Alumni at Large 2010.03
Grover Wickersham '67 is Chairman of S&W Seed Company. As the magazine goes to press he is taking the company public on NASDAQ. S&W is a 30 year-old alfalfa seed company in Five Points, in California's Central Valley. It sells its products nationally and internationally, including to Mexico, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia (www.swseedco.com). Grover anticipates using the company as a platform for other activities, including growing and processing stevia leaf. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley, Harvard Business School, and Hastings College of Law. His son Eric graduated from Stevenson in 2002 and his niece, Elizabeth Wickersham is a member of the Stevenson Class of 2012.
Richard Zahm ’77 is Principal and Portfolio Manager at Second Angel Fund. He is also Portfolio Manager with Whole Loan Traders which specializes in turnarounds and workouts, and distressed real estate assets and companies in the greater New York City area.
Mark Pocock ’88 lives in Alpine, Utah with his wife and their four children ages 13, 10, 7, and 1. He is CFO with Wavelink (www.wavelink.com), a wireless communication software company specializing in devices such as barcode readers. His company employs 80 people and services major retailers such as FedEx, Toys R Us, and Amazon. He earned Bachelor and Master degrees in Accounting from Brigham Young, and spent two years serving his church in missionary work, in France.
Elliott Easterling ’89 is CEO at Surgery.com LLC; President at Echo Prospects, a leading website and web service incubator; and co-founder and Chairman at Red Bricks Media, which specializes in search engine optimization and marketing; online, database, and email marketing; and media planning and landing page optimization. The mission at www.surgery.com is to build the most complete and informative surgery resource on the internet; it was founded on the simple idea that everyone should have easy access to quality, doctor-reviewed content related to surgical procedures and related topics.
Laura Gorman Chernova ’90 is Senior Investment Adviser at StanCorp Investment Advisers, in San Francisco. Prior to that and for 13 years she worked as a Wealth Manager and Financial Planner at Wetherby Asset Management. She is a Certified Financial Planner and specializes in Employee Stock Option, Education, and Retirement Planning. Her education includes a BA in Sociology with an emphasis in law from UC Davis. She lives in Sausalito with her husband Vladimir and son Alexander.
Miguel Ridolfi ’92 works with Common Vision (www.commonvision.org) to create real changes in health, hunger, environmental justice, and climate change through education and on-the-ground community action in communities across California. Its mission is to cultivate dynamic leaders in sustainability practice and education, and to support schools and neighborhoods to transform their landscapes into edible orchards. In the last 6 years, the Fruit Tree Tour Program has directly impacted 45,000 students and has transformed over 150 low income schools and community centers into abundant orchards with the planting of over 3,500 fruit trees. Short videos can be seen at http://commonvision.org/harvestrhythm/harvestrhythm.php?categories=Fruit%20Tree%20TV; a six-minute version of the Emmy Award Winning documentary “Fruit Tree Tour” can be seen at http://www.commonvision.org/programs/fruittreetour/fruittreetour.php.
Matt Miller ’94 is an orthopedic surgeon specializing in hips and knees. He will finish his fellowship at Chicago's Rush Hospital in August, where he is learning to do minimally invasive joint replacements, and has accepted a position as a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and as a surgeon at Stanford Hospital. He will also be associated with a Stanford-sponsored orthopedic clinic that is currently being established in Los Gatos. His wife Stephanie is a neonatologist and will be working at the Stanford Hospital as well.
Ryan Flagg ’95 owns Flagg Industries (www.flaggindustries.com), a real estate development, management, and construction company in Salinas, CA that is focused on assisted living projects for the elderly. He is a member of the Monterey County Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council, the Pebble Beach Community Emergency Response Team (C.E.R.T.), and the Pebble Beach Community Services District (PBCSD). Ryan earned a BS degree in Construction Management from the College of Architecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He and his wife Marni have a daughter, Merelle Frances.
