Class Notes - 2000s

Class Notes - 2000s

2000

Matt Biondi MAT ‘00 teaches math at Parker School, a private middle and high school in Waimea, Hawaii. Biondi, one of America’s most decorated swimmers with 11 Olympic medals, is also the school’s swim coach.

Sandra Brown MAT ‘00 splits her time as principal between Cannon Beach elementary School and Gearhart Elementary School.

Kate Campbell ‘00 interned with the Public Defender service in Washington, D.C., and the Juvenile Rights Project in Portland in 2005. She’s on track to earn a law degree from Northeastern University and a master’s degree in public health from Tufts University School of Medicine in November 2006. 

Emily Payne Davis ‘00, MAT ‘02 and her husband, Jason Davis, moved back to Virginia from Hawaii in 2004 and are now teaching middle school in Orange, Virginia. Emily teaches sixth-grade language arts and has also begun work on a doctorate in curriculum and instruction at the University of Virginia. On the weekends, she and her husband enjoy motorcycling trips.

Annie Lovejoy Elasky ‘00 spent her final semester of law school studying in Barcelona, Spain. She received her JD from the University of Minnesota in 2004, passed the Minnesota bar, and was sworn into the Minnesota Supreme Court. She currently works for a judge in Minneapolis.

Kelly Fisher ‘00 lives with her fiancé, Tim Miller, in Concord, New Hampshire. Fisher spent her last year of law school as a visiting student at Vermont Law School, because Miller had started his master’s degree program in mechanical engineering at Dartmouth. Fisher passed the Oregon bar in July 2005 and started a two-year clerkship with the New Hampshire Superior Court the following month.

Jared Hager ‘00 graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School, summa cum laude, in 2004. He then clerked for Judge Ronald M. Gould of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle. Hager is now an associate for Kirkland & Ellis in Los Angeles.

Sue Larsen MA ‘00 has an art studio in her home and teaches art at Polk Adolescent Day Treatment Center, an alternative school for troubled teens in Dallas, Oregon.

Orlando Medina JD ‘00 is a partner in the law firm Landye Bennett Blumstein. He specializes in federal, state, and international tax planning; mergers, acquisitions, and dispositions for corporations and partnerships; equity compensation; business formations; venture capital financing; and estate planning.

Carrie Morgan ‘00, MAT ‘03 teaches English in Prague, Czech Republic.

Duane Petrowsky JD ‘00 is a shareholder in the law firm McKeown & Brindle. He specializes in family law, insurance law, and personal injury in Oregon.

Yumiko Shimabukuro ‘00 received her master’s degree from Columbia University in 2003 and began work as a financial-economic analyst for Nomura in New York. In fall 2005, she began a doctoral program in political economy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Sarah Joy Staude ‘00 worked for AFS intercultural Programs in Portland for four and a half years. In March 2005, she moved to Costa Rica and launched Boyero Tours with her partner, Julio Barrantes. Staude invites alumni to visit her and learn about the nature, history, and culture of Costa Rica.

Brooke Stanley Tou ‘00 met her husband, Issa Tou, while working in the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso. They now live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Brooke works as a case manager for a subsidized housing program for homeless adults. Issa is a mechanic who is studying for his U.S. certification. 

Trung Tu JD ‘00, a litigation associate at McEwen Gisvold, was elected to a three-year term as chair of the board of directors of the Asian Pacific Alumni of Notre Dame, and to a three-year term on the board of directors of the Notre Dame Alumni Association. Tu was previously a senior staff attorney for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. Tu serves on the Oregon State Bar’s Affirmative Action Committee.

Stephany Watson JD ‘00, a partner in the law office of Krogh & Leonard, has expanded her energy and environmental practice to include counseling clients in corporate compliance and ethics. 

2001

Arts & Sciences 5th Reunion Oct. 5-8, 2006

Tonya Atwell Alexander JD ‘01 has opened the Law Offices of Tonya Alexander in Portland. She focuses on family law.

Sarah Bowen Antonelli ‘01, a PhD candidate in materials and inorganic chemistry at the University of Oregon, is on track to graduate this summer. Her husband, Andy, works at Intel. They now have four cats: Oscar, Isabel, Julius, and Max.

Kate Bayley ‘01 lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her dog, Lowx, and her boyfriend, Tadd. A graduate of the Atlantic Theater Company, Bayley has been busy acting on stage and in film. She played Luke in Down the Shore at the HERE Arts Center in Soho; she acted in We Go Way Back, which was filmed in her hometown of Seattle; and she can be spotted in Transamerica, a film with Felicity Huffman (of Desperate Housewives). She was Huffman’s assistant for the film and got plugged in for a quick scene.

Shannon Benfield-Blankenship ‘01 spent two years teaching sixth grade in Harlem, New York; took a trip around the world; and now teaches in an Oakland, California, school that is part of the national Knowledge Is Power Program network of charter schools. 

