1992

Back again: With some last minute pleading, I received a healthy dose of news.

4-Quarter Report: Jim Winnet dropped me line just prior to boarding a plane to St. Lucia. "Big news, I got married last night (on Cinco de Mayo) on the Santa Monica seaside. My wife is a great woman named Jo Leonard who works in advertising for Popular Science. Fellow classmates attending included Drew Koecher, Bruce Spear, Mike and Kristen Simmons, Art Muldoon '96, and Steve Rappaport who flew in from Prague. Unfortunately, I had to shut down my start-up ShipMax recently. It was disappointing since the business was growing fast, but our funding dried up faster. Nevertheless it was an incredible experience. I'm now doing some consulting and looking for a 20-hour-a-week position that that pays $300K. Contact me at Jimwinnet@earthlink.net."

Apparently Kristen Simmons has been kicking some serious tail at Mazda. She was promoted to vice president of marketing for Mazda North America and was one of the chief architects behind the highly successful "Zoom-Zoom" advertising campaign (amazing what a cute little Aussie kid in school uniform will do for a car sales -- and a career). The Rapper has added high-end plumbing fixtures to his budding conglomerate.

Chris Rhoades writes "I got married in March to Karee Amato in Carmel. I'm still in San Francisco working at Merrill Lynch as managing director of sales and trading.

Yetli and Tom Scarpello also had a March wedding in Cuernavaca, Mexico. They have an 18-month-old son named Alexander. Tom is still with Ford. Yetli owns a telecom site construction and engineering firm and is looking for financing for wireless projects in Mexico. Julia Cassidy Fitzgerald is vice president of marketing for Hedstrom, the company that makes those bouncy red balls for kids and licensed sport balls. She reports, "I am the de facto Ball Queen. I even have a business card that says so. I'm always looking to meet Kellogg alums when I'm in NYC or L.A. for work, so call me. I'd especially would like hear from Donna Potter, Ellen Purdy, and Jeannine Everett."

Mark Anderson writes from San Francisco, "Most of you already know I was laid off from my last Internet company after only six weeks. I was proud of this accomplishment until a friend told me he got laid off before he even started at his dot-com. So to one-up him, I got laid off from yet another dot-com within seven months." (I suppose he'll one-up Mark and get laid off from a dot-com that hasn't hired him yet.) Mark is looking for a project management/marketing job and just finished working on this year's Million Mom March for sensible gun control laws. He's also the new social chair of the Bay Area Alumni Club with friend Heather Forsythe '93. As Mark put it: "If I can't work, at least I can drink."

	Andy Hilliard with his wife Silvia and their children

From the (Andy) Hilliard clan: "For five years now, Silvia and I and our three kids have lived in Charlotte. I'm currently Southeast regional director for Cognizant Technology Solutions, a U.S.-traded, Indian software application and eBiz services company. Yes, I'm expecting my ex-instructor, Dean Jain, to help me expand the region! Kevin Hykes and Heather Hudnut Page were both promoted to marketing directors at Medtronic over the last year. In December, Heather had her third child, Elizabeth Ann. Joe Husman dropped the CarParts.com gig for iStarSystems, a start-up venture between i2 Technologies and Toyota which provides supply chain management software. Kellogg grad Yoshi Inaba, president of Toyota USA, is on our board. I recently attended Lana Etherington Slavitt's son's birthday. I also live just 10 minutes from Marilyn Richards-Jackson. Marilyn and Jonathan '91 have two beautiful kids and live 10 minutes away from me.

Luis Garreaud reports he is hanging in there despite the brutal recession wracking South America and says that the U.S. better get moving on a free trade agreement. Luis manages Egon Zehnder's Santiago office and has started a First Tuesday breakfasts for Kellogg alumi and faculty in Chile. "It's not easy being one of the senior senor guys, since most of the alums are recent graduates. This year Kellogg accepted nine Chileans, a far cry from when I was the only one." Contact Luis at Luis.garreaud@ezi.net.

John Small figured out how to deal with the stress of funding a start-up in this environment. Get involved with a lot of them, sit on advisory boards, and use the portfolio approach. "After helping eVector raise $10 million. I'm now working as and advisor/vice president for strategy to Eactive, a rich-media direct marketing company run by my ex-Proctoid colleagues of mine including Kellogg alum Rick Brenner. We have big name brand companies using our technology to push rich media messages via e-mail (audio/video) even over narrow bandwidth. Folks can call me for a test drive. Needless to say I travel a lot; I do the 84-hour commute to Bangalore every time someone on the tech team calls a meeting."

Berthold Heinemann writes that he just had his second child, a boy, and recently met with Dean Wilson, Megan Byrne, and their GIS study group when they came to Saigon. "I am working in trade and investment promotion in Vietnam and may be reached at berthold@creatrade.com."

Co-founders Charles Kwon and Gerard Beenen recently sold their firm Neodesic. The FleetXchange.com B2B community which Neodesic developed was sold to AmeriQuest, while the Neodesic software business was sold to Participate.com, the leading online community solutions provider founded by classmate Al Warms. Charles is now vice president of strategy and acquisitions with Wallace Corp., a leading provider of printing solution products and services while Gerard is deciding between offers.

Mark Kennedy is now in his final year as a PhD candidate at Kellogg.

Betty Hogan writes: "Accepted a position as director of new product development at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) Chicago. NCBA is the marketing arm of the nation's cattle producers."

Anita A. Loch has a new job and moved to a lake community in Wisconsin.

SCORE! Learning Inc., a Kaplan, Inc. subsidiary that provides after-school learning centers and in-home tutoring programs for kids, has appointed Jeffrey Conlon its CEO.

As for me, my software start-up's roller coaster continues with downs seeming to increasingly outnumber ups as the economy heads south. Seems like every week is "gut-check week" for us.

Drop me a line if any of you are ever in NYC or Chicago (I'm there often).