CLASS NOTES | SUMMER 2025 | 53 tic. He’d love for you to try it out and share your feedback—kevin. vass@musotic.com. Leslie (Utzinger) Faraci notes that she and husband Mike have a son, Grant, heading to UNC Chapel Hill to study business this coming fall. He is graduating in May from Forsyth Country Day School in Winston-Salem, N.C. Leslie (Kramarow) August writes that her daughter, Sadie August, will be joining the Lehigh Class of 2029! Please continue to share your news, and I will make sure that it makes our class column. Class of 1998 Facebook Page: facebook.com/groups/ Lehigh98/ ’99 Karen (Smith) Fischer, kms5lehigh@gmail.com Hello and happy summer! It’s been a quiet news period, so I’m taking the opportunity to ask a question. Mind-blowing as it is—at least to me, lol—some of our 1999 classmates may have children, family members or friends who are joining our Lehigh family! Any classmates out there who want to share this amazing news? If so, please send me an email! Other news to share? We’d all love to hear it! Wishing you all the best! ’00 GUEST CORRESPONDENT: Natalie Ciampa, natalieciam pa@gmail.com I, Natalie Ciampa, work for the Aerospace Corporation at NASA Goddard, and have been recently connected with several other Lehigh alumni. I am deputy project manager for a small weather satellite mission, and our launch vehicle integration manager happens to be another Lehigh alum, John Satrom ’83. I was asked to serve as the Class of 2000’s guest columnist because I recently contacted Lehigh to share that I did a podcast for the Maryland STEM Festival, where the other speaker happened to also be a Lehigh grad, Aisha Abdulkarimu ’20. I recently married Ignacio Arriagada, who I met while working on a ground-based telescope in La Serena, Chile. We live in Annapolis, Md., with my two teenagers, Sullivan (16) and Shiloh (14). Personally, I can attest that the Class of 2000 alumni connection is still going very strong. We see each other once or twice per year and text daily. Most recently we attended the Lehigh women’s soccer reunion (even the non-soccer ladies), and many of us brought our kids to campus with us. Meredith (Hughes) Falatek, former swimmer, left her career as a biochemist at Merck in 2004 to pursue an M.S.Ed. at the University of Pennsylvania (2005) and become a teacher. Inspired by her high school chemistry teacher and Lehigh professors, Linda Lowe-Krentz and Keith Schray, she now teaches various chemistry- and biochemistry-related courses at Wissahickon High School in Amber, Pa. This is her 20th year as a teacher. Meredith is married (Scott) and has three children (Avery 16, Ryan 15 and Matthew 15). In her ample spare time, she contributes to various community organizations and boards. In the summer you can find her at the swim club, and in the winter, on the ski slopes. Otherwise, you can count on her to sing the Gamma Phi Beta rush song on demand, or gush about the latest weather phenomenon. Joy (Hohenstein) Graber serves as the president of United Drilling Inc., and resides in Bucks County, Pa. Joy manages a company that works in 30 states, but she hasn’t lost her unmistakable Philly charm—or accent. Joy was clearly a natural leader back at Lehigh when she somehow convinced her boss to turn a blind eye as she got all her friends to join in building a structurally unsound deck in a location we shall not name (no worries for safety as the structure is no longer there!). I recently had the pleasure of singing our go-to karaoke duet with Joy at the Tally Ho, and she hasn’t lost her beautiful singing voice. Danielle (Landers) Hasselberg lives in Hartford, Conn., where she works as an engineering manager for a municipal pump and process equipment distributor owned by fellow Lehigh University grad Craig Burmeister ’98. Danielle has two elementary-age kids who keep her busy with soccer, skiing, basketball and lacrosse. Danielle was my freshman year roommate at M&M, and I knew right away that she was a great fit because of her motherly nature. She gently guided me to clean up when ants invaded our dorm room after a spilled bacon incident. See the fall issue for more updates from this crew. ’01 Abby Dawes Columbo, abbywdawes@gmail.com ’02 Laura (Schwamb) Carino, lcarino@ att.net No news to share this time, Class of 2002, which means I need your help! I’d love to hear what’s new in your life, whether it’s a career move, family milestone, travel adventure or anything in between. Send your updates my way via email to LCarino@att.net or message me on Facebook at Laura Schwamb Carino so we can keep our class connected. I look forward to sharing more in our next issue. Until then, be well! ’03 Jessica DeSantis-Berg, jessicadesantisberg@yahoo.com Hi, Class of 2003! A few months ago, I asked in our Facebook group if anyone would be willing to share their story. I was thrilled when my old friend Román Martinez responded. We ended up spending an hour chatting about our lives since graduation, which was a lot of fun. Román shared that after Lehigh he spent time with his family in Houston before moving to be with his grandparents in Monterrey, Mexico. There, he worked as a sales and service engineer for a medical equipment company and then later became a manager within an anti-virus company. In 2011, Román moved to Columbus, Ohio, to lead the U.S. market intelligence arm of Sys Com, an aerospace cable manufacturing company. He earned his MBA from Ohio State University while there, and then took a B2B sales job at global fashion brand Magnanni. Today Román continues to serve as the director of international sales for Asia and Latin America, frequently traveling to NYC, Milan, Paris and Hong Kong. Over the years, Román has also continued to play his guitar. His current band has even opened for national acts playing in Columbus! While Román volunteered his story, I also wanted to point out that Safiya Jafari Simmons, our previous class correspondent, was one of the alumni speakers sharing her knowledge with alumnae at Lehigh’s Soaring Together Women’s Summit in March. Well done, Safiya! If you’re interested in sharing your story or notice something notable in the lives of our ’03 peers, please just send me an email or speak up in our Class of 2003 group! ’04 Editor’s note: Our many thanks to Lloyd Henderson for his eight years of volunteerism. Please welcome Michael Zurat as the new correspondent. He can be reached at 202-549-2222, or mzurat@icloud.com. Greetings, Class of 2004! I hope the Year of the Snake has been treating you well. Lloyd Henderson has handed me the baton as the new class correspondent, and I want to thank him for his service. So much for AI taking people’s jobs! Reconnecting with many friends and familiar faces at
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