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Class Notes

Since the first class of candidates graduated in 1989, we have welcomed more than 2,800 alumni into our global network. We have launched a new class notes initiative. Tell us where you've been and what you're doing now.

Class of 2018

Meghna Jain, MIA, who specialized in International Management and Southeast Asia at GPS, has started work with Hanover Research as a Content Analyst in Arlington, VA.

Joanna Valle, MIA, this past October, after graduation, I (re)joined the labor market as Field Coordinator working for the Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) Department for the WB monitoring an RCT in rural Ethiopia.

Class of 2017

Mary Halloran, MAS-IA, is in account management and business development for PwC that focuses on global clients looking to invest in the U.S. market.

Seungwan Kim, MIA, is studying to earn her doctorate in sociology at the University of Maryland. She is specializing in demography in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her career track at GPS was International Development and Management. 

Maya Reynolds James, MIA, as the PR & Content Coordinator for a local real estate investing and education company, my responsibilities include brand management, content writing, social media and implementing SEO strategy.

Class of 2016

Henrique Fialho Barbosa, MIA, as a research analyst at International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., is doing a lot of macroeconomics research — mostly empirical — on Brazil and Bolivia and applying everything he learned at GPS.

Amandine Berro, MIA, is a data engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment. He recently welcomed daughter Elena Berro-Takahashi. Berro says his family is over the moon and his dog Stata can't wait to play with little Elena.

Adam Cohen, MAS-IA, recently started a new role as manager business operations at PayPal. In addition, continues to search for a decent burrito in San Francisco as nothing compares to San Diego burritos.

Zeyuanyu (Zoey) Long, MIA, accepted a position as a customs specialist at Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego.

Hrishikesh Somani, MIA, after a corporate stint in market research, I am now working as a freelance digital marketer for e-commerce startups. Fancying the digital nomad route!

Shirley Xiaolin Xu, BA/MIA, has switched careers to a software engineering at Salesforce (thanks QM) after a year in East Asia, running a modeling agency, guesthouse and teaching English. Feel free to reach out for referrals!

Class of 2015

Parul Agarwal, MPIA, currently is working in the development economics data group at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.

Braden Agpoon, MPIA, is an impact evaluation program assistant at Social Impact in Washington, D.C., with responsibilities for conducting impact evaluations of Millennium Challenge Corp. and U.S. Agency for International Development projects in Guatemala, Honduras and Tanzania.

Mark Chesney, MPIA, is balancing contract work while earning a master's degree in computer science at Seattle University.

Henar Hellow, MPIA, is a research analyst at San Diego Workforce Partnership in San Diego.

Jessica Lee, BA/MIA, is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at UCLA.

Jiun-Da Lin, MPIA, is a Ph.D. student at University of Maryland in College Park, Md.

Matthew McAuley, MPIA, is serving as a Consular Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu, China. He interviews visa applicants, including many students excited to go to UC San Diego!

Christopher Moffatt, MPIA, has been hired as an adjunct faculty member at the Riverside Community College District and will begin teaching American Politics in February. I am also preparing for my third Los Angeles Marathon.

So Yeong Park, MPIA, is working as an assistant manager at Junglim DVP, a real estate development company that focuses on building apartments in Busan, Korea.

Jason Pham, MPIA, received his Series 7 and is now an institutional fixed income broker with a broker/dealer in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Jason Raby, MPIA, moved back to his original hometown of Portland, Oregon to work for Mercy Corps (the nonprofit that first spurred his interest in international development work).

Jason Ryu, MAS-IA, since 2015, has been deployed as the Syria Assets Manager, CJTF-OIR. I was the Aide to a 1-star general and an interpreter for the HQMC. I serve as an expeditionary logistics planner in New Orleans, United States Marine Corps.

Akshay Shankar Bharadwaj, MPIA, currently is working in the business development team at cloud communications provider Twilio in San Francisco.

Lizzy Sung, MPIA, is a coordinator at Booking.com in Taipei, Taiwan.

Class of 2014

Hirokazu Abe, MPIA, is a project manager for the Asian Football Confederation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 

Steve Astle, MPIA, is working on trade negotiations and compliance for the U.S. Department of Commerce in Fairfax, Va.

Jamie (Rau) Herrera, MPIA, recently moved to Dallas and is utilizing international disability compliance and data analysis learned at IRPS/GPS to help guide content on Hilton websites to be accessible for any potential traveler!

