Sanford N. Katz (CAS’55) of Newton, Mass., is the Darald & Juliet Libby Professor of Law Emeritus at Boston College Law School. The paperback version of his book, Family Law in America 2d, was published in January 2016 by Oxford University Press.
Carroll Parrott Blue (CAS’64) of Houston, Tex., is a filmmaker, an interactive multimedia producer, and a community activist. She collaborated with French composer and multimedia artist Jean-Baptiste Barrière and New York–based composer and interactive artist George Lewis to create Whispering Bayou, an immersive multimedia art installation that features a video triptych and multichannel soundscape composed of sounds, voices, and images of Houstonians and their city. It was recently displayed at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.
Lavinia Kumar (CAS’64, GRS’66) of Plainsboro, N.J., published The Skin and Under (WordTech Communications, 2015), a book of poetry that “explores a body of history through worldwide healers who use natural remedies, magic, potions, special rituals, or the familiar scalpel.”
Hank Davis (GRS’65) of Yonkers, N.Y., coproduced The Sun Blues Box, a boxed set of blues music issued by the German company Bear Family Records. The Sun Blues Box won the 2014 W. C. Handy Blues Music Award for Best Historical Album. Hank is a retired professor of psychology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
David R. Mindlin (CAS’67) of South Daytona, Fla., published How I Recovered From PTSD Due To Child Abuse (B.M.I., Inc., 2014).
Deirdre Dore (CAS’69) of Westbridge, British Columbia, published the short story “The Wise Baby” in Geist magazine. In November 2015, Deirdre won the $10,000 Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, one of the most significant monetary awards given in Canada to a developing writer for a work of short fiction published in a literary journal.
Roy Perkinson (GRS’70) of Framingham, Mass., a painter, showed his work in a solo exhibition at Fountain Street Fine Art in Framingham in September.
Hollie Blaustein (CAS’72) of Stoughton, Mass., recently retired as a special educator at Stoughton High School and has spent the last two-and-a-half years traveling. She and her husband visited all 13 presidential libraries (only 54 others have done this) and received a certificate from the national archives. They also just returned from a weeklong visit to Cuba.
Peter H. Bloom (CAS’72) of Somerville, Mass., a flutist, was artist-in-residence at the Snow Pond Composers Workshop in Sidney, Maine, in June 2015. There, he gave premieres of 11 new works written for the occasion, including music by faculty members Elliot Schwartz, Richard Nelson, and Edward Jacobs, as well as compositions by workshop participants. Peter also presented a lecture in June and multiple demonstrations of historical flutes for the American Musical Instrument Society’s national meeting at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Peter also recently participated in numerous chamber music concerts in Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois, Iowa, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as a variety of performances with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, whose founder and music director is Mark Harvey (STH’71, GRS’83). Contact Peter at phbloom@comcast.net.
Michael Levy (CAS’75) of Andover, Mass., published his second book, Celebrity & Entertainment Obsession: Understanding Our Addiction (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). Michael writes that the book “explains society’s obsession with celebrities and being entertained from a psycho-social-historical perspective.” Contact him at mlevy8@partners.org.
William B. Federman (CAS’79) of Oklahoma City, Okla., is the founder and managing partner of Federman & Sherwood. He and his firm won appeals in the Fifth and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals, establishing guidance for district courts in securities class actions.
Stephen B. Corn (CAS’82, MED’86) of Sharon, Mass., provided testimony on medical education to the Pennsylvania State Senate. With his wife, Meredith Fisher-Corn, Stephen has created courses on topics such as opioid prescribing and medical use of marijuana that have been used by the Massachusetts Medical Society, New York State Department of Health, and the Florida Medical Association. He also writes that the Stephen B. Corn, MD, Massachusetts Alternative and Palliative Care Educational Research Fund has been endowed at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School for advancing education and research.
Jim Haskell (CAS’82) of Ipswich, Mass., published Two Tents: Twenty-one Years of Discovery on the Appalachian Trail (Maine Authors Publishing, 2015), his account of hiking the trail over two decades.
Tom Hayes (CAS’83) of Hollywood, Calif., is senior vice president/head of new media for Paramount Pictures, Inc. He is responsible for new technology, distribution, content, and new media talent for the studio.
Ian Randal Strock (CAS’87,’89) of Brooklyn, N.Y., is ombudsman of American Mensa Region 1 (Northeast Region). He writes, “After two terms as president of Greater New York Mensa (and more years as an editor and membership officer), plus two terms as treasurer of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and getting the Moon Society off the ground, I thought I’d shaken the need to volunteer, but I guess not.” He is also building the publishing company Gray Rabbit Publications/Fantastic Books and working on his writing career. Contact Ian at ianstrock@hotmail.com, and learn more about his publishing company at www.FantasticBooks.biz.
William Cooke (CAS’88) of Madison, Wisc., published the book of poetry In a Haunted Analytic of the Sublime (CreateSpace, 2014). William writes, “Included within the text is a poem about my experience at BU.” Contact him at billcookejr@aol.com.
Kristen Dieffenbach (CAS’92) of Morgantown, W.Va., was named public relations and outreach division head for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, an international professional organization that promotes the field of sport and exercise psychology.
Scott Singer (CAS’93) of Hallandale Beach, Fla., founded Insider Career Strategies, a firm assisting job seekers with every phase of their job search, including coaching and résumé writing, as well as helping small- and medium-sized companies develop and implement their recruitment strategies. Scott can be reached at scott.singer@insidercs.com.
