Alumni Celebrations Summer 2016

This article originally appeared in the summer 2016 Harker Quarterly.

Alumni from all classes through 1997 are listed under the years they would have completed grade 8 at The Harker School, Harker Academy, Harker Day School or Palo Alto Military Academy (PAMA). For all classes after the Class of 1997, alumni are listed under the class years they would have graduated from high school, regardless of whether they completed high school studies at Harker. For unlisted classes, we invite you to email alumni@harker.org if you are interested in becoming a class agent or would like to nominate a classmate.  

Please join us in congratulating the following alumni:
Jerome Keene ’96 married Briana Parra last spring. His sister, Rachel Keene ’00, was a bridesmaid, andSteve Blomquist ’96 was a groomsman.

Nicole Lindars ’10 got married on June 4. Her husband is Harker middle school teacher Chris Caruso, who began teaching grade 6 Latin and grade 7 history last year.

Class agent Andrea Miles ’96 and her husband,Gary, had their first baby, Soren Jeffrey Miles, on Dec. 24, 2015.

Christopher Park ’97 and his wife, Kwi Young Sung, welcomed baby Hadley into their family.

Class Notes — Harker School 1992-present –Harker Quarterly Summer 2016

This article originally appeared in the summer 2016 Harker Quarterly

Alumni from all classes through 1997 are listed under the years they would have completed grade 8 at The Harker School, Harker Academy, Harker Day School or Palo Alto Military Academy (PAMA). For all classes after the Class of 1997, alumni are listed under the class years they would have graduated from high school, regardless of whether they completed high school studies at Harker. For unlisted classes, we invite you to email alumni@harker.org if you are interested in becoming a class agent or would like to nominate a classmate.  

1993
Kristen (Nielsen) Morgensen works at Harker’s middle school as a grade 8 biology teacher. Recently, her students presentedhands-on ecology activities to their younger pals at Harker Preschool (for the full story, see page 14). Kristen is also a current preschool parent (3-year-old Teagan).

1994
Jason Reid stopped by the upper school to catch up with Joe Rosenthal, Harker’s executive director of advancement. Jason said he has known Mr. Rosenthal since he was 5 years old. He also reported that his brother, AJ ’04, recently had his first baby, a boy named Evan.

1996
Jerome Keene got married. Please see the Celebrations section for details. Andrea Miles had a baby. Please see the Celebrations section for details. Sheila Collins and her husband, Mike, are enjoying spending time with their 10-month-old twins, Alex and Theo.

1997
Congrats to Will Jarvis of Jarvis Estate Winery in Napa, who was recently promoted from vice president to president of his family’s winemaking business.

2004
Kudos to Vivek Saraswat, whose group Halfway to Midnight won the 2016 Bay Area Harmony Sweepstakes Regional A Cappella Festival!

2006
Roshni Mehra wrote in with some exciting updates. She is now the external relations donor stewardship and communications manager at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She also recently got married and, prior to that, went to Cabo with some fellow Harker ’06 girls for her bachelorette party. For her honeymoon this summer, she’ll be traveling to Italy, Greece and Croatia!

2007
Lower school English teacher Kate Shanahan recently met up with VyVy Trinh. VyVy is currently attending the Harvard Graduate School of Education, with plans to go on to medical school. “VyVy was in my class the second year I taught at Harker. She loved to learn, was excited about literature, and always had a big smile on her face! Her enthusiasm for life was so contagious. I realized that year that Harker was such a special place, and that if all my students had a little bit of VyVy in them, that I would stay here quite a long time. It’s been 18 years now,” shared Kate.

2008
Tiffany Liou spent the last two years in Iowa and Illinois working as a reporter. In March, she moved to Oklahoma City and is now a news reporter at the CBS affiliate KWTV News 9. “It’s been a whirlwind moving from one state to another, but for me it’s the best way to travel the United States while following my dream. For those who don’t know the TV industry, Oklahoma City is a step up in market size from my last job. I’m slowly moving my way up and hopefully back to the Bay Area one day. I would love nothing more than to be a reporter in my home state. Truly, this career change is the best decision I’ve made for my life,” she said. Check out Harker News for a previous story about Tiffany: https://staging.news.harker.org/alumna-passionate-about-career-as-broadcastjournalist/.

