1993

Since 1993, Yasushi Tanabe and his family have been back and forth between the U.S. and Japan. Yasushi had an assignment at Isuzu Motors America in southeast Michigan from 1997 through 2002, and has been working at Isuzu in Tokyo since then. Even after returning to Tokyo, he has occasionally visited the U.S. (Michigan, NYC and Los Angeles) as well as some other countries (Australia, South Africa, Ukraine, Thailand, Indonesia, India, etc.). His daughter Yumeno, who you may recall was born in Evanston our first year at Kellogg, is now 14. How time flies! The Tanabes now have three kids: Yumeno; a boy, Kazuaki, or "Kaz" (8); and another girl, Natsuki (2). Yumeno and Kaz, as well as their parents, really enjoyed living in Michigan for five years and still miss it. Yasushi occasionally meets for drinks with friends from our class in Japan. He also spent some time with Kei Wakabayashi '94 and his family in Michigan, where Kei also had an assignment. When in Michigan, Yasushi also met with several Kellogg School alumni who work at General Motors. "As I get older," writes Yasushi, "the ties with my Kellogg fellows tend to get thinner, especially after leaving the country for a while, but I will try to bring them back."

	Canh Tran '93, wife Beth and son Ryan (2)
	Heather Forsythe '93 at Hubbard Glacier in Alaska
	Eric Dingman '93 enjoying life in Belgium
	John Kwant '93 and wife Carolyn in Shanghai
	Luke Parker '93 (left) and Hideaki Chuck Mizuno '93
	Paul Richards '93 with his son, Liam Paul, swaddled in NU gear
	Warwick Nash '93 with sons Jasper and Jed

Yuko Suzuki '94 writes that she had dinner with Hideki Tanaka while he was in San Francisco in September — his first time back to the States since graduation. Hideki is the president of Osaka-based Koda Corporation, one of the largest alcoholic beverage distributors in Japan. Yuko says Hideki is doing very well, and he very much misses Kellogg ... and Burger King and McDonald's!

John Kwant is still at Ford (six years now, a record for him), where he has become the director of business and operational planning for Ford's Asia-Pacific and Africa Group. While still based in Dearborn, he travels to the region about once a quarter. His wife, Carolyn '95, joined him on his most recent trip. Children Ian (7) and Aerin (5) keep him busy. Especially Ian, who has made the Ann Arbor travel hockey team and, says John, "shows all the athletic prowess his father lacks (true regression to the mean)." The Kwants continue to host mini Kellogg reunions around Michigan football games, most recently versus NU last fall with the likes of John Sheputis, Susie Campbell, Bob Strozinsky, Carrie Collins, Paul Wehner, Karen Dolfis, David Josephs and Tim Lewis. John promises to make the trip to Evanston this fall to see the Wolverines take care of the Mildcats.

Dr. Rusen Yildirim has changed jobs after working as general manager of the Istanbul Surgery Hospital for nearly four years. He recently moved to Izmir (third largest city in Turkey) on the Aegean coast, to work as general manager of Kent Hospital (kenthospital.com). The new job has proven to be a bigger challenge compared to his prior position in Istanbul. Kent Hospital has 150 inpatient beds and serves nearly all medical and surgical specialties. Due to the location of the hospital, they also treat a significant number of foreign tourists for emergency cases. Rusen hopes he doesn't see any of you as a patient, but hopes you will stop by to say hello if you're in town. Rusen has also been honing his motor-biking skills. His new KTM 950 Adventure has become his latest passion. After a great trip through Europe last summer, he takes every opportunity to ride his bike in the mountains and landscapes around Izmir. (I bet he'd be willing to give you a ride if you made the effort to go to Izmir.)

Jennifer Merritt is living in Cleveland with her husband, Noah, and their daughter, Wylie (4). They have been in Cleveland for six years, where Jennifer teaches at John Carroll University. She runs an educational partnership program with the Cleveland municipal school district called "The Carroll-Cleveland Philosophers' Program." This is an educational enrichment program for under-served students from the local urban high schools. Noah is a technology consultant for a variety of nonprofit organizations and also teaches multimedia development at JCU. Wylie is in preschool and loves spending time with her grandparents while her parents are at work. The family enjoys hiking together, traveling and participating in international service learning immersion programs with JCU students.