Kestrin Pantera ’97 married Jonathan Grubb on April 2, 2010 at The Wedding Rock at Carmel River State Park. Erin Schelcher ’97 performed the marriage ceremony and Michelle Storkan ’97 was in attendance. Michelle is in her second year of medical school at St. Louis University. Kestrin moved to Los Angeles in 2003 after returning from Taiwan, where for two years she taught English and learned Chinese. She plays electric cello in a band and makes television commercials, among other endeavors in the entertainment industry. Erin Miller Crum ’97 came in from Idaho to compete as an invited elite runner in the recent Big Sur International Marathon. She finished third in a field of 1500 or so female runners behind runners from New York and Colorado. A protégé of Cleve Thayer and Catherine Powers, Erin helped the Stevenson girls win their first CCS cross country championship in the fall of 1996 and went on to found the triathlon team at Stanford, from which she graduated in 2001.
Willy Schaeffler ’00 and his brother Cory Schaeffler ’05, will graduate in June with International MBA degrees from the University of Denver. They and a friend recently participated as a team in the D.U. + CTAM (Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing) competition, aimed at developing solutions to issues affecting the cable industry, one of which is the decreasing use of cable by young people (who choose instead to use other forms of TV). Their team placed second among fourteen teams from D.U.’s Daniels School of Business.
Katrina Cornell ‘02 is a substitute teacher in Jackson, WY and is hoping to be full-time next year. She is a River Guide in Idaho and Oregon during the summer. She has a B.S. degree in Physics and Geology, and an M.S. degree in Geology from MIT. Austin Krissoff '02 took a break from his responsibilities as a 1st Lieutenant with the U.S. Marine Corps to visit teacher and water polo coach Jim Fannin and catch up on life at Stevenson. He is on his way to his next assignment, in Washington, D.C., which will include graduate studies at one of The Capital's universities.
It’s hard to keep up with Katie Kohn ’03 but we’ll give it a shot. We do know that in the fall she will be at Harvard as a fully funded PhD candidate in film and visual studies, that is to say “film philosophy,” and as a teacher of undergraduate film courses. Prior to that and for the past few years she was in graduate school studying film, media studies, and philosophy at King’s College (London) where she earned an MA in film and cultural studies, and at the European Graduate School, in Switzerland. Oh yes, and before that she spent her undergraduate years at NYU. She says she’s on a full-time academic track now, and that this passion she has is all the fault of her Stevenson experience. After all, she says, she could’ve been a hedge fund manager or something. : )
Brett Cornell ’04 graduated recently from Harvard and at last report is deciding between MIT, Berkeley, and Cal Tech to continue his studies toward a PhD in high energy particle physics.
Lok Ka Yeung ’07 is in his junior year at The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania. He is studying finance and is a member of the 150 year-old Penn Glee Club. He met with a group of Stevenson students from the east coast college tour who attended the Glee Club’s spring concert at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
Emily Talley ’08 earned Athlete of the Week at CU Boulder for her success as a member of the golf team. She finished in 6th and 3rd place in the BYU and CU Mountain View Invitational’s respectively. Her third-place finish is just the 24th top-three finish in University history and her two top-ten finishes give her seven in her career, which ties her for fourth most in CU history. And she’s only a sophomore. Fiona Corner ’08 is in her sophomore year at Lewis & Clark and is majoring in International Affairs. She is active in her church and was recently chosen as the National Catholic Student Coalition 2010 Western Region Chairperson. She is also a leader of the campus Newman Club (http://www.catholic.org/prwire/headline.php?ID=8691) (http://www.sentinel.org/node/10981). Tyler Rosa ’08 has been a standout member of the football and baseball teams at Dickinson College. He was recently selected to the 2010 All-Centennial Conference baseball team, for which he started all 34 games and hit .287 with 19 RBIs, eight doubles, a triple, and a pair of home runs.
Victor Atkins ’09 transferred to The Colorado School of Mines where he is working very hard and studying Petroleum Engineering. Vivian Hui ’09 writes that she is studying biochemistry at UCLA and is enjoying the University immensely, although she misses the training runs with the track team along 17-mile drive and to the gate beyond Poppy Hills