Joe Kelly: Hello Classmates It’s been a while since I submitted an update. Diana and I are living happily ever after in New Jersey. We just returned from a trip to Cape May, New Jersey, my first visit there since our epic class party. I am a founder and partner of New View Advisors, now in its 13th year, providing strategic consulting services, valuations, product development and securitization advice for the mortgage industry. 1st Lt. Joe Jr, USMC is currently deployed. He and his wife, Dr. Nicole Kelly, live in California. Our daughter Veronica is a CPA living and working in Chicago. I hope we can somehow someway get together next year!
Jordan Foster: Adjusting to live during the pandemic. Strange times but thankful for family and friends and health. I am in my twelfth year at Marshall Wace (based in our NYC office) and kids are 15, 12 and 10. They’ve a mix of in-person and remote learning. Still in Scarsdale and we have a new home in Water Mill (where we spend this past summer). Meeting Chris McDonald for coffee next week!
Lucinda Duncalfe: Hi Everyone! I’m back in NYC and thought I had retired, but a truly compelling opportunity has me back in the startup game again. This time, in a way that is likely relevant to all of you! I’ve founded a new company called AboveBoard, which is an inclusive platform for executive hiring. The short version is: anyone VP level + can join and see executive and board opportunities–almost 400 already! You can read about it in Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/90565186/landing-a-c-suite-role-or-board-seat-just-got-easier-with-this-high-level-jobs-platform Join using my personal invite code here: platform.aboveboard.com/signup?inviteId=6774bbc3-3055-44d5-a120-135f7513f656 And, if you’re interested, my personal story about it is here: https://www.duncalfe.me/home/were-building-aboveboard-to-change-executive-search-and-thereby-the-world Working on something that has an enormous market opportunity while helping individuals and making the world a better place is pretty fabulous. Especially at this stage in our lives.
Jose Moulin Netto: For the last several years, Christiane has been a philosophy teacher and a volunteer in social impact not-for-profit organizations. She is also finishing a postgraduate degree in Art History. Carolina (26) graduated in graphic design and has been working with film animation. Gabriel (21) is in film school and is (was) working as an actor in plays and in independent films, short and full feature. For 5 years, I was president of a foundation with the mission of developing leaders among 100 thousand civil servants in Rio de Janeiro. I have been developing a consulting practice in Applied Behavioral Science which made me travel often to London, Cambridge, New York and Toronto. One notable project was creating the first government “nudge unit” in Brazil. If interested, check the article below by The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/24/change-thinking-save-lives-rio-nudge-unit-coronavirus
Frank Ganis: It goes without saying that for countless people throughout the world, 2020 has been an extremely challenging year. For me the ordeals started in November 2018. I had just finished a demanding consulting project for a well-established executive search firm about creating an innovative e-learning practice. As the project evolved it became clear that it was a mismatch with the company’s conservative culture and mutually decided with the client to terminate the project. As it turns out it was for the best, because on Thanksgiving Day when my wife Patti, teenage son Gabriel and I were visiting my parents in Reading, Pennsylvania, my Mom who was in relatively good health had to be unexpectedly rushed to the emergency room and almost passed away. After a long hospital stay my Mom was diagnosed with a debilitating blood disorder which needed weekly treatments. With my Mom declining, my Dad who was also in good shape became extremely stressed out triggering a serious cardiac condition. Every single month for the next 18 months either my Mom or my Dad had a long stay in either a hospital or rehab center. Suddenly I was commuting 170 miles between Washington, DC and Reading on a regular basis spending weeks or months in Pennsylvania. With countless weekly doctors’ appointments and treatments, caring for my parents became a full-time job that I could not justify outsourcing. My Dad passed away on April 1st followed by my Mom 53 days later on May 23rd. Thankfully they did not have COVID-19, but it certainly created lots of challenges during their final months, especially with hospital visits. Both of my parents were extremely coherent until their final days. My Dad, known for his great sense of humor, started calling coronavirus World War V (the V standing for Virus), because he had not seen so many shortages and lockdown restrictions since World War II. Reflecting on the past two years I realized that with hectic career challenges and schedules, combined with the dynamic social pace of living in the Philadelphia, New York City, Washington, DC metro areas for almost four decades, many of the values my parents nurtured me with became diminished or lost in the shuffle. Reflecting on the past two years, combined with all of the changes wrought by COVID-19, I have come to realize I need a more balanced approach to life and that my priorities need to be Faith, Family and Friends. I want to thank my many Wharton Friends who somehow stumbled on my parent’s obituaries and reached out to me over the past few months with messages, cards and flowers. I promise to follow up with you over the next few weeks. Also, as I discern my next career move, please let me know if you have any creative ideas.
P.M. Steckmest: Life in Oslo is good. My super wife Esenia is working for Scatec Solar developing solar plants internationally, and my 3 girls (10-10-8) are complaining about school. So all normal. I finally got my son Michael out of his mothers tight fist and sent him to Nova Southeastern as the soccer goalkeeper arriving on August 31st. But on October 3rd (21st birthday) he crashed with his electric scooter and has spent the remainder of his tine in the Memorial Regional hospital with a severe head injury. Will rack up a hospital bill close to USD 1 million – so thank you for the existence of health insurance. He is much better per 30 October and will leave for Norway end of January for rehabilitation. Suddenly the life changed rapidly for him and his father. Stay healthy and hope to see all in May.
Gary Pencer: A lot has happened since my last confession. I now have four wonderful kids. My youngest is three and my eldest just married. My eldest is a data scientist working remotely from Portsmouth, NH, and the rest of us are enjoying Montreal. The two middle kids will both graduate university this year, one in Sports Management, and the other in Engineering, both learning mostly remotely, and the youngest is enjoying real nursery school. We have certainly been impacted by all of this, but have avoided any harm and we all are making do. We were in Palm Beach for school break when this hit and took advantage of the schools and offices being closed to stay and enjoy an extra month of tennis and golf. Since returning, no big trips, and greatly missing traveling with family, and buddy ski trips, etc, but we have been spending lots of time playing tennis, some golf, and tons of swimming and kayaking at a cabin in the countryside. Yes, we’re still out on the lake, even as winter approaches, but we will transition to skiing soon enough. Hopefully, we will also make it to Vermont and to Palm Beach for a month or two during our long winter. Restaurants and Gyms are closed, but the bbq is working overtime, so all is ok. Work? Mostly a disaster. I’m building condos which continues to do well, but our office buildings and retail centres have taken a hit. It could always be worse, and for many it is. Hopefully we will make our way back to sanity, but in the meantime we will just keep on smiling. I hope you are all managing ok, and I’m really looking forward to our 30th reunion in May. If anyone manages to get to Montreal please give me a shout. 🙂
Sean Crotty: I am in my 4th year at enterprise software company VMware, driving Research Operations within their industrial research lab: VMware Research Group.