Fletcher '95 inc. continues to expand its operations overseas and in the United States. We've been hired, fired, deported (sort of - see Andy Kennedy, below), promoted, engaged, married, poked, prodded and otherwise field-tested, as the following stories attest:

ASIA

Caroline Blume, based in Hong Kong, is coordinating special events for Northern Telecom Asia, including a Nortel-sponsored performance of the Chinese National Symphony for over 1,000 people.

Eric Sanderson is working for Hewitt Associates, a Chicago-based human resources and benefits consulting firm, in Hong Kong. Eric and Caroline are engaged and planning a May 1997 wedding near Philadelphia.

On his way back from a year studying Chinese in Taipei, Andy Kennedy, during a trip to mainland China, had a slight encounter with the local sheriff in Guilin (just outside of Guangzho). Put on a plane to Hong Kong sans passport, Andy was released into Caroline and Eric's custody at the Hong Kong airport (they accepted). Andy returned to the States and spent the summer at Middlebury's Chinese language school.

Bo Tedards, who, totally by coincidence, rented an apartment on the same Taipei block as Andy, is studying Chinese and teaching English in Taipei. Po-Hui Chen passed the Taiwanese foreign service exams and is working in the Foreign Ministry's international organizations department. Holding down the fort in Tokyo is Aya Nakajima, who works in the economics section of the U.S. embassy.

Sonoko Kiyotaki is in charge of economic and political research on ASEAN countries at the Fuji Research Institute. Sonoko has been active in the Fletcher Alumni Club of Tokyo and the Japan Civil Liberties Union, an NGO which is studying the role of national human rights commissions throughout Asia.

FORMER SOVIET UNION

Maura Lynch finished a year working on girls' education projects for Catholic Relief Services in Lucknow, the capital of India's Uttar Pradesh state. After trying unsuccessfully to get herself sent to Afghanistan and Bosnia (two of my top vacation spots), Maura has moved to Tblisi, Georgia to run CRS's programs there and in Armenia. She will also serve as an OSCE election monitor in the Georgian region of Adjara.

Maura reports that she has seen Katrina Menzigian, who is working at the University of Armenia in Yerevan, and Professor Henrikson's neighbor (small world). Maura also reports that she had a drink with a footnote from her MALD at a Tblisi pub (really small world).

Diane Tausner continues to train party officials in electoral politics for the National Democratic Institute in Kiev. Rafal Golebiowski has been implementing the land privatization program in Russia for the International Finance Corporation; he is in charge of operations in Kirov and Volgograd.

Sasha Zakharov, who handles corporate finance at Pioneer Investments in Moscow, helped arrange some foreign investment in GAZ, the Nizhny Novgorod-based company that makes Russia's Volga automobiles. His work took him throughout Russia, as well as to Arkansas and Texas. He continues writing songs, one of which was a top radio hit that brought him a TV appearance and several TV and newspaper interviews. The first Top 40 hit by a member of the Fletcher class of '95!

EUROPE

Andrew Bovarnick consults for foreign governments (including Russia, India, Sri Lanka, Mexico and Georgia) on the economic implications of introducing effective environmental policy. He reports that several people have crashed at his flat while passing through London, including Toby Knapp, Jon Libby, Elena Galaitsi and Diane Tausner.

Andrew in turn spent a week in Sweden visiting Bjorn Gilsater, who handles the big kroner at Sweden's Ministry of Finance. (Bjorn in turn partied with Sasha during a business trip to Moscow. These European guys get around.)

Geoffrey Fink is an associate at McKinsey's London office. Lt. Col. Roger Baty has been enjoying his posting in Naples. Joel Rhenstrom got married in August in Finland. Tomila Lankina is at Oxford working on her Ph.D. in politics.

AFRICA

Elizabeth Ridley is working in South Africa.

MIDDLE EAST

Debbie Isser will spend a year clerking for a justice on the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem. Tamim al-Madani reports that he is working in the family business, serving on the boards of directors of the Al-Gaith National Food Company and Sabbagh & Madani Wood Manufacturing Company. As of late 1995, he was laying the groundwork to begin working with the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

LATIN AMERICA

Juan Brito is the international news editor at Santiago's El Mercurio. He reports that his wife misses performing with the Accords as an unofficial Fletcherite.

NEW YORK

David Schwimmer took off for India and Nepal after taking the bar exam; he will return to New York to practice law at Davis Polk. Felicia Swindells, an aspiring lawyer herself, made the Fordham International Law Review. Najm Akbar returned to the U.S. from Islamabad, where he was working in Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to become a first secretary at Pakistan's Permanent Mission to the United Nations.

Johann Elysee management consults (Is that a verb? It should be) at Mitchell & Titus in New York. Alice Hurley, Laura Huizi, and Lazarre Potier are all guarding the money supply at the New York Federal Reserve Bank (have you gotten the tour of the gold yet?).

Diana Quintero has been working on CNBC's "Inside Opinion" and "Money Wheel." She was recently promoted to Associate Producer of "Business Insiders" (Monday-Friday at 6:00 p.m.) and "Strictly Business" (Saturday and Sunday at 9:00 a.m.).

