Class Note 1994
After a 15-year investing career in Silicon Valley, Ian Picache crossed into the world of entrepreneurs last March when he co-founded Bergine, a luxury daily flash-sale website based in San Francisco. Last October New York City-based Gilt Groupe acquired the company, which—like their site Gilt City—focuses on deals from luxe local businesses such as high-end restaurants and gyms as well as services like floral arrangements and wedding planning consultations.
In other business news Frida Polli was named a Harvard Business School 2010 Kaplan Life Sciences Fellow. These awards are given to first-year M.B.A. students with life sciences backgrounds who are planning careers in science-related businesses or organizations.
If you had a chance to catch any morning talks in March you might have seen Erica Katz Abramson talking about her new book Bonding Over Beauty, which hit stores that month. Katz describes the book as a down-to-earth guide for moms of tweens designed to help them open up a dialogue with their daughters during those often-awkward years. In the book she dishes out advice to moms on how to discuss such sticky issues as shaving legs, using tampons and wearing makeup to school. The book also provides chapter-by-chapter beauty-themed mother-daughter bonding activities.
My recent Susie Lee update earned me a write-in from K.J. Ward. “I’ve gotten to see her and her new family a few times during the last several years. Randy Akee and I got married in 2004, he graduated from Harvard in 2006 with a Ph.D. in economics and we moved to Bonn, Germany so he could take a three-year postdoctoral position. I worked as an internal communications consultant for McKinsey & Co. in Cologne. Just more than a year ago we moved back to Massachusetts. Randy is an assistant professor of economics at Tufts and, in addition to maintaining a contract with McKinsey Germany, I am (once again) the director of Boston’s supportive services drop-in center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer adolescents. We never thought we’d be back in Boston, but it’s nice—even though Heather Searles moved to New Orleans like two weeks before Randy and I moved back here. Luckily, she and I have been able to visit each other. Our dog Shaka is less thrilled to be back in the United States. He had gotten quite used to going to restaurants and shops and traveling on trains in Europe, but those freedoms have come to an end for him.” Thanks, K.J., and welcome back to the States, where—probably coincidentally—our soles are generally cleaner than those in Europe.
I also have been asked to pass on the following sobering news from the ’94 class officers. Since our class is no longer a “young” class (ouch!) we will no longer receive generous subsidies for DAM. Sadly, only about 250 of you reading this right now are currently paying class dues, which means the entirety of current collected class dues plus additional funding are going to be needed to pay for the publication and mailing of the DAM to our class. If things continue on this course, it means we will be running an annual deficit of $3,000-4,000 on DAM alone, excluding any reunions, events or sponsorships of College activities. Unfortunately, this is not sustainable. Unless we are able to eliminate this funding deficit (meaning more folks pay their dues!) we will no longer be able to provide non-paying classmates with DAM and other class services. So if you want to continue to receive this publication, please send in your $40 class dues either by returning a ’94 class dues solicitation or by using PayPal on our class website at www.dartmouth94.org.
—Suzie Fromer, 26 Irving Ave., Tarrytown, NY 10591; suziefromer@gmail.com
