Class of 2020
Pierre Lipton was included on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. He is cofounder of 1440 Media, which releases a free, ad-supported daily email newsletter, leaning on fact-based reporting and primary research to summarize events in a way that Americans across the political spectrum can agree on.
Jeff Stewart writes: “Breakaway Partners was acquired by Komodo Health. What is interesting is the high concentration of Brown folks on the Breakaway side! There is Andrew Laubscher ’07 (married to Amanda Puffer ’05, ’08 ScM), PJ Santoro ’04, and myself (married to Karen Steinig ’91, parent to two sons ’20 and ’24). Also on our team are Andrew Coggins ’18 and Dylan Groos ’19. A nice ‘conclusion’ to a gathering of several Brunonians across a few decades.”
Janet Leung ’16 earned a Bronze medal in women’s softball with Team Canada in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Other Brown Bears competing included Hanna Barakat ’21 of Team Palestine in track and field; Jagger Stephens ’20 represented Guam in swimming; and Cicely Madden ’18, Alex Miklasevich ’19, and Anders Weiss ’15 competed for Team USA in rowing events.
Arya Okten published her first book, The Mathematical Investigations of Dr. O and Arya, with Tumblehome Inc. She and her father, Giray, cowrote the book based on workshops they used to present together to middle school students. The book aims to make advanced mathematical topics accessible and enjoyable to kids and uses a combination of games, history, and cartoons to explain topics from number theory to probability.
Here are 5 being pursued today. Read More
Judith MacIntosh O’Neill and Thomas J. O’Neill III have been enjoying retirement for many years now, spending time with their family and traveling the world. They traveled for a month in Central Asia visiting Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Tom plays trombone in a number of swing bands and orchestras and Judith remains busy gardening and knitting. "It was a fabulous trip learning about these newly free countries. We are thrilled that our granddaughter Claire Harrison ’20 is enjoying Brown. Her parents are Christine O’Neill Harrison ’91 and Marc Harrison ’92."
Class secretary David Nichols reports the Class of 1952 Endowment Scholarship fund was presented to Reed Jaworski ’20, with a concentration is math, physics, and philosophy, for the fiscal year 2017-2018 and to Natalie Montufar ’21, with a goal to attend medical school and become a neurosurgeon to help people with Alzheimer’s disease, for the fiscal year 2018-2019.
Obituaries
Leo M. Shiner ’20, of Hamilton, N.Y.; Sept. 8. At the time of his passing he was enrolled in a master’s program in Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii. While at Brown, he studied for a semester in Yaroslavl, Russia, concentrated in linguistics and Slavic studies, and was involved in Tech House and Brown's Catholic community. He cared deeply about political issues because of his concern for all marginalized people and started a chapter of Amnesty International in high school. In subsequent years he tutored children, taught English to immigrants, and registered young people and people of color to vote. He enjoyed music and played cello and sang. He was passionate about the preservation of endangered languages and the well-being of the Indigenous people who speak them. He taught himself multiple languages and had been working on designing an innovative language-learning video game that he hoped would make language learning accessible to all people. He shared his humor and knowledge of languages on his linguistics meme pages, the most popular of which, Etymology Memes for Reconstructed Phonemes on Facebook is followed by over 100,000 people around the world. He is survived by his parents, a sister, grandparents, and an uncle.
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