1992

Dale Nugent celebrated the first anniversary of his new venture, RivaTek Inc. Dale writes, “We design and make innovative process control equipment for technology industries, such as semiconductors and biopharmaceutical processing. Creating jobs the old-fashioned way, we now have six employees and are raising our first round of capital. I’m happy to tell you more; email me at dnugent@rivatek.com. FYI, my youngest daughter Katie became a teenager last summer. Ouch!”

Fred Christensen is still in marketing with IBM’s wireless e-business division in Raleigh, N.C. He just finished an Ironman triathlon. The Christiansens had child No. 2, Jacob, last fall.

Bill Sharpe writes: “Eleven years (wow!) since Kellogg. After doing consulting, corporate development and investment banking, I’m now doing the much-talked-about ‘general management’ thing and making it up as I go along. It’s living proof that even knuckleheads like me get their chance, notwithstanding a nuclear winter in investment banking for the past three years.”

Chris Carson is in Morristown, N.J., where he works for BOC Food Ventures. He has just had his third daughter, Maya Sibelle, and he and his wife will now stop trying for a boy. His current project is working with and funding an entrepreneur to develop a “meat machine” that finely tunes lean/filler ratios in processed meats. The technology is just going into commercial production.

I ran into Bernardo Llovera in October. He has just joined Expansion Capital Partners, a young VC firm that specializes in expansion-stage companies in clean technology (see www.expansioncapital.com). Bernardo is a general partner and will maintain his family’s residence in Connecticut.

After 10 years, Sue Doctoroff Landay writes: “I’m president of our 10-year-old family business, Trainer’s Warehouse. It’s a catalog retailer catering to the needs of presenters such as corporate trainers and schoolteachers. We design and market hundreds of unique products from game show buzzers to reusable name cards. It’s been a blast to see the company grow despite the weak economy. My husband of three years, Bill Landay, recently published his first novel, a literary thriller called Mission Flats, which has received critical acclaim. Topping off a great year, our second son, Henry, was born in December.

Robin Stroud writes that she “scaled back work life last year to take care of ill family members. Made what proved to be a satisfying and profitable career change at the same time. I’ve spent the last year marketing AFLAC’s corporate benefits and am now recruiting to staff my agency for the Maryland/DC/Virginia region.”

Kelley Devaney and her husband Tad had a baby girl last year. She is still with Kettle Cuisine.

In November, Simone Frank married her boyfriend Lewis. Several classmates attended the wedding including Maria Thomas, Dan Vinh, Kelley Devaney, John Terzis and Perry Cantarutti (flew from Japan). Simone writes: “We took an extended honeymoon to Chile and Argentina. I still work at a centrist public-policy think tank, The New America Foundation, in D.C., as head of finance and operations.”

Pat Burns ran into Flip Huffard, who was in town for some “bankruptcy court action,” which comes with the territory in his senior managing director role at Blackstone. Pat does strategy and M&A for DuPont.

Dean Chamberlain and family are settled in Winnetka. He’s now a managing director with Bank of America.

Rob Grossman is a partner with Deloitte in NYC, and is a marathon-running machine. Eric Degenfelder manages strategic planning for DuPont’s coatings and color platform and sees Pat Burns often. Sung and Yun Lee live in the Delaware area. He’s starting a telecom consulting firm with some other top-notch experts. Pat says that Debbie and Tony Natoli have moved to Glenview, Ill., where their three boys can terrorize the neighborhood. Tony is leading some high-profile ebiz projects for Allstate.

After 12 residences (New Haven twice, Hartford, Chicago, Poland, London three times, Evanston twice, and Wilmette twice) in 12 years, Fred Reichenbach and company finally settled in a house in Wilmette. Fritz works with two other Kellogg alumni at a boutique merchant bank with a health-care focus, The Athena Group. He says, “We co-invest with private equity firms in health-care opportunities where we are able to develop winning strategies and management teams. Our 15th wedding anniversary this year should enable a short break from our two kids.”

Cassio Mello '92 and son

Cassio Mello is still at BankOne in Chicago; he married Kelly from Chicago and has a son named Antonio.

