class notes

Alumni from all classes through 1997 are listed under the years they would have completed grade 8 at The Harker School, Harker Academy, Harker Day School or Palo Alto Military Academy (PAMA). For all classes after the Class of 1997, alumni are listed under the class years they would have graduated from high school, regardless of whether they completed high school studies at Harker. For unlisted classes, we invite you to email alumni@harker.org if you are interested in becoming a class agent or would like to nominate a classmate. All photos submitted by the subject unless noted.

For a list of Harker Academy class agents for the Classes of 1972-97, please contact alumni@harker.org.

Jeff Carnes – 1950-2022

Earlier this year, the Harker Alumni Association learned that that Jeff Carnes, a graduate of Palo Alto Military Academy, died in the summer of 2022. Mr. Carnes moved with his family to Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1967, where they lived ever since.

“He always spoke of his days at Palo Alto Military Academy and how he enjoyed them,” said his wife, Tina. “He was from an old Palo Alto family and cherished growing up in the Bay Area.”

CLASS AGENTS:

Akhsar Kharebov axarharebate@gmail.com

Yasmin Ali yasminfali@gmail.com

Isabella Liu isabella.a.liu@gmail.com arts chair Laura Lang-Ree. Both were performers at the event: Ann was part of an ensemble that sang a medley of 1960s folk songs, while Lang-Ree performed a solo rendition of “See What it Gets You” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Anyone Can Whistle.”

2005

CLASS AGENT:

Erika N. Gudmundson erika.gudmundson@gmail.com

2006

Dr. Shalini Bhambani, a cardiologist, visited the upper school in February to deliver a guest lecture to science students. She offered insight into her profession by sharing fascinating case studies and answering questions from students.

CLASS AGENTS:

Julia N. Gitis juliag@gmail.com

Maheen Kaleem maheenkaleem@gmail.com

CLASS AGENT: Jessica C. Liu jess.c.liu@gmail.com

At South Bay Musical Theatre’s 60th anniversary celebration, Ann Lucena caught up with Harker performing

Casey L. Near caseylane@gmail.com

Meghana Dhar meghanadhar@gmail.com

Jeffrey Le Jeff87@gmail.com

Forbes’ Steven Savage published a story in March featuring Tara Chandra’s company, Here We Flo, as one of three women-run companies selling plant-based consumer products to help reduce the use of plastics. Tara and co-founder Susan Allen established Here We Flo, a feminine hygiene product company, in 2017 after meeting while pursuing master’s degrees at the London School of Economics. Here We Flo launched in the United States in 2020 and currently has three product lines.

C LASS AGENTS:

Cassandra Kerkhoff cass.kerkhoff@gmail.com

Audrey L. Kwong Audmusic@gmail.com

CLASS AGENTS:

Senan Ebrahim sebrahim@fas.harvard.edu

Stephanie J. Syu ssyu363@yahoo.com

Paul Christiano, a former key member of OpenAI and now the founder of the Alignment Research Center, was quoted in Ezra Klein’s New York Times opinion piece, “This Changes Everything.” One of his quotes reads: “The broader intellectual world seems to wildly overestimate how long it will take AI systems to go from ‘large impact on the world’ to ‘unrecognizably transformed world.’”

In December, Natalie So’s story, “Aristocrat, Inc.,” was published in The Believer and has since been nominated for a National Magazine Award. The piece chronicles how several Silicon Valley tech companies – including one run by her mother – were targeted by a massive panAsian crime organization.

Grace Hudkins was honored as this year’s Life in the Arts inductee at the 2023 Senior Showcase in May. See the sidebar on right for more.

At the 2023 Senior Showcase, Grace Hudkins was honored as this year’s Life in the Arts inductee. Grace was deeply involved in the performing arts during her time at Harker, performing in four fall plays and three spring musicals as well as directing “The Important of Being Earnest” for the 2008 Student Directed Showcase. After graduating with a Harker Conservatory certificate in theater, Grace attended Mount Holyoke College, receiving bachelor’s degrees in both psychology and education, and religion. She went on to teach at Chadwick International School in Songdo, South Korea, where she would work for seven years. Her many accomplishments there included expanding the drama program to include every grade level, increasing the number of yearly theater productions from just one to three divisional productions and growing a student technical theater crew of 80 members. After receiving her second master’s degree from the University of Northern Colorado in theater education, Grace relocated to Vietnam, where she taught drama at Hanoi International School. There, she was instrumental in expanding the school’s theater program to include all secondary grade levels (6-12). The first production she led in 2021 “led to an explosion of interest in our second production in 2022, with over 40 percent of the student body involved onstage or behind the scenes,” Grace said. 2009

