1993
David Bowser
All good here! We are all hunkered down in New Jersey living the “new normal” life. All of the kids [Zoe, Becca, David, Ferris, and Trevor] are taking classes online, but we are giving them extra work to keep them occupied [God bless Khan Academy]. To stay sane, we are getting out in our garden and going for walks on the hiking trails that run along the back of our property. We also did a movie night out the patio with a laptop, projector, and a bedsheet/screen. For work, I am on the Healthcare and Life Sciences team at Google, so I work with hospitals and biotech companies every day. For COVID-19, we were working with hospital systems in new York and New Jersey on rolling out video patient monitoring solutions for the temporary facilities setup to handle the patient overflow. We enabled the entire office workforce [1,000 people] from one New Jersey healthcare system to work from home in a project that only took a few days. We were also working with Clinical Research groups on streamlining the sharing of data and testing methods in the search for vaccines and new treatments. Obviously there are lots of other things, but those are the ones I have personally worked on. I highly encourage everyone to check out the COVID-19 information clearinghouse we are working on with the CDC and World Health Organization: https://www.google.com/covid19.
Alan Bruderer
We are doing fine here in Guatemala, my family is OK, and hopefully we’ll get back to normal soon.
P.G. Schrader
Las Vegas [i.e., Henderson] is experiencing ice weather. This is the time of year when we hike, walk, and otherwise enjoy the outdoors. Working from home is a little easier for me. I’m Department Chair for the Department of Teaching and Learning at UNLV. Most of our work can be done remotely. Domestically, we’re coping by finding different things to learn every day. We’ve done science and math by measuring shadows, making bath bombs, and building Lego gears. We’ve been reading a lot and engaging in life skills that we ever seemed to have time to do prior to this. My five-year-old [Kenji] and three-year-old [Kai] are loving their new responsibilities.
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1995
Lisa Veratti Dagnoli
My family and I are trying to manage working, home schooling, and parenting all at the same time so that’s been challenging. Thank goodness we are fortunate enough to have both our jobs considered “essential” and we continue to try to navigate these waters. But we consider ourselves lucky to have a job and our health. So thankful overall. Since I left Suffield, I attended Syracuse University and after graduation I met my husband of 15 years. We now have four wonderful children [on most days ha-ha!] and our oldest Siena was accepted to join Suffield as a freshman Tiger this fall and is so excited to begin this new adventure. Our other kids are ages 10 years, 8 years, and 6 years. I work at our family business Con-Test Analytical Laboratory in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts. We test soil, water, and air samples for environmental contaminants of concern. My husband Dean is a VP in Wealth Management at UBS Financial in Springfield. Hope you all are well!
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1996
Ryan Gall
In 2012, I co-founded a cause-based music festival and platform called Global Citizen Festival. We run an annual event on New York’s Great Lawn of Central Park every September. On our platform we encourage people to learn about global health and sustainable development issues and take action on those issues that apply pressure to world leaders to come and make commitments on stage at the events we run. The actions can be a tweet, signing a petition, making a phone call, or sending an email and then by taking action, these Global Citizens are rewarded with access and tickets to our music festivals and other events around the world. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit our team was preparing to produce a multi city event in September called Global Goal Live. With that live event up in the air we pivoted our focus to rally artists to drive action around the pandemic. We partnered with Chris Martin and the World Health Organization to produce a digital series around social distancing and a TV special called One World: Together At Home broadcast globally on April 18. The event and campaign was championed and curated by Lady Gaga and drove private sector donations in support of the WHO and several local GO’s COVID-19 response. Our goal with the special was to bring people together and pay tributes to the scientists, healthcare professionals, and other essential services workers who have championed the fight against this pandemic. Wishing my Suffield family well, and for anyone that wants to watch some of the special there are highlights on our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/globalcitizen.
Jonathan Medwid
Hi everyone. It is always fun reading and editing these class notes here on campus while knowing you will soon be seeing this upon publication of our most recent SUFFIELD magazine. We are very proud of our work that celebrates our many talented Tiger alumni and students. We welcome to you enjoy this edition and share with us a great appreciation and gratitude for Suffield Academy. Our team of faculty have all done a remarkable job pivoting our educational programming during these unusual times, and we hope this magazine reminds you of the great community of kindness we all dedicate ourselves to serving. It is a pleasure writing for you all.
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Adam Greenburg tktk
1998
Adam Greenberg
I’ve turned our restaurant into delivery and takeout only, of course, as well as a community market. We’re selling everything at cost and trying to give people what they need right now. We’re fortunate enough to be doing far more in sales, and 100% of our gratuities are being sent home to our employees laid off. We also started out a T-shirt drive “carryout for a cause,” and the proceeds from those T-shirt’s also go to our staff at home. Every week and day is new as we completely pivoted our business into doing something we had ever done before. We are sending experiences in a box and trying to bring people those positive Coconut Club vibes. We hope all of our Suffield Academy families are doing well, and if anyone is in the DMV area and needs anything, please reach out to me on social or email agreenberg@hellococonutclub.com. As the winningest chef in Food Network history[5-0!], I’ll also be doing some Instagram Live cooking demos and talking with all sorts of people from our industry. Love to all my Tigers!
[See what Adam Greenberg’s restaurant Coconut Club is doing on @hellococonutclub or @chefadamgreenberg on Instagram and Facebook].