Justin Lee, MPIA, is the director of community engagement at Los Angeles Conservation Corps.

Ana Quiroz, MPIA, is now a field coordinator for the Work Bank, evaluating the West Africa Unique Identification for Regional Integration and Inclusion Project. She splits her time between Cote d'Ivoire and San Francisco.

Jonathan Shalfi, MPIA, returned to his alma mater to pursue a Ph.D. in political science at UC San Diego.

Jennifer Wanninger, MPIA, recently started working at Home Bay, a tech real estate start-up based in San Diego, as a Senior Financial Analyst alongside Ross Bixler '13.

Class of 2013

Ross Bixler, BA/MIA, recently accepted a new role with HomeBay Inc. to lead their operations team. The company is growing incredibly fast so it is really exciting to jump on board early in the expansion process.

Michael Buesa, BA/MIA, relocated from Oakland, Calif., to San Francisco, where he now is a pricing analyst at Credo Mobile. Prior to this position, Buesa served as a projects analyst at Opinion Dynamics Corp. and worked briefly with a startup.

Maura Deignan, MPIA, a William J. Clinton Fellow for Service in India at the American India Foundation, is currently serving as a volunteer for a grassroots child rights organization called Shaishav.

Dechawuthi Dispanurat, MPIA, had been working at the Big 4 public accounting for four years and recently accepted a new role as senior associate at KPMG in Los Angeles, Calif.

Xu (Monica) Han, MPIA, relocated from Beijing to Paris, working as a program assistant at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization headquarters, with her experience collected from a think tank and a transnational corporation in China.

Chenhao Liu, MPIA, is a junior professional officer with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Cairo—the only recent GPS graduate serving in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Ruben Lugo Delgado, MAS-IA, is a SelectUSA investment specialist for the U.S. Department of Commerce in Mexico City.

Taylor Roberts, MPIA, formerly a senior researcher at the University of Oxford, has recently taken a new role within the Cyber and National Security Unit of the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C.

Elena Salazar, MPIA, an integrated marketing manager at Union + Webster, is giving back to San Francisco as a junior board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area. 

Amit Sharma, MPIA, recently moved to New Delhi to be closer to family after about eight years in SoCal and starting a new job with Gartner's industry research group focusing on finance. He aspires to live the life my dog has.

Class of 2012

Fernanda Luchine Ishihara, MPIA, is loving Atlanta and the heat, and shrimp and grits! After years at the World Bank & UN, she now works on raising awareness of international affairs as the executive director of the World Affairs Council of Atlanta.

Elena Foukes Lucas, MPIA, leads a Lean In Circle in San Francisco—where women in the energy industry meet up monthly to talk about challenges and victories in the workplace. Because of her involvement, she was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Jason Kim, MAS-IA and U.S. Army foreign affairs officer, currently is serving as the country desk officer for Korea and Vietnam at U.S. Army, Pacific in Honolulu.

Timothy Kim, MPIA, is working as a senior product manager at Comscore in Los Angeles. Previously, he worked at Cox COMET as a senior product analyst.

Nancy Li, MPIA, works on electric grid reliability and continues honing her interest in renewable energy in the Pacific Northwest as a senior management systems analyst at Seattle City Light.

Kurtis Nakamura, BA/MIA, and Judith Li, MPIA ’12, welcomed their first son, Kenshin, and are re-learning work-life balance. Nakamura currently works as an auditor-evaluator for the California State Auditor in the Bay Area.

Dan Siegel ’12, MAS-IA, is working on his dissertation at the University of Maryland at College Park, and preparing to graduate and begin working!

Class of 2011

Chihiro Fujimoto, MAS-IA, is a financial officer in the capital markets division of the Word Bank in Washington, D.C.

Karen Grunstra, MPIA, is an international trade specialist at the International Trade Administration under the U.S. Department of Commerce. Her portfolio includes medical devices and health IT.

Aska Kuwabara, MPIA, has been wanting to move overseas and work in more international environment and finally my dream came true! I look forward to meeting GPS alumni here in Singapore.

Jarrod Russell, MPIA, is now the executive director of Startup San Diego, a community's front door to entrepreneurship, building connectivity, awareness, and inclusivity around the individuals and resources that make exponentially scalable ideas a reality.

Colin Santulli, MPIA, who previously worked on autonomous vehicle initiatives for SANDAG, has joined the Natural Resources Defense Council as a Climate Advisor supporting the City of San Diego.

