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This article originally appeared in the winter 2015 Harker Quarterly.
1992
Joe Rosenthal, executive director of advancement, recently ran into Ravi Kapur and his mother. Ravi shared that he just got married and owns TV stations in San Jose, Chicago and North Dakota. Ravi also offered to serve as an alumni mentor to a current Harker student.
Toku Chen had a baby. Please see the Celebrations section for details.
1995
Lisa Kai Klosterman is an orthodontist living with her family in Austin, Texas. Lisa is one of six Kai children who graduated from Harker. Following Harker, she went on to Exeter for high school, Santa Clara University for undergraduate, University of Pacific Dental School in San Francisco, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles for orthodontic residency. She is married to Kelby Klosterman, and they have a son, Theodore (Theo), born Oct. 7, 2013, and a daughter, Camille, born Aug. 26 of this year.
1996
Frank Lee got married. Please see the Celebrations section for details.
2002
Samana Khan had a baby! Please see the Celebrations section for details.
Jerry Chi is changing jobs from Google to Supercell, the developer behind the game Clash of Clans. He’ll be doing marketing analysis and strategy work covering the Asian Pacific region. Still based in Tokyo, Jerry will be visiting the San Francisco office every few months.
Sean Gabriel (MS ’98) recently returned to the Bay Area after having spent much of 2015 abroad in Accra, Ghana, working with an organization called MEST, a combination tech entrepreneurship school and startup incubator in the region that has recently expanded into Kenya and Nigeria. During Sean’s stay in Accra, he came on board the incubator team as a tech fellow, mentoring resident startups. Sean has written about the experience at http://meltwater.org/scrum-tips-from-west-african-incubator-mest/.
2003
Peter Noonan got married. Please see the Celebrations section for details.
2004
Alfred See completed his undergraduate studies and medical school at Johns Hopkins, and is currently in neurosurgery residency at Harvard, with four years to go. Alfred is interviewing for fellowship spots in 2019-20. He is in touch with classmates Geetanjali Vajapey, Maggie Chen, Joycelin Tsai and Stephanie Chun. After med school he ran a marathon with Wesley Wu, followed by a cross-country drive. Alfred stopped by the alumni office to visit and says he has fond memories of cross country, his classmates and teachers. Alfred has also stepped up to be an alumni mentor for students interested in neurosurgery, and last fall visited Anita Chetty’s grade 12 Human Anatomy and Physiology class to lead a workshop, using the school’s anatomy table to illustrate two recent stroke cases he had worked on.
Emma Hawley is volunteering at the upper school, leading relaxation sessions as part of Harker’s wellness program. Emma spent a year living at an ashram in India and is now back in the Bay Area and delighted to be sharing her meditative skills. The weekly class is open to all upper school students.
2005
Greg Kastelman has served as director of concert booking and business development for Cadenza Artists. There he is responsible for directing agency-wide booking initiatives, talent scouting, developing strategic partnerships, initiating new programs for revenue generation developing and initiating branding and promotional strategies.
2006
Amanda Polzin got married. Please see the Celebrations section for details.
Steve Boyle designed and directed a show called “Matthew Briar and the Age of Resurrection.” The epic, immersive show played on Oct.16-18 at History San Jose, a park full of historical buildings including an old hotel, bank, firehouse, a gorgeous light tower and old homes. Steve is a graduate of Harker’s Conservatory program and has produced several other productions recently. For this unique experience, he divided the park up into three smaller mini-immersive zones: a 1907 World’s Fair, the 1920s, and a Depression-era camp. The production had a very successful run. A fun side note, shared Steve, is that “Aseem Shukla ’07 was in the show!”
2007
Jake Bongers, a fourth year Ph.D. student at the University of California, Los Angeles, was featured in both a video and local newspaper article discussing his role as the consulting guest curator of an exhibition on mummies now on display at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Jason Martin has been playing professional baseball for the past four years. He was just traded to the Joplin Blasters in Missouri, and is working toward a master’s degree in sports psychology at Fresno State. He is also coaching baseball at Clovis West High School. Jason married Nicole Duquette in October 2014.
