64 | LEHIGH ALUMNI BULLETIN | CLASS NOTES one of computing’s highest honors, the IEEE Sydney Fernbach Award for inventing commodity-based supercomputing that can be traced back to his Lehigh days. David graduated with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Lehigh and now lives in Manhattan. And finally, we heard from Nicole (Pollaert) Witt from her home in the suburbs of Tampa, Fla. She’s lived near Tampa for the past 18 years with her husband, Chris Witt ’87. The couple has a sophomore at Wake Forest and a son heading for a maritime academy next fall. Nicole owns The Adoption Consultancy, and the couple recently started a side hustle during the pandemic, which is the job they feel Lehigh “really trained us for”: pirate-tikis.com. That’s right, a floating tiki bar! She’s invited us all in for a visit! Classmates, if you’d like to share your own Class of ’90 update, email us at dctsports@ gmail.com and mpl1968@ yahoo.com. Thank you! ’91 Diana Zoller Perkins, dianazoller@ gmail.com Hello, friends! It feels like forever since I’ve written, as Jill Anderson so graciously agreed to write the reunion update. Thank you, Jill, and sorry to have missed all of the fun. I did manage to sneak in some visits last summer while dropping my younger daughter off at camp. Susan Lanter Blank and her loving family hosted me and made me feel like a New Yorker again! Susan recently switched jobs and is now working at Command Companies, a large book manufacturer in North America whose customers are large book and educational publishers. She found a familiar face during the interview process and now has lunch every single day with Nico Brusco! Susan and I had brunches, lunches and dinners and managed to see quite a few LU friends. Jon Ballis was in town for meetings (he is the chairman at Kirkland & Ellis), and we had a really great time catching up on his family, work and how much fun he had at the reunion. I was lucky enough to gather the following girls for a fun dinner on the UWS: Melissa (Peller) Eydenberg, who graduated magna cum laude in 2022 from Pace University/Elisabeth Haub School of Law; Jill Wasserman, whom I will have seen in Tel Aviv when she and her family come to celebrate her son’s bar mitzvah; and Stacey Winter. Shortly after our dinner, Melissa went to Daria (Nasr) Rickett’s lake house with Jill (Merriam) Dulitsky and Andrea (Wiesel) Weissman. Andrea and her daughter, Alex, Melissa and her daughter, Sophie, and Jill all attended the Soaring Together event in NYC in October. They met so many inspiring Lehigh women from various career paths and were happy to run into some familiar faces, including Kellie Fisher ’88. I also got to catch up with Heather (Sange) Mahland ’92 and Russell Mahland ’92, who have two kids at Lehigh. I loved hearing from their kids about life at Lehigh today. (Apparently, Lower Cents is the hot place to live!) Their son, Matt, is a junior and Natalie is a freshman. Andrea Strong, one of my book mavens, continues to move and shake in the NYC restaurant scene. She just joined as a staff writer at Jose Andres Media, working on the Longer Tables newsletter. Her NYC restaurant blog, The Strong Buzz, is back on Substack, so subscribe for all of the latest industry news: https:// andreastrong.substack.com And if that’s not enough, she continues her work at the nonprofit she started called NYC Hospitality Alliance Impact Foundation. Oh, and she’s just completed her third marathon! Maybe next year, Dana Susman will run with her! Dana is a partner at Kane Kessler, where she has been practicing since law school. Her kids are at University of Vermont and Hunter College. Stacey Levine, another of my book mavens, is delighting in the fact that her daughter, Ella, got her driving permit. Does anyone miss carpooling? Chris Tanis has a few years left in the carpool line. He and his wife, Carly, have two adorable kids in kindergarten and second grade. Brenton Karmen and Megan Ayer Karmen ’92 were in Prague recently visiting their son Will, who is a junior at the University of Richmond. Their daughter, Kate, is a freshman at Villanova and their youngest, Colin, is 11. ’92 Melissa (Gitlin), Jacoby, mgjacoby@gmail.com; and Rachel (Beck) Diamond, rachelmbeck@hotmail.com Our 30-year reunion was so much fun! Here’s another column with info from our classmates. The Kappa Alpha Theta crew found their way back to campus for this big milestone reunion! Marcy (Solomon) Baker lives in Tampa, working as a pediatrician. She’s been to Lehigh many times over the last few years, as her daughter, Sammy, attended Lehigh (Class of 2021)—a fourth generation for Marcy’s family! Fellow Theta Jen Soch lives in Montclair, N.J., spending her days working in advertising and shuttling around her three kids—12-year-old twins and a 9-year-old. Jen’s Montclair neighbors are Vicky (Voccola) Kearns and Rich Kearns, who spent their Lehigh years dating and married in 1996. One son is a sophomore at Dartmouth and the other a junior in high school. Rich is the CIO for insurer Alliant, and Vicky works in investor relations consulting. Lastly, Janice (Ruhl) Carroll, who lives in Fairfax, Va., has been a civil engineer for 24 years at Hazen & Sawyer, specializing in wastewater treatment plant design. Janice has a son and daughter who are in high school. The Saturday night party at the Stacks proved to be a great place to catch up with more classmates. Westfield, N.J., resident Scott Kornfeld, who is married to Pam (Goebel) Kornfeld ’93, is extending the Lehigh tradition with Class of ’25 offspring. Cynthia (Roccaforte) Chapman lives in NYC with husband Cliff Chapman ’91 and their three kids. Fiji brother Jerel Phalines, who lives in Swedesboro, N.J., and has three teens, works in wood truss manufacturing. Fellow Fiji Bob Hamilton works in ocean science coastal engineering on Cape Cod, where he lives with his wife and two kids. There was a solid turnout of Zetes at the 30th. Larry Webster spent his Lehigh days studying engineering but found his real passion as a writer. After years of writing for Car & Driver, Popular Mechanics and Road & Track, the Ann Arbor, Mich., resident and father of three teens now works in automotive media for a classic car insurance company called Hagerty. Adam Sabella, who lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., and works in the real estate lending business, has a 17-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter. Andy Udell lives with his wife and three teens in his hometown of Westport, Conn., and serves as president for North America at the biotech company Calliditas Therapeutics, which just launched a drug for rare kidney disease. This fall, Andy’s son headed to Syracuse University, where he’s sure to meet up with Atlanta-based Mark Wassersug’s and Dara (Plasky) Wassersug’s ’95 son, who is also an incoming freshman. It was great to reconnect with our fellow Class of 1992ers during the reunion, but we know there is plenty of other news out there from those who didn’t make it to South Mountain that weekend! Please send
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