Jamie Schau, MPIA, after a four-year stint in Chile, returned to the U.S. to work as an internships advisor for Latin America programs at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore., and will be married in September 2016.

(Daisy) Qiuqing Tai, MPIA, is a Ph.D. student in the department of political science at Yale University.

Class of 2010

Shannon Cummings Morris, MPIA, launched a global food subscription box called Spiced Pantry. She currently resides in Yarmouth, Maine.

Natasha Hanshaw, MPIA, was named chief commercial officer at Strategyzer in Zurich and became engaged in January 2016.

Catherine Harris, MAS-IA, works in international affairs in New York City. Prior to this assignment, she worked at the World Trade Center in San Diego and for the San Diego Association of Governments on cross-border infrastructure projects. She is one of the School's first MAS-IA alums.

Brian Mallis, MPIA, landed a new job as a senior web developer at Sony in San Diego, where he also is buying a house and loving being back near his alma mater—plus working with fellow alum Blake Ellison, MPIA ’11. 

Jessica Megill, MPIA, remains a political officer in the U.S. Foreign Service.

Keisuke Nakatsuka, MPIA, is a senior business analyst of digital ventures at Boston Consulting Group in Tokyo.

Blake Tye, MPIA, is a senior manager for technology advocacy at Intel Corp. in San Diego. She previously worked for Qualcomm Inc.

Class of 2009

Jessica Graham, MPIA, has launched her own environmental security consultancy after living and working in France with INTERPOL. She is currently in Geneva attending the CITES Conference of the Parties (COP-18).

Class of 2008

Dennis-Michael Broussard, MPIA, executive event producer at Silk Road Productions, received the 2015 Wendell Cutting Humanitarian Award from the San Diego American Red Cross and the 2015 40 Under 40 Award from "San Diego Metro Magazine."

Nicola Hedge, MPIA, is heading back to Hawaii to join Natural Resources Defense Council as a Climate Advisor for the City & County of Honolulu’s Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency.

Aaron Jacobson, MPIA, a materials manager at United Technologies in San Diego, and his wife Lan welcomed their baby Amelia on July 25, 2016.

Oliver Petzold, MPIA, now is the assistant director, resource development at The Asia Foundation.

Thammaradee Prypiroonrojn, MPIA, who previously worked for Thai Oil Public Company Limited, has accepted a position at LINE Thailand as the company’s business development manager in Bangkok.

Jordan van Rijn, MPIA, now is a Ph.D candidate in applied and development economics at University of Wisconsin—Madison.

Ari Schwartz, MPIA, is a manager at Nintendo. He has worked for both PlayStation and Nintendo doing business development and strategy. He has also welcomed two daughters, Evelyn and Sophie, since graduation.

Class of 2007

Cynthia Davilla, MPIA, works as a general service officer in the General U.S. Consulate in Shanghai, China.

Peter Foo, MPIA, rejoined Chemonics International in Washington D.C., as the program director in the Afghanistan region. Previously, he served as a country director/Asia program manager for Relief International in Pakistan.

Andres Gentry, MPIA, is a senior manager at Grant Thornton in Shanghai. He advises companies on their internal investigations, as well as conducts due diligence investigations on behalf of his clients.

Benjamin Grayson, MPIA, joined UBS Asset Management in December 2015 as a fixed income product specialist in Chicago. 

Brett Hamsik, MPIA, an economic policy adviser at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., received the 2015 Herbert Salzman Award for Excellence in International Economic Performance.

Jay Harriman, MPIA, currently is a senior director at BowerGroupAsia in Bangkok, specializing in public policy and government affairs consulting for Fortune 500 firms.

Renate (Muenich) Kwon, MPIA, as part of her role as program manager of the Southeast Asia Research Group and communications coordinator for the Asian Pacific Studies Institute at Duke University in Durham, N.C.,  works closely with Asia-focused scholars and practitioners from the U.S. and North and Southeast Asia.

Federica Marchesi, MPIA, started with KPMG right after graduating IR/PS, been with the firm ever since and had the chance to move in different offices around the world to develop her career. Now she is happily settled in Washington, D.C.

Nicholas Matcheck, MPIA, a former officer in the Navy, has been invited to serve as a Peace Corps NGO Advising Volunteer in Paraguay.

Renate Meunich, MPIA, formerly worked as a program coordinator for masters of advanced studies in international affairs students in the Global Leadership Institute at GPS.

