“Other” Class Notes

Luca Sciullo (Col ’03) and Caroline King Sciullo (Col ’03 L/M) welcomed a son, Eric Easton Sciullo, on March 12, 2015. He joins siblings Luca “Luc” Jr., 7; Marc, 5; and Sophie, 2. The family lives in Ashburn, Virginia, where Mr. Sciullo is a managing partner at ASET Partners in nearby Alexandria. Mr. Sciullo also runs Zeds Books, an online book retailer that specializes in rare antiquarian, first edition and leather-bound books.

John Gekas (Law ’03) has received the Award for Excellence in Pro Bono Service from the United States District Court in conjunction with the Chicago chapter of the Federal Bar Association. He is a partner and a member of the litigation practice group in the Chicago office of Arnstein & Lehr. Mr. Gekas also serves on the board of directors of Housing Opportunities for Women, an organization dedicated to permanent solutions for poverty and homelessness.

Harris Freier (Col ’03 CM) and Lily Morris Freier (Col ’05 L/M) welcomed a daughter, Georgia Grace, on Dec. 16, 2014. The family resides in Cranford, New Jersey. Georgia is the granddaughter of Jerold L. Freier (Col ’67 L/M) and James T. Morris (Col ’73).

Richard Wallace (Col ’02 CM) has joined the Morgantown, West Virginia, office of Littler Mendelson, a large global employment and labor law practice. He focuses on employment litigation and traditional labor law and has experience in employment litigation in both state and federal courts. Mr. Wallace’s trial experience includes matters involving race, age, sex and disability discrimination; wrongful discharge; workplace harassment; violations of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act; and breaches of the duty of loyalty.

Rick Ramsey (Com ’01, Darden ’07 CM) has been named president of Engineered Steel Products, a structural steel manufacturing company headquartered in Sophia, North Carolina. He also serves as operating partner of New Page Capital, a private equity firm that he established with Adam Duggins (Darden ’08). Engineered Steel is the first major acquisition for New Page Capital.

Emily Leitch (Col ’01 CM) has been promoted to partner at Bracewell & Giuliani, where she advises clients on securities matters, corporate finance and general corporate transactions. With a primary focus on capital markets, she represents issuers and underwriters in public and private offerings of equal securities, high-yield debt securities and investment-grade debt securities.

Zachary Gemignani (Darden ’00) has published Data Fluency, a book that outlines the importance of changing the way organizations view and use data. The book serves as a guide to help any organization transform into a data-fluent culture where any individual or team can easily consume data, make informed decisions and take immediate action to positively affect business.

Stephen Ziegler (Engr ’97 CM) and Katharine Miller Ziegler (Col ’99 L/M) welcomed a daughter, Charlotte Amelia, on Dec. 23, 2014. Charlotte joins big brothers Owen, 6; and William, 3. The family currently resides in Clifton, Virginia.

Mark Zaffarano (Col ’77 CM) was selected by the Delaware Judiciary as court administrator of the Superior Court of Delaware, effective June 1, 2015. He previously was deputy-in-charge for the U.S. District Court, San Jose Division of the Northern District of California.

Katherine Dinh (Col ’93 CM) has been elected chair of the board of the National Association of Independent Schools, which represents 1,700 independent private schools and associations of schools. She has served as head of the Prospect Sierra School, a K-8 private school in El Cerrito, California, since 2007. Prior to that, Ms. Dinh was principal of the middle and upper schools at Metairie Park Country Day School in Louisiana. She has worked in boarding, day, single-sex and co-ed schools and was a founder of a public charter school in Boston.

Jack Wolf (Col ’91 CM) received Clemson University’s 2015 Alumni Master Teacher Award for outstanding undergraduate classroom instruction. Mr. Wolf, an associate professor of finance in Clemson’s College of Business and Behavioral Science, was nominated by the student body and selected by the student alumni council. His scholarly interests lie in valuation, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and shareholder voting, and his research has been published in the Journal of Finance, Financial Management and the International Review of Financial Analysis, among others.