Solomon Enos ‘01 worked in the undergraduate admissions office at Lewis & Clark for four years following graduation. He moved to Philadelphia to pursue a master’s degree in higher education management at the University of Pennsylvania. He continues to do a lot of running, only now he runs beside the Schuylkill River instead of the Willamette.

Brian Forrest JD ‘01 is an associate with the law firm of Marger, Johnson & McCollom. He focuses on patent preparation, prosecution, and licensing.

Shawna Gamache ‘01 received a master’s degree in journalism in June 2005 from Northwestern university’s Medill School of Journalism in Chicago. She then worked as a reporter for Religion News Service for six months in Washington, D.C. She and her husband now live in the Northwest.

Leigh Johnson ‘01 teaches women’s studies and English classes at Western Kentucky University and Bowling Green Community College. She also works part time at the Center for Gifted Studies at WKU and coaches the academic team at Franklin-Simpson High School with Patrick Cronin ‘02.

Jules Kopel-Bailey ‘01 is pursuing a master’s degree in public administration at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Betsy Leighty MEd ‘01 teaches special education at Sisters Elementary School.

Amanda Mayhew JD ‘01 is deputy general counsel of EthicsPoint, a hotline provider for corporate governance and ethics compliance. She also serves on the Oregon State Bar Affirmative Action Committee.

Shawna Randall MA ‘01, a nationally certified counselor, opened her own practice in Portland for children ages 2 to 17 and their families.

Oliver Smith ‘01 has been working as a research associate for Trexler Climate & Energy Services for the past two and a half years but is now headed back to school at Portland State University for a master’s degree in urban studies. He is married to Emilia Allen Smith ‘03.

Morgan Specht ‘01 works with disaffected inner-city youth as an outreach and development worker for Fairbridge West in Bristol, United Kingdom. He lives with his English girlfriend, whom he met on his overseas study program to Italy in 2000. An avid rower, he prequalified to row in the Henley Royal Regatta. He says, “If you come to England, please drop by for some tea.”

James Tucker ‘01 is enrolled in the MD/PhD program at the University of Utah and expects to finish in 2012. He is studying biomedical engineering with an emphasis in neurophysiology. He enjoys rock climbing, mountain biking, and skiing.

Karen Varney JD ‘01 is an associate with the law firm of Sather, Byerly & Holloway. She represents Oregon and Washington employers on workers’ compensation matters.

John Villavicencio ‘01 lives in the Bay Area and teaches math at Berkeley High School. Even though he spent last summer traveling in Holland and France, Villavicencio still finds time to work out and train harder than when he was at Lewis & Clark. (Sorry, Coach Fanger.) He is now training for a triathlon with Team in Training and a bodybuilding competition with Velocity Sports. He also makes documentaries and fictional movies about life in the Bay Area.

2002

Elizabeth Cain ‘02 and her husband, Charles Hess, live in Eugene, where they plan to stay for a while.

Iris Oren Cox JD ‘02 moved to Ra’anana, Israel, a suburb of Tel Aviv, with her family in September 2004. She is an associate patent attorney in the biotechnology practice group at the patent firm of Reinhold Cohn & Partners, Tel Aviv.

Andrea “Ondi” Crino ‘02 began a PhD program in zoology in August 2005 at the University of Florida, where she received an alumni fellowship. She started competing in triathlons last year and has recently taken up kung fu. She also spends a lot of time rock climbing and is training for her first marathon. 

John Fathman ‘02 recently left Harvard and is now continuing his research at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

Jilian Saurage Felton ‘02 works as a private mortgage banker at Wells Fargo. She lives in Lake Oswego.

Amanda Goodman Hughes ‘02 settled in Sonora, California, in 2003 and began working as a grant writer at the Mountain Women’s Resource Center. She is also pursuing a master’s degree in public administration from California State University Stanislaus in Stockton.

Marisa James JD ‘02 has joined the DuBoff Law Group as an associate in the firm’s intellectual property department.

Sean Lee ‘02 works at Ponderosa Medical and has started his own medical billing business, Medical Billing Z.

Michael Mayer JD ‘02 has relocated to Colorado and is working for the National Park Service Environmental Quality Division in Lakewood, Colorado.

Joe Parsons MEd ‘02 is an art teacher and football coach at Crook County High School in Prineville.

Andrew Zahler ‘02 is now in his final year of graduate study at the Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia. He recently completed a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund editing internship at the news desk of The Record in Stockton, California, and is currently participating in another internship at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington.

2003

Jesse Beason ‘03 is a staff representative for Portland Commissioner Sam Adams.

Anna Bellersen ‘03 recently completed a Fulbright teaching assistantship in Bregenz, Austria. During her two years in Austria, she taught upper-level college preparatory classes and adult education classes for those pursuing Austria’s equivalent of the GED. Bellersen returned to the United States in June 2005 and taught German and English over the summer at Concordia Language Villages in Moorhead, Minnesota. She now lives in Seattle.

