Where are they now?

Read on for news from CISLA alumni around the world. Also, be sure to visit the new Connecticut College Alumni Online Community. If you have trouble logging on, contact alumni.relations@conncoll.edu.

Andrea Fisher Erda '92 is busy raising her three small children in Richmond, VA, but still manages to spend time fundraising for international causes. Currently she is working for the International Hospital for Children and she loves it!

Laura Rosario Manzano '93 is vice president of sales for Auberge Resorts and manages national sales efforts of the LYC and Los Angeles offices in the leisure and group segments. Recent travel has taken her to Turkey, Croatia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Amy O'Neill Houck '94 lives in the fishing village of Cordova, AK with her two children and husband, who is stationed there with the Coast Guard. She is a knit and crochet designer and her most recent book of patterns was released in March. She just began an MFA in creative writing at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

Philae Knight '94 left the contemporary art auction world for an exciting online venture, www. 20x2000.com, where she is the director of artist and institutional development. 20x200 is a website that offers a curated selection of limited-edition prints and photographs at affordable prices.

Jennifer Hollis '95 published a book in April, "Music at the End of Life: Easing the Pain and Preparing the Passage." She is an assistant director of admissions at Harvard Divinity School.

Maria Coppola '96 and Sara Schaefer Munoz '96 were roommates at Connecticut College and fellow CISLAians who found themselves working down the street from each other in London last year. Sara relocated to London in 2008 and is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal covering the banking industry. Maria was working with the UK Office of Fair Trading on matters relating to an international network of competition agencies. In the 2010-2011 academic year, Maria will continue work on international networks through a research fellowship at Harvard.

Keri Sarajian '96, her husband, Rick Stratton '96, and their two children live in Milwaukee. Keri has been at S.C. Johnson & Son for six years and is senior brand manager for Glade.
She loves following trends, digesting consumer insights, creating win/win strategies and, of course, developing new products that delight their users. The photo is of Keri with her daughter Jocelyn.

Zandy Mangold '96 recently photographed 250-km ultramarathoners in the Gobi Desert in China, the Atacama Desert in Chile and the Sahara Desert in Egypt. You can see these and other travel photos at www.zandymangoldnyc.com.

Greg Levin '00 lives in NYC and has put his China studies major to good use. He lived in Nanjing and Shanghai for several years and came back to the US to finish his master's at Johns Hopkins-SAIS. He works on China and other finance-related issues in foreign exchange at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Jordana Gustafson '01 recently moved from San Francisco to Washington, DC, to take a job as a correspondent for the international political affairs program America Abroad, which airs on NPR stations across the US.

Laurel Dudley '02 studied and worked at the East West Center in Honolulu and then joined the Blue Planet Run team on a relay run around the world to raise awareness of the global water crisis. Back in Oahu now, she welcomes any CISLA visitors!

Juliet Guzzetta '02 is in Turin, Italy, finishing up her Fulbright for graduate research on a contemporary theater movement. She will be extending her stay for another year to continue her graduate work.

Effie Katsantonis '03 has been living in Paris for three years and recently finished an MBA program in luxury brand management at ESSEC U.
She is working on the brand Cartier as a project consultant. Recently, she visited one of the last diamond cutters left in Paris (see photo at left.)

Lindsey Meyer '03 has been interning as an architect in Seattle for two years. She recently returned from France where she worked for three months on small farms through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. In the fall, she will leave for Morocco to begin a Fulbright scholarship about the artisans and architecture in Fez.

Josh Peck '03 was recently in the Amazon of Peru working on a documentary about the healing and transformative properties behind the shamanic medicine Ayahuasca.
Right now, he is busy scoring and writing music for an independent film called "The Girl is in Trouble" (executive producer, Spike Lee; director, Julius Onah. Photo at left, Josh takes a break from filmmaking in Peru.

Danielle Miley '04 is a grad student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies working towards a master's of environmental management. This summer, she is interning with UN Development Programme's Energy and Environment Unit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Laila Hochhausen '05 completed a PhD in clinical psychology at George Washington University and will be working in a health center in Baltimore providing psychotherapy to patients of diverse ethnic backgrounds. She owes her Spanish language abilities in therapy to her CISLA experience in the Dominican Republic.

Tess Cohen '07 came home in May after working for two years in Costa Rica as a rural community developer with the Peace Corps.

M. Grant Hogan '07 is a full-time grad student at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. He will graduate in May 2011 with a master's in international affairs with a focus in technology policy and China. He had a summer internship at the Albright Stonebridge Group as a China specialist.

Emily Honstein '07 is also at GWU's Elliott School of International Affairs, pursuing a master's in global communications.

Elizabeth Greenman '07 is a second grade teacher in Hawaii. She continues to travel, most recently to Thailand and Peru, and meets up with friends and colleagues on the island from Teach for America.

Soren Gabrielsen '07 recently returned to the Boston area after teaching English in German high schools for two years on Fulbright and PAD fellowships, and started a new job working with contracts on the leagal team of Pegasystems, a global software company based in Cambridge. The photo shows him with his eighth grade class in Mainz, Germany.

Lynne Stillings '09 received the Fulbright-mtvU Award in May and will be going to Indonesia for 13 months to research children's music and to teach Javanese middle-school students how to write and compose music to empower themselves. This is a clear extension of her CISLA project, where she researched children's rights and music in Senegal, and she fully believes that the CISLA experience helped her get the Fulbright.

Last Modified: Friday, February 18, 2011 11:36 AM