Most eyes may have been on Golden State Warriors guard Steph Curry during last weekend’s Ellie Mae Classic golf tournament, but Harker community members likely noticed another familiar name among the many competitors: recent graduate Colt McNealy.
McNealy, who will begin studies at Stanford in the fall, qualified for the event in late June at a Junior Tour of Northern California tournament, sneaking past three other players who were in contention for the spot. One of them was JTNC Player of the Year Thomas Hutchison.
The Ellie Mae Classic, held at TPC Stonebrae in Hayward, is a charity event that features professional and amateur golfers as well as star athletes from other sports. Colt’s brother, Maverick ’13, competed at last year’s Ellie Mae Classic but was unable to attend this year, as he was competing at the The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in England.
This article first appeared in the summer 2017 Harker Magazine.
While in high school, Elyse VyVy Trinh ’07 attended a Vietnamese Catholic youth group where she heard a priest talk about human trafficking. It lit a fire in Trinh, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, and fueled her desire to make a difference in the world.
“It really hit me that day,” remembered Trinh in a thoughtful, upbeat tone. “I had heard these stories before, but I felt like I was waking up.” Trinh later attended a leadership event that was packed with young people who wanted to change the world.
After the event, Trinh sent an email to two Harker administrators, saying that the school needed a revolution. She and a group of friends dedicated themselves to raising funds – ultimately, nearly $14,000 – to support displaced people in Darfur, Sudan. “It was like Dumbledore’s Army,” she said with a smile. “This was my earliest experience organizing a group of people and it felt so empowering. I realized this is what I want to do – this is what matters.”
While Trinh was becoming an activist, she also considered herself a writer and an artist. Although her family thought she would go into medicine, Trinh wasn’t convinced. But then two things happened that ultimately led her down that path.
First, she read “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder, which gave her a new perspective on the role of a physician. The book is about Dr. Paul Farmer, whose passion, dedication and tireless efforts resulted in improved health care for the desperately poor in Haiti and beyond. She realized that following one’s calling can lead to a meaningful life.
Then John Near, a beloved Harker history teacher, got sick and Trinh watched helplessly, wishing here was something she could do. She began to see herself practicing medicine. After a four-year battle with cancer, Near died in 2009.
A family friend told her about a medical program at Brown University in Providence, R.I., that allowed students to explore their passions as undergraduates so that they would develop into well-rounded, humanistic doctors. She took a leap of faith that she could forge a connection between health, community and education.
“Brown’s true education to us will have been this lesson above all: that it is never foolish to feel love; that compassion is the enduring and most important connection among of all fields of study,” she said in a commencement speech at Brown in May 2011.
Trinh fell in love with education at Brown – and even took a year off between her third and fourth years of medical school to earn a master’s degree in education at Harvard University. For this she received a Zuckerman Fellowship, which enables students who have or are pursuing a professional degree to spend a year earning a public service degree.
Meanwhile, she nurtured her passions for social justice, community and education by volunteering with BRYTE (Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment), which works one-on-one with refugee youth in K-12. “I’d like to think I played some role in her success but, of course, I know she achieved all she has without my help,” said Brigid Miller, a Harker English teacher and Trinh’s high school advisor. “VyVy is a force, a magnetic personality whom others are drawn to. She’s a person you want to know forever; she’s my idol.”
She’s also an idol to the young refugees she has tutored and mentored through BRYTE (www. brownrefugeetutoring.weebly.com). Known as “BRYTE Grandma,” she co-directed the summer camp for years and still works as a tutor and advisor. “VyVy is [nicknamed] BRYTE Grandma because she loves our program and all the people in it! Whenever we are trying to contact a camper’s family, we call VyVy because she memorized all of the addresses and she always knows it,” said Mechack Ira, assistant director at BRYTE and former tutee and camper. “I will forever be grateful to VyVy for believing in me.”
As Trinh wraps up her time in Rhode Island and heads to California for her residency, she hasn’t slowed down a bit. In addition to working with BRYTE, she’s trying to connect Haitian peanut farms to global markets and working with young Vietnamese Americans to organize and stand with today’s refugees. Her LinkedIn profile ends with “Come dream and scheme with me!” capturing her mission to make a difference in the world.
