1995
— Full-Time
Hello, everyone. First some news from our 15-year Reunion: It was a fantastic event. It was great to see so many good and amazing friends again. People had traveled from Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Switzerland, Germany and Japan to attend. Be sure to visit the Reunion website to see who came to the reunion, and read what people have been up to since Kellogg days in the e-book: alumni.kellogg.northwestern.edu/reunion. There are also some fun photos on Facebook. And a hearty thanks to the Reunion committee who put in a lot of effort to pull it all together.
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Philippe Laval and Frank Watterkemp, both ’95, enjoy a conversation on the Kellogg lawn at Reunion |
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A smiling Reunion group photo of Tom Rogers, Travis Hurst, Lisa (Forthover) Lavine, and Dave Gordon, all ’95 |
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Dave Holececk, Jules Valoria, Jim Beckemeyer, Ruth Valoria, Adam Lubinski, and Suzy Taherian, all ’95, enjoying the beautiful sunny day at Reunion |
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Jim Beckemeyer and John Martin wanted to share this note on behalf of the Reunion committee:
“Just wanted to let you know that we all had a great time at the Reunion (for those that couldn't make it, you were missed!). We had 117 classmates who were able to attend. It was great catching up with everyone. In terms of fundraising tied to the Reunion, we have classmates donating/pledging $220,000 so far. Our target is $225,000. As you can see, we are very close and we have until Aug. 31 to hit those goals, so please consider donating this special year. You can just go to: alumni.kellogg.northwestern.edu/reunion/Reunion_Giving.html. We hope that many more can make the 20-year Reunion. Finally, we want to thank our Kellogg development contact, Becky Schneider, who was great and very instrumental in making this a great Reunion for all of us!”
A few other class updates to share:
I reconnected with Kian Meftah and he has started his own business, providing consulting services to firms looking to enter Libya. It was a surprise to find out that we had been living just a few miles from each other for the last couple of years, and we reconnected thanks to the Kellogg Reunion outreach.
Kathy Schneider Brumme and Peter Brumme moved to Austin, Texas. Peter is vice president of marketing at a network software company called Solarwinds. They went public last year and are doing great. Looks like a really exciting opportunity. Kathy is going to stay with Hewlett-Packard and work remotely.
Anne Law Woods and her family moved to Dallas when her hsuband accepted a position at Sabre Holdings. If you pass through Dallas, say hello.
Brent Harrison sends helloes. He was disappointed to miss the reunion — he was opening the second location for Savvy Cellar Wine Bar & Wine Shop in Mountain View, Calif. He still stays very busy with his consultancy firm, SmokeJumper Strategy (a Silicon Valley-based marketing and product innovation consultancy) as well as three kids (Hanna, 13, Parker, 11 and Carter, 3).
Jeff Hyman started a new firm called Strong Suit, which advises private equity and venture capital firms. Strong Suit "unsticks" portfolio companies that are stuck. Contact jeff@strongsuit.com for details. Meanwhile, Jeff’s son Max (5) has memorized all the state populations and NBA teams. Odd, since Jeff barely passed geography and P.E.
Rick Berg is doing well in Decatur, Ga., with his two sons Ben (16) and Sam (13). Two teenage boys’ sports schedules keep him busy with lacrosse games, basketball tournaments and swim meets plus the new phenomenon of Ben’s high school girlfriend coming over for dinner. eHarmony is helping out his personal life, and he continues to not have to travel with his consulting company, North Highland. He had a great time at Reunion and reflected that the conversations weren’t so much about “what we do” as much as they were about “who we are” and “who we want to be.” It is always inspiring to head back to Evanston and be surrounded by smart, goal-driven people who are pretty humble as they take on some pretty ambitious careers and volunteer activities. In particular, he enjoyed staying with Per & Ted for the reunion, like he did for the 10-year and 5-year gatherings. He hopes to see a lot of you in 2015, when Ben is a senior in college.
And one final update on Suzy Taherian: “I’ll be teaching a course on international finance to the MBA class at University of California, Davis next spring. I’ll still keep my day job at Chevron as this is a course on evenings and weekends for working professionals. I’m pretty excited about being in the classroom again and hope to learn all the things I didn’t learn the first time around! If you have any good case studies you’d like me to use, shoot me an e-mail at staherian1995@kellogg.northwestern.edu.
“As we have a new president for Northwestern and a new dean for Kellogg, it seems appropriate to have a new class representative as well. I’ve really enjoyed getting news from Kellogg friends around the world and sharing it in Kellogg World magazine. It’s a good time to pass the baton to someone else. I’m happy that Mark Lamps has kindly agreed to be our class representative going forward. Mark and I worked on Mexico GIM trip together at Kellogg and he has stayed connected and committed to the Kellogg community even through his move to China and back. He helped put together the nostalgic (embarrassing?) slide show for the Reunion dinner. So I really appreciate all he’s done with Kellogg so far. He’ll reach out to collect your stories for the next edition of Kellogg World. Feel free to send him updates and news at mark.lamps@pentair.com. Thanks Mark!” |
