“Other” Class Notes

Alan Gold (Law ’76) has been selected for inclusion in the 2015 edition of Pennsylvania Super Lawyers in the field of appellate law; this is the 10th consecutive year he has been on the list. He is a shareholder in the law firm of Gold & Ferrante in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, where he focuses his practice on appellate law, commercial litigation, constitutional law and personal injury law.

Simeon Taft (Col ’99 CM) and his wife, Heidi, welcomed a son, Andrew Edward, on April 20, 2015. Andrew joins big brother George, 2. The family lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where Dr. Taft is a veterinarian.

Emily Hodge (Col ’05, Educ ’06, Grad ’07) earned a doctorate from the department of education policy studies in the Pennsylvania State University College of Education on May 15, 2015. Her dissertation is titled “Rigor for All? The Enduring Tension Between Standardization and Differentiation in the Era of the Common Core State Standards.” Ms. Hodge is an assistant professor of educational leadership at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey.

Richard Brown (Col ’74 CM) has been appointed town administrator of Somerset, Massachusetts.

Mark Arey (Col ’98) and his wife, Shuchi Shah, welcomed a daughter, Daniela Winston Arey, on Jan. 2, 2015. Daniela joins big sister Mikaela Cameron, 7; and big brother Evan Kai, 5. The family lives in Tampa, Florida, where Dr. Arey is an ophthalmologist at Florida Eye Center.

Buddy Omohundro (Col ’92 CM) has been promoted to chief services officer of Apex Systems Inc.,  a staffing firm based in Richmond, Virginia. He will continue to head the company’s legal operations and provide executive oversight for Apex’s shared-services function.

Richard Forsten (Com ’85, Law ’88 CM) has been elected president of the Delaware State Bar Association and president of the Appoquinimink School District Board of Education, both for 2015-16. He is a partner in the Wilmington office of Saul Ewing, where he focuses on commercial real estate, business transactions and related litigation. Mr. Forsten also is chairman of the board for the Everett Theatre, a historic venue in Middletown, Delaware, and serves on the boards of Goodwill of Delaware and the Home Builders Association of Delaware.

Sarah Meadows (Col ’07 CM) and Scott F. Meadows (Engr ’08, Darden ’15 L/M) welcomed a son, Avery Thomas, on June 9, 2015. The family has moved from Charlottesville to New York City, where Mr. Meadows works for Goldman Sachs.

George Drake (Educ ’93) has been appointed founding dean of the College of Education and Human Services at Millersville University in Millersville, Pennsylvania. He was associate dean of the College of Education at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

Eric Lent (Col ’00) has been named vice president, general counsel and secretary of Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, headquartered in the Seattle area. Ste. Michelle is Washington’s largest wine producer; it owns and operates wineries in Napa Valley, Oregon and Washington and imports wines from the premier wine regions of the world, including Italy, France, Chile, New Zealand and Spain.

Cyndee Moore (Col ’85, Educ ’02 CM) received a doctor of education degree in higher education leadership and policy from the Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University in May 2015. Ms. Moore is the regional vice president of operations for American National University in Indiana and Virginia, and for National College in Tennessee.

Thomas McKee (Col ’01 CM) and Alison Cunnane McKee (Col ’02 L/M) welcomed a son, Tucker William, on May 18, 2015. Tucker joins big brother Tommy, 6, and big sister Charlotte, 3. The family lives in Vienna, Virginia.

Michael Guthrie (Educ ’75, Educ ’76 CM) has received the first-place award for best documentary or public affairs program from the Virginia Association of Broadcasters for “Conversation on Aging,” a segment that aired on his weekly Real Estate Matters radio show on 1070-WINA. On the show, Mr. Guthrie, who is a broker for and chief executive officer of Roy Wheeler Realty Co. in Charlottesville, and his guests discuss matters influencing the real estate market in the area.

Steven Cholewiak (Col ’06) and his wife, Sara, welcomed a daughter, Cora Anne, on June 16, 2015. Mr. Cholewiak is a postdoctoral scholar in the department of psychology at Justus Liebig University Giessen in Giessen, Germany, where he works in vision science. He will begin a second postdoctoral position in the department of optometry at the University of California, Berkeley, in October.

Carl Markowitz (Com ’67 CM) has retired after 45 years as an attorney specializing in residential and commercial real estate. Throughout his career, he conducted more than 20,000 real estate settlements. Formerly a resident of Virginia Beach, he now lives in Naples, Florida.

Julie Hummer (Col ’90 CM) has been appointed by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan to serve a five-year term on the board of education for Anne Arundel County Public Schools. Ms. Hummer brings a background in special education to the board, as well as experience parenting her own five students now in the county’s public schools.

Richard Miller (Col ’75 CM) has been appointed Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Religious Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Stephanie Sharer (Col ’04 CM) and Garrett Traub were married May 24, 2015, at the Carlyle Club in Alexandria, Virginia. The couple lives in Washington, D.C., where both are attorneys.

Megan McNulty (Col ’99, Educ ’00) is a writer and producer based in Los Angeles. She recently sold a half-hour scripted comedy to a major cable network.

Aaron West (Arch ’98 CM) and his wife, Meredith Davis West, welcomed a daughter, Julianne Claire, on Jan. 15, 2015. Julianne joins big brother Davis, 4. The family lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Rebekah Shapiro (Law ’08) is an associate attorney in the insurance coverage group in the San Francisco office of Selman Breitman. She is also a contributing editor to the Rutter Group’s California Practice Guide Civil Procedure Before Trial (Claims and Defenses), authored by Justice Rebecca A. Wiseman (Law ’01) and Sara Church Reese. Ms. Shapiro has been appointed to the board of reference of Alma Heights Christian Schools, and this year she will complete a three-year term as a vestry member of St. Joseph Parish in San Mateo, California. She and her husband, Alexander Gorelik, live in Redwood City, California.