Chris Moore, MPIA, co-founder of Sim4Act in Berlin, completed a German Chancellor Fellowship and now is helping cities with climate change adaptation.

Veronica Valdez, MPIA, moved from Washington, D.C., to Seattle — after serving the Obama administration over the last 8 years — to start a new job as a commission specialist at the Port of Seattle.

Stefan Whitney, MPIA, now is serving as a foreign service officer for pollution and climate change at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

Class of 2006

Dawn Baker, MPIA, is a business analyst consultant in Wittenberg Weier LLC in Chula Vista, Calif.

Roberta Brodsky Connors, MPIA, is vice president of administration for BayWa r.e. Solar Systems in Murrieta, Calif.

Andrew Curry, MPIA, and senior analyst and project manager with the U.S. Government Accountability Office in Seattle, and Melissa Nitsch, MPIA and program analyst for the Federal Aviation Administration in Seattle, welcomed their son Emmett in December 2015.

Micah Fisher-Kirshner, MPIA, is the director of SEO & Content at Turn/River Capital in San Francisco and is also the president of BayAreaSearch.org, a nonprofit association for the San Francisco Bay Area SEO Meet-ups.

Melissa Nitsch, MPIA, joined Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the Seattle Field Office's community relations officer.

Heather Rock, MPIA, has joined Pacific Gas and Electric's Corporate Sustainability team as the Climate Resilience Chief, where she will lead climate adaptation work to prepare for our state's changing environment.

Lys Severtson, MPIA, is finding fulfillment working as an entrepreneur, building a couple of business concepts in San Diego.

Yuko Takagi, MPIA, is deputy director for the Ministry of Finance Japan in Tokyo.

Cameron Van Tassell, MPIA, is leading the Foreign Investment Board of the Office of the President Republic of Palau, which regulates all foreign direct investment coming into Palau. We process applications and monitor and enforce compliance with investment laws.

Dion Ward, MPIA, has been living in Brasília since 2015 with his wife and 3-year-old daughter, working on project design for WWF programs to help conserve the Cerrado-Pantanal, Atlantic Forest and Amazon biomes.

Kim-Yen Nguyen, MPIA, is a global sales and distributor operations manager at Chevron, based in San Ramon, Calif.

Jon Yan, MPIA, is a business analyst at Google and living in Millbrae, Calif., where he’s enjoying life in the Bay Area.

Class of 2005

Jeff Burnett, MPIA, is a special agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in Rome, Italy. He is currently forward deployed to southern Ethiopia.

Sebastian Cabello, MPIA, is the director of GSMA Latin America. His job consists on bringing together telecom stakeholders from the private and public sector to discuss mobile telecom policy as well as promoting a sustainable environment for the future of the industry. He has been recently meeting with the President of Costa Rica and in public debates with the ICT Ministers of Colombia and Chile.

Bradley H. Kittredge, MPIA, s vice president of product for 23andMe located in Mountain View, Calif.

Tanya Lloyd, MPIA, is an associate investment officer in Mexico with the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private sector arm.

Charles Notzon, MPIA, is an economist at the Denver Service Center for the National Park Service and resides in Lakewood, Colo.

Will Pearson, MPIA, just returned to London after five years in Zambia, where I was director of GET FiT, a renewable energy program. I'm now with Camco, which manages a £150m Africa-focused renewable energy fund.

Darren Posey, MPIA, is living in Bujumbura, Burundi serving as the country representative for Burundi & Rwanda for Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

Xin Rong, MPIA, is a market intelligence leader at GE China Growth and Operations in Shanghai.

Kevin Trepa, MPIA, is vice president of tactical sales and marketing at Leupold. He also leads their new tactical Optics Division, bringing an extensive background in global military operations, business leadership and academic achievement to the job.

Class of 2004

Scott Freiberger, MPIA, currently works as an educator in New York City and was honored to be the recipient of the 2018 TESOL International Teacher of the Year Award. My life has been adventuresome, challenging and fun. 

Mark Higgins, MPIA, has had a busy start to 2016, acting as chief operating officer at Strategen Consulting in Lafayette, Calif., and launching a clean-tech venture capital fund.

Duc Huynh, MPIA, is a senior analyst in the strategic planning department at Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia.

Bo “Catherine” Peng, MPIA, is a senior associate at Mercer LLC in Toronto, Canada.