Geoffrey Weiss (Engr ’91 CM) will take command of the U.S. Air Force 505th Test and Evaluation Group, located at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, on June 29, 2015. Col. Weiss is currently the deputy director of the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization, in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia. He and his wife, Karen Gonsky Weiss (Col ’92, Educ ’92 L/M), have three children: Alison, who graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in May 2015; Scott Weiss (Engr ’17 L/M); and Brian Weiss (Engr ’19).

Melanie Nix (Col ’91 CM) was a featured speaker at the Young Survival Coalition’s YSC Summit, a national conference focused on young women with breast cancer, in March 2015. Ms. Nix, a triple-negative breast cancer survivor who is also a speaker, author, life coach and health advocate, spoke at three sessions, including one titled “Giving Yourself Permission to Change.” She continues to run the Breast Cancer Comfort website, for breast cancer patients and survivors.

Deborah Lewis (Col ’90) has published an essay, “The Weight of Ash,” in There’s A Woman In The Pulpit: Christian Clergywomen Share Their Hard Days, Holy Moments & the Healing Power of Humor, a collection edited by Martha Spong. Rev. Lewis also is the director and campus minister for the Wesley Foundation at the University of Virginia.

Christopher Graney (Grad ’90) has published Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo, an account and analysis of seventeenth-century scientific arguments against the Copernican system, with the University of Notre Dame Press. Mr. Graney’s research calls on newly translated works by anti-Copernican writers of the time to challenge the idea that opponents of the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus and Galileo were motivated by religion or devotion to an outdated intellectual tradition and instead proposes that science played an important, even predominant, role in that opposition. Mr. Graney is a professor of physics at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky.

Ronald Polly (Com ’87 CM) has been re-elected managing partner of the national litigation firm Hawkins Parnell Thackston & Young. He will continue to lead the labor and employment group, which represents Fortune 500 companies, public entities and senior executives.

Sara Austin (Col ’87 CM) is president-elect of the Pennsylvania Bar Association; she will become president in 2016. She is a partner in Austin Law Firm, located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Ms. Austin served on the organization’s board of governors from 2009 until 2012 as the zone governor for Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Juniata, Lancaster, Lebanon, Perry and York counties. She is a past president of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, the continuing legal education arm of the PBA, and is chair-elect of the bar association’s solo and small-firm practice section and is treasurer of the PBA commission on women in the profession.

Donna Frisby-Greenwood (Col ’86 CM) has been appointed president and CEO of the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, which generates, directs and manages private philanthropic resources in response to the goals of the School District of Philadelphia. She joins the current executive director, Angela Connor, as the second full-time executive of the fund. Most recently, Ms. Frisby-Greenwood served as the Philadelphia-based program director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, where her work focused on retaining talented people and expanding economic opportunity in the city. Prior to that, she was the director of the School District of Philadelphia’s office of college and career awareness.

Eric Callisto (Col ’86 CM) has joined the Madison, Wisconsin, law office of Michael Best & Friedrich as a partner on the firm’s energy and environmental teams. He has an extensive background in regional and national energy matters. Previously, Mr. Callisto worked for nine years at the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, where he was chairman, commissioner and chief of staff and regulated Wisconsin’s public utilities, including the energy, telecommunications and water utilities. He also was lead commissioner for regional energy market and national electric transmission policy, held leadership positions in the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, and worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and with an environmental consulting firm.

Haywood Rhodes (Educ ’03) and his wife, Virginia, welcomed twins Jonah James and Matthew Haywood on Jan. 8, 2014. The family lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

Mark Scharf (Col ’84 CM) has received a 2015 Individual Artist Award in playwriting from the Maryland State Arts Council. He also won first place in the 2014 Storefront Theatre Festival of Ten-Minute Plays for his play Our Place. Another of his plays, Fortune’s Child, premiered Jan. 8, 2015, at the Baltimore Theatre Project. Mr. Scharf was a 2010 Great Plains Theatre Conference PlayLab playwright and a 2012 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference semifinalist. His adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau will open Oct. 16, 2015, at the Twin Beach Players in North Beach, Maryland.