2009
Sanaz Oskouy shared that she just graduated from Duke University School of Law and is looking forward to the next Class of 2009 reunion.

2010
Nicole Lindars got married. Please see the Celebrations section for details. Alexander Miller just graduated from Cal Poly in computer science.

Kelsey Chung is entering grad school at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Kelsey is pursuing her master’s in art history. She will be moving to New York this summer, and would like to connect with any alumni living in the area.

Mark-Phillip Pebworth won the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship.

2011
In May, Swetha Repakula joined IBM as a member of its open source cloud team. Here she is featured in an IBM blog about her current work: https://www.cloudfoundry.org/welcome-tothe-ibm-dojo/.

Harker upper school math teachers Gabriele Stahl and Anthony Silk recently went to Napa Valley to visit Mike Patland, who had invited them up for a private tour of his family’s estate and vineyard. “It was a fantastic afternoon. Mike is such a fine young man. I had him in calculus. To see him again was really special. He is now managing and growing the family wine business,” recalled Ms. Stahl.

Michael Prutton just finished his master’s in medical device and diagnostic engineering at the University of Southern California.

Michelle Markiewicz was part of a student team from the University of California, San Diego’s department of urban studies and planning who came up with a winning formula for redoing a nearby commercial property. She and her team were featured in an article in the April issue of the San Diego Metro Magazine, highlighting their accomplishments.

2012
Chun Man Chow was a runner up for the University of California, Berkeley’s prestigious University Medal, an honor that requires a 3.96 grade-point average and goes to a graduating senior who is seeking to make a difference in people’s lives. Chun just graduated from the university with a double major in chemical engineering and environmental engineering.

2013
In mid-March Amy Johnson spent a day visiting the upper school as part of a research assignment she is doing as a current student at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. “I was enrolled in an education class for which I had been asked to conduct a school visit. This visit helped give me hands-on experience in understanding the theories we had been discussing in class,” she explained.

Cecilia Lang-Ree was recently named Reserve National Champion in the Collegiate Cup Novice Equitation on the flat division (second place in the nation) at the 2016 Intercollegiate Horse Show Association National Finals. She was at the nationals as a member of the 2016 Zone Champion Stanford Equestrian Team.

The spring sports season proved to be very good for a pair of alumnae athletes! Ashley Del Alto gained attention as the starting left fielder for the Briar Cliff University Chargers and was named a GPAC/Hauff Mid-America Sports softball player-of-the-week. The Chargers went 4-0 in one week, thanks in large part to Ashley, who went 8-15 with seven RBIs in four victories. She is currently leading Briar Cliff with a .338 batting average.

A little closer to home, Izzy Connell has been tearing up the track and the record books at Pepperdine University. Izzy broke her own school records in the women’s 100-meter (12.13 seconds) and 200 (24.96 seconds), placing fifth and sixth, respectively, at the Bruins Legends Invitational, held recently at the University of California, Los Angeles. She also holds the school record in the 400.

2014
Congrats to Anika Ayyar who recently launched The Sheroes Project, an interactive, online video talk show to showcase inspirational stories of women in technology. Enjoy her first episode: http://bit.ly/1VkXWkm.

2015
The cast of the Harker Conservatory’s spring musical “Bye Bye Birdie” had a nice surprise when alums Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari, Madi Lang- Ree and Caroline Howells visited a rehearsal and led the warmup routine. All three are graduates of the musical theater certificate program at the Harker Conservatory and continue to be active in the arts now that they are in college.

Fred Chang and Priscilla Pan are spending their summer expanding an award-winning journalism video project they began at Harker. Enjoy their first “In a Nutshell” project at http:// bit.ly/24i8yRh.

(Photo) These longtime buddies – all “lifers” except one who started Harker in grade 1 – reunited after the completion of their freshman year of college. From left: Sarah Bean, Sheridan Tobin, Delany Martin, Madi Lang-Ree, Zoe Woehrmann and Alyssa Amick.

2016
Congratulations to the Class of 2016 on your graduation and welcome to the Alumni Association! We look forward to hearing updates from you.