Daniel Smyth, MPIA, is an investment director for MGM Innova Capital in Miami, Florida. He invests in energy efficiency and renewable energy in Colombia, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

Sherry Xie, MPIA, is a director of Residential A/C Marketing at Emerson Climate Technologies in Shanghai, China.

Class of 2003

Brian Allemekinders, MPIA, is the deputy director of the Aid Program at Foreign Affairs, Trade & Development Canada, responsible for the operational management of Canada's official Aid Program to Bangladesh.

Molly Gavin, MPIA, is vice president of government affairs and sustainability at Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego.

 

Class of 2002

Erin (White) Fairbanks, MPIA, is enjoying being a mother of three, professional portrait painter and activist for Friends of McMillan Park in Washington, D.C., during the school year and venturing to Portoviejo, Ecuador during the summer.

Kirsten Mao, MPIA, is the founder of ManGo Associates, a head-hunter company in Shanghai, China.

Hidekatsu Take, MPIA, is an executive officer, joint head of the Americas at Mizuho Bank Ltd. in New York.

Yimin Wang, MPIA, is the founder, executive coach and facilitator of Sense Consulting. He also founded Sense Mentoring, a for-profit social enterprise. Yimin is active in charity and collective giving efforts. He is now preparing for his second 50KM charity walk in Shanghai. He completed it last April.

Class of 2001

Chris Pesenti, MPIA, founder and director of RED Sustainable Travel was recently nominated as a finalist in the Innovation category for the prestigious Tourism for Tomorrow Awards.

Kenichi Takase, MPIA, is a senior manager at TEPCO Fuel & Power Inc. in Tokyo.

Dora Zepeda, MPIA, is a process engineer at British Petroleum in Long Beach, Calif.

Class of 2000

John H. Cunnison, MPIA, is vice president and senior portfolio manager at the Walla Walla, Washington-based Baker Boyer Bank.

Justin Miyai, MPIA, is currently an Administrative Law Judge with the Office of Administrative Hearings & Appeals at the California Department of Health Care Services in Sacramento, Calif.

Nina Natina, MPIA, is now the director of the Small Business Development Center at CSU Chico.

Xia Ning, MPIA, is an executive director in the head of administration division in BOC International, Hong Kong.

Yimin Wang, MPIA, as CEO of Sense Consulting in Shanghai, represents Lumina Learning, a U.K.-based innovative psychometric developer.

Class of 1999

Samuel Gordon, MPIA, is a partner at Deloitte, where he focuses on providing international tax advice to global financial service firms.

Maria Carne Lee, MPIA, is the vice president of Tradelane Development in China for Panalpina, a provider for logistic services.

Kahori Matsui, MPIA, is the vice president of strategy and business development at SoftBank U.S. in San Francisco.

Betsy (Wiedenmayer) Rogers, MPIA, assistant program manager for Japan Market Expansion Competition, is happily raising her four children in Tokyo, with the youngest two in a local Japanese school.

Varunesh Tuli '99, MPIA, has a new Indian culinary travel book titled "Índia Sabores e Sensações" coauthored with Zeca Camargo of TV Globo. It was launched at FLIP & Sao Paulo Book Fair and is published by Companhia das Letras (RandomHouse).

Class of 1998

Leah (Fenwick) McFarland, MPIA, served as a foreign service political officer in Sao Paulo, Washington and Moscow. Oversaw global program operations for a non-profit organization building financial infrastructure in emerging markets, particularly the Middle East and North Africa. She now develops strategic planning for technology implementation in global anti-money laundering operations at Citigroup.

Class of 1997

Mina Hsiao, MPIA, worked at HP Shanghai until 2012.

Marcy (Honnold) Morrison, MPIA, is living her passion and purpose as founder and CEO of Careers with Wings in La Jolla, Calif.

John Nylin, MPIA, is living with his family in the Czech Republic, where he works at the U.S. Embassy in Prague.

Jeff Rector, MPIA, is a partner at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP in San Diego, serving as a renewable energy project finance attorney at the firm.

Wendy Dougherty, MPIA, was recently appointed as a school board trustee for the San Carlos School District. She also serves as chief operating officer of the Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation.

Class of 1996

John Nylin, MPIA, is a foreign service officer for the U.S. Department of State in Tokyo, Japan. He currently works as a special assistant to Ambassador Caroline Kennedy. Since 2001, he has lived in India, Slovenia, Washington, Japan and Afghanistan.

