|
1980
Hello
to all my classmates from the Class of 1980! Recently, Kellogg
sent out a request for a new rep for our class, and I volunteered.
Of course, my husband, David, looked at me and asked where
I thought I would find the time for another volunteer activity,
but here I am.
It's
hard to believe it's been 27 years since we graduated —
and it's been quite a while since I've seen a long Class of
1980 update in Kellogg World, so here goes. Since I'm
the class rep, I get to give my updates first.
I
marriedDavid Marlowe the day before Kellogg graduation (most of you
will remember me as Cathy Weinstein), and spent the first
16 years out of Kellogg in administrative positions with a
variety of hospitals, physician practices and consulting groups
in Kansas City, Missouri and the Baltimore/Washington metropolitan
area. We have been in Maryland since 1983, and I have been
executive director of HPV Heart, P.A., a private cardiology
group in Columbia, Md., since 1996. It continues to amaze
me why anyone would voluntarily go into healthcare administration,
given our crazy system in this country, but I work for a great
group of doctors and love what I do. I'm a past president
of the state chapter of MGMA (the Medical Group Management
Association) and spent the last few years doing animal rescue,
which is how I now have more cats than I should in addition
to two dogs.
David
has been principal of Strategic Marketing Concepts, a healthcare
strategic marketing consulting firm that works with hospitals
and healthcare systems across the country, since 1999. Prior
to that, he worked in hospitals in Kansas City and Baltimore
in the chief marketing/planning roles and with several marketing
consulting firms. Of course, having clients across the country
sometimes means he gets to go to Fargo, N.D., in January,
and he earns frequent flier miles faster than we can use them.
He is currently president-elect of the Society for Healthcare
Strategy and Market Development of the American Hospital Association
and recently authored his third book, A Marketer's Guide
to Measuring ROI.
We
have a son, Daniel (19), whose current career interests include
photojournalism and outdoor adventure, and who has just adopted
his own puppy that will soon grow to about 100 pounds. Now
that our son is out on his own, David and I have the opportunity
to travel more, and spent two weeks in Israel on a trip with
our synagogue (summer 2006) and a week in Albuquerque, N.M.,
building houses with Habitat for Humanity in a project with
our synagogue and several local churches (summer 2007). We
get back to Chicago regularly (my parents and one of my sisters
are still there) as well as to Ocala, Fla., (David's parents),
and just spent Labor Day weekend in Boston because I finally
managed to snag face-value tickets to the Jimmy Buffett concert
at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough (not surprisingly, most
of the crowd of 60,000-plus was 50-plus).
Jon
Myers writes that he is living in Marin County, "land
of hot tubs and liberals and lovin' it." His sons Sonny
and Buddy just entered the second grade, and he says they
are fun-loving, athletic and a lot of joy. His wife, Bonnie
'81, has been working as a mom and a childhood development
expert, while Jon himself has three startups he is juggling:
Neural ID (human-like recognition), BioMetallix (recovering
large amounts of metals from waste while cleaning up the waste),
and Sequestration Company (novel, proprietary technologies
for sequestering CO2 on site).
| |
 |
| |
Michele
Thompson '80 and her son, Michael '07, celebrate his graduation
from Kellogg in June. |
| |
|
Michele
Thompson is carrying
on the tradition with the graduation of her son, Michael J.
Thompson, in the Kellogg Class of 2007 this June. Michele
told me that she was pregnant with Michael when she was at
Kellogg, and shared this picture of the two Kellogg grads
— mom and son — 27 years apart. (I congratulated
her on Michael's MBA, but told her I still insist that my
Kellogg degree is an MM). Michele recently decided to retire
early after 25 years as a healthcare executive, which included
positions at Oak Forest Hospital in Illinois and Kaiser Permanente
in California before her last position at Provident Hospital
in Chicago — and she loves early retirement.
Since
graduating, William Lannin says: "I spent 19 years
in Saudi Arabia running the benefits program for the national
oil company (Aramco) and was present for both the Gulf War
and the Khobar Towers bombing. I returned to Illinois in 2000
and spent five years teaching in the Roosevelt University
business school. Since then I have earned a certificate in
natural history from the Morton Arboretum and volunteer on
various prairie restoration projects. This year, I have trips
planned to Australia and Antarctica."