Andrew Bowman JD ‘03 is a program officer for the environment at the Doris Duke charitable Foundation in New York City

Sarah Budd ‘03, a PhD candidate in physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, works as a graduate research assistant and does data analysis and collider detector maintenance at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Her research focuses on single-top quark production.

Indigo Jamee Eriksen ‘03 left the highlands of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, for the mountains of southern Mexico. She lives in Chiapas, Mexico, where people call her Indigo. She works for the environmental/human rights NGO, Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste, and also with a U.S.-funded NGO, the Chiapas Peace House Project.

Tim France, who earned his certificate in educational administration in 2003, is principal of Willamina High School.

Aaron Jackson ‘03 is an Oregon state trooper. He patrols the Mount Hood corridor from Gresham to Warm Springs– nearly 90 miles of highway known for snowstorms and car accidents.

Lindsay Kohn ‘03 is sales coordinator for Jeff Sanders Promotions, a golf management company based in Beaverton. She travels around the country coordinating charity golf tournaments, sponsorships for a televised golf series, and PGA Tour events. She also helps produce the Albertsons Team championship, a televised golf series. Kohn traveled to Brazil in 2004 and Israel in 2005. 

Jennifer Krumm JD ‘03 is assistant attorney general in the civil recovery section of the civil enforcement division within the Oregon Department of Justice.

Tim Lauer, who earned his certificate in educational administration in 2003, is principal of Meriwether Lewis Elementary School in Portland. Also an education-technology professional, Lauer posts a blog at eSchool News.

Sonia Marie Castanier Leikam ‘03 is completing a master’s degree in education at Portland State University. She and her husband, Theo ‘03, reside in their classic Portland bungalow with their cats, Max and Ofer.

Theo Leikam ‘03 does accounting work for the executive offices of the Heathman Hotel. He is working toward becoming a certified public accountant.

Jonas Lerman ‘03 works as a graphic designer and occasional food writer at the Register-Guard, Oregon’s second-largest newspaper. He lives in Eugene with his girlfriend, architecture student Kristin Mjolsnes, whom he met in Italy during his overseas study program. In 2004, the couple traveled through Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.

Christopher Lombard JD ‘03 has opened his own law practice in Portland. He focuses primarily on small business representation and employment litigation, but he also does work in domestic relations law and criminal defense.

Anna Maj Michelson ‘03, founder of Anna Michelson Photography, makes rock stars look like Rock Stars with her photography and digital imagery. She also “throws around cameras and reconstructs stories digitally” with Wrong Way Pictures, a Portland documentary group. Michelson made a documentary called Gimme Doughnut about the Portland-based business Voodoo doughnut. She is also working on a documentary about the Portland Challenge, a swim across the Willamette River that benefits an orphanage in Tanzania.

Myah Moore ‘03 moved to New York City in 2003 and loves it. She works at Columbia University Teachers College as the assistant director of alumni relations. She is also working on a master’s degree in higher education administration at Columbia, to be completed in May 2006.

Justin Oswald ‘03 owns Gallery 500 in Portland.

Doug Pease, who earned his certificate in educational administration in 2003, is vice principal of Broadway Middle School in Seaside.

Emilia Allen Smith ‘03 is an education and community engagement manager for the Oregon Symphony in Portland. Her husband, Oliver Smith ‘01, has been working as a research associate for Trexler Climate & Energy Services for the past two and a half years but is now headed back to school at Portland State University for a master’s degree in urban studies.

Matt Stanley ‘03 plays for the Chico Force professional basketball league.

Scott Thompson JD ‘03, a lieutenant commander in the Navy, returned from a five-month deployment in the western Pacific with the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. The strike group led the U.S. military’s tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia. Thompson’s next assignment will be as environmental counsel for Commander, Naval Forces Europe in Naples, Italy.

Kristin Wilkins ‘03 was accepted into Pacific University’s College of Education.

Courtney Caughran Winkfield ‘03 and her husband, David, live in New York City with their dog, Garp. Winkfield teaches seventh-grade English in the Bronx and is pursuing a master’s degree in English education at Fordham University. She is also working to open a combination high school/community college in New York City. Eventually, she hopes to return to Portland to pursue a degree in urban studies.

2004

Donald Altman MA ‘04 and John Benassu MA ‘04 opened West Linn counseling, a practice that focuses on helping adults through stressful periods and transitions.

Julia Arnold ‘04 spent an additional semester abroad after graduation at the School of International Training in the Balkans, where she studied gender and microcredit. She now lives in Washington, D.C., where she works for PBS. She says her job “comes down to watching The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer every day.” She adds, “Eat your heart out, Cyrus (Partovi)!”

