Our very own Phil Ginsburg is a real-life Amy Poehler, whose fictional TV character stars in the NBC sitcom, Parks and Recreation. Phil manages the entire recreation and parks department for the city of San Francisco, and truly sounds like he loves his work.


He says the challenges place him right in the middle of a living laboratory experiment for making 21st-century government work. He’s responsible for 1,100 employees and 230 parks, playgrounds and open spaces, including a marina, multiple golf courses and the famed Coit Tower. When Phil took the job in July of 2009 his boss, then San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, called Phil a “skilled manager and natural leader who loves this city and our parks.”


Phil previously served as the mayor’s chief of staff, as well as head of the city’s human resources department and a labor union lawyer. His wife, Emily, is an anesthesiologist and they have daughters Grace and Sarah, in sixth and third grades. They live near Golden Gate Park, where Phil runs every morning and gets to keep an eye on one of the many beautiful city treasures under his watch.


Seth Rosenblatt moved to the West Coast for a temporary assignment in 1994 and never looked back. He and his family live south of San Francisco in the town of San Carlos, where Seth is in his second term on the school board and currently serves as its president. He has also run his own consulting company since 2009, following many years in marketing, strategic planning and business development, including leading two software company startups. He and his wife, Sara, a pediatrician, have 12-year-old son Benjamin and 10-year-old daughter Mia.


Joanna Morris is an assistant professor of psychology at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She describes her research as lying at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience and linguistics, with the goal of figuring out how people process language. Joanna got her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, following a linguistics degree at Oxford during her Rhodes scholarship. Her almost-5-year-old son Dominic is getting ready to start kindergarten.


Congratulations to Peter Converse, a first-time author. HarperCollins published his book for teens, Subway Girl, last year. It’s the story of the connection between two teenagers, despite their language barrier.


Andrew Erlichson,last seen in this column exploring the Galapagos Islands with his family over the holidays, lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, Bari Anhalt Erlichson ’91, and their kids Emily, 12, and Matthew, 9. Andrew studied electrical engineering at Stanford. He recently sold his Internet photo-hosting company, Phanfare, to Carbonite, a Boston-based company, and joined them as vice president for Carbonite Labs. Bari is assistant commissioner of education for the state of New Jersey.


Finally, for those of you who saw the 2012 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, you may have missed the jewelry worn by the cover model. Time to go back and check out the picture, so you can see the fabulous necklace designed by Sonya Ooten Frisina. The “collage” necklace is a pave diamond star, South Sea pearl and two pyrite beads on a gold chain from Sonya Ooten jewelry’s limited collection. Sonya lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Chris, two daughters and a son. Her jewelry has appeared in numerous fashion magazines from Vogue to Glamour and is available at many high-end stores, including Barneys New York, Neiman Marcus and Saks. Her flagship store, Sonya Ooten Gem Bar, opened in L.A. in 2005.


—Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com