CLASS AGENTS: Stephanie J. Guo stephanie.j.guo@gmail.com David Kastelman davidksworld@gmail.com

Shelby Drabman, now an artist in Los Angeles, received a visit in May from upper school art

Pilar Agüero-Esparza, who was in town to see Shelby’s work on display for the ArtCenter College of Design’s MFA Open Studios event. Jennifer Remenchik of the online art magazine Hyperallergic said Shelby’s “text-based textile pieces carry an edgy, feminist bent and highlight her eye for color.”

2010

CLASS AGENTS:

Adrienne Wong adriee@gmail.com

Kevin J. Fu kf800@yahoo.com

2011

CLASS AGENTS:

Hassaan Ebrahim hassaan.e@gmail.com

Moneesha R. Mukherjee rani.mukherjee18@gmail.com

2012

C LASS AGENTS:

Will Chang thewillchang@gmail.com

David Fang david.fang75@gmail.com

2013

CLASS AGENTS:

Kathir Sundarraj kathir.sraj95@gmail.com

Nick Chuang njchuang@usc.edu

Nikhil Panu guruhounddawg@gmail.com

Samantha Hoffman is currently in Harvard Medical School’s M.D./ Ph.D. program and recently became engaged. Previously, she earned top biology honors at Stanford, where she led a service sorority and worked for the Red Cross.

Although he wasn’t a computer science student at Harker, Jacob Hoffman went on to work at Neuralink, where he has had leading roles on several large projects, including the creation of a robot that has many useful applications in neurosurgery. He previously was an honors student at Stanford, where he played shortstop on the baseball team.

2014

CLASS AGENTS:

Adith Rengaramchandran adithram@gmail.com

Nithya Vemireddy nithya.vemireddy@gmail.com

Connie Li connieli32@gmail.com

2015

CLASS AGENTS:

Katy Sanchez ktlynnsanchez@gmail.com

Nikhil Reddy reddnikhil@gmail.com

David Lin david.lin210@gmail.com

Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari jetongutierrez@gmail.com

In late 2022 Murali Joshi ’12 and Michael Sikand ’17 were named to the 2023 Forbes 30 Under 30 in the venture capital and media categories, respectively. Murali, a principal at ICONIQ Growth, has been involved in 55 investments in 17 companies, including Datadog and Procore, helping source or lead more than $2.02 billion in capital. Michael co-founded the Our Future podcast in May 2020 to reach younger people (commonly referred to as “Generation Z”) with business-focused content. It later pivoted to YouTube and has since spread to other platforms, receiving more than a billion views across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.

CLASS AGENTS:

Stephanie Huang stephaniehuang17@gmail.com

Grace Guan guanzgrace@gmail.com

Michael Zhao michael.zhao@gmail.com

Mary Najibi mary.najibi@gmail.com

Edward Sheu edwardsheu.ca@gmail.com

Kurt Schwartz kurticus100@gmail.com

Selin Ekici is in her second year at University of Colorado’s eight-year Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), a federally funded M.D.-Ph.D. program in which students graduate with both M.D. and Ph.D. degrees with the goal of solving mechanisms underlying disease, combined with their passion to treat patients in a clinical setting. Selin’s doctorate will be in neuroscience. She loves living in Denver, and enjoys hiking and skiing in her free time.

CLASS AGENTS:

Emre Ezer emre.ezer10@gmail.com

Alex Youn ahsyoun@gmail.com

David Zhu david.zhu@gmail.com

Maile Chung mailchung.pb@gmail.com

Haley Tran haleyktran@gmail.com

CLASS AGENTS:

Amitej Mehta djamitej@gmail.com

Melissa Kwon mwjkwan@gmail.com

Gloria Guo gloria.jx.guo@gmail.com

Dolan Dworak ddworak@umich.ed

In January, the upper school varsity cheerleading squad welcomed Olivia Long for a full day of cheerleading skill building. While studying at UC Santa Barbara, Olivia spent five summers teaching with the National Cheerleaders Association and was eager to share her expertise back at home, using her hands-on approach to teach stunting and tumbling classes. Being a former Harker student and cheerleader, Olivia led with the intention of teaching Harker students how they can continue to integrate the cheerleading sport into the school, remain safe in progressions and work as a diverse and unified team.