Rishal Dinkins-Stanciel and her husband, Kenny, recently celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary and now live in metro Atlanta with their three children, Kennedy (9), Ken III (6), and their new addition, Kendall Joy (5 months). Rishal retired from the corporate world and started a nonprofit organization focused on helping at-risk youth become successful student athletes. The GLUE (Giving Love Unites Everyone) Foundation positively impacts the lives of many young people, so if anyone knows of a philanthropist looking to invest in a good cause, put them in touch with Rishal (rishal21@hotmail.com). She also started working on her master's degree in divinity at a local seminary and became the youth pastor at her church. "Life is great!" writes Rishal. For anyone trying to get in touch, her new address is: 2337 Lake Ridge Terrace, Lawrenceville, GA 30043.

Alistair Goodman and his wife, Rebecca, recently moved back to the Bay Area after two and a half years in London. Alistair, who works at Tribal Fusion as VP of strategic marketing, looks forward to reconnecting with Kellogg friends.

After "doing the entrepreneurial thing" for the last six years, Ken Yager has returned to his old turnaround management firm of Morris-Anderson in Chicago. His job is twofold: to help the sales and marketing arms of troubled middle-market companies and to solicit opportunities for turnaround work from equity sponsors. Ken had been doing his own turnarounds for the last four years with two dot-com distractions. After running six small businesses (not all at once) for other people and not getting much more than a headache (great experience, but still a headache), Ken decided to work with a larger group working on larger companies. Ken says, "Expect to see me soon at an airport near you."

On the family front, Ken's wife is begging him to leave Iowa and return to Chicago. Their boys are doing great. Oley (10) is playing football for the second year and has discovered the exhilaration of tackling wide receivers at full speed. "Man how he likes to put the hurt on," writes Ken. CJ (8) has discovered baseball in a big way and has demonstrated a stunning ability to read plays. Ken never played baseball so now CJ is teaching dad. And yes, the family has been to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa. "It is worth seeing."

Late last year Michael Schwaeber joined 303 Capital Partners, a Chicago group that launches niche/proprietary trading hedge funds, as CFO.

Brett Bonthron continues to work for Microsoft in San Francisco, where he lives with his wife and two kids, and has joined the faculty of the University of San Francisco teaching entrepreneurial management in the MBA program. He has also been sailing around the world with his sailing team, the Escaped Aussies, formed when he worked for Index in Australia (escapedaussies.com). The team has done a dozen regattas all over the world from Croatia to Thailand to France and the Caribbean. (See photo of part of the team on their recent foray in Barbados.) The team raises money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation through their charity, SailStrong, a takeoff on Lance's LiveStrong.

2005 has been a busy year for Warwick Nash. Earlier in the year he left Diageo (where he had been working for the last seven years) to join Millward Brown as U.K. managing director. Millward Brown is a market research consultancy and part of WPP. It specializes in brand equity measurement and communications effectiveness, so the old marketing courses from Kellogg are coming in very handy!

In June, Warwick's wife, Jane, gave birth to a boy named Jared (also known as Jed), who joins big brother Jasper (3). In July they moved out of London to live in a lovely house in north Oxfordshire. "It's funny not living in a city anymore," says Warwick, "but Jasper is really enjoying collecting eggs from the hens we inherited with the house!"

Warwick still sees Peter Harrison, Roddy Urquhart and Sean Capstick in London regularly. They are all well and "each pursuing his interests with characteristic vim and vigor (you know what I mean if you know these three)."

Speaking of Roddy, he just sent his first update in 12 years (yippee!). He noticed in the last edition of Kellogg World that Dave Darragh was on a mission to supply him with some Zatarains to spice up his Scottish fried catfish and wondered where Roddy was these days. Well, Roddy confirms that he is now off the streets and back in "gainful" employment working for Misys, the U.K.'s largest software company, selling banking software in Central and Eastern Europe. He is based in London and gets to see fellow classmates Peter, Warwick and Sean on a regular basis, "when I baby sit for all their kids!" Roddy has also gone back to his naval roots and joined the Royal Navy Reserve, which keeps him busy. "I'm also single, heterosexual, NS, GSOH Š !" Roddy was seen at the Hong Kong 7's rugby tournament last March dressed as a fireman, where he saw John Sheputis' brother Joe, who just happens to be a real fireman!

