Brandeis Magazine

After visiting Alaska’s Lake Clark National Park and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park last summer, Lewis Brooks and Denise Silber Brooks ’84, both P’16, have been to 62 of the 63 U.S. national parks. Still to come: The National Park of American Samoa.

Jonathan Dordick heads the Office of Strategic Alliances and Translation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York. He is RPI’s Institute Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Julie Aronson is curator of American paintings, sculpture, and drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum. She curated the exhibition “Creating Connections: Self-Taught Artists in the Rosenthal Collection”; edited the accompanying catalog; and presented a companion display of work from Visionaries and Voices, an organization that encourages the creativity of artists with disabilities.

Education professor Dan Chazan and wife Ronit Eisenbach teach at the University of Maryland, where Dan was named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher for 2023-24. Dan and Ronit live in Takoma Park, Maryland, and have two children, Noa and Adam.

Paul Friedman, founder and executive director of the gun-violence prevention nonprofit Safer Country, met with Vice President Kamala Harris last year. Paul’s work is inspired by the memory of his great-aunt, who was shot and killed just a few months after he graduated from Brandeis.

Last year, Michael Lyon cycled 2,000 km along the Danube River, passing through nine countries in all. A few months later, he traveled across India and then to Tanzania, where he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, which he summited 40 years earlier. He’s looking forward to a driving/camping trip across the U.S. this summer. Michael’s son is a Carnegie Mellon student who recently interned in the office of Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).

For the first time in 44 years, Lee Schlesinger got together with Sioux Saloka, GSAS MFA’79, with whom he worked on shows at Spingold as a student. Lee says they spent three hours talking (and could have talked another three). He would welcome the chance to say hi to other Brandeis friends.

Frank Segall, P’11, an attorney at law firm Burns & Levinson, known for his work in the cannabis industry, was named to the 2024 500 Leading Dealmakers in America list by legal media company Lawdragon.

Teta Moehs, who retired as a foreign service officer last year, is spending time in Belfast, Maine, and Leipzig, Germany. She and husband Bill attended daughter Alina’s PhD defense at ETH Zurich last December.

Rika Levin Reisman is a member of the board of trustees of the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains, New York, as well as the board of trustees of the HOPE for Youth Foundation.

Deborah Renert is an Orthodox rabbi, family coordinator for evacuees, and social worker in Jerusalem.

Ellen Silver Coppola retired in 2018 and moved into a high-rise in downtown San Diego, where she is a member of the HOA and finance committee, and chair of the remodeling committee. She and husband Peter enjoyed world cruises in 2019 and 2023, and have signed up for a 2025 133-day pole-to-pole cruise, which will take them to 68 ports on five continents.

Irene Stern Frielich, who has owned an instructional design consulting business for 25 years, has penned a family memoir, “Shattered Stars, Healing Hearts: Unraveling My Father’s Holocaust Survival Story,” which was published in October 2023. She writes, “I also make presentations about my father’s story, and the courage and light that enabled him to survive.” Irene has two sons, Josh and Jonah, and says she would welcome hearing from classmates.

Nelle Saltzman Miller is president and chief executive officer at All Faiths Food Bank, in Sarasota, Florida.

Linda Schwartz summited Mount Kilimanjaro last summer, then enjoyed a safari expedition with her husband, Ari Segev. Having retired from a 30-year career in private banking/wealth management, she is pursuing a PhD in economics at Florida International University. Linda has three children — Tal, Yael, and Amit — and her first grandchild was expected to arrive in late November 2023.

Leah Binder is celebrating 15 years as president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit that pushes for advances in hospital and surgical-center patient safety. She was named to the No. 28 spot on Modern Healthcare’s 2022 list of the 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare and is a board member at the National Quality Forum. She says she is grateful for Brandeis’ moral compass and leadership in the wake of the terrible recent events in Israel.

Rachel E. Meyers is a member of the board of directors of Korro Bio, a biopharmaceutical company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Brian Saber has moved to Palm Springs, California, where he lives 10 minutes away from Shelley Kaplan, former vice president for administrative affairs at Brandeis (Brian worked for Shelley during his student years).

Joan Sikand runs a biodiversity conservation group in Nairobi, Kenya, called the Wildlife Foundation. She also serves on the Kenyan national committee of United World Colleges, an international baccalaureate endowment, and has published four books of poetry and art.

Amy Mager and Daniel Garfield ’84, both P’21, in August 2023 celebrated the wedding of son Eitan ’21 and Lily Schmidt-Swartz ’20. Laura Levine ’84, P’21, P’24; Shalom Krinsky ’21; and Emily Rothschild ’86 joined in the fun. Amy is advocating for a Massachusetts bill that would require commercial insurance plans to cover acupuncture used for the treatment of pain, PTSD, nausea, and opiate addiction.

Mark R. Meckler is a management professor at the University of Portland’s Pamplin School of Business. Research he co-authored — titled “Testing Alternative Cultural Explanations of Managers’ Values Across the U.S.-Canada Border” — was presented at the Academy of Management’s annual meeting last year.

Marc Daniel Lazar is a shareholder in the Boston office of law firm Greenberg Traurig, working in its global real estate practice.

