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.
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.
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.
Harker 2017 graduates Steven Cao, Divya Rajasekharan, Sandip Nirmel, Angela Kim, Andrew Rule, Kai-Siang Ang, David Zhu, Anuva Mittal, Amrita Singh and Albert Xu were named 2017 National Merit Scholarship Winners. Cao, Rajasekharan, Nirmel, Kim, Rule, Ang and Zhu were awarded National Merit $2,500 Scholarships, a one-time prize that can be put toward their studies at any accredited U.S. college or university. Mittal, Singh and Xu received college-sponsored Merit Scholarships, which provide an annual amount of between $500 and $2,000 for up to four years.
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!
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:
Maverick McNealy ’13 was named one of three finalists for The Ben Hogan Award, given annually to the top men’s college golfer. Colonial Country Club, Friends of Golf and the Golf Coaches Association of America take into account all collegiate and amateur competitions over the last year when selecting the finalists. McNealy joins Bill Haas of Wake Forest as the only three-time finalist for this award. The winner “will receive the first exemption into the PGA Tour’s 2018 Dean & DeLuca Invitational, as well as earn a $30,000 grant for its [college’s] men’s golf scholarship program,” according to thebenhoganaward.org.
This is the sixth time a Stanford golfer has made it to the final three for this award, of which only one Cardinal golfer has won.
Among his many accolades, McNealy is currently No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and was recently named the winner of the 2017 Byron Nelson Award.
Ashvin Swaminathan ’13 was just awarded a Soros Fellowship for New Americans.
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans honors the contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants to the United States. Each year, the program provides funding for graduate studies for 30 immigrants and children of immigrants “who are poised to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture or their academic field,” according to the website, which goes on to note that each fellow receives up to $90,000 in financial support over two years.
Swaminathan, a senior at Harvard, is graduating in May with degrees in mathematics and physics. In the fall, he will start his graduate studies in mathematics at Princeton. Other awardees include a jazz trumpeter at The Juilliard School, a printmaker at Yale and a philosophy major at Columbia. Swaminathan was valedictorian for his graduating class at Harker and earned a number of distinctions while still in high school, including being named a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search (now the Regeneron Science Talent Search) and a John Near Scholar Endowment recipient. Amazing work, Ashvin! Best wishes for a continued great career! The photo is from the 2013 Near-Mitra Endowment reception.