EMP-66

Chris Ball is still living in Comerio, Italy, a small town north of Milan, where he is working in Whirlpool’s European headquarters as a marketing director for their laundry business. The big news (drumroll, please) is that the Ball family expanded in July with the arrival of baby No. 6. The new baby boy takes the count to five boys and one girl. Chris has promised pictures of the crew for the next issue. If you’ve read this far, congratulations … we didn’t read past “baby No. 6” due to shock and awe.

Bret Waters is teaching a course at Stanford University called “Getting From an Early Idea to a Real Business.” We suspect he wears his Kellogg sweatshirt to all class sessions.

James Waite is keeping busy! He is still traveling back and forth between Dallas and Denver and launched a legal zoom concept for equipment leasing contracts (construction equipment, etc.) via equipmentrentalcontracts.com. In addition, his corporate law practice is still going well, although he works too much and travels too often. Fortunately, when one of his travels took him to Boston, he met up with Lou Madge and his wife Hillary for a nice dinner.

Maggie Lower gave birth to a little boy, Jasper George Lower Holmes, on March 30. Maggie says he is fantastic! Maggie is still on maternity leave and will be returning to work at the beginning of August. We’re so happy for the first-time mom!

At the end of April, Joe Blanck and his business partner acquired two businesses, Kingery Manufacturing Service LLC (rkingery.com) and Compass Compliance LLC (complycompass.com). Joe is running the day-to-day operations of Kingery, a provider of short-run and just-in-time delivery of precision-machined parts to OEMs in Eastern Iowa. Joe’s business partner is running the day-to-day operations for Compass, which assists agricultural COOPs and agricultural service suppliers with OSHA, EPA and DOT training and compliance in a six-state area in the Midwest. 

In addition, Joe’s son Richard graduated from high school and will attend Iowa State University in the fall to pursue an interior-design degree. 

Allison Knapp and Joe Kappil enjoyed meeting up with a few 68ers in Houston at a Kellogg event to meet Dean Sally Blount.

In addition to her continuing interests in Flowerbooking Inc. (now in its 21st year), Idle Hands Bar (NYC’s finest beer bourbon bar), and a ‘lil offspring to boot, Susanne Dawursk just started with the amazing team at GrubHub.com as brand marketing director. Having just closed a fourth round of funding and expanding into 26 more markets by the end of 2011, Susanne is all about delighting their customers and owning the category of “happy eating.”

2011 Reunion is on for Sept. 16-18! Come explore our nation’s capital, catch up with fellow EMP-66ers and meet local D.C. Kellogg alums. For more information, contact Martha Nowak at martha.nowak@hotmail.com or 586.260.9275 or Drew Marston at catmandroo@yahoo.com or 630.696.6931.