Happy New Year to all ’96s far and wide! With 2013 upon us, most of us are knocking on the door of our 40th year with great life and career changes ahead! As such, I have been afforded with updates from a few busy alumnae who have not written for some time.


Soraya (O’Brien) Jollon told me the last time she sent in updates she had but one child; she and husband Alfredo are now proud parents of two boys (Thiago, 4, and Leos, 2) and daughter Lucia, newly turned 1. In addition to celebrating her 10th wedding anniversary in 2012, she will be celebrating that same decade-long milestone for her Brooklyn-based, event-planning company later this spring.


Soraya graciously provided updates on a few other ’96s, including news of what she called a “serendipitous Dartmouth moment” while visiting Brazil last year. She and Alfredo had taken their children to the Parque Buenos Aires, a location he frequented growing up in São Paulo. While watching their kids at play, someone asked if her name was Soraya and she turned around to see Christine (Puleo) Reis standing behind her. Christine (on the same freshman trip as Soraya) and her Brazilian husband, Bruno, live around the corner from the park with their 2-year-old daughter Marina. They ended up spending Carnaval together in Cunha, where Soraya says, “Eating dinner together under the stars while the children played is one of my favorite memories from the trip.”


She also recently visited with Amy Harman Burkart, a federal prosecutor in Boston who welcomed her third child (a son named Cormac) with husband Ryan Burkart ’99 and passed along that Gabe Schlumberger and family left New York this summer, moving to Los Angeles so “he could be closer to the Disney mother ship.” Gabe happens to be the godfather of Soraya’s younger son—a position he accepted only after she promised “not to die and leave him in charge of our son’s spiritual guidance!”


In other Angeleno news, Kristen Havens has been based there since 2000. She just ghosted her first book on a neuroscience/psychology-related topic to be published in early 2013, and expects to be ghostwriting a business book on management this year (leaving her looking forward to working with more scientists, doctors and researchers). “Those skills I picked up tutoring in the composition center in Sanborn have come in handy,” Kristen imparted. She keeps in regular touch with Tara Callahan and Suzanne Leonard, whom she was hoping to see over the holidays. 


Fiona Danks sent what she believes to be her first-ever update. After earning her Ph.D. in polar ecology from the Scott Polar Research Institute, she moved to Tromsø, Norway, in 2008 to become the station manager of the Norwegian Polar Institute’s research station in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard; she describes the role as “an exciting and dynamic position in a majestic place.” Fiona recently returned to student life and is “enjoying immensely” the conservation (biology) leadership M.Phil. program at Cambridge University, an interdisciplinary course that combines conservation science, finance, policy, governance and leadership skills. She is making the most of life with winter daylight again!


Lastly, I have an update from Aassia (Haroon) Haq, who after running her own startup business, decided last year to take the plunge back into a full-time executive role as chief marketing officer at MBO Partners, which helps independent business professionals manage back-office responsibilities. “One year in I am loving my new role,” Aassia reports, enjoying the benefits of working from a home office in Plano, Texas, and spending more time with her children Zoya, 8, and Adam, 3; her husband, Faisal, has his own ophthalmology practice there. 


—Garrett Gil de Rubio, 1062 Middlebrooke Drive, Canton, GA 30115; ggdr@alum.dartmouth.org