Mi Ae Geoum traveled to North Korea with the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization in May. Rafael Docavo-Malvezzi has been working as a program associate for economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Andrea Hanneman spent a year clerking for Judge John Gleeson in the Eastern District of New York.

NEW ENGLAND

Joe Vorbach survived his first year teaching at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. After grading finals, Joe did a 6 week research "investigatorship" at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Marine Policy Center. He then joined the Academy's three-masted tall ship "Eagle" in Hamburg, Germany for a six week training cruise. The cruise took him to Rostock, Germany, where he had lunch with Annika Hansen's parents. Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Thomas Pickering and his wife Alice (both Fletcher graduates - 1954) joined the ship for the one day sail from St. Petersburg to Helsinki.

Martha Bory, who got married on August 10 to Ken Culver, manages international programs at the University of Connecticut Business School. Marc Parrish is working for Putnam Investments in Boston, but reports that he still finds time to do a little two-steppin' every now 'n' then (not to mention working on web pages).

Kristin Hicks spent a few months with Management Science for Health in Nicaragua; she is now working as an independent international nutrition and health consultant in Cambridge, Mass. Kristin will tie the knot in October 1996. Alina Garcia, a senior analyst at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, married Carlos Lapuerta in Boston on April 26; Carlos is a partner in the Brattle Group, an economic and financial consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass.

Chris Green also got married, to Julie Pennington, an engineering analyst at State Street Bank. After graduation, Brigitte Smith traveled to Nepal, Pakistan and Indonesia. She is now the manager of business development for Molten Metal Technology in Waltham, Mass., working on M&A and new business development. She reports that her work has taken her to "several of the United States' most disgusting nuclear waste sites."

After passing her Ph.D. Comps at Fletcher, Erin Conaton decompressed by spending the summer in Monterrey, California. All (!) that's left now is the dissertation. Matt Levitt has his Comps in September. He and Dina are spending lots of time with their sons Tani (3 years old) and Uriel (six months).

Josh Lincoln finished his fifth semester and spent the summer interning at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Fellow Ph.D. candidate Phil Moremen married Mitra Morgan, F'96, on August 17. Olaf Groth recently accepted an offer from AirTouch International Mobile Satellite Services Group in San Francisco.

WEST AND SOUTH OF THE BELTWAY

Daniel Grunberg is practicing corporate and securities law in Chicago at Mayer, Brown & Platt. Yvonne Agyei, having returned from Hong Kong, lives in San Mateo and works at a human resources/training consulting firm in San Jose.

Sheba Crocker will clerk for a federal judge in California, and Howard Sklamberg has been clerking for Chief Judge Richard Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Melissa Etheridge expects her veterinary degree from Colorado State in 1999.

LCDR Kevin Haney is an operations officer at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida. Lulit Getachew is doing her Ph.D. in economics at Rice University.

WASHINGTON, DC

Fiona Wilson is Assistant Program Manager for Southern Africa at Population Services International. She reports that, on a six-country tour through the region, she strolled through Soweto distributing prophylactics with a guy in a condom suit. Maria Farnon, who loves her job marketing internet services for MCI, delivered a paper at a Kennedy School conference on internet policy.

Linda Maguire directs the National Democratic Institute's programs for Mali, and also works on several of its other democratization programs in West Africa; "Mademoiselle Linda" is already a well-recognized regular at Abidjan's main hotel.

Jen Norberg is the Coordinator of Telecommunications and Agribusiness Programs at Caribbean/Latin American Action. Ladeene Freimuth and Christina Kohn both work at environmental consulting firms, Ladeene at Hagler Bailly and Christina at Jellneik, Schwartz & Connelly. Lee Caplan is a trade researcher at Dewey Ballantine, working on the Kodak-Fuji trade dispute.

After a year of study and work in Japan, Christian Hougen graduated in May 1996 and began a six-month internship in Congressional Research Service's Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division, which will send him to Japan in September. Mark Baker is promoting American business from the Department of Commerce's Advocacy Center.

Jenny (Lovitt) Riggs moved to Washington to work at Booz Allen and Hamilton. Desiree (Billerbeck) Filippone is a pension/social security analyst at the Office of Management and Budget.

Duncan Hollis married Emily Lentz on August 17; after a five week honeymoon that will take them to Tahiti and Australia, Duncan will start practicing law (keep practicing, Duncan -- eventually you'll get it right) at Steptoe & Johnson. Jen Gergen, who is working at Hogan and Hartson, married Lyle Piper on August 24; Lyle works for the Council of Affordable and Rural Housing.

Claude Galuzzo has been serving as the Executive Officer aboard the USS Key West, a Los Angeles class attack submarine, based in Virginia Beach. Finally, yours truly, Larry Hanauer, spent five months working on the Middle East peace process at the State Department before returning to the Pentagon to serve as the West Africa desk officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Ever the schmoozer, Larry has also been elected president of the Fletcher Alumni Association of Washington.

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