Class of 1995

Luis Fajardo, MPIA, graduated from Oxford University with a Ph.D. in history. He worked in London for a few years at the BBC and is now at the Miami bureau of the BBC.

Takashi Kobanawa, MPIA, after working 20 years as an investment banker, now is managing director of Polaris Capital Group, a private equity firm in Tokyo. 

Carlos Sanchez, MPIA, spoke and attended Colombia's Orange Economy Summit held in Medellin, Colombia this past September 2019. Website: http://cumbreeconomianaranja.org/

Tim Weed, MPIA, is a novelist and professor. He's published two books, organizes private trips to Cuba and works as a featured lecturer for National Geographic in Spain, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.

Class of 1994

Jose (Joe) Altovar, MPIA, is currently a program manager at Northrop Grumman supporting its Aerospace sector’s Applied Research organization on cool stuff with interesting folks and customers.

Andrea Ding-Kemp, MPIA, is at CRH/Meadow Burke in San Clement, Calif. A LOT has changed since we graduated! The biggest change is that I can TALK a lot now. Looking back, my English was so poor and the only thing help was smiling at you. Look forward to seeing you.

Thanh Duy Phạm, MPIA, has been working for the Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs after graduation from IR/PS in 1994, including two terms in Vietnam Embassy in Washington, D.C. until retirement and is now living in Hanoi.

Elias Terman, MPIA, who has worked for various Enterprise Software, SaaS and IT Security companies, has accepted a position at Distil Networks as the company's vice president of marketing in San Francisco, Calif.

Tim Weed, MPIA, is an author with parallel careers as an entrepreneur and lecturer for National Geographic, the Newport MFA, the Cuba Writers Program, and my own company, Creative Travel Arts, LLC. www.timweed.net

Class of 1993

Robert Osborn, MPIA, a senior analyst at California Public Utilities Commission in Sacramento, Calif., published a historical novel about Americans in WWII China titled, "Lovers & Comrades" (2015).

Class of 1992

Richard Boly, MPIA, has retired after a diplomatic career and now can devote time to solo cross-country cycling (Washington, D.C.-San Francisco; Miami-Maine); splitting time between paid gigs (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, PeaceTech Lab) and unpaid board/advisory (Mind the Bridge, InnovateEDU, Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs, Ampion, TableTribes); and paying his wife and son back for having dragged them around the world for the last two decades.

Kenneth Tingey, MPIA, is a principal at CIMH Global in Logan, Utah, developing a collaborative network in health and governance in Asia, Central Europe and the Gulf.

Dan Irving, MPIA, vice president of international at WX Brands in Oakland, Calif., is sponsoring a Beer for Books event in Tokyo with Gary Bremermann, MPIA '91, in May 2016.

Class of 1991

Debito Arudou, MPIA, a lecturer at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu, had a chapter on Japanese media published in Jeff Kingston, Ed., "Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan.”

Gary Bremermann, MPIA, as representative director of PowerUp Solutions K.K., coaches bilingual professionals on recruiting, marketing and advertising in Tokyo.

Richard Cohen, MPIA, after one-and-a-half-year stints in Tokyo and Singapore, lived in Malaysia for nine years and has been in Thailand since 2006. He joined Recipco Capacity Exchange, the world's first Capacity Exchange, which essentially creates a new asset class derived from companies' capacity. It provides capacity-backed financing at no interest and facilitates non-monetary trade via our own currency, called the Enterprise-backed Credit Obligation.

Roberto Torres, MPIA, is Senior Marketing Manager at Siemens in the Chicago area and recently returned from an awesome vacation in the Riviera Maya.

Marifel Verlohr, MPIA, is now responsible for building Emory's international alumni network through programs that engage alumni worldwide. Marifel and her husband, Ralph '90, MPIA, moved to Atlanta three years ago with their two boys, Maximillian and Alexander. They would enjoy connecting with fellow alumni who live in the area or travel through Atlanta.

Class of 1990

Ken Davenport, MPIA, co-founded and runs a social enterprise consulting firm that works with nonprofits. Davenport also recently published his first novel called “The Two Gates,” an alternative history of John Kennedy and Vietnam.

Jason Dedrick, MPIA, was promoted to full professor and is serving as associate dean for research at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University.

John Warren, MPIA, has been appointed as Director and Associate Professor of the Masters in Publishing program at George Washington University. Previously was director of George Mason University Press/Mason Publishing Group.

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