Elizabeth Hirko (Col ’98 CM) and David B. Hirko (Engr ’98 L/M) welcomed a son, William Andrew, on May 23, 2015. Will joins big brothers John, 8, and James, 5. The boys are the nephews of Karen E. Hirko (Com ’00 L/M). The family lives in Arlington, Virginia.

William Teale (Educ ’73, Educ ’77) has been elected president of the International Literacy Association (formerly the International Reading Association), a professional organization of 300,000 literacy educators worldwide. He is a professor of education, a University Scholar and director of the Center for Literacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

David Beers (Col ’75 CM) has been a consultant and adviser to the international directorate at the Bank of England since August 2014. In 2012-13, he was special adviser to the governor at the Bank of Canada. He worked at Standard & Poor’s in New York and London between 1990 and 2011 in various roles, most recently as global head of sovereign and international public finance ratings.

Andrew Gutowski (Arch ’75) leads the East Coast hospitality project management group for Cumming Corp., where he directs teams managing the renovation and new construction of major hotel and resort projects in the U.S. and the Caribbean. Before joining Cumming, Mr. Gutowski spent 10 years developing major urban vertical mixed-use projects in the Washington, D.C., area. Throughout the 1990s, he worked in Poland, managing real estate investment and development companies. In 1995, he and Pioneer Mutual Funds (now Pioneer Investments) founded a private real estate investment company, Pioneer Real Estate Poland, now Pioneer Polish Real Estate Fund. Before his career in real estate investment management, Mr. Gutowski, who is a member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and holds a master’s degree in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a master’s degree in real estate from MIT, was an architect with Benjamin Thompson and Associates in Massachusetts. He and his wife, Francesca Lupica Gutowski (Arch ’74), live in the Washington, D.C., area and have three daughters: Elisabeth Gutowski Munder (Col ’02 L/M), Gabriela A. Gutowski (Arch ’05 L/M) and Juliana T. Gutowski (Arch ’12 L/M).

Benjamin Brawley (Com ’11) has been promoted to associate director, senior client lead, in the Cincinnati office of dunnhumby USA. In this new role, he will be responsible for new business development among retail suppliers. Previously, he served as capability lead, responsible for supporting retail pricing and promotions.

Kelly Underwood (Col ’10) received a doctorate in veterinary medicine from the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech in May 2015 and was valedictorian of her class. Outside her studies, she was one of three founding student co-chairs of Virginia Tech Helping PAWS (Pet Assisted Wellness Service), a community program that provides stress relief and animal-assisted therapy to nursing homes, assisted-living centers, schools, libraries and other community locations. Dr. Underwood currently works at a small animal general practice in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Reedy Swanson (Col ’12, Law ’16 L/M) and George Zaras (Col ’12, Law ’16) traveled to Myanmar over winter break to research a range of human rights issues as part of the Human Rights Study Project at UVA’s School of Law. The group spent 15 days in the country studying the impact of foreign investment to health care and Myanmar’s constitution, among other issues.

James Cocola (Grad ’09) has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor in the department of humanities and arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. His research explores ideas of place in American poetry and poetics, the literary and cultural production of Americans and others of Mediterranean descent, and experiential and experimental forms of writing. Mr. Cocola has received a number of honors for his work, including a scholarship for the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin, and a resident scholarship at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

D. Starrett (Law ’09) has been named to Triad Business Journal’s 2015 “40 Leaders Under Forty” list, an annual listing of the region’s top young professionals. Mr. Starrett is an attorney in the Greensboro, North Carolina, office of Brooks Pierce McLendon Humphrey & Leonard, where his practice includes business litigation, corporate law, compliance and internal investigations and employment law.

Amy Azano (Educ ’09) an assistant professor in Virginia Tech’s School of Education, and Carolyn Callahan, a professor in UVA’s Curry School of Education, have received a $2 million federal grant to study gifted education for rural students. Their program, Promoting PLACE, aims to increase the number of rural students in gifted programs, especially in high-poverty school districts. Ms. Azano and Ms. Callahan will work with rural school districts in Virginia to identify gifted and talented students and develop high-quality language arts units to serve those students capable of advanced work.

Lelia Otmani (Col ’08) has published The Protection of the Environment and Access to Patented Technologies: Interpreting the TRIPS Agreement in light of the human right to health, an academic book that examines the connection between human health and the environment.

Adam Duggins (Darden ’08) is managing partner of New Page Capital, a private equity firm based in Greensboro, North Carolina, that he established with Rick Ramsey (Com ’01, Darden ’07 L/M). Previously, Mr. Duggins worked as vice president of operations at Care Services and as a manager in Bain & Co.’s private equity group.

Rory Francisco (Col ’07 CM) and his wife, Kristin, welcomed a son, Charles Theodore, on Jan. 8, 2015. The family resides in Richmond, Virginia.

Andrew Cookingham (Col ’05 CM) has been selected for inclusion in the 2015 Texas Rising Stars in the area of business litigation. He is an attorney at Thompson & Knight in Dallas, where he represents healthcare providers, pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, and other clients in state and federal court, as well as in appellate courts and in arbitration proceedings.

Daniel Mazanec (Law ’04) has joined the Miami office of Greenspoon Marder Law as senior counsel in the litigation practice group. He has more than 10 years of experience representing and advising corporations, financial institutions and entrepreneurs in complex commercial disputes and high-profile litigation matters, including class actions, multidistrict litigation proceedings and cross-border business disputes. Mr. Mazanec previously practiced at an international law firm with offices in Cleveland, New York City and Miami.