West Coast Ventures

Michelle and Mark McKechnie proudly welcomed two more to their clan when twins Claire and Lauren were born in January. McKech is now CFO of Vcommerce, a medium-sized (50-55 folks) software company. Mark writes: “It’s a re-cap with some real potential. We do channel management software platforms that help companies to ship direct and track goods through distribution channels. The bad part ─ it’s based in Phoenix. Good part ─ I can often work from SF.”

Elise Cayelli Wetzel gives a shameless plug for her start-up iSold It ─ an eBay “clicks and mortar” retail concept. Elise says: “We offer consumers an easy way to sell their stuff on eBay, offering a 3,000-square-foot ‘bricks and mortar’ superstore. Customers drop off merchandise that they want to sell on the Internet and we take care of the rest. We professionally photograph the items, write descriptive copy, post the item on eBay, answer questions from bidders, process payment from the winning bidder, pack and ship the merchandise and send the customer a check. Our first store is in Pasadena, Calif., and we’re selling franchises in California and across the country. We are extremely busy and have had some great press coverage (Reuters, KCAL and CNN to name a few media outlets). Visit our Web site, www.i-soldit.com, or send me an email at elise@isoldit.com.”

Bruce Spear writes: “Last fall, I joined Panalpina, a $4 billion global freight forwarder and logistics provider, as senior vice president of North American strategic planning and development. It’s a challenging and exciting opportunity, but will require relocating back to the Bay Area. I look forward to hooking up with fellow alumni there once we get settled.”

Carter Cast is “still in San Francisco with Walmart.com, still single, and still listening to bands I should have left behind by now.” Gary “Mr. Meat” Ger has been incommunicado since moving from New Jersey to Seattle for a new job. Perhaps he’s trying to get some deals on mad cow steaks from across the border. Gary Dvorchak’s first hedge fund has been up and running for nine months, and he’s now launching a second fund (focused on dividend income). Matt Collier and wife have been catching up on some Caribbean sailing now that the kids are sleeping a bit more. Kelly and Tim Nelson live in Los Gatos, Calif., with three kids. He’s vice president of business development at Durect Corp.

Foreign Correspondence

David Valdes has been very busy in Manila. When he’s not working or running a chauffer service for his kids, he manages to squeeze in badminton, mountain hiking/biking, and yes, underwater hockey (you weren’t expecting ice there?). Apparently the kids and mom have also jumped on the sports bandwagon, and are joining David in many of his adventures ─ including hiking a 2,900-meter peak. For his 40th birthday, he did a mini, all-terrain triathlon just to prove that he’s not yet an old codger.

	Kashif Chaudhry '92 and Paul Mistor '92 stand in front of the former Royal Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Paul Mistor and Kashif Chaudhry returned safely from Afghanistan. Mr. Mistor is evaluating a business venture there and looks for Osama in his spare time. Investor confidence in Turkey seems to be on the rise, thanks, in no small part, to efforts by Minister of the Economy Ali Babacan. It was also nice to see Cedric Loiret-Bernal in his latest trendy start-up Nanoink (www.nanoink.net) get quoted in The Economist. I’m sure CEO Cedric is disappointed he didn’t get an accompanying mug shot. Cedric and family have moved back to Evanston from Switzerland and have settled down nicely. I hear Nanoink has impressive, patented technology from Northwestern called Dip Pen Nanolithography that has applications in a variety of industries. Cedric says, “We only have 31 employees and 10 percent are Kellogg grads, which makes teamwork excellent. I need to raise more than $20 million for a Series C and get some serious partnerships under way.”

Michael Kubzansky writes (after 12 years), “After stints in Chicago, NY, Zimbabwe and South Africa, my wife and I settled in D.C. with our kids, Caroline, 4, and Will, 3. Since 2002 I’ve been working in the World Bank’s strategy and risk management group where I manage Development Marketplace (www.developmentmarketplace.org), our innovation and social entrepreneurship portfolio. We act as venture philanthropists, investing seed funds in private, academic and NGO social ventures with promising international development ideas through global and national business plan competitions. My newest project is a business plan competition for small enterprises in Rwanda. We often bring in assistance for business plan writing from outside. It’s a great challenge to try to adapt the VC model to development, and a little goes a long way in places like Guatemala and Yemen.”

As for me, I’m still running my consulting and venture development business and working to raise capital for some early-stage ventures in the United States and abroad. The market seems to be coming around, but I’ve had to move into the life-sciences area a bit to get better deals. All the best, Riff.