Class Notes, Spring 2018


January 30, 2020

Ana Isabel Abad Bagnasco, BA ’17, is currently working as a Latin America researcher at Eurasia Group where she helps her team identify relevant regional trends while closely following the Mexican election, NAFTA negotiations, and Argentina's reform agenda and how it impacts markets.

Josh Altman, BS ’12, is currently a United States Army officer serving in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Ashok Bajpai, BA ’88, is in New Delhi, India, and is the MD of Apollo Hospitals, the country's largest private healthcare provider. He and his wife Rajni have two kids each. They will soon be empty nesters, with their youngest leaving for college this fall.

Earlene Baumunk-Cancilla, BA ’56, has been a docent at the Princeton University Art Museum for nearly 15 years. She lives in town, plays piano, travels and enjoys New York plays and concerts. She worked in government contracting before retirement.

Berk Baycan, BA ’15, has started to work as an analyst at Weber Shandwick Turkey, a leading global communications and consultancy firm headquartered in New York. He has been assisting multi-market clients in finance, energy, aviation, defense and chemical sectors.

Ryan Buffkin, BA ’09, is currently corporate counsel for alternative capital and investments at XL Catlin Ltd., a global reinsurance company. His practice focuses on venture capital and structured financial product transactions.

Alexander Carre, BA ’17, was hired directly from being an undergraduate by Booz Allen Hamilton and is now a management consultant for the federal government in Washington, D.C.

Lisa (Baldesweiler) Casa, BS ’08, is currently an attorney in the Long Island, N.Y., office of Forchelli Deegan Terrana LLP. She focuses her practice on labor and employment issues on the management side.

George Cook, BS ’09, recently graduated with an MBA from Dartmouth where he co-founded a startup. He is currently the CEO of Honeycomb Credit, a platform that allows locally owned businesses to borrow expansion capital from their own loyal customers.

Bob Costello, BA ’76, has spent almost all of his career in investment management. Currently Bob spends his time in Michigan (Grand Rapids & Frankfort) and in the Chicago area, helping people with their personal investments.

Philip “Phil” H. De Turk, BA ’54, PhD ’56, is now living in North Carolina where he retired in 2002. Prior to that he practiced law in Washington State for 50 years having also received his JD from GW.

Ashton DeLano, BS ’17, still lives in D.C. while working as a full-time project analyst for BAE Systems in their Maryland offices. At the same time, he is pursuing a graduate degree in data science full time and intends to finish it by the end of spring 2019.

Guoliang Feng, PhD ’15, is an economist at China Investment Corporation, the sovereign wealth fund of China.

Thomas Fratkin, BS ’17, has been performing behavioral economics research for a D.C. startup called Creative Science Labs. He has also been studying for the GRE, applying to master’s economics programs in LSE & the University of Amsterdam, and has been writing a memoir!

Stephen Geisler, BA ’97, went on to receive a JD from the University of Alabama School of Law and is now in the legal department of BBVA Compass.

Lowell M. Glenn, PhD ’74, is the chair of the Department of Finance and Economics in the Woodbury School of Business at Utah Valley University. He oversees a nationally known PFP Program and Finance degree with high success rates of students taking the CFA exam.

Austin Hansen, BA ’17, is currently employed as a business analyst with Deloitte Consulting LLP and is working on autonomous vehicle policy with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Michele (Walk) Hansen, BA ’12, is now running a software-as-a-service startup that focuses on geocoding and data matching, Geocodio. She is also working on her MBA at Virginia Tech in Falls Church.

Paul Helmkamp, BA ’17, is working as a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch, in Northern Virginia.

Ann Hollingshead, BA ’08, is currently a senior fiscal and policy analyst at the Legislative Analyst's Office, the nonpartisan fiscal and policy adviser to the California Legislature. She covers issues related to the overall condition of the state budget.

Zhaoyang Hou, PhD ’10, is working at Georgetown University in Qatar as an assistant professor of economics.

Molly Jacobs, PhD ’15, was recently hired as an assistant professor at East Carolina University.

Robert King, PhD ’87, is retired after 30 years with the World Bank. He sits on multiple nonprofit boards, provides pro-bono counseling services to nonprofit executive directors and board chairs and is an active volunteer with the National Park Service.

Jason Kofinas, BA ’05, is currently in practice as a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility physician in New York.

Shuyang Liu, MA ’15, is living in Beijing right now, and working in the State Information Center.

Nicole (Wilder) Maaguo, BA ’04, started a boutique tech consulting firm named Cultivate Ink, LLC in November 2017. The firm specializes in project management, product development and customer success consulting.

Giovanni Marquez, BA ’92, supported the World Health Organization/Health Emergencies Programme humanitarian crisis response in northeastern Nigeria.

Gerald Miller, MA ’88,  has been advising healthcare and life sciences executives on mergers and acquisitions integration and performance improvement after retiring as a principal of Deloitte Consulting.

Marjie Mogul, BA ’87, is the senior director of research at the Maternity Care Coalition in Philadelphia, where she evaluates the evidence-base of programs serving at-risk pregnant women and young families. She lives in Audubon, Penn., with her husband and shelter mutts.

Kirt (Nelson) Nilsson, BA ’92, is COO of Charter School Capital, a niche financing organization empowering charter schools across the nation through working capital and facilities financing. He is actively involved in Social Venture Partners Portland to get every kid ready for kindergarten.

Paul Organ, BS ’14, is in the first year of a PhD program at the University of Michigan, studying economics and business, and planning to focus in public finance.

Jason Peuquet, BA ’09, received an MPP degree from Harvard University in 2016 and has since been working as a senior economist at the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. He uses the economics principles he learned at GW every day.

Solomon Polachek, BA ’67, is a SUNY (Binghamton University) distinguished professor. His recent article in the Journal of Health Economics on “Why Babies Might Benefit From Looking Like Their Dads” was featured in the Wall Street Journal and other publications.

Melissa Pollak, MA ’79, worked at the National Science Foundation (NSF) for almost 30 years and retired in 2010. At NSF, she wrote chapters of the NSB report “Science & Engineering Indicators,” specializing in public attitudes toward and understanding of science.

Troy Quast, BS ’95, is in his third year as an associate professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health.

Ahmed Rostom, PhD ’16, earned his PhD in economics from GW after six years of continuous hard work and joined the World Bank to contribute to bringing prosperity to the poor and most vulnerable across the globe.

Kavi Sagunarthy, BS ’02, is a general dentist in private practice. He established his practice in 2011 in Fort Mill, S.C.

Steven (Ira) Shapiro, BA ’86, is practicing food and drug law as counsel to Rivkin Radler LLP in New York City.

Cornelia “Cornie” J. Strawser, PhD ’83, retired from the House Budget Committee in 1994 and from editing Business Statistics of the U.S. in 2014. She lives at Goodwin House-Baileys Crossroads and writes letters to the editor when United States economic history is misrepresented.

John Swanson, MA ’87, is working for a defense contractor doing ship acquisition, science and technology for the United States Navy.

Sarra Talib, BA ’04, based in London, has launched and has been managing an innovative advisory programme for agribusiness clients of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), in the bank's Southern and Eastern Mediterranean region.

David Touger, BA ’81, has been practicing criminal law in NY for the past 33 years and is currently a partner in a small law firm.

Xinhao Wang, MS ’17, is applying for a PhD.

Ellen Welsh, BA ’74, is completing her twentieth year as institutional client portfolio manager at Seix Investment Advisors focusing on High Yield bonds.

Noah Yosif, BA ’15, is an economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.