CLASS AGENTS:

Matthew Hajjar matthew.hajjar@gmail.com

Olivia Esparza oesparza@poets.whittier.edu

Mahi Gurram mgurram@colgate.edu

Riya Gupta gupta2001riya@gmail.com

Kelsey Wu kelseywu@college.harvard.edu

In April, Jason Huang was among 12 Space Force and Air Force cadets chosen to intern at the Pentagon. “After I graduate and am commissioned as a second lieutenant, I will spend several months working for the Secretary of the Air Force in International Affairs before reporting to intelligence training,” he said. He is set to start at the Central Division where his duties will be “foreign military sales, education and training, and cooperative research and development with our partner forces and countries in the U.S. Central Command Area of Responsibility.”

CLASS AGENTS:

Lauren Beede 20blauren@gmail.com

Chloe Chen chloe.chen@bc.edu

Grace Hajjar gracehajjar@g.ucla.edu

Bennett Liu bennett.c.liu@gmail.com

Anika Tiwari anika.tiwari@gmail.com

In December, Simar Bajaj earned the Foreign Press Association’s Science Story of the Year for a piece he penned for The Guardian in August about pigto-human heart transplants. See the sidebar below for more details.

Late last year, Simar Bajaj ’20 received the Foreign Press Association’s Science Story of the Year award for a piece he penned for The Guardian in August about pig-to-human heart transplants. Simar, who currently attends Harvard University, traveled to London to receive the award in person. The FPA is the world’s oldest press organization, dating back to 1888. Simar is the youngest awardee in the organization’s history. He was also the alumni speaker at the 17th annual Harker Research Symposium this past April, where he spoke on the importance of storytelling in passing beneficial scientific policies. “The reality is that there was never a policy in the history of our country that would just pass because it was a good idea,” he said in his keynote. “They pass because they’re able to open someone’s eyes, someone’s soul, to the impact, to the purpose.”

Simar began pursuing science journalism during the summer of 2022, publishing pieces in Smithsonian Magazine and The Washington Post in addition his story for The Guardian. He has written extensively on systemic inequities in the medical field, which was the subject of papers he co-authored for Nature Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine. These and other writings can be found on Simar’s website at www.simarbajaj.com.

CLASS AGENTS:

Kristin Tong kristintong@gmail.com

Olivia Guo olivia.guo@pepperdine.edu

Helen Zhu helen.c.zhu@gmail.com

Jason Lin, currently at Stanford University, became a viral sensation in April after he and some collaborators created a motorized couch and posted a video of them driving it on TikTok, where as of press time the video has 2.3 million views and nearly 300,000 likes. Stanford caught wind of the project, which was later posted to Stanford’s official Instagram account, garnering more than 14,000 likes as of press time.

CLASS AGENTS

Alexa Lowe alexa.lowe@gmail.com

Gigi Chan gc449@cornell.edu

Irene Yuan irene.d.yuan@gmail.com

Members of the upper school’s inaugural class got together on campus in December for their 20th reunion. “It’s not like your 20-year high school happens all the time,” said Isabella Liu ‘02, who helped organize the event. The alumni met with longtime faculty members and visited some of the campus facilities that have sprung up since they left. “I have such warm memories of my entire Harker experience that I made a point of coming back for the reunion,” said Alex Janofsky ’02. “Now that I have school-age children, I am increasingly refleccting on my own grade-school experiences to share with them.”

East Coast-based alumni enjoyed connecting and reminiscing with classmates at recent meetups in New York City and Pittsburgh. Several Harker staff also joined in the mingling, including Brian Yager, head of school; Kristin Giammona, primary division head; and Sam Lepler ‘96, economics teacher.

Lexi Ross ‘09, Sophie Newman ‘09, Saumi Mehta ‘22, Josh Field ‘22, Ysabel Chen ‘22, senior directors Harper Brada and Samvita Gautham, Laura Lang-Ree, senior directors Aastha Mangla and Zubin Khera, Joel Morel ‘20, Shyl Lamba ‘20 and Richie Amarillas ‘22

Alumni directors attend Student Directed Showcase

Alumni directors graced the Patil Theater to support the Student Directed Showcase performances this past weekend! Graduates from as far back as 2009 joined this year’s student directors on stage with Laura Lang-Ree, who teaches the SDS semester-long course. What fun!