Joe Husman and Allison Katz, both ’92, atop Mt. Sodom in Israel’s salt mountains, overlooking the Dead Sea.
	Paul Mistor ’92 at the Mount Everest base camp

Bill Lafountaine works for DeltaWing RacingCars (deltawingracing.com) on one of the proposed cars for the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series. Bill writes: “We hope to have a decision on the car in June. We launched the car at the Chicago Auto Show in February and it has been the center of motorsports discussion around the world since then. I saw Frank Wozencraft at my house in Connecticut last summer and am working on a project with him. Racing my new Gary Fisher Superfly 100 mountain bike whenever I can.”

After 17 years at Medtronic, Kevin Hykes moved to southern California in 2008 to join a venture-backed ophthalmology startup called Visiogen, which was acquired by Abbott Labs 18 months later. He writes: “After a short stint at Abbott, I left last month and accepted the CEO role at Cameron Health in San Clemente, another late-stage venture developing a novel implantable defibrillator. I have run into a few classmates out here, including Joe Hartsig, who is the head of marketing for consumer electronics at Sam's Club. FYI — he has graciously offered a special KSM '92 discount on 60-inch LCD flat-panel TVs in exchange for continued discretion regarding his extensive undergraduate outreach efforts at the Medill School back in 1992. Call him in Fayetteville, Ark., if you'd like to discuss free delivery and discounts.”

Paul Mistor and Kashif “not KC” Chaudhry aside, nobody from our class still does global vacations in tandem like Joe Husman and Allison Katz. The globetrotting duo visited Israel and Jordan, including the Dead Sea, Jerusalem, Megido (Armageddon) and Petra. Joe, national manager of inclusion and diversity at Toyota Financial Services, helped Kellogg’s SoCal alumni club develop its Facebook page. Check it out.
“I suppose I could be a 'poster child' for alternative work arrangements,” notes Mariann Kurtz Weber. “I work half-time from my Iowa home for the International Finance Corp. (as a staffer). I spend four to five days in D.C. once every six weeks on average and generally have one to two international trips per year. Otherwise I'm a soccer mom, serve on a couple of boards and am working on a children's book.”

Phil Lane took on the role of volunteer managing partner to oversee an initial phase of Operation 6035, an economic development strategy for the Pikes Peak/Colorado Springs region.

Rachel Macha, previously senior vice president of marketing and planning for ICT Group, was named executive vice president of sales and marketing for Protocol Global Solutions.

This spring, Shez Bandukwala brought his cleantech investment banking team over to Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. from ThinkEquity on March 1. He updates: “Now I manage cleantech investment banking out of Chicago for all of Stifel Nicolaus, which is a 4,000-person full-service investment bank.” Shez is extra busy as he gets to integrate Thomas Wiesel’s cleantech team into the fold, too, as Wiesel merged into Stifel in May.

Andy Hilliard is president of Accelerance, a global IT outsourcing firm and has been busy traveling the globe. He wrote me from Mendoza, Argentina, to assess a new partner for the Accelerance Global Partner Network and said, “Over the last few months, we have added new preferred partners in Costa Rica, Mexico, Ukraine and Colombia.”

Eric Degenfelder reports that all is well in Shanghai. The automotive industry has taken off and China is already the largest automobile-producing country in the world. He says, “It's great to travel to all of the countries in my Asia Pacific region, which spans a flight time of 10 hours north to south and 10 hours east to west!”

Long overdue, Jay Fehnel provides this update: “I've been promoted to senior vice president and COO of entertainment products at Tribune Media Services (TMS). This fall, I'll be marking my 18th year at TMS, making me one of the few remaining members of the one-employer-since-Kelllogg club for our class.”

Given the tough times in the media industry, that’s no small feat, either. Jay reports that Tom Hardart, Jim Higgins, Chip Craig and Brad Bissell are all alive and well, as he’s seen them all this last year. Of course, until the latter three send us some news, we’ll have to consider this just a rumor. Also requested to send in news by their classmates are Aaron Taylor, Guy Hoffman, Barb McQuade, Peter Wright, Lauren Genk, Dan Marquardt and Jennifer Bednarz.

Angela Comstock and Jim Bell celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary with a scuba-diving trip to Mexico. Their two children (12 and 10) stayed home with their grandparents. Jim started a new position as CMO at Jaspersoft, an open-source business intelligence software company in San Francisco (about two blocks from the ballpark!). Angela left her work in investor relations a few years back to raise their children and run the household, but is getting the itch to head back to work in a part-time capacity now that the kids are older.

Robin Stroud still lives and works in the greater Washington D.C., area for Aflac: “I enjoy life as grandmom (my official title) and mom to Nate (14). I had a Smith mini-reunion in D.C. where I saw Jane Mason.”

Doug Nash was promoted to vice president and general manager of technology solutions and service at United Stationers, where he has been for six years. He writes: “We took a minority position in a company that has a build service business involving managed print and datacenters that we plan to leverage into the SMB markets. Should be fun. We still love living in Chicago, and I’m still doing triathalons, with the next one in August. Our four kids are doing great with the eldest starting college at Hobart — Gerry McGinley’s old stomping grounds.”

Lana Slavitt dropped me a quick note from Paris while with her family for spring break: “Loving the City of Light and had fun seeing the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. I had a quick dinner with Todd Morgan, who works with Texas Pacific Group and who happened to also be in Paris this week.”

Dmitry Paramonov took the entrepreneurial plunge after 15 years in big pharma. He’s building a technology startup called MED-IN-TOUCH (med-in-touch.com) which focuses on improving patient medication compliance, a massive problem in the health care system. His partners, a specialty pharma packaging company called One World Design & Manufacturing Group, are at patientcompliance.com. He welcomes ideas and feedback from fellow Kellogg alums in the healthcare IT space.

The family is back in Princeton, N.J., after a two-year stint in Moscow. Dmitry’s wife Minako (minako-art.com) is now an exhibiting artist. Their son Dennis is wrapping up his freshman year in high school and hasn’t yet broken any bones on his skateboard, and daughter Sofia is swimming like a fish at the university pool and competes statewide.

Paul Mistor reports via satellite from the Mount Everest base camp: “I am finishing up a documentary with Jamie Clarke here which is sponsored by Hanes.” Some of you suggested Paul and Jamie should wear their Hanes underwear on the outside to give the sponsor due coverage. Let’s hope that they each saved “a good pair” for the final ascent and summit photo.