Dermot O'Brien married a poet from New York. (How many other Kellogg grads can say that?) His son is 6 now and a daredevil. Dermot says, "He takes after his grandfather, who was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam!" Dermot moved to Manhattan in 1996 after working for Unilever and a consulting firm in Ireland. He rode the Internet wave from 1997 until 2003, and "should have sold my startup in 2001 when I had the opportunity as it was worth a LOT less after the bubble burst." However, Dermot kept all the Irish geographic interest domains (about 1000) he purchased back in 1997 and some became pretty valuable. Celtic.com, his portal Web site, was also selected as one of the top three Irish Web sites by Yahoo! magazine. (Guinness and The Irish Tourist Board were the other two contenders for the throne.) The fact that Yahoo! magazine was also shut down is beside the point!

Dermot and his family moved to East Hampton, N.Y. in 2000 and he became interested in real estate. They moved to West Palm Beach, Fla. in 2003 and he has been selling real estate since then. He is currently working for a developer selling multi-million dollar condos on the ocean and loving the fast pace. "It is like the new stock market," writes Dermot, "where everyone wants to flip their unit for a big profit." Dermot invites you to look him up if you visit south Florida (dermot@obrien.net).

All is well with Jack Polsky. He got married almost a year ago to Rebecca Schanberg and "life is good." He has the same job and no kids, yet. Jon LeMay, on the other hand, has eight (count them!) kids. Jack also stays in close touch with Canh Tran. Canh and his wife, Beth Wilson, have a boy named Ryan (2) and live in Chicago. Canh still runs Pattern Recognition, a predictive analytics company focused on the financial and insurance industry. In addition to Jack Polsky, Canh sees Dave Keeling, John LeMay, Jon Salveson, Matt Shapiro, and Dan Malven on a fairly regular basis.

Eric Dingman is living in Belgium and working for InBev (formerly Interbrew), the world's largest brewer. He is single again after ending a long-term relationship with a great girl — "so it's been lots of change." His role with InBev takes him around western and some of eastern Europe, and "it's an interesting time in Europe with changes politically and socially." Eric has met with some of the Kellogg Benelux alumni group, including co-hosting an event on leadership in June.

John LeMay '93 with his eight kids!

Leticia Ponce had a baby this June. Her name is Clara, and Leticia writes "I'm enjoying her very much!" Leticia's other children, Diego (7) and Sofia (5), go to school all day, so she gets to spoil Clara. After eight years as master franchise of KA International in Mexico, Leticia decided to close her business and look for something closer to home (Madrid, Spain). She's taking her time and looking for a new business opportunity. She is open to suggestions!

Luke Parker spent some time skiing with Hideki "Chuck" Mizuno in Japan during January and February. He says, "Chuck is in great form and still at the Bank, still loving life, and still without wife." Luke plans to head back in January '06. Luke was interested to read about our colleagues in the drinks business. Besides still working in the metal recycling industry, Luke and his wife, Alicia, have their own startup: Parker's Organic Juices (parkersorganic.com.au). Their fresh juice, sparkling juice and mineral water have had a good reception in Sydney and they are now rolling it out across the country.

Luke writes that Dave Darragh is using all his crisis management skills keeping his Zatarain's in business following Hurricane Katrina. Zatarain's, the leading maker of New Orleans-style food products, bills itself as "a New Orleans tradition since 1889," and Dave is the CEO. Luke spoke to Dave and he is doing well under the most trying circumstances.

As for me, I just got back from a fabulous two-week vacation in Alaska. The first week a friend and I took a cruise of the Inside Passage — gorgeous! Then I ventured off on my own to explore the Kenai Peninsula and Denali National Park for a week, meeting a lot of interesting people and seeing some amazing animals along the way. I just got home today, just in time to edit this issue's class update and to sign the papers for my new condo. I bought the two-bedroom unit right next door to where I'm living now. I'm (finally) a home owner!

Well, have a wonderful holiday season — and add me to your holiday mailing list if you do one of those annual letters to family and friends. Just remember to send it to my new address (listed in this issue).