Amy Barrows JD ‘04 has joined the San Francisco law firm of Dechert as an associate in the finance and real estate group.

John Benassu MA ‘04 and Donald Altman MA ‘04 opened West Linn counseling, a practice that focuses on helping adults through stressful periods and transitions.

Satya Byock ‘04 and Casia Freitas ‘04 have launched Education for Development, a nonprofit designed to empower individuals in their own communities to create an equitable, global learning community.

Jaymie Cox ‘04 lives in Longview, Washington, and has four part-time jobs: She works as a youth ministries director at a church; she coaches junior varsity volleyball and softball at Kelso High School; she serves as an assistant basketball coach at Lower Columbia community College; and she records volleyball and basketball stats for the Northwest Athletic Association for Community Colleges. She plans to pursue a master’s degree in sports management to become an athletic director at the college level.

Daniel Del Coro ‘04 was interviewed for the “Film Freak” section of the Oregonian on October 22, 2004. He has seen The Big Lebowski more than any other film.

Maggie Forrestal ‘04 and David Merin ‘04 live in an A-frame house in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, just north of Boulder, Colorado. Both are research specialists at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where they study neurodegenerative diseases. Merin is a serious rock climber, and Forrestal enjoys mountain biking and yoga. They both enjoy music: Merin plays guitar and banjo, and Forrestal plays viola. They play music on their front porch and hope someday to join a band. 

Casia Freitas ‘04 and Satya Byock ‘04 have launched Education for Development, a nonprofit designed to empower individuals in their own communities to create an equitable, global learning community.

Yi-Kang Hu JD ‘04 has joined the Portland law firm of Preston Gates & Ellis. He will be handling mostly FDA regulation and intellectual property cases.

Ursula Kienbaum JD ‘04 is an associate with the law firm of Amburgey & Rubin. The firm focuses on counseling and representing employers in labor and employment law matters and litigation and business immigration.

Anthony Larson ‘04 is a Portland police officer.

David Merin ‘04 and Maggie Forrestal ‘04 live in an A-frame house in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, just north of Boulder, Colorado. Both are research specialists at the Institute for Behavioral genetics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where they study neurodegenerative diseases. Merin is a serious rock climber, and Forrestal enjoys mountain biking and yoga. They both enjoy music: Merin plays guitar and banjo, and Forrestal plays viola. They play music on their front porch and hope someday to join a band. 

Miles Mulcare ‘04 spent the summer after graduation working with Lee Weinstein ‘81 and Jill Peterson Zanger ‘95 in Nike’s corporate responsibility department in Beaverton. After completing his contract, he spent the fall traveling throughout Cambodia, China, Vietnam, and Thailand. Upon his return, he accepted a sales/marketing officer position in the institutional services and asset management department of Union Bank of California. Outside work, he continues to enjoy all types of biking, including his new favorite, cyclo-cross.

Jessica Reynolds ‘04 is pursuing a PhD in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Mary Jane “MJ” Rice ‘04, a former campus safety student assistant and a Lewis & Clark women’s basketball player, became a Gresham police officer in May 2005.

Steven Ross LLM ‘04 accepted a position as an environmental/ natural resources attorney with the natural resources section of the Alaska Department of Law.

Stacy Skiftenes ‘04 is a Peace Corps volunteer in Chiguinda, Ecuador, a village of about 400 people. She teaches public health in the elementary school and sex education in the high school. She hopes to establish a legal counseling center for abused women and a nutrition campaign to combat malnutrition. When not enjoying the excitement of market day, she spends her time reading, gardening, and running. 

Alison Strachan ‘04 teaches English in Iwaoka, Japan, as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching program.

Bonnie Thompson ‘04 is pursuing a PhD at Arizona State University, where she studies American Indian and women’s history. She plans to teach at the university level.

Alejandro Tosi JD ‘04 is an associate in environmental law with Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt. Before attending Lewis & Clark Law School, he practiced law in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Rebecca Watkins JD ‘04 is an associate with the law office of Sather, Byerly & Holloway. She focuses on employment litigation and workers’ compensation defense.

Heath Williams ‘04 was interviewed for the “Film Freak” section of the Oregonian on October 15, 2005. Spellbound is one of her favorite documentaries.

2005

Angela Chu ‘05 lives in the Bay Area and works as a research analyst for Oakland-based united Healthcare Workers West, a union representing hospital, nursing home, and home-care workers throughout California.

Pete Hickok ‘05 was selected to be in the 2005 graduate exhibition at Blackfish Gallery in downtown Portland.

Scooter Johnson ‘05 won the 2005 American Institute of Physics’ Outstanding Student for Undergraduate Research Award. He traveled to Portugal in August 2005 to represent the Society of Physics Students of the United States at the International Conference of Physics Students.

Jacob Rawson ‘05 was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to South Korea, where he plans to teach English for a year.