George Pitts (Law ’83 CM) has joined the McLean, Virginia, office of Sands Anderson, where he will maintain a practice in bankruptcy and creditors’ rights and commercial litigation. Previously, he was a partner with Wiley Rein in northern Virginia.

Jeffrey Elkin (Col ’83 CM) has been named litigation practice group leader for Porter Hedges in Houston, where he focuses his practice on complex commercial disputes, partnership and LLC dissolutions, federal and state securities laws, and business torts.

Robert Conrad (Law ’83) received the 2015 Distinguished Service Award from the Clemson University Alumni Association. A U.S. District judge for the western district of North Carolina, Judge Conrad serves on the board of directors for Clemson’s Tiger Letterwinners Association and mentors law students who are Clemson graduates.

Jim Davidson (Engr ’81) has been promoted to associate vice president of Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm. He currently manages the bridge department in the Fairfax, Virginia, transportation group, where his responsibilities include reviewing and supervising the design of bridges and other civil structures. A structural engineer and project manager with more than 30 years of experience, Mr. Davidson is a licensed professional engineer in 11 states and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Nancy Keene (Col ’78) has published Your Child in the Hospital: A Practical Guide for Parents, a book that provides information and emotional support for parents. She has written fourteen other consumer health books, and her work has appeared in many national journals and magazines. Ms. Keene is a managing editor at JBS International and executive director of Childhood Cancer Guides, a nonprofit publisher. Previously, she was a paramedic, an air traffic controller, and manager of a publications department.

Christopher D’Angelo (Col ’75, Law ’78) was a featured speaker at the 2015 National Conference on Class Actions: Recent Developments in Quebec, in Canada and the United States, where he presented “What the European Union Is Doing with Collective Redress or Class Actions.” Mr. D’Angelo is an attorney with Montgomery McCracken in Philadelphia, where he is chairman of the firm’s international practice and co-chairman of the product liability, toxic torts and catastrophic events practice. He is national counsel for several major U.S. clients and represents foreign concerns in the United States and U.S. concerns abroad.

Richard Thurston (Grad ’73, Grad ’79) has rejoined the New York office of Duane Morris as of counsel in the firm’s intellectual property practice group; he was a corporate and intellectual property attorney at the firm from 1980 to 1984. Mr. Thurston also has retired as senior vice president and general counsel of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, an independent semiconductor foundry company. He has more than 40 years of business and legal experience in the corporate, international, micro-electronics and transactional/licensing markets.

Raymond Abramson (Col ’73 CM) has been elected to an eight-year term on the Arkansas Court of Appeals, effective Jan. 1, 2015. Judge Abramson practiced law in Holly Grove and Clarendon, Arkansas, for 34 years. He served on the Arkansas Court of Appeals by appointment of the governor from 2010 to 2012. Judge Abramson has also served as chairman of the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, the Monroe County Community Foundation, the Holly Smith Grove Library and the Holly Grove food pantry. He and his wife, Mockie, have two daughters: Anne, a graduate of Columbia and Yale universities, and Margaret Emily Abramson (Col ’07).

Erin McDonald (Educ ’06) and her husband, Jeremy, welcomed a son, Henry George, on Oct. 28, 2014. Ms. McDonald was recently named assistant dean of students at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina.

Dennis Unkovic (Col ’70) has been named chairman of the board of Meritas Law Firms Worldwide, a global alliance of independent business law firms. He is a partner and international transactional lawyer at Meyer, Unkovic & Scott in Pittsburgh. Previously, Mr. Unkovic was a member of the Meritas board and the executive committee and also was chair of the membership committee.

