Class Note 1974
In 2016 Doug Peabody cofounded a life sciences company, Ceracuity Inc., with Dr. John Hardy, a leading neuro-geneticist and a molecular biologist with the Taub Brain Institute at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. They are developing small-molecule, brain-penetrable drugs targeting aspects of the cellular clearance mechanisms in brain cells that clear misfolded proteins, notably Tau, that are implicated in neurodegenerative diseases. They have raised seed funding, but more is needed for drug development. Steve Dietz is helping with the project. Doug and his wife, Annick Cooper ’75, became empty-nesters this year when their son, James, headed off to Cornell. Doug and Annick live on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, most of the time, but they have an apartment in New York City, where daughter Christina (Rhode Island School of Design ’15) and son Nick (Princeton ’18) live. Christina works at Bridgewater Associates and Nick is with the Jeffries Group. Daughter Olivia (University of Virginia ’19) is studying in France and Italy this year. Oldest daughter Alexandra “Alix” ’12 is a founder and the chief executive officer of Bev, a woman-run company selling canned California rosé wine. The company recently received funding from a group led by Founder Funds.
After almost 40 years and more than 8,000 surgeries Andy Wexler has retired from surgical practice and his position as chief of plastic surgery at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles. About half of his practice was pediatric craniofacial and maxillofacial surgery, operating on children with congenital deformities and posttraumatic facial restoration. Andy continues to teach residents at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he is a clinical professor of plastic surgery. Andy’s passion during the last 25 years has been leading volunteer surgical teams to low-resource countries, primarily teaching local surgeons and performing surgery on children with facial deformities. He has worked in Africa, South and Central America, and Asia. Now that he is retired, Andy is able to spend more time on this work in some of the world’s neediest places. He founded a 501(c)(3) organization, Surgiwex, to bring surgical training and instruments to countries in need. While working recently in Nepal, Andy and his wife, Geri, avid hikers, went on the spectacular Annapurna base camp trek. Geri is a pediatric neuropsychologist who runs the autism clinic at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles. Andy and Geri live in Pacific Palisades, California. They have two daughters. Becca earned an advanced degree in international affairs and security studies at Columbia and has served as an advisor to cabinet secretaries, United Nations ambassador Samantha Power, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Sarah was a varsity gymnast at the University of Pennsylvania, earned her physician assistant degree from the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and currently works in the emergency room of a large hospital in the Los Angeles area.
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—Rick Sample, Retreat Farm, 1137 Manakin Road, Manakin Sabot, VA 23103; samplejr@msn.com
