“Other” Class Notes

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.