“Award/Recognition” Class Notes

Bruce H. Russell II (Col ’97 CM) has been named a Leader in Law for 2020 by Virginia Lawyers Weekly magazine. He is the current (and eight-term) president of the Russell County Bar Association, as well as the Washington County Defense Bar.  Russell practices throughout Southwest Virginia out of his firm’s offices in Abingdon, Lebanon, and Tazewell. He and his wife, Shannon, an elementary school special education teacher, live in Abingdon with their two sons, Clark, age 12, and Eamon, age 8, and their miniature dachshund Huckleberry and goldendoodle Luna.

Brett Herbert (Col ’10), an attorney with the firm Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, was recognized by his peers in the inaugural edition of Best Lawyers©: Ones to Watch 2021 in the practice area of commercial litigation. He practices out of the firm’s Williamsburg, Virginia, office.

Nancy Grace Parr (Col ’80 CM) was elected president of the National District Attorneys Association. The first Virginian to serve as president of the association, she has served as the commonwealth attorney for the city of Chesapeake, Virginia, since 2005. In January 2020, she was appointed by U.S. Attorney General William Barr to serve as a commissioner on the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice.

Col. John D. Pavlovsky (Engr ’69 CM) (ret) has been recognized by the American Volkssport Association for completing 10km walking events in each of 50 state capitals and Washington, D.C.  

Ameena Gill (Engr ’04) was promoted to senior director of quality and process excellence at Lyft. Ameena was previously the General Manager at Lyft, responsible for growing market share and profitability for the entire California region. She lives in San Francisco with her 3-year-old son, Gavin.  

Georgia Newell Merten (Col ’81) is a Florida state licensed interior designer with more than 23 years of experience providing both residential and commercial interior design. She opened her own boutique design firm, Georgia Merten interior Design, in 2011, and recently won an ASID South Florida Award for Residential Renovation. She has been published in Florida Design Magazine, SE Florida Style & Design and The Palm Beach Post.

Jason H. Silverman (Col ’74), the Ellison Capers Palmer Jr. Professor of History Emeritus at Winthrop University, has published his 12th book, When America Welcomed Immigrants: The Short and Tortured History of Abraham Lincoln’s Act to Encourage Immigration. Additionally, the Governor of South Carolina awarded him the Order of the Silver Crescent, “the state’s highest civilian award for significant contributions, leadership, volunteerism, and lifelong influence within a region or community.” Silverman retired in December 2017 after almost 40 years as a university professor. He lives with his family in Pawleys Island, South Carolina.  

Jenna Rinehart Rassif (Col ’92 L/M) was featured in the Chambers USA 2020 Guide, a publication ranking the leading lawyers and law firms across the U.S. Rassif is the managing principal of Jackson Lewis’ Miami office. She has extensive experience representing employers in virtually all areas of labor and employment law.

Marney White (Com ’91) received the 2020 Teacher of the Year award from the Yale School of Public Health. This is the second distinguished teacher award White has won since 2014. Since then, she has also launched a class through Coursera, been denied the role of “feminist Ivy League Professor” in a local community theater production, and been a back-row dancer in the viral “Fairfield Mombies” Thriller/Halloween flashmob sensation. 

Richard Margulies (Col ’76 L/M) was recently featured in the Chambers USA 2020 Guide, a publication ranking the leading lawyers and law firms across the U.S. Margulies is office managing principal of the Jacksonville, Florida, office of Jackson Lewis. He has more than 30 years of experience in counseling and representing employers in litigation matters.

Steve McLaughlin (Arch ’85 L/M) has served for more than five years as staff landscape architect for the Architectural Design Division at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, as a third party contractor, currently employed by MicroSystems Automation Group, and in that capacity was recognized during an OBO Bureau awards ceremony at the close of Fiscal Year 2019 for his contributions to the success of the U.S. Embassy campus redevelopment project at New Delhi, India, which is now under construction. The architecture and engineering team for this project was headed by the New York City-based design firm WEISS/MANFREDI, and on 13 April, 2020, the UVA School of Architecture awarded the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture to the firm’s co-founders, Marion Weiss (Arch ’79) and Michael Manfredi. 

Kathryn Blair Moore (Col ’03), an assistant professor of art at Texas State University, won Western Michigan University’s Otto Gründler Book Prize for her book The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land: Reception from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance. The prize, which comes with a $1,000 cash award, was announced at the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies—one of the largest annual gatherings of scholars of the Middle Ages, which is held on the WMU campus.

Christopher Payne (Col ’81 L/M) was recognized as the 2019 Distinguished Philanthropist by the American College of Surgeons. The award honored Payne for his philanthropic endeavors, service to the surgical profession and long-lasting contributions to the medical community and the ACS.

David Black (Educ ’65 L/M) won first place in the 2019 Writers’ Club of Virginia annual poetry contest for his poem “On Studying an Old Photograph.”