Some
days I think we are too wired to our technology – after
I told Michael Hogan that he got the prize for
the first and fastest response to my request for class updates,
he replied that he actually responded on his Blackberry from
the waiting area of the airport in St. Louis (where he lives)
en route to Minneapolis, where his second Blackberry response
was sent from the taxi. His news was that he recently had
the chance to catch up with Scott Shay, author of Getting
Our Groove Back: Energizing American Jewry, while Scott
was in St. Louis as keynote speaker at the National Conference
of Jewish Educators at Washington University. He says they
were ensconced at the Knight Center, which he described as
being the Allen Center of the Olin School but without the
lake. He shared that Scott is doing well, raising four kids
amid promoting Judaism and running or sitting on the boards
of several successful businesses. For his part, Mike is also
the father of four kids, ranging in age from 10 to 25, with
two college tuitions and one master's behind him and, he notes,
probably as many of each to go. He admits that the "Big
55" comes next April, and will have the next chapter
in his career/life for us then. It's great to hear from you,
Mike.
Priscilla
Wallace writes that she went to Frito-Lay right out of
Kellogg, where she met her husband, Scott. They now live in
Edina, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis — the tenth move
in their 25-year marriage and apparently neither is in the
military. After staying home with her two sons and following
Scott's career around the country, Priscilla returned to work
full-time five years ago and is now a director/marketing consultant
for the business development division of Bolin Marketing &
Advertising, which helps clients seeking innovative strategies
for growth. In her spare time, she likes to travel, read,
cook, swim, do watercolor painting and occasionally play tennis
or ski. Scott is senior vice president of marketing for G&K
Services, a uniforms company. Son Andrew graduated from Lafayette
College in 2006 and is enrolled in a paralegal program, while
son Peter is a senior at Williamette University. Priscilla
also writes that she has kept in touch over the years with
Karen (King) Minkus, who also worked at Frito-Lay,
and then with Scott at Kraft, as well as with Peggy (Dinkelkamp)
Pandaleon and George Pandaleon when they were neighbors
in Lake Forest, Ill.
| |
 |
| |
The
students of Tom Byrne '80 hosted an in-class party at
the end of the term. |
| |
|
Thomas
"Tom" Byrne is another alum whose travels have taken him to exotic locales. He writes
that he has been interested in a mid-career switch from marketing
consulting to academia, and he tested the waters by conducting
a dozen executive education sessions through DePaul University's
Kellstadt Center for Marketing Excellence in the past few
years. He was recently asked to join the adjunct faculty of
one of the big business schools in Asia and spent this past
July and August in a special summer program in Seoul, teaching
customer relationship management and marketing communications
to program participants from China, Japan, the Republic of
Korea, Singapore and the U.S. After his final lectures, his
students hosted an in-class party complete with cakes, candles
and gifts for the instructor. He says that, while he was well-paid
and well-pampered by his hosts at Korea University, it's good
to be back in Chicago.
Lance
Littlejohn has been
part-owner of West Coast Novelty Corp., which he proudly notes
has been the largest U.S. distributor of licensed professional
sports souvenirs for the last 25 years. He says it is great
to read the sports section as his business section and ride
the waves up and down as a sports fan and small businessman.
He married Janene Banks one week after graduating from Kellogg
and has three children — daughter Lauren is married
and has a young daughter named Aubrey, and his son and other
daughter, James and Alison, both attend BYU. He says, "Life
is great. I couldn't wish or ask for more."
Daniel
Belet writes from Bordeaux, France, where he explained
that while he studied in 1976 and 1977 at Northwestern, for
administrative reasons he got his degree in 1980 — so
welcome to our class, Daniel! He is French, works as a part-time
professor in a regional business school and also is an independent
consultant for small businesses.
Finally,
Michael Gara writes that he graduated from The Managers'
Program in 1980 and has had a career in the healthcare industry,
which began at Baxter in Deerfield, Ill. He is now in Weston,
Fla., and is head of grant programs for the Wallace Coulter
Foundation, which supports biomedical research across the
U.S. He says it is like a second career and very rewarding,
and in his present role he visits the top biomedical engineering
schools in the U.S. and learns about groundbreaking research
that will help save people's lives. The foundation also helps
educate academic researchers in the nuances and hurdles in
commercializing research into the marketplace.
My
thanks to those of you who answered my Where Are You, Class
of 1980? e-mail, and I look forward to hearing from more of
you for the next issue of Kellogg World. Please drop
me a line at the e-mail or "snail mail" address
at the top of the column.
|