Christian Na (CAS’94, LAW’97) of Somerville, Mass., is the CEO of Pinch!, a new app start-up in Boston, which recently won the Best of Boston College Tech Fest 2015. Users of the app can request any kind of help and be connected to someone who can fulfill the request. Learn more at www.pinchapp.com.
Fadia Nader (CGS’92, SAR’94, CAS’94) of Westlake, Ohio, recently earned a postprofessional Doctor of Occupational Therapy from Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions.
Jeff Takle (Questrom’96, CAS’96) of Somerville, Mass., runs Global Connectivity, which connects medical diagnostic devices to the internet in the developing world. The devices are used to fight infectious diseases like Ebola, tuberculosis, and HIV. “Faster disease information leads to faster health care response and better health outcomes,” Jeff writes. “Global Connectivity has national networks in 23 countries across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.” Jeff’s wife, Heather (March) Takle (Questrom’99), runs mergers and acquisitions at Ameresco, an energy services company in Framingham, Mass. Jeff and Heather have two sons, Grady and Anderson, and a big dog, Buckley.
Jennifer Cleary (CAS’99,’03) and Michael Duda (COM’00) of Brooklyn, N.Y., welcomed their first child, Sophia May Duda, on July 1, 2015.
Jared Jacobson (CAS’99) of Philadelphia, Pa., graduated from St. John’s University School of Law in 2002. After working in New York for a few years, he formed his own law firm, Jared Jacobson Law, in 2009. In January 2015, Jared partnered with attorney and licensed physical therapist Franklin J. Rooks, Jr., and formed Jacobson & Rooks to develop their labor and employment, qui tam/whistleblower, and general counsel legal service practice areas. “We filmed a fun video and were lucky enough to have a review written on it, published in the legal industry’s leading blog Above the Law,” Jared writes. Check out the video, which parodies Lorde’s hit song “Royals,” on the company’s website, www.abovethelaw.com, and contact Jared at jjacobson@jacobsonrooks.com.
Gregory O’Malley (CAS’99) of Santa Cruz, Calif., is the author of Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619–1807 (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). The American Historical Association awarded the book its 2015 Morris D. Forkosch Book Prize for British, British Imperial, or British Commonwealth history and the James A. Rawley Book Prize for Atlantic History. Gregory is an associate professor at University of California Santa Cruz.
Beth Murphy (GRS’99) of Falmouth, Mass., is releasing the documentary film What Tomorrow Brings, about the Zabuli School for Girls in Afghanistan. The Zabuli School provides K–12 education to almost 500 students. Now, along with Afghan activist Razia Jan, Beth is working to create the first college for girls in rural Afghanistan. She founded the production company Principle Pictures in 1999, and has worked on projects all over the globe, often in war-torn areas and developing countries.
Edward Welch (CGS’98, CAS’00) of West Palm Beach, Fla., an associate at the Miami office of the law firm Broad and Cassel, was recently appointed to the advisory board of Florida Atlantic University’s College of Education. Edward is a member of Broad and Cassel’s health law, commercial litigation, construction law and litigation, and real estate litigation practice groups. His work focuses on complex business issues, bankruptcy, consumer transactions, and the construction industry.
Daniel Hoak (CAS’02) of Richland, Wash., writes that he successfully defended his PhD thesis in physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As a graduate student, Daniel worked on the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, a group of scientists seeking to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves from astrophysical events. He plans to move to Pisa, Italy, where he has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study at the European Gravitational Observatory in Cascina.
Dennis Yang (CAS’02) of Boston, Mass., recently completed his doctorate at New York University and started a new position at Boston University as the associate director of BU’s new Gateway Office in Beijing, China. He has also published his first book, The Pursuit of the Chinese Dream in America: Chinese Undergraduate Students at American Universities. You can reach Dennis at dtyang02@bu.edu.
Haig Panossian (CAS’05, MED’08,’12) and Nicole Record (MED’08) of New York, N.Y., were married on September 5, 2015, in Laguna Beach, Calif. They are both resident doctors in New York.
Allison Brown (CAS’06, COM’06) of Louisville, Ky., was selected for the spring 2016 class of Ignite Louisville, “a seven-month program designed for next-generation leaders ready to make a positive impact both in their career and in their community.” Allison is a member of the litigation and dispute resolution service team at the law firm Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs. She represents clients in a variety of cases, including health care litigation, employment matters, and commercial disputes.
Rebekah Roulier (CAS’06, SED’13) of Burlington, Mass., is associate director of Doc Wayne Youth Services, a nonprofit that connects youth through sports. Rebekah writes, “Our organization won the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Sport Award,” which recognizes innovative and collaborative approaches to making healthier communities.
Justin Fyten (CAS’10) of Boston, Mass., opened the small immigration law firm Johnson & Fyten Law Offices in Boston’s Back Bay in March 2015.
Alexandros Papadopoulos (CAS’13) of Cambridge, Mass., is an account manager at EMC, a global IT company. In addition to working full time at EMC, he is the managing partner at Ventus Advisors, a part-time consulting firm he helped start. His partners are Nicholas Sorenson (Questrom’14), Christian Chabaneix (ENG’14), Bradley Sauln (ENG’14), and Jack Gantt (Questrom’17).
Kesia Ryan-Webster (CAS’14) of Washington, D.C., published It Ain’t Easy (CreateSpace, 2015), a collection of short stories about growing up in Washington, D.C. “If you think it’s all memorials and museums, you’re mistaken,” she writes. “This collection explores the everyday lives of those who reside in the city—from the around the way girls and boys in the hood, to the private schools on the privileged side of town. It Ain’t Easy shows one of America’s most talked-about cities in a way it is rarely seen: through the eyes of the people.”
