1995

Christian E. Langenstein has left Merrill Lynch to join an Internet start-up as EVP in charge of business development. Taking the company from business plan to Web design and strategic alliances has been exciting and challenging for her. The site is ready to launch and they are now looking for angel or venture capital. Anyone with contacts that would help, please let me know by sending me an e-mail at clbid4wheels@aol.com.

Brent Harrison has asked Rick Berg to take on the class rep function. He accepted his offer with the promise of a future beer at a reunion TG. Before jumping into the news, he¹d like to thank Brent for his efforts to keep the class informed over the past five years. They usually get the most column inches in this magazine and it has been the result of his efforts. Please send a note of thanks to him at brenth@netscape.com.

As many of you know, Rick Berg started up an e-mail network among Kellogg ¹95ers called Word of Mouse (WOM). He currently has the e-mail addresses of 400 of your classmates. We have used WOM for job searches, competitive intelligence related to our jobs and the occasional baby picture. If he doesn¹t have your e-mail address and you want to join Word of Mouse, please send a note to either of the e-mails listed above. It¹s also a good way to find lost classmates...now on to the news.

Randy Grudinski reports: ³Great news from the home front,² as his wife Molly just gave birth to their first child--a little 5 lb., 11 oz. baby girl. Her name is Alexandra Skye Grudzinski, and she literally ³popped² out to join us (only 15 minutes of pushing) on Oct. 5 at 3 p.m. According to Randy, ³she already has Dad wrapped around her little finger.²

Michelle Quinones participated in a mini-reunion as Lawrence Chan and Andrew Tong organized a large group of folks to go on a seven-day sailing trip around the Greek Islands in September. The trip was awesome! The islands were beautiful. The group chartered two boats, sailed, swam, ate, drank, shopped, slept, danced and had a few water balloon fights. It was like a camping trip on the water! Kelloggians on the trip were: Jim Beckemeyer, Lawrence Chan, Stella Lin, Michelle Quinones, Seth Ruthen, Susan Schmidt, Kurt Scherer, Andrew Tong and Frank Wetterkamp. After the sailing trip, Richard Chino joined Jim B., Michelle Q. and Andrew T. in Athens for two days, and then the group traveled on to Istanbul for five more days of sightseeing.

Kerry O¹Rourke has been busy as she left Gemini Consulting over a year and a half ago and joined Brent Harrison as director of EC strategy and business development in the Netscape Business Solutions (NBS) team of AOL. (Quite a mouthful!) Four months after joining NBS, she moved to AOL¹s strategic development group and was promoted to senior director. Finally, at the beginning of June, she moved to iPlanet. She reports that she¹s still living in San Francisco, and still doing lots of coast to coast travel.

Henry Caffrey left ³to join the migration to the start-up world.² He¹s at ICG Commerce along with Rob Metzger and Raj Shah. A little late perhaps, but they seem to have survived the dot-com fallout and are still on track to IPO in February 2001. He also finally broke down and bought a pad in Chicago so now he¹s back in debt for the next 30 years.

Another intra-class wedding occurred last January as John Weber and Tamara Sluk tied the knot in Kansas City. Tamara is a now a new products manager for Hallmark and John is chief operating officer for Three Dog Bakery. The Best Man was Tom Palmer (who is also living here in K.C.). They took a brief honeymoon in New Orleans immediately after the wedding, and followed with a real honeymoon in Italy (once the 4th quarters were fully closed!) Other Kellogg attendees included Rick Berg and Mike Weiss. They have purchased a house in the Brookside area of K.C. with plenty of guest rooms, so ³feel free to visit at anytime!²

Erin (O¹Malia) Gehan has been hanging our with baby Bridget and her husband Bob ¹94. They took Bridget to Chicago in September to her first TGs. Nabisco was the corporate sponsor, so the girls tagged onto Bob¹s trip. While there, Bridget met Fran Brasfeld, Margaret Godfrey and Kevin and Dafne Foote from the class of ¹96. She writes ³work is going well and we¹re just enjoying weekends full of gymboree classes and munchkin birthday parties.²

Alex Dungey is back in touch as he is still with Eli Lilly (after all these years) working on e-Commerce for our neuroscience division.