Mark Krebs (Col ’70 CM) has received the 2015 Senior Leader Award from Northwestern Mutual in recognition of an outstanding year of performance, serving the financial security needs of clients and policy owners throughout the region. Mr. Krebs is a financial representative in the Van Der Hyde network office of Northwestern Mutual in Richmond, Virginia.

Frank Quinn (Col ’66, Grad ’67) has been named University Distinguished Professor Emeritus by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors. A member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 1977, Mr. Quinn has engaged many of the best mathematicians of the late twentieth century in a dialogue on the direction of the profession. He organized several mathematics conferences and special sessions, served on five committees of the American Mathematical Society, and served on the council of the American Mathematical Society. In addition, Mr. Quinn has held editorial roles with the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society and served on a national K-12 mathematics standards panel. Over the course of his career, he has been elected a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also received numerous awards for his work at Virginia Tech, including the Virginia Tech Alumni Award for Research Excellence, a Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award, and a University Distinguished Professorship.

Kevin Donleavy (Col ’61) has published his second book, The Irish in Early Virginia, with Pocahontas Press. A past resident fellow of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Mr. Donleavy is a retired Latin teacher and political organizer. He is active in Clann Mhór, a research group documenting the Irish and slave workers who built the railway through the Blue Ridge Mountains in the mid-1800s. His first book, Strings of Life: Conversations with Old-Time Musicians From Virginia and North Carolina (2004), focused on traditional music from Virginia, North Carolina and Ireland.

Stuart Pachman (Col ’58) has been selected as one of the recipients of the New Jersey Law Journal’s inaugural “Lifetime Achievement Awards,” given to attorneys who have helped shape New Jersey law. He is a member of the corporate, estate and trust and litigation practice groups at Brach Eichler in Roseland, New Jersey, where he counsels businesses and nonprofit corporations and their directors and officers. He has been named to Best Lawyers in America every year since 1993.

George McMath (Col ’54 CM) has published You Win Some, You Lose Some, an account of his life as a Virginia legislator in the 1960s and ’70s, when he represented the Eastern Shore in the Virginia House of Delegates for 15 years. The book describes an era of politics very different from today, before computers transformed legislative and campaigning procedures; when social activities were gala affairs; and proposals reflected local citizens’ concerns and desires.

Matthew Meyers (Col ’01, Law ’06 CM) was elected a partner of the law firm of Drinker Biddle & Reath in February 2015. Based in the firm’s Philadelphia office, he represents public and private companies in a variety of corporate and securities matters, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, private equity investments, joint ventures, corporate governance, capital-raising transactions in public and private markets, public company reporting obligations and general business matters.

Laura Pall (Col ’08) has received an M.B.A. degree from the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary.

Jerry Tuttle (Engr ’74 CM) has earned a Master of Arts degree in educational technology from New Jersey City University. He is an actuary with RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. in New York City and teaches math part time for the University of Phoenix.

Eugene Facey (Engr ’70 CM) has received the U.S. Coast Guard Meritorious Public Service Award for his exceptional commitment and substantial contributions to the Coast Guard while serving as chairman, vice chairman and a member of the National Offshore Safety Advisory Committee from January 2004 to January 2015. Throughout Mr. Facey’s leadership, the committee made an unprecedented number of recommendations that helped the Coast Guard develop and implement regulatory standards and policies on a wide variety of topics.

Myla Spencer (Col ’98) has earned a doctorate in biology from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She also holds a Master of Science degree in biotechnology from the Johns Hopkins University.

Charles Printz (Col ’72 CM) has been elected president of the Defense Trial Counsel of West Virginia. A partner with Bowles Rice in Martinsburg, West Virginia, he focuses his practice on civil litigation. Over the course of his career, he has tried more than 80 jury trials to verdict and argued more than 40 appeals before the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Printz is also a member of the Defense Research Institute and its commercial litigation committee.