Class Note 2000
Issue
March - April 2024
Happy 2024 from guest columnist Brian Feldman.
After losing his first wife (Anne Geiger, Yale ’98) to breast cancer in 2016, Dave Gacioch and his kids, Tom and Eleanor, formed a new Brady Bunch family with Curran Schiefelbein (Brown ’01) and her sons, John and Henry, after Curran lost her husband to melanoma. They’re getting married in May! Dave is a healthcare litigator at McDermott Will & Emery, a youth soccer coach, and a volunteer dabbling in local government in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Walker Holmes has been living for 15 years in New Haven, Connecticut, with Justin Neuman ’99 and their two kids. She is a vice president at Trust for Public Land, a not-for-profit with a mission to connect everyone to the outdoors. She also teaches land conservation at the Yale School of the Environment.
Chuck Divak lives in Brooklyn and is a television and film editor, currently editing a series from the director of Tiger King that will air on HBO in the summer. He also has two boys (5 and 3) who are very passionate about dinosaurs. Chuck wants to meet any paleontologists in our class!
Jonathan Light was recently promoted to general counsel of Paratek Pharmaceuticals, after playing a pivotal role in taking the company from publicly traded on NASDAQ to privately held. Jonathan lives in the Philadelphia suburbs and is “a proud dad to Connor (12), playing MLS Next soccer, and Aubrey (10), traveling the country for all-star cheerleading.”
Leigh Johnson is living in east Tennessee, working as an outpatient family physician. Her husband Abraham works at a not-for-profit, and they have two “wild sons.” Leigh recently got together with Bea Radakovich and Meghan (Bodkin) Lopez. She reports, “Life here in our little Appalachian mountain town is busy and full!”
Rob Ristagno’s family is settling into the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, area, where he is president of international for Vistage Worldwide, a CEO-coaching and peer-to-peer learning organization. The job has taken him “around the girdled earth—London, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, Kuala Lumpur, and more,” often with his wife, Kate, and girls Helena (“Leni,” 6) and Emilia (“Mila,” 3).
After graduation Sam Desai extended his college days by moving to Boston with Dartmouth friends Thad Glowacki, Evan Greenbaum, Dan Siegel, and Chris Welty and working at Genzyme. In 2005 Sam received his law degree from Villanova and then practiced intellectual property law in N.Y.C. and D.C. Now, Sam lives in Delray Beach, Florida, and serves as in-house counsel for Hetero US, a generic pharmaceutical company with headquarters in India. He enjoys spending time with his wife, Kari, and their two boys, Ty (9) and Ryder (7), golfing, and not raising “Florida Men.”
Ben Berk took advantage of his relatively flexible gig in health information tech by summering in Europe before dropping his daughter in London for university. They lived in a VW camper van exploring the Alps and caught up with Lilly Wollman and Daniel Ofer ’03. Back home in Chicago, Ben’s wife, Emily, works at a local climbing gym and their boys, 12 and 15, are deep into science and tech. “We recently saw Guster from a kayak on the Chicago River!”
In L.A. Todd Piro is gearing up to cover the 2024 election and all the legal entanglements that go with that on both sides of the aisle. And Eric Buchman, while still working in television and hosting the Fake Presidents podcast with Ben Oren, created a scripted audio drama for Audible set to be released in 2024.
Thanks for all of the news and send your next updates to Kate, contact info below.
—Kate (Ryan) Stowe, 91 Waterman Place, St. Louis, MO 63112; dartmouth2000secretary@gmail.com
After losing his first wife (Anne Geiger, Yale ’98) to breast cancer in 2016, Dave Gacioch and his kids, Tom and Eleanor, formed a new Brady Bunch family with Curran Schiefelbein (Brown ’01) and her sons, John and Henry, after Curran lost her husband to melanoma. They’re getting married in May! Dave is a healthcare litigator at McDermott Will & Emery, a youth soccer coach, and a volunteer dabbling in local government in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Walker Holmes has been living for 15 years in New Haven, Connecticut, with Justin Neuman ’99 and their two kids. She is a vice president at Trust for Public Land, a not-for-profit with a mission to connect everyone to the outdoors. She also teaches land conservation at the Yale School of the Environment.
Chuck Divak lives in Brooklyn and is a television and film editor, currently editing a series from the director of Tiger King that will air on HBO in the summer. He also has two boys (5 and 3) who are very passionate about dinosaurs. Chuck wants to meet any paleontologists in our class!
Jonathan Light was recently promoted to general counsel of Paratek Pharmaceuticals, after playing a pivotal role in taking the company from publicly traded on NASDAQ to privately held. Jonathan lives in the Philadelphia suburbs and is “a proud dad to Connor (12), playing MLS Next soccer, and Aubrey (10), traveling the country for all-star cheerleading.”
Leigh Johnson is living in east Tennessee, working as an outpatient family physician. Her husband Abraham works at a not-for-profit, and they have two “wild sons.” Leigh recently got together with Bea Radakovich and Meghan (Bodkin) Lopez. She reports, “Life here in our little Appalachian mountain town is busy and full!”
Rob Ristagno’s family is settling into the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, area, where he is president of international for Vistage Worldwide, a CEO-coaching and peer-to-peer learning organization. The job has taken him “around the girdled earth—London, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, Kuala Lumpur, and more,” often with his wife, Kate, and girls Helena (“Leni,” 6) and Emilia (“Mila,” 3).
After graduation Sam Desai extended his college days by moving to Boston with Dartmouth friends Thad Glowacki, Evan Greenbaum, Dan Siegel, and Chris Welty and working at Genzyme. In 2005 Sam received his law degree from Villanova and then practiced intellectual property law in N.Y.C. and D.C. Now, Sam lives in Delray Beach, Florida, and serves as in-house counsel for Hetero US, a generic pharmaceutical company with headquarters in India. He enjoys spending time with his wife, Kari, and their two boys, Ty (9) and Ryder (7), golfing, and not raising “Florida Men.”
Ben Berk took advantage of his relatively flexible gig in health information tech by summering in Europe before dropping his daughter in London for university. They lived in a VW camper van exploring the Alps and caught up with Lilly Wollman and Daniel Ofer ’03. Back home in Chicago, Ben’s wife, Emily, works at a local climbing gym and their boys, 12 and 15, are deep into science and tech. “We recently saw Guster from a kayak on the Chicago River!”
In L.A. Todd Piro is gearing up to cover the 2024 election and all the legal entanglements that go with that on both sides of the aisle. And Eric Buchman, while still working in television and hosting the Fake Presidents podcast with Ben Oren, created a scripted audio drama for Audible set to be released in 2024.
Thanks for all of the news and send your next updates to Kate, contact info below.
—Kate (Ryan) Stowe, 91 Waterman Place, St. Louis, MO 63112; dartmouth2000secretary@gmail.com