A report from N.Y.C says Rob Constable just had a second son, Tyler, this past May. They now have two healthy fast-growing boys. He left Disney earlier this year and now works for USAi, Barry Dillers co., as VP affiliate sales/marketing negotiating distribution deals to the major cable operators such as Time Warner, Comcast, Cox, etc. etc. He had several opportunities in the .com space back in February but decided to pass. Maybe someday he¹ll get sucked in, but for the moment he is content. He missed the 5th reunion because he was down in New Orleans for an industry convention. He managed to squeeze in a day at the Jazz festival with Steve Frangione, Ross Williams and John Haegele. It felt like another TG. Some unforgettable forgettable moments.

Nicole Neufeind sends in another missive from the road as she¹s on the tail end of traveling Asia for a month (China and Indonesia) She has decided to look for a new job in Barcelona when she gets back. She will be primarily looking for Internet-related positions.

Stacey Castor is also in the job search mode in New York. ³As I¹m sure many of you can relate, the Internet start-up I¹m working for is quickly running out of cash.² She is the vice president of marketing there and is looking for another Internet position (preferably at a better funded entity!) as VP or director, marketing, in either the New York, San Francisco or London area. Any leads are appreciated. Thanks!

Some news from the world of HP is Win Reis has now fulfilled the legacy of a Kellogg graduate. ³That¹s right, Mr. Numbers over here is now a marketing guy! I¹ve left the world of finance to become a program manager for our Intel-based server business. My program is still in the skunkworks stage, but hopefully by the next WOM I will be able to say a little more. Tommy is now three and is quite the little man and a great big brother to Gordon, who at 6 months said ³da da (da da da da...)² and now at seven months says it whenever I come home. Guess the kid knows where his bread gets buttered. Smart kid <\m> must take after his mother.²

Jules Veloria is changing business cards again. He is moving on to a new company, Arula Systems. He says ³working at Rainfinity has been fun and a great experience, but the opportunity to run the marketing organization of this new startup was too tempting to pass up. Arula Systems, a spinoff from Hewlett-Packard, makes embedded systems appliances that can securely connect ANY electronic equipment to the Internet. We¹re growing rapidly so if you know of anyone interested in working at a hot start-up, let me know!²

Following a spring of hopping between the European Reunion and the five-year reunion, Vincent Grimaldi celebrated the first anniversary of his New York-based firm, The Grimaldi Group, this summer. They provide international venture capital services in the U.S., Europe, and now, Japan.

³Go East Young Man² is Seth¹s Ruthen¹s new motto as he has left sunny Los Angeles to move back to New York City in October to open up PIMCO¹s New York office. He says he¹ll ³be moving to the Upper West Side and working out of the Allianz capital building in mid-town (55 & 6th). I¹m looking forward to being back in New York and plan on looking up some other N.Y.-based Kellogg people when I get there.²

An actor transformed into a Partner? Julie Brej seems all grown up now (or at least has a big, grown-up monster mortgage). ³I¹ve moved out of the loft condo (so hip, so young) and on to a single family home in Wicker Park. I haven¹t become totally ³un-hip² . . . still a city girl. The only way I¹m moving to the suburbs of Chicago is if they bury me out there. The new place has a yard, so I¹ve gotten a dog (a three-legged dog nonetheless). Things are great at Diamond. I now head up the strategy competency for the firm and business is booming. Lots of great Kelloggians still there. We are the freaks of our class. Ed Brady, Todd Rooker, myself and a host of other Kellogg folks from other years are still in our original jobs since graduation.

From Peru, Gianfranco Ferrari has a family update. ³Denise, Michela (3), Gianluca (1) and myself just moved to our new house in a suburb near Lima. I am still working at Banco de Credito del Peru and have been recently promoted to senior vice president in the corporate finance area.²

Tim Keary has profitably completed the first six months of business ownership, and things are right on track. E-K Media is duplicator of corporate video, audio, CD and DVD. ³It is great being my own boss, bringing the dog to work, and having only a five-minute commute. Lot¹s of quality time for the better things in life.²

From London, Jane Hunter reports from Guiness, ³Work continues to be exciting and challenging. I am spending the next five weeks developing an innovation strategy for our merged company GuinnessUDV.²

In Maine, Tracey Heilman¹s new company is going well and getting off the ground. She and her partners are raising money, building their product, and just hired their third employee! Hard to believe that back in May all of this was a vision. ³I love the flexibility to work anywhere (right now that¹s Chicago and Maine). I was planning to run the Chicago Marathon again, but have been sidelined by an injury. It sure sucks to get old. Am going to try to rest up so I can run Boston again in April...hopefully without any broken bones this time!

