EMP-32

Greetings to my classmates. . . After a long dry spell, EMP-32 is finally back with a column! It was great to see input coming in from a bunch of folks ... hope to keep this trend up through the next couple of issues.

First off, congratulations to Jeff Dahl and his wife, Sonya. Both Jeff and Sonya walked away from the business world and leapt head first into teaching. Per Jeff, “After 20 years of talking about it — I finally did it! Recruiters say I am nuts, but we are enjoying the new challenge and new time with the family.” Jeff is teaching entrepreneurship, advertising and is the department chair for the Marketing Cooperative Education Program at the local high school. If anyone is interested in looking down the same road, please contact Jeff directly.

I heard from Brett Latham — the Latham family all went on an Alaskan cruise this summer with Brett’s parents (Ed and Carolyn), his two sisters and their eight kids, ages 4 to 22. It was Ed and Carolyn’s 50th anniversary and most everyone’s first cruise. Brett has transferred within the Limited Inc. family of brands to Victoria’s Secret Stores as director of central merchandise planning and testing. In his new role, Brett works closely with the merchants at Victoria’s Secret in coordinating the overall purchase of merchandise and ongoing pricing decisions, a nice mix of strategic and day-to-day operating decisions. He is also responsible for providing strategic input to the vice presidents of merchandise and marketing relating to testing and implementation strategies. This is a major career direction change that should make some of Brett’s hard work at Northwestern pay off. We can all expect some interesting corporate “trinkets” for next years’ golf outing!

A recurring theme from quite a few of you out there is college. More specifically, that some of you are actually old enough to have kids to send off to college! Jorge del Castillo’s son began his freshman year at Marquette; Brett Latham’s son Blake is at Ohio State; Mike Bantz took his eldest to the University of Wisconsin and Paula Currie’s son Warren is a senior at Georgia Tech; her daughter, Simone, is at North Carolina. Where are the future Wildcat alumns in all of this?

Speaking of Mike Bantz, Mike is still hanging his hat in Minneapolis. He took a new position at Datalink Corporation as director of sales. Datalink is an independent architect of data storage infrastructure with about 200 employees. In addition to Mike’s “real” job, he is teaching marketing and organizational behavior at Concordia University in St. Paul. Mike and Jeff — you two are inspiring!

On Sept. 1, Patricia Shafer completed her first half-marathon (13.1 miles) under cloudy skies and on rain-soaked roads at the “Rock and Roll Half-Marathon” in Virginia Beach, Va.. In the process, she raised $4,550 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program. When Patricia is not running and raising money for great causes, she is serving as lead influence and communication consultant for Innolect Inc.

I received some wonderful news back in June from Allegra Biery who delivered a healthy baby boy named Theodore. His big brother, Nicky, is quite thrilled. Nicky turns 6 in October and started kindergarten this fall. Also in May, Allegra was promoted to senior vice president at Northern Trust.

I heard through Ann Herring that the award for the most dramatic transformations in careers would have to go to Cathy Nowinski. Since her days at Kellogg, Cathy has married, moved to Las Vegas and started a cooking school! Cathy is the president and founder of the Creative Cooking School. Check out her Web site at www.creativecookingschool.com. Congratulations Cathy.

Last, but not least, an update or two from the far West team. I was able to meet up with Jamie O’Rourke and Tim Smithe a few months back in Chicago. Jamie was in town pitching his company to potential investors; Tim and I met up with him basically for free food and drinks! As usual, the two kept me very entertained and we spent the majority of the time remembering our days at Kellogg. Look for Tim Smithe’s new Smithe Furniture flagship store, scheduled to open in Oak Brook this fall. I also had a chance to see Tim Angst this past summer up in Lake Geneva. Tim and his family had rented a summer place at the lake and we got to take a spin on his latest toy — a speed boat complete with waterskis and inner tube. The kids had a ball and it was nice to get caught up with Tim. He is still based out of northern California with Siebel.