Contributor Vikki Bowes-Mok is also the executive director of the community nonprofit Compass Collective.
This article first appeared in the summer 2017 Harker Magazine.
By Vikki Bowes-Mok
When Tiffany Liou ’08 arrived at Harker in seventh grade, she had no idea what she wanted to be when she grew up. What she did know was that she was interested in a lot of different things, so she jumped in and got involved.
“I remember her start to announcements at school meetings with her energetic ‘Hey, guysssss’ – drawing out the second word and giving her classic huge Tiffany smile,” said Evan Barth, upper school academic dean. “Her energy was contagious, and her peers loved to follow her lead as much as Tiffany enjoyed leading.”
From being president of the Spirit Club and serving on student council to playing varsity basketball and golf and participating in Junior State of America, Liou’s enthusiasm for life and learning led her down many different paths. “High school was one of the best times of my life,” she said with a smile. “Harker gave me opportunities to test the waters wherever I wanted to and taught me to always try new things.”
She attended Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, where she studied marketing and communications. While in college, she did a marketing internship at KGO-TV, an ABC-owned television station in San Francisco. As Liou crunched numbers for Nielsen ratings, she watched the newscasters and realized she wanted to be in front of the camera, not behind it. Although she was intrigued with broadcast journalism, she wasn’t sure about her next step.
She took a job with Salesforce.com out of college but decided to take a TV broadcasting class at Ohlone College, which she absolutely loved. This led to an internship at KTVU, a Fox-owned station, and then she was hired as the overnight assignment editor. Liou juggled two jobs for more than a year, working at Salesforce.com by day and KTVU at night. She took catnaps in her car and learned the power of 5-Hour Energy shots, while working 70-80 hours a week.
“Everything I’ve accomplished, I’ve earned through hard work,” she said. “I don’t think everyone can say they love their job, but I do!” Once she realized her dream, there was no stopping this driven young woman. Her first broadcast job offer came from West Monroe, La.
“This was one of hardest decisions I’ve ever made – to quit a great job at Salesforce in the Bay Area near all my family and friends for a producer job in Louisiana, a state I had never even visited!” she recalled.
After some tears and soul searching, she knew she had to go for it. So she packed up and trekked across the country. This was her first stop on her broadcasting journey, which has taken her from Louisiana to Iowa to Oklahoma, where she is now a reporter at KWTV News 9. She covers everything from hard crime to tornadoes but always works to find a human element in her stories. “There’s always a reason to tell a story because there’s always a group of people it impacts,” she reflected.
Liou learned this firsthand on her way to a new job in Iowa, when her airplane had to make an emergency landing in Greenville, Texas. “Smoke filled the cockpit, panic was everywhere, but we all stuck together and landed uninjured thanks to the leadership of our flight crew,” she reported. “I sent one viral tweet, and ended up on NBC Dallas, Today and CNN before I even started my first day of work. What an entrance!”
Her arrival in Oklahoma wasn’t as action-packed, but she is now enjoying a full life there with her fiancé, Allen, and their two dogs, Suki and Bacon. They are planning a wedding in March 2018 in the Bay Area – where Liou also hopes to fulfill her career dreams. She may not have known her passion when she started as a middle schooler at Harker, but she definitely does now.
As Liou said, “Reporting is my passion and I will go anywhere at any time to cover a story.”
Contributor Vikki Bowes-Mok is also the executive director of the community nonprofit Compass Collective.
This article first appeared in the summer 2017 Harker Magazine
1992
Toku Chen attended the March 18 Asia alumni reunion and presented Joe Rosenthal with the Carley Service Award at the alumni dinner on the Bund in Shanghai. The Carley Service Award recognizes alumni or friends who have unselfishly devoted their time and energy, and made significant contributions toward, advancing the programs of The Harker School. Toku gave a warm speech that included memories of Mr. Rosenthal during the dorm days. He also highlighted Mr. Rosenthal’s work benefiting young people, education and fundraising over his 30-plus year investment at Harker Academy and The Harker School.