From the land of the Olympics, Nick Palmer reports that his wife, Liz, and Baby William are not contemplating joining Rick and Beto by throwing their youth to the wind and buying a people mover. Never. (Beto and I have mini-vans)

Dave Mathias had his wedding in July in L.A. This reunion rivaled the gathering that was in Evanston in May. ³Had a blast! Well attended by our classmates.² In addition to Alex, Todd Reichmann, Dan Kelly, Seth Ruthen, Ben Chou, Phil Yau, Julie and Pete Wheelan, Beth and Eric Daliere, Rebecca Swarr, Dan Hillenbrand, Skip and Hedi Wipson, Nicole Neuefeind, Amy Lehr and Dave Mitchell attended.

Calling all Fellow Kellogg Alum from Raj Shah. The more we get connected with Kellogg alum and friends, the more we find how many of us have actually entered the world of B2B. Keith Smith heads up alliances at iProcure. Raj heads up marketing strategy at ICG Commerce. Grady Hall heads up strategy at FOB.com. Henry Caffrey manages business development at ICG Commerce. And yes, we all remain optimistic! So the question is, who is else is out there? We want to put together an email network of those in the B2B space. It may be a good way to flip thoughts, questions, recruit, explore partnerships. E-mail rshah@icgcommerce.com or keithd.smith@dstm.com if you are interested and want to be on this list. (P.S. Yau, this can still include you!)

Linda Lewis lets us know that ³things are going really well in New York, and my company just officially launched. Check out the Web site at venturearchitects.com. We do business plans and investor presentations to get early- to late-stage companies funded. Pretty interesting departure from the conservative offices of Lazard Freres (my last job).

Javier Beeck is optimistic with the recent election results in Mexico, ³after the presidential elections, I would not be surprised if activities picking up in this country. Thus, anyone in the area feel free to send a note to beeckj@hotmail.com.

Out West, the Henson family (formerly Catherine Stephan) has grown by one. Siena Marie Henson was born June 3 at 10:17a.m. Unlike her parents, she was comparatively slight of stature weighing in at 7 lbs. 10 oz. and 20.75² long. But, as of her two-month check-up, she is a stunning 11lbs. 10oz. and 23² long. Catherine is doing fine, but for the lack of solid blocks of sleep. She cannot stress enough the importance of napping to expectant first-time mothers, ³I¹m not really sure how baby #2 even makes it to the drawing board with the hours we keep--and we hear that Siena is a good sleeper compared to others! Anyhow, we are thrilled with our little bundle of joy and hope that our fellow Kelloggians will come to the Puget Sound area soon to meet her and check out the scenery...it¹s worth the trip (at least until the rainy season--ha!).²

Kellogg 1995 and Kellogg 1996 joined forces as Mike and Linda (Lin) Pirotta had some good news that on July 26, 8:10 a.m., Christina Julia Pirrotta was born. She weighed 7 pounds, 5 ounces and is 20 inches long. Christina is a healthy baby. She is sleeping and eating well! As many of you know, her original due date was August 10, so her two week early arrival was a bit of a surprise for us. Luckily we had most of our things in place, and had just packed our hospital bag the night before I went into labor! Things are a bit busy around the Pirrotta household. Mike and I are very happy and are doing great, despite the lack of sleep.

I have more info about our class that I received for the Word of Mouse, but we are running out of space here. If you would like to see the most recent versions, please send an e-mail. I number them sequentially in case you miss one. WOM #11 was 20 pages and WOM #12 was 24 pages long. I send them out about once every three months and they contain e-mail addresses, phone numbers and mailing addresses. Thanks for all of your input for Kellogg World.