Barbara and Tom Riley’s home. Everyone was extremely well-behaved and no poor decisions were made that jeopardized the Riley home. Thanks to the entire EA staff for putting together a terrific weekend! Thanks to the Jacobys and the Rileys for bookending the weekend with two perfect parties. Thanks to our classmates for participating, especially those that traveled long distances to be there.
Chris Brookins writes: “Unfortunately, I will be unable to make our 30th reunion as I’ll be with my family on our first Disney World vacation. While
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I’m fully prepared to need a vacation from this ‘vacation,’ I know my wife, Lisa, and our two boys, Reid, age four, and Parker, age six, will have a blast. Professionally, I continue to enjoy the Boston tech startup scene and am currently VP engineering and product management at Acquia, which is a commercial provider of cloud platforms and services for the opensource Drupal project. Translation: We help companies build, scale, and maintain very large social websites. It continues to be a wild ride, as Inc. magazine recently named us the fastest growing software company in the US. I’m also having fun on the side mentoring several startups as a part of Boston TechStars, and still am playing tennis regularly when I am not shuttling my boys around to soccer, piano, swimming, or gymnastics, and soon tennis! My wife continues to enjoy her marketing consultancy that allows her to work at home while helping her clients develop and launch new products.”
Jon Foxman writes: “After EA, I graduated from the University of Vermont, albeit six and a half years later, with a BA in English and then from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business with an MBA. Since then, I’ve worked mostly in wireless communications, founding and operating three venture capital–backed cellular telephone companies in non-major markets around the country. My current company provides cellular phone service under the Cellular One brand in Montana, East Texas, Central Louisiana, and the Gulf of Mexico. Over the years, my wife, Karin, and I have lived in northern Virginia and Scottsdale, but moved home to the Philadelphia area about 10 years ago. We live in Bryn Mawr with our five children: Emily, Libby, Caroline,
Will, and Grace. Libby will graduate from EA this year, and Will is in the Class of 2018. I see some of the old crew pretty regularly but am looking forward to catching up with everyone at the reunion. A special shout-out to David Havens for his perennial Classnotes update allegedly from Richard Roberts—hilarious, but far too inappropriate to submit!”
Jamie Harper has lived in Oregon since 2000. With a Ph.D. in art history from Penn, he teaches Italian Renaissance art and serves as the director of undergraduate studies for the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is The Turk & Islam in the Western Eye 1450–1750: Visual Imagery before Orientalism 2011. He is married to Roxi Thoren, a professor of architecture and landscape architecture, and they live on a woodsy hilltop in a house that they designed together. They have two children, Eleanor, age seven, and J.E.B., age five. Any similarities to Wednesday and Pugsley from the Addams Family are purely coincidental. Jamie returns to Pennsylvania every summer with his family for a month at Pocono Lake Preserve, and keeps in touch with about a dozen of his EA classmates.
Andy Kahn writes: “After University of Michigan, worked in Asia for a year. Then lived and worked in Boston and got into banking, lending, and corporate finance, providing bond financing and loans to small companies. Then came out to San Francisco in 1991 with a San Francisco–based investment bank called Hambrecht & Quist. Got acquired by JP Morgan in 2000 and spun out in 2004 to start my own small company, lending to technology and life science companies worldwide.