1994
Leyna Cotran was the keynote speaker at an alumni networking luncheon held during the Harker Research Symposium last month. She focused on the important collaboration between academia and industry.
Alumnus-in-the-media alert! Wajahat Ali has been busy. Here he is in a CNN point-counterpoint discussion on the U.S. Attorney General nominee. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=440KPaYH-kI
And here’s an interesting opinion piece by Wajahat in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/opinion/sunday/do-muslims-have-to-be-democrats-now.html
1996
Several members of the Class of ‘96 met at Campo di Bocce and celebrated 20 years since graduating from eighth grade! Class agent Andrea (Nott) Miles submitted a few photos of the event.
Pictured left to right are Patrick Fellowes, Elizabeth (Keezer) Isaak, Andrea, Wendy (Okimura) Diaz, Sheila Collins, Ann (Chu) Blomquist, Marlen Alcaraz and Steven Blomquist.
2003
Andrew Shvarts published his first book! “Royal Bastards,” for teens and young adults, is the story of a castle lord’s disenfranchised “natural” children who are drawn into castle intrigue. Check out our profile on Andrew on page 48.
2004
Jessica Liu was married over the Memorial Day weekend to Tyler Chang Seaman, who was the boy next door all through their childhoods! Pictured (all ‘04 unless noted) are Vickie Duong, Jessica, Jen Lin and Jacinda Mein (front row); Nickisa Hodgson, Karla Bracken, Laena Keyashian and Christiana Rattazzi ’03 (middle row); and Tanya Schmidt ’08, Casey Near ’06 and Courtney Johnson (top row).
2005
Adhir Ravipati received Positive Coaching Alliance’s National Double-Goal Coach Award. He was also one of four coaches selected out of more than 2,000 nominations to be featured on stage at PCA’s National Youth Sports Awards. Adhir is a football coach at Menlo-Atherton High School.
http://bayareane.ws/2qbbpBy
2006
Gail Nakano is a chemist, but has been a volunteer in the San Francisco Symphony Chorus for seven seasons. The symphony did a great video featuring Gail: https://www.facebook.com/sfsymphony/videos/vl.554392084714335/10154570668528292/ ?type=1
The Class of 2006 met for a 10-year reunion in San Francisco just before Christmas. Alumni gathered to enjoy refreshments, appetizers and plenty of festive alumni company at the Thirsty Bear Brewing Company. There were more than 50 people at the event, including faculty members Brian Larsen and Lisa Radice. It was a nice, long evening – folks stayed quite late catching up and enjoying a (only slightly embarrassing) slideshow of archive photos!
2007
Jacqueline Rousseau recently married Tommy Morphet. They met as undergrads at Caltech. Natalie Torban was one of Jacqueline’s bridesmaids.
2008
The Washington Post made a wonderful video featuring employee Emily Chow. Check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqAHf3gMhUo
2009
Chetan Vakkalagadda graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in May. After eight years in St. Louis, he is moving to Chicago in June to start his internal medicine residency at Northwestern.
Stephanie Guo and Steven Tran met up in Copenhagen, Denmark, while he was on a business trip. Stephanie said Steven saw her Instagram post and reached out.
D.J. Blickenstaff’s acting career continues to heat up. He will appear as “Arman” in three episodes of Netflix’s new series, “Dear White People,” which premiered April 28. Check him out in the trailer:
The show can be streamed on Netflix at https://www.netflix.com/title/80095698
Evan Maynard was the alumni speaker at this year’s Harker Research Symposium. Evan works at Blue Origin as a propulsion development engineer. His talk focused on making spaceflight more affordable, as well as the development of reusable rockets. Check him out on the video playlist:
2009
Neha Sabharwal, attending Harvard Law School, is an avid runner and ran this year’s Boston Marathon as part of the Girls on the Run team. Neha became involved with the nonprofit organization seven years ago while an undergraduate student at Duke University in North Carolina, where the organization is based. Here’s a nice article about her: https://www.losaltosonline.com/news/sections/community/177-features/54955-
2010
Several Harker classmates helped Kevin Zhang celebrate his birthday. Pictured left to right are Albert Wu ’12, Stefan Eckhard ’10, Jackie Ho ’10, Kevin, James Feng ’10, Karthik Dhore ’11, Sean Morgan ’10 and Kyu Bok Lee ’08.
Priya Sathaye got engaged! After graduating from Cornell, Priya started grad school at the University of Pennsylvania. She and her fiancé, John, met while running out of their graduate student housing apartments when the fire alarm went off. They ran down 11 floors to the courtyard, and ended up cooking dinner together that evening. John is a Ph.D. student in the mechanical engineering department.
2011
James Seifert found himself on the stage once again with Cecilia Lang-Ree ’13 in Stanford University’s spring mainstage production, “The Wild Party.” James and Cecilia were in “Les Misérables” and “Pippin” together at Harker, and both were in Downbeat. Both will graduate from Stanford this year. Cecilia plans to continue at Stanford, working on her master’s in community health and prevention research.
2013
Pranav Sharma is the editor-in-chief of the Brown Journal of World Affairs (a journal similar to Foreign Affairs), which recently released an issue featuring scholarly work on global populism, India’s developing national identity, and art, identity and conflict (available for purchase at some Barnes & Noble locations).
Maverick McNealy is currently ranked No. 1 on the World Amateur Golf Rankings and is tied with Tiger Woods on the Stanford all-time wins list. He was named one of three finalists for The Ben Hogan Award, given annually to the top male college golfer. It’s the third year Maverick has been nominated; the winner will be named after our press time. He also recently received the 2017 Byron Nelson Award. Read all about it in Harker News: http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8hh
Ashvin Swaminathan was awarded a Soros Fellowship for New Americans, honoring the contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants to the United States. Ashvin was valedictorian and won a number of prizes while at Harker, including being named a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search; he was also a John Near Endowment scholar.
Michael Amick was drafted by Major League Soccer team the Portland Timbers! Read all about it at
http://wp.me/pOeLQ-83J.
Izzy Connell and Ryan Mui got engaged to each other this spring! Huge congrats to both of them. The news emerged at the annual Keller Tour, so the whole group celebrated! Read more about it in the Keller Tour story on the next page.
2015
Sarah Bean will be interning this summer at the studio of Alexander Wang ’98. She will be working in the merchandising department at the Broadway office in Manhattan.
Ayush Midha is still winning debate awards – now as a Harvard student! He and his debate partner won the Rex Copeland Award, which is presented to the top college debate team in the nation. The duo won several invitational tournaments, giving them the best overall record of the year. The award was announced at the National Debate Tournament, held in March at the University of Kansas. Harker debate coaches Greg Achten and Jenny (Alme) Achten (yes, they recently married!) attended the tournament and were very proud to see Ayush receive the Copeland and make it to the quarterfinals of the tournament. “It is a ton of fun to watch our alums debate so successfully at the collegiate level,” said Jenny Achten. Greg Achten added that Ayush’s debate achievements are especially laudable alongside his rigorous pre-med course of study.
2016
Elisabeth Siegel has had her Harker Mitra grant paper, titled “Ideology through Subliminal Propaganda: A Critique of Portrayals of Palestine and Palestinians in Israeli and Western Online News Media during Operation Protective Edge,” published by Yale Review of International Studies! Read more at Harker news: http://wp.me/pOeLQ-8gh
Andrew Zhu ’14, a junior at NYU, was recently recognized with All-Academic honors by the United Volleyball Conference. This is the second year in a row that Zhu has received this award. This season, his team won its first UVC title, as well as made its first trip to the NCAA D3 volleyball tournament and finished the season ranked No. 7 in the nation. While at Harker, Zhu was a three-time captain and MVP. Congrats Andrew!
This article first appeared in the summer 2017 Harker Magazine
1985
Judge John Owens visited Harker’s lower school to speak to third graders about his career and take questions from the students. See our profile of John on page 16.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2017 Harker Magazine.
The annual alumni tour of Butch Keller, upper school division head, and his wife, Jane, upper school math teacher, began in March with a trip to Southern California to watch Izzy Connell ’13 in her final track meet as a Pepperdine student and have dinner with the rest of the Harker alumni at Pepperdine.
Josh Tien ’13 and Alisa Wakita ’16 joined the Kellers and Connell for dinner the next evening where the group celebrated Connell’s engagement to Ryan Mui ’13, who had proposed that day. Mui is currently at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. “It’s a great opportunity to get to know Mr. and Mrs. Keller on a more personal level,” said Connell.
The East Coast leg of the Keller Tour started with several fun-filled days in New York City. At their next stop, New Haven, Conn., the Kellers met up with Alyssa Amick ’15 for lunch and a tour of the Yale campus. They then had dinner with other Yale students at Elm City Social.
In Ann Arbor, Mich., the Kellers toured the University of Michigan campus with Sheridan Tobin ’15, followed by lunch with Tobin and Arjun Ashok ’15 at the famous Zingerman’s Delicatessen. Dinner that night with other Harker alumni attending Michigan brought many smiles and plenty of laughter. “The sense of community at Harker has always been so special,” said Tobin, “and the Keller Tour was the perfect reminder of that.”
The final stop brought the Kellers to the University of Washington. Sean Pan ’14 met the Kellers for lunch and a tour of the UW campus. “I was very glad to have gotten dinner on the Keller Tour at least once during my four years in college!” said Pan.
Though it was a rainy trip, noted Jane Keller, “the weather could not dampen the joy in seeing our alums fulfilling their dreams in the next phase of their education.”
Search for “Keller Tour” in Harker News for more details on this annual journey!
Congratulations to Izzy Connell ’13 on being named a CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) third team Academic All-American this week. Connell graduated from Pepperdine University this spring as a psychology major with a 3.96 GPA. She also was the school’s top female sprinter in the program’s history, holding nine school records, and was named Pepperdine’s Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year for the 2016-17 season. Check out the full story here:
This article originally appeared in the winter 2016 Harker Magazine.
Two Class of 2015 alumnae have taken their passion for food and journalism to new levels with In a Nutshell Food, a YouTube channel they created.
Fred Chang and Priscilla Pan have been making how-to videos of delicious foods while pursuing their academic dreams in California and abroad. Pan attends the University of Southern California, where she is studying biomedical engineering with a mechanical emphasis. “I’m also planning to minor either in entrepreneurship or computer science, two subjects that I think will greatly complement my engineering background,” she said.
Chang is attending Yale-NUS in Singapore. She is considering a politics, philosophy and economics major with concentrations in philosophy and economics. “On top of that, I’m a computer science minor – strictly speaking, a mathematical, computational and statistical sciences minor with a focus in computer science,” she said. Before graduating from Harker, the friends began making fun food videos under the name In a Nutshell Food – and then opportunity knocked. “Our journalism teacher, Ms. [Ellen] Austin, was always a huge supporter of In a Nutshell Food,” said Pan, “and when the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) award season rolled around, she encouraged basically everyone to submit their work – articles, videos, photos, etc.”
The pair earned a first-place prize for their video, giving momentum to what was already a fun project. Chang was surprised when she heard the results. “I had no words. It was really nice to have the affirmation that we were indeed doing a good job, especially because it was mostly just for fun,” she said.
The duo had posted 29 videos as of mid- October, and the effort to keep the pipeline full while in college has been a labor of love. “We knew we’d always want to continue making videos,” said Pan. “Especially the summer after our junior year, when many others were attending summer internships and research positions, we were in the kitchen filming and cooking.”
Though Pan and Chang opted to monetize their YouTube channel by allowing ads, they continue to be motivated by the purest desires – good journalism and good food. “At the core of it all,” said Pan, “we started making food videos because as journalism students, we really enjoyed writing, photographing and taking videos of our niche, which was food. I especially love feeding my creativity by coming up with unique ways to film our videos.”
Chang agreed the payoff is in doing something they love. “I don’t know how else to say it: food is my life’s passion,” she said. “Food videography for me is the most wholesome format of sharing my love for food online. If I had enough money to survive on for the rest of my life, I’d just spend my time engaging with food media and eating and cooking. All of the improvement and self-learning is indeed great, but I don’t need any extrinsic motivation because this is how I would spend my time anyway.”
This summer’s videos covered a variety of foods, based on season, upcoming holidays and food trends. “We have a lot of current food trends (like smoothie bowls),” said Pan, “our favorite baked goods, easy back-to-school meals, drinks, etc. We want to keep some stuff a secret!”
“Subscribe to our channel to find out!” Chang said. What’s next for In a Nutshell Food? “We’re definitely going to continue producing biweekly cooking videos along with vlog channel videos through the end of 2016 and most likely through our sophomore year of college,” said Pan. “But our future plans might still change.”
Chang is also hopeful but practical. “For now it’s really more of a let’s-try-to-make-it-happen thing, but there isn’t much of a longterm plan beyond the semester.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2016 Harker Magazine
1992 Jamil Valliani was promoted to partner at Microsoft, where he leads product teams in the U.S. and China working on Microsoft’s search team. He is most known as the product leader for Bing image search, video search and home page. These products touch more than 100 million users and serve billions of searches every month. Jamil enjoys traveling around the world and is an active volunteer in the Seattle community. Jamil is in touch with Iliya Pesic (now chairman of Silvaco).
1996 Yong Joon Yoo and his new wife dropped by Harker to tour the campus and reminisce with Joe Rosenthal during their honeymoon trip to the Bay Area.
1997 Edward Hong and his wife, Jenny Chung, attended the Harker Family & Alumni Picnic, caught up with Joe Rosenthal, and then returned to the Saratoga Avenue campus so Eddie could take a tour with Karri Baker ’84, alumni director, and reminisce about his years spent in the Harker dorms. Eddie said, “Harker will always be a special place for me. You guys nurtured and parented me in the most evil ages of adolescence. How can I forget about it? You really made me who I am now.”
2002 Isabella Liu worked on the Hillary Clinton campaign as a field organizer in Florida. She first got involved in January and played a key role in San Francisco during the California primary. Though she had the option to organize in the Bay Area and battleground states like Virginia, she chose Florida, which was the biggest, most influential swing state.
2003 We are sad to report that Sparsh Bhargava passed away on Oct. 28 of natural causes while on a business
trip to Germany, just four days after his 31st birthday. Sparsh left Harker after grade 5, when his family moved to Boston. Also attending Harker at that time were his brother, Samarth ’06 and cousin, Shivani Bhargava ’06. His obituary states, “His name means ‘touch,’ and he lived every day with a mission to enrich people’s lives: family, friends and the less fortunate. We are better people and the world is a better place because of him.” A memorial fund has been established, geared toward touching children’s lives: https://www.youcaring.com/childrenseducation-683341#. For the full obituary: http://joycefuneralhome.tributes.com/obituary/show/Sparsh-Bhargava-104105361
2005 Hillary Brooks married Andrew Lawrence on Aug. 27 at the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. The couple met while studying abroad in China. The wedding was a mini reunion for Harker classmates. According to Joan Brooks, mother of the bride, “Though miles have often separated the group with their college choices and careers since their 2005 Harker graduation, it’s so wonderful that they have worked at remaining very good friends.” Heartiest congratulations to the happy couple! Pictured left to right (all ’05 unless noted): Eric Gavarre, Katie (Ball) O’Leary, Mariama Eghan, Yagmur Ilgen, Hillary, Andrew, Erika Gudmundson, Genna Erlikhman ’09, Estelle Charlu and Boris Fedorov.
2007 Harker alumni based in New York City stopped by Webster Hall on Oct. 24 to support the band Letters From The Fire, featuring Mike Keller. The band toured across the country until Nov. 9 promoting its new album, “Worth the Pain.” Letters From The Fire started at Harker as the band Park Lane, which was a regular contestant in Harker’s annual Battle of the Bands. Pictured left to right (all ’07 unless noted): Anna Huang, Siobhan Stevenson, bassist Clayton Wages, Mike, Jessica Lee, Gwynne Davis ’08 and Chanelle Kasik.
Jason Martin is the new owner of Sal’s Pizza in Campbell, and he’d love to have Harker alumni and current families stop by to eat. Alumni parent Tina Najibi said, “My family has been ordering pizza from Sal’s ever since I first ate a slice at a Harker event when my kids (now both graduated) were in the lower school. It is, in my opinion, the best pizza in the Bay Area! Their calzones are the best that I’ve tried anywhere.”
2009 Ryan Tam married Stephanie Wang in a beautiful ceremony in Palo Alto in August. Ryan and Stephanie met at USC and are now living in the Bay Area. According to class agent Stephanie Guo, “It was a beautiful occasion and a wonderful reunion.” Ryan added, “It was great celebrating the big day with old friends, K-Life!” Pictured left to right (all ’09 unless noted): Nate Kwok, Andy Yee ’08, Jonathan Liu ’09, Andrew Chin, Marcus Wong, Ryan, Stephanie, Kyle Hall, Stephanie Guo, Winny Huang and Khwaab Dave.
Jia Jun recently graduated from the University of Washington with her M.S. in bioengineering, and has moved back to the Bay Area. She took a job at Gilead Sciences as a senior research associate. Jia said, “I have been missing all the reunions since I’ve been away (since graduation, actually), and I’ve been finding so many Harker connections recently! My boyfriend started his MBA program at Stanford, and another member of my ’09 class is his classmate, and I unexpectedly found out that my boyfriend’s sister’s college classmate went to Harker as well (Class of ’03). Small world!”
D.J. Blickenstaff’s Hollywood career is on fire! He was cast as “Arman” in Netflix’s “Dear White People,” a 10-episode show based on the 2014 movie of the same name. The show follows a diverse group of students as they attend an Ivy League college where racial tensions are often hidden. The show will air in 2017 and D.J., originally cast for episodes two and eight, was recalled for the finale, episode 10.
A few 2009ers are in graduate school in Boston and managed to get together. Vinay Kumar celebrated his 25th birthday in New York City with Harker friends. Pictured are classmates Manasa Reddy and Veronica Hsieh (first row); Vin, Valerie Hwa, Jackie Ho, Sean Morgan and Lung-Ying Yu (second row); Andy Fang, Arjun Mody and Sachin Mitra (back row).1
Vlad Sepetov was interviewed by Huck Magazine on his iconic and iconoclastic album covers. He is clearly a serious force in album design! http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/vlad-sepetov-designs-album-art-worlds-greatest-hip-hop-artists/
Michael Prutton just finished his master’s degree in medical device and diagnostic engineering at USC.
2012
Sanjana Baldwa is working with a fascinating startup, Go Jane Go, to develop an application that will connect female road warriors in real-time. The company’s motto is, “Business women embracing the experience of #TravelingWhileFemale.” Via in-app messaging, women can “connect with each other for activities to make solo business travel a lot more safe, fun and easy.” Sanjana, who graduated this year from Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied psychology, human-computer interaction and communication design, will be concentrating on her forte, user experience. The website ( http://www.gojanego.com) already has garnered some great blog posts by traveling women.
Pavitra Rengarajan was part of a group of engineering interns who had dinner with Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan at their Palo Alto home in early October. Zuckerberg posted this image on his Facebook page.
2013 Nikhil Panu and his app, Squadz, were among just 10 teams selected to participate in the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures Social Innovation Lab! “In addition to being promising solutions to pressing social issues in the areas of health, education and community development, these ventures and their leaders represent the strength and diversity of Baltimore’s social innovation and entrepreneurship community,” said Darius Graham, SIL director, in the university’s news story. The report noted, “Squadz is a social activity and venue booking platform that connects the community to play pickup sports, while generating revenue for community centers and recreation facilities.”
And in sports news, Nikhil was featured on a Johns Hopkins basketball promotion. Nikhil graduated from Johns Hopkins in three years and is now a post-grad student there.
2014
Mary Liu received the Distinguished Cadet Award at West Point, the United States Military Academy, and was selected for the Omar Bradley Research Fellowship. She ultimately elected to leave the academy to go on a mission trip. Mary is now teaching high school physics, economics and statistics at a school in Weihai, China, and working with the Catholic church as a bible study leader. She promises to keep us posted on her next adventure!
2016 While staffing Hillary Clinton’s national headquarters in Brooklyn, Shannon Hong called in to answer student questions during Cyrus Merrill’s history class. “She is my youngest guest speaker/former student ever!” said Merrill.