Last November, David Hollander visited Puerto Rico to lead two days of workshops at the FIBA Foundation’s Youth Leadership Program, where he met up with classmate Gustavo Gelpi. David is a clinical professor at NYU’s Tisch Institute for Global Sport and the author of “How Basketball Can Save the World.”

Last year, for the fourth year in a row, work by Daniel Lockwood was published by Writers Without Margins.

Michael Lubowitz was named to the 2024 Lawdragon list of 500 Leading Dealmakers in America. He is a partner in Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ New York office, where he is head of the mergers and acquisitions practice.

Stephen Scheinthal, P’16, is chair of Rowan- Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and president of the New Jersey Association of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons. The magazine Insider NJ named him to its 2023 list of the state’s top 100 policymakers.

Gill Schor, founder and publisher of Sports History Weekly, was named to the Who’s Who list for excellence in publishing and business.

Scott Spitzer, P’24, writes, “I am looking forward to becoming a full professor of political science at California State University, Fullerton, this June (if all goes as planned).” Daughter Sheindl Spitzer-Tilchin ’24 graduated from Brandeis this year.

Gastroenterologist Adam Steinlauf earned the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s 2023 Rosenthal Humanitarian of the Year award for his dedication to the study and management of patients suffering from inflammatory bowel disease.

Mitchell Bard is a full-time professor in Iona University’s media and strategic communication department. Last November, he was reelected to a second term on the Village of Irvington (New York) board of trustees. He and wife Ronna ’90, a partner in a law firm, live in Irvington with their 13-year-old son.

Robin Blumenthal writes, “After moving to California in 1997, I am very happy to be living in Massachusetts once again.”

During the COVID-19 shutdown, Jorge Chacin put together a small home recording studio and dusted off his six-string guitars. Now his first collection of songs, “Shades of Strings,” is available on many music platforms. The songs are a blend of jazz, rock, and fusion.

Jodi (Scher) Gast, Deborah (Utstein) Verga, Orly Houminer, and Karen (Rubenstein) Wyle report they came from Florida, Israel, Massachusetts, and Connecticut for a get-together that celebrated their past and joyful present.

William Greiner, P’16, the founder of Primary Bank, was interviewed on an episode of the podcast “Navigating Uncertainty,” which examines decision making. William talked about attending Brandeis and starting a hedge fund at age 25, among other topics.

Michelle Leder is living in Paris for a year while husband Scott Cooper works on an animated movie. She’s already had several visitors, including Suzanne Isenberg ’87.

Jodi Lyons has launched CareBrains.com, which educates and guides people with dementia, their caregivers, and medical professionals.

Howard Matalon is the co-author of the book “Navigating Career Negotiations: How To Avoid a Lifetime of Getting Less Than You Deserve” (NAV, 2023). He is a partner in the employment practices group at law firm OlenderFeldman.

Pratyoush Onta is co-editor of the 2022 book “School Education in Nepal: History and Politics of Governance and Reforms.” He reports his next book will be a co-edited volume focusing on Nepal “in the long 1950s.”

Michael Ramer, IBS MA’89, and his wife, Amy Brothman-Ramer, celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary by spending two weeks in Africa, including visits to Cape Town and Victoria Falls, and safari expeditions in South Africa and Botswana.

Todd Soloway, P’20, was recognized in Super Lawyers’ 2023 New York Metro list for his work in real estate law. He was also included in the 2023 Notable Leaders in Real Estate list compiled by Crain’s New York Business.

Rabbi Michele Lenke is rabbinic fieldwork coordinator and instructor of pastoral care at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, where she works alongside Rabbi Dvora Weisberg ’81, Miriam Heller Stern ’98, and other Brandeis alumni. Michele lives in Sherman Oaks, California, just over the hill from where she was raised.

Andrea Molod, P’20, welcomed her first grandchild, Millie Wren Rauch, on July 9, 2023. Andrea spearheaded last year’s launch of the Brandeis Alumni Art Gallery in the campus’s Wien Faculty Center, and helps select and curate exhibitions mounted there.

Steve Newburg, Jackie Simons, and Adam Whitehead reunited on an Alaskan cruise in August 2023.

Cornelius Salmon writes he enjoyed the university’s 75th-anniversary celebration, praising the larger shuttle buses used for campus travel, and the shuttle service to and from Waltham. He also enjoyed seeing trustees Barbara Dortch ’71 and Curtis Tearte ’73.

In August 2023, Marci Swede became dean of Bridgewater State University’s College of Education and Health Sciences. She and husband Bruce Taillon, formerly residents of the Chicago metro area, are excited to be closer to their children, Aaron and Kate, who live in the New York City metro area.

Jaclyn (Kugell) Yezerski was recognized by Best Lawyers 2024 in the employment law (management) and labor law (management) categories. She was also named to the 2023 Massachusetts Super Lawyers list, as well as the Top 50: Women Massachusetts Super Lawyers and the Top 100: Massachusetts Super Lawyers lists. Jaclyn is an employment lawyer and partner at Boston law firm Morgan, Brown & Joy.