2008
Troy Townzen got married. Please see the Celebrations section for details.
2009
Gloria Ye has been working at Groupon, where she participated in her first hackathon, winning first place locally and placing second and third globally in two different categories as voted by Groupon’s technical panel. Her picture will be featured at Groupon’s headquarters on the honor wall just outside of the CEO’s ofice, honoring her as one of the company’s most dedicated employees.
After graduating from Harker, Dominique Dabija earned her B.S. in bioengineering and M.S. in engineering from Stanford. She spent the next year doing research on medical devices, traveling throughout Japan and Europe, and working on a scuba diving boat around the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea in Australia. She is now attending Vanderbilt Medical School, so let her know if you ever find yourself in Nashville!
In the fall issue of Harker Quarterly, Harker Conservatory graduate DJ Blickenstaff showed off his acting chops in a Subway commercial. Now he’s added another notch to his acting belt: he will be in several episodes of a series called “The Colony,” which will begin airing in January on the USA network. He is playing a character named Vasquez. He also recently filmed another commercial, this one for AT&T.
2010
Andy Fang, co-founder of the Palo Alto-based, on-demand food delivery startup DoorDash, shared the secrets to his success during a seminar hosted by the Asian American Parent Association on Oct. 15. Two days later he spoke at TEDxHarker-School, a student-run, kid-only event.
2011
Harker classmates Rani Mukherjee and Alice Loofbourrow are in school together once again, completing a one-year post-baccalaureate premedical program at Goucher College in preparation for a career in health care.
Some interesting work updates from various alumni: Shreya Nathan is working for an education startup in Buenos Aires until January. Christina Li is working for Scary Little Girls, a feminist matrifocal production/theatre company based in England. Howard Lio is having a great time working for Box in Mountain View. Ari Parige is freelancing as a filmmaker. And Daisy Mohrman had her first performance as a professional dancer with Sean Greene’s Shield Wall in Los Angeles.
The Class of 2011 will have its five-year reunion on Dec. 26! Likely topics include reminiscing about the good old days and talking about transitioning into “real” adulthood. Stay tuned for more information!
2012
Neel Salukhe, who plays football for the University of Washington Huskies, was recently interviewed for the Huskies’ athletic newsletter as well as for an article that appeared in The Seattle Times. Neel is making a name for himself at the university as both a dedicated and talented football player, and a serious and respected student of microbiology.
2013
Vladimir Feinberg has been awarded the B. Wood Legacy Sophomore Prize at Princeton University! He also received the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence while at Princeton. He is concentrating in computer science and is pursuing a certificate in statistics and machine learning; he’s also a member of the Princeton Association for Computing Machinery and plays club volleyball. This past summer Vladimir was a software engineering intern at Google.
Mav McNealy continues to make breaking golf news. Back in November the Stanford junior capped a sensational fall season by earning medalist honors for the third time in four events at the Gifford Collegiate Championship.
Back in August, former upper school history teacher Ray Fowler, who retired at the end of last year, met up with Alison Rugar at Cornell. Mr. Fowler was riding his motorcycle coast to coast, and Alison was getting ready to help out with freshmen orientation before returning to her engineering and physics studies. She is on schedule to graduate in 2017.
Upper school math teacher Victor Adler recently visited with some Harker alumni attending Princeton University. Pictured here with him are Joy Li, Vladimir Feinberg and Sonia Hashim, as well as Kiran Vodrahalli ’11, Abhinav Khanna ’12 and Avi Nayak ’14.
2015
At the 62nd National Junior Classical League Convention, held at Trinity University in Texas, Maya Nandakumar received the Jessie Chambers NJCL Scholarship. A current Harker student, Elisabeth Siegel, grade 12, was part of a multischool advanced competitive Certamen team that took third place. The achievement earned them nice mentions in Nuntius Californiensis, the official newsletter of the California Junior Classical League. Congrats to both women!