Spring/Summer 2018: Alumni Updates
’50s
Ed Mosher, ’52 Theatre Arts, closed Mosher’s Ltd. last fall, the men’s clothing store he’s owned and operated since 1955. Mosher is credited with bringing the “Ivy League look” to the city in the 1950s and kept his business in downtown San Jose despite the “retail exodus of the 1960s and 1970s,” reported the Mercury News. The store’s final location was in the Fairmont Hotel.
’60s
Michael Dean, ’64 Social Science, name partner at Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean LLP in Oakland, received his 35th consecutive listing in the 2018 edition of Best Lawyers in America. He specializes in real estate law.
Jerry Ray Dias, ’65 Chemistry, is Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Medicine in the Department of Chemistry, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Robert Garratt, ’64 BA, ’69 MA, English, was a finalist for the Society for American Baseball Research’s Seymour Medal for Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants (University of Nebraska Press), featured in our Spartan Bookshelf column last issue. The Seymour Medal honors the best book of baseball history or biography published during the preceding calendar year.
Christine McLaren, ’69 Mathematics, is a professor and vice chair of the Department of Epidemiology, School of Medicine, UC Irvine.
Douglas Pavese, ’63 Business Management, a nonprofit consultant working with the Santa Rosa High School Foundation, received a Nonprofit Leadership Award from the North Bay Business Journal. A U.S. Navy veteran, he retired as senior vice president and institutional consultant at Dean Witter/Morgan Stanley in 2006.
’70s
Scott Bellamy, ’79 Industrial Design, based in Mill Creek, Wash., is a design engineer at Philips Oral Healthcare-Sonicare.
Gary Cunningham, ’70 BA, ’75 MA, Physical Education, retired after a 46-year career in education and a 38-year career as baseball and softball coach at Del Mar High School, Mission College and Bellarmine College Preparatory. He played baseball on SJSU’s 1969 and 1970 teams.
Jim Davis, ’76 MPH, is the new CEO of Tri-Cities Community Health in Pasco, Wash.
Bruce Epperly, ’75 Philosophy, senior pastor at South Congregational Church in Centerville, Mass., and professor at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., is the author of more than 45 books, including The Mystic in You: Discovering a God-filled World (Upper Room, 2018).
Joseph Heppert, ’78 Chemistry, previously professor of chemistry and associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Kansas, was named vice president for research at Texas Tech University. A member and fellow of the American Chemical Society, he has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and filed 10 invention disclosures. He received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Randall Ishida, ’76 Advertising, a para-educator specialist, teaches special needs students at Sacramento’s River City High School in the Washington Unified School District.
Constance Moore, ’77 Business Administration, current chair of SJSU’s Tower Foundation, was recently elected to Columbia Property Trust’s Board of Directors. A 40-year veteran of the real estate industry, she also chairs the Policy Advisory Board for the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley and is a trustee and governor of the Urban Land Institute.
Sam Piraro,’75 Physical Education/Health, was SJSU baseball head coach from 1987 to 2012, and took the 2000 Spartans to the College World Series. In retirement, he coaches the Willow Glen baseball team, which won a championship in 2017, and serves on youth league and amateur boards.
Jeff Smith, ’70 Life Science, ’76 Microbiology, curates the butterfly and moth collection at the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis. He retired in 2013 from a 35-year career at Univar Environmental Sciences, a distributor of specialty chemicals and equipment headquartered in Austin, Texas.
’80s
Jeffrey Anderson, ’83 Finance, former CFO of Nanometrics Incorporated in Milpitas, is the new CFO of Fremont’s Ichor Holdings. Earlier in his career, he held executive positions at Intevac and Applied Materials.
Marsha Atkins, ’86 MS Public Health, is the dean of nursing at Northern Virginia Community College in Springfield. Former dean of nursing at City Colleges of Chicago, Malcolm X, she has worked in both the public and military sectors during her 46-year career, serving as a midwife in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force.
Bill Bradford, ’84 Aeronautics, retired from Southwest Airlines after 30 years in ground operations, the past 17 as ground operations supervisor at T.F. Green International Airport in Warwick, R.I. He began his career at San Diego International Airport.
Betty Carr, ’81 MFA Painting, exhibited her oil paintings in a western-themed art show at Solvang Antiques Fine Art Gallery titled “Western Ways and Cowboy Days.”
Anthony Ciaburro, ’89 BS, ’03 MS, Criminal Justice, is East Bay Regional Park District’s assistant general manager for public safety. He also serves as the district’s police chief.
Bruce Davis, ’86 Business Management, a professor of paralegal studies at UC Clermont College, published Fundamentals of Ohio Real Estate Law (Carolina Academic Press, 2016). Prior to joining the UC Clermont faculty in 2005, he worked in marketing and sales in Silicon Valley and played jazz piano to pay for law school.
Richard Diaz, ’89 MA Educational Counseling, is serving as interim principal of Millennium Charter High School in Salinas. Founded in 2013, the school offers technical education in the arts and media.
Martin Garvin, ’89 MBA, who has held senior executive positions at Dell and Juniper Networks, joined the board of advisors for PureWRX, an Austin, Texas, firm that develops and manages CPO programs for IT hardware manufacturers.
Eric Gill, ’84 Journalism, is lifestyle editor of the Santa Ynez Valley News. Most recently he was a content editor and writer for Smart Meetings magazine.
Brian Kohne, ’89 Radio/TