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.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2016 Harker Magazine.
Class of 1982
Dana Lurie married her best friend of 10 years, Dalila Vargas, on Oct. 22. Janean Mariani and Michele Magboo, along with their husbands, helped Dana and Dalila celebrate the day. In 2015 the couple spent two months driving around the country in a camper van, visiting as many national parks as possible. Dana is looking forward to the 35th reunion and seeing as many classmates as possible! Pictured with Dana and Dalila is Janean.
Liz Robertson reports that she and her husband, Keil Albert, are active supporters of their son’s parent participation school, Stevenson PACT in Mountain View. Keil works with the parent education committee and Liz with the garden committee. In past years Keil also has taught science. Keil is a volunteer golf coach at First Tee of Silicon Valley and is celebrating his 22nd year at Geoconsultants in San Jose, locating water well sites and designing production wells. Liz is celebrating her 12th year at SciGene in Sunnyvale, applying her marketing skills and running the company, which manufactures instruments and reagents for genetic testing, for the president/owner, who lives in Pasadena. “Our new ‘favorite’ vacation destination is Austin, Texas, which we visit twice a year since my parents and brother relocated there about 10 years ago,” Liz reports. “We love to swim, golf, go to waterparks and attend concerts in my parents’ new home city of Georgetown, an Austin suburb, which has the ‘Most Beautiful Town Square’ in Texas. We are all looking forward to a Christmas cruise with my folks and my brother’s family (10 in all) to the Caribbean. We have our Stingray City/Dolphin Adventure shore excursion in Grand Cayman already booked! I am also the webmaster for the California Groundwater Association.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2016 Harker Magazine.
Robyn Stone is the STEM specialist at Harker Preschool. The tireless Stone represents the preschool on Harker’s Green Committee, co-chairs the three buddy programs – STEM Buddies, Math Buddies and Eco Buddies – is on the preschool/kindergarten academic committee, and is the preschool’s math coordinator.
Her community participation isn’t confined to Harker, though; she volunteers with Second Harvest Food Bank, the Center for Food Safety and the Pesticide Action Network. A native of Illinois who lives in Los Gatos with her husband and son, Stone reflects on a few interesting topics for Harker Magazine.
What is the one thing in the world you would fix if you could wave a magic wand?
I would eliminate pollution from all of Earth’s water, land and air.
What makes you feel like a kid again?
Eating ice cream.
What are you obsessed with?
Farmers markets! I am a regular at the Los Gatos Farmers’ Market. Whenever I travel, I seek out the farmers markets to find local, seasonal produce. The best market is in Nice, France.
What are you doing when you feel most alive?
I feel most alive hiking on top of a mountain, sitting under a canopy of trees or swimming in the sea.
What is your most treasured memory?
My most treasured memory, so far, is of snorkeling in Hanauma Bay with my son.
What is something interesting about you that almost no one knows?
During my tenure as the editor of the Old Pueblo Trolley newsletter, I also became a certified
This article originally appeared in the winter 2016 Harker Magazine.
By Casey Near ’06
Know yourself, know the colleges, know the process. That three-pronged approach has been the foundation of Harker’s college counseling process since the department formed nearly 15 years ago when the upper school was opened. At the department’s inception, Harker hired counselors with solid college admissions experience and, as the student body expanded during the first four years, filled out a team of counselors with a range of university counseling backgrounds.
The college counseling office is now run by Nicole Burrell, who started with the office when the upper school opened. During the past 15 years, the department has successfully guided students into higher education around the world, from the University of California system to universities in the United Kingdom and Asia.
Counselors help with the minutia that occupies students as they fill out forms and scrutinize university Curricula, but ultimately the counseling job is about teaching a process that will help students make good decisions – and that process, at its best, is rooted in a student’s self-reflection.
Know Yourself
Burrell and her team begin working with students in their junior year, a full calendar year before college application deadlines. Their efforts aim to ensure that, in the yearlong process, students will reflect deeply on what they want in a university education. “This is not something you just check off the list,” cautioned Burrell.
When students walk through their doors, the counselors urge them to not let high school and the college application process just happen to them. At this time, in particular, students must take ownership of their education, Burrell noted. Ideally, the student drives the learning process, while the parents serve as the guardrail, explained Martin Walsh, one of the four counselors on the team.
Know the Colleges As senior year approaches, counselors guide students to finalize their lists of colleges and universities where they feel they may thrive. Andrew Quinn, another counselor, said this is his favorite part of the process – introducing students to “possibilities beyond the schools they’ve heard of that could be a good fit.” Burrell said the students’ visions become reality as they expand their lists and, due to the reflection that takes place in the process, the students begin to develop their unique voices, which they share in their applications.
Know the Process
Starting in their junior year, students attend a weekly college counseling class, an original and comprehensive cornerstone of Harker’s college counseling program. Seniors then have regular meetings with their counselor, and the counselors have drop-in hours for all seniors. In addition, throughout the fall, college representatives come to campus to speak to students to help them make decisions. This year, nearly 75 colleges visited Harker, giving students a chance to better understand the broad range of college options available to them.
“This [counseling process] is the stuff that’s on the dream list of 99 percent of the high school college counselors I talk with,” said Walsh. With a caseload of fewer than 50 students per counselor, Harker’s ratio is well below most private schools; coupled with the availability of counselors, a college counseling class built into seniors’ schedules, and the carefully developed process, the program is built for student success. The Harker college counseling program is “the gold standard,” said Lauren Collins, a former Harker college counselor who has worked in college admissions and at many independent schools. “The counselors take time to analyze both local and national historical data, meet with families with great care and patience, and maintain important relationships with college admission colleagues – all while keeping the individual student at the front of this layered, dynamic and complicated process,” Collins added.
The counselors hope students will walk into their offices knowing this is a more organic process than they may have thought when they were freshmen – that it’s more about introspection than playing a perceived admission game. Padding accomplishments and joining clubs won’t guarantee an attractive application. Because each student’s goals are unique, the process will look different for each one, and counselors hope students will learn to follow their deepest interests, digging into what they really want and how they learn best.
Counselors’ Roles
“We’re college counselors, but we really are guides,” said Kevin Lum Lung, a 12-year veteran of the counseling office. “The expectation of a guide is that they’re going to help you, but not do the work for you.” A counselor’s role is to show students all the roads ahead, but students need to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them. Parents also must stay engaged in the process through college parent nights or by attending a counseling meeting with their child to check in.
The process can become stressful when students don’t assume prime ownership of the process, Burrell said. A huge part of senior year is managing the calendar and showing up to college counseling sessions, she added. For the most successful students, the process includes a heavy dose of self-reflection. “Problems arise when you have a college list that makes no sense – too many [schools], or too many ‘reach’ schools,” said Martin, referring to schools that deny a vast majority of their applicants.
Many students and families can rely too heavily on various rankings, so the counseling team encourages students to supplement their research with big questions to encourage reflection about how and in what kinds of communities they learn best, he noted.
Success Defined
With more than 2,000 colleges and universities in this country, what precisely does success look like to Harker’s college counseling department? For Lum Lung, it all comes back to helping students manage the process. “If a student goes through the process with less anxiety than they would have without my help,” that’s success, he said. Plus, in an ideal world, students will learn something about themselves during the journey, added Walsh.
Burrell agreed, noting she hopes students can look back on the final outcome knowing they did everything in their power to choose well, and they don’t look back with any regrets. Sarah Payne ’09 had a particularly fulfilling experience in the college application process. She said that once she realized that the competitive admission process didn’t reflect on her value as a person, she “was able to focus on the qualities of a university that matched my expectations for a positive college experience.”
And when it came time for her younger brother Dwight ’12 to approach the college process, she counseled him “to open his horizons outside of [the] traditional lists during his college application process.” Sarah ended up at the University of Southern California, while her brother chose University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, choices they likely wouldn’t have made without the nudging and reflection encouraged by the counseling department.
Each spring, Lum Lung reminds seniors that they are not defined by their admissions decisions. As Sarah Payne wisely reflected, “Your acceptance letters are not your net worth.” And, when counselors finally send students off to college, Lum Lung said, their best moments occur when they hear how enthusiastic and happy their students are in their new college homes – the truest sign of a job well done.
Following graduation from Scripps College, Casey Near ’06 was an admissions counselor at Mills College and a director at Collegewise, which provides one-on-one counseling for high school students.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2016 Harker Magazine.
Winston Churchill is often credited with saying that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others.” While this quote expresses little esteem for democracy, it shows even less esteem for government in general. Governments are composed of humans; therefore, they are, almost by definition, imperfect. Thomas Jefferson held a similar distrust of governments as expressed by his famous, “That government is best which governs least.”
The country is currently divided, edgy, anxious and cantankerous. In recent years there has been a rise of divisive offense taken on college campuses. Various media are reporting a rise in hate crimes and speech. There is a need to demonstrate that all lives matter. Nations are turning inward. Globalization is on its heels. There are eerie parallels to the early 20th century.
How much of this is predetermined by government? One of the best quotes about government’s impact on the day-to-day activities of the heart comes from the 18th century poet and polymath Samuel Johnson: How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
The couplet asserts that there is a rich panorama of daily life, relationships, work, solitude, community and family that remain untouched by the laws of the land; one can say that these arenas are governed by the laws of life, not man.
Laws or kings do not dictate how kind we are within our communities, or command whether or not we show respect to someone with whom we disagree. Laws or kings do not prevent us from listening a little harder to a perspective with which we disagree, or keep us from showing tolerance to a culture or way of life that is not our own. Laws or kings do not compel us to judge that which is different from us. And laws or kings do not have a final say on whether or not we choose to use hateful, stereotypical, insensitive speech among friends and acquaintances or to strangers.
The greatest moment during the 2016 election, I believe, was when an elderly man stood up to show his support for Donald Trump during a rally for Hillary Clinton in North Carolina that featured President Obama. Whether you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent, Obama’s response was deeply admirable. I mean this completely apolitically.
President Obama asked, no he ordered, his own supporters, who were heckling the Trump supporter, to “Hold up. Everyone sit down and be quiet for a second.” He then added with vehemence (by Obama’s standards), and rather ungrammatically, “You got an older gentleman who is supporting his candidate. He’s not doing nothing.
You don’t have to worry about him.” Obama continued: “First of all, we live in a country that respects free speech. So, second of all, it looks like maybe he might have served in our military and we ought to respect that.
Third of all, he was elderly and we’ve got to respect our elders. And fourth of all, don’t boo, vote.” Obama assumes not only knowledge of the first amendment to the Constitution but a conscious decision to honor it. Laws or kings do not compel us to honor the right to free speech in any given moment – we do. We are not forced to respect our elders or military service, or to show tolerance to a dissenting opinion, as Obama was clearly enjoining his audience to do – but we can choose to.
Tolerance, from the Latin tolerantia, means endure or bear, which takes effort not provided by laws or kings but by our own willpower.
I am not saying that governments have zero influence on the civility and respect shown among their citizens. I am saying that regardless of the general culture surrounding us and our children on the Internet, in the news or even in our neighborhoods, how we treat each other largely remains our choice.
We have what the philosophers of free will call “agency” in the areas of civility and respect. Alexis de Tocqueville, an astute 19th century observer of American democracy, wrote, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Laws or kings do not decide for us whether we are good or not good. We decide, each and every day, with a thousand small acts, thoughts, words. Therefore, each and every day, we also decide whether or not we will be great.
Congratulations to the varsity boys water polo team on being named one of the 29 CIF State Academic Team Champions for the 2016-17 school year. The team GPA of 3.87 was the highest among all boys water polo team in the state. The boys also won the award last year, with a 3.77 GPA, and will receive a banner recognizing this accomplishment again this year. Check out the entire list of State Academic Champions here:
Congratulations to this year’s grade 8 athletes who were recognized at an end-of-year ceremony. These student athletes all participated in at least three sports this past year, while those asterisked played four sports this year. Impressive!
Grade 8 boys:
Marcus Anderson (Athlete of the Year)
Rosh Roy* (Athlete of the Year)
Bayden Yazalina*
Arya Maheshwari
Anton Novikov
Nick Coulter
Gowtham Irrinki
Levi Sutton
Grade 8 girls:
Hunter Hernandez (Athlete of the Year)
Maria Vazhaeparambil*
Anna Weirich*
Dylan Williams
Renee Page
Olivia Guo
In April, rising sophomores Catherine Zhao, Ronit Gagneja, Jeffrey Yang and Michelle Kwan took second place at the Cupertino Hackathon, held at the city’s Quinlan Community Center. During the event, they created an app that helps students organize bike rides, carpools and meetups. Their work was presented to the Cupertino City Council, with the top five teams receiving awards from Cupertino mayor Savita Vaidhyanathan.
About 20 teams competed at the Cupertino Hackathon, during which they spent 13 hours creating projects intended to improve public safety and promote community togetherness. The event also offered many learning opportunities, including workshops on women’s contributions to computer science and leveraging software used by several large tech companies.
They say you can’t go back, but you can – after you’ve graduated college (Harvard!) and been in the work force for a decade – anyway. Karan Lodha ’04 spent the last five months substituting for Harker teacher Cyrus Merrill, who has been out on paternity leave. Lodha taught grade 8 history classes and had his own learning experiences along the way.
“It’s been a thrilling semester learning how to be a guide and a mentor for my students,” said Lodha. “In the first few weeks, there were moments where I felt like an impostor, but I was lucky to have two weeks with Mr. Merrill in which he taught me how to balance sharing my personality with the students, while maintaining the order and discipline necessary to be an effective teacher. Of course, the most rewarding part has been watching my students learn and grow over the last five months.”
Lodha reached a point in his post-academic career where he was looking for a way to contribute more to society. “I’ve often thought about a career transition to teaching,” he said. “Although I enjoyed my experience in the technology industry, I was always searching for a way to have a more direct impact. I fondly remembered my experiences as a student at Harker, and I stayed in touch with some of my former teachers – and it struck me just how much they had shaped my life.”
After a frustrating experience at his last job, Lodha decided to try moving into full-time teaching. He reached out to former teachers, including Bradley Stoll, his former calculus teacher at Harker. “Mr. Stoll was kind enough to arrange for me to come visit Harker to shadow in the history and math departments, which included sitting in on a class with Donna Gilbert (my former AP European History teacher!).
“Spending those two days at Harker made me realize how connected I still felt to the community here. I visited the Harker careers page and, with the encouragement of Ms. Gilbert and Ruth Meyer in the high school history department, I applied to the opening for the long-term substitute to fill in for Cyrus Merrill while he was on paternity leave.”
Once in the classroom, Lodha had to make it all work. “I had two big challenges,” he said. “The first was learning to call my former teachers and coaches – now my colleagues – by their first names! It was awkward for a few weeks, and even now, I have to fight the feeling that I’m being disrespectful, even when I know I’m not.
“In the classroom, the most challenging aspect for me was learning what pace, depth and difficulty was appropriate for my students. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the eighth grade, so I often found myself leaning on my colleagues, especially Ramsay Westgate, a fellow eighth grade history teacher, to get a better grasp of how best to adapt material, homework and tests to make them accessible to all my students. Of course, many of my students weren’t too shy about expressing their own opinions on the matter!”
The return has been rewarding. “The most fun part of teaching at Harker has been being part of the larger community. I’ve loved going to my students’ concerts, performances and sporting events. After all, Harker students are talented in so many ways, and it’s great to see my students express their passions outside the classroom. As a former Harker athlete and debater, I also still feel the pull of the rivalries with other schools from all those years ago!”
Being on the other side of the teacher’s desk has been enlightening and memorable. “Almost every day and every week has something to remember: a student exceeding his or her potential in an unusual way, a particularly creative project or interpretation that caught my eye, or a joke or a moment that had the whole class in laughter,” said Lodha. “My recollection of this semester will be like one of those collages that has many small photos creating a larger one; there may be one or two bigger themes, but it’s those hundreds of individual memories that really build up to what I’ll take into the years of teaching to come.”
And those years will gain traction at Harker. “I was fortunate enough to receive an offer to join the middle school math department next year,” said Lodha, “so I will be transitioning subjects but remaining a part of this wonderful community.”
Second graders and preschoolers participated in a great letter exchange activity this year, called Eaglet Mail Buddies. Mary Holaday’s grade 2 language arts class corresponded with Jocelyn Poplack’s preschool class.
“Since September we have been exchanging letters every month,” said Holaday, who brought her class to the preschool in mid-April to meet their buddies. The two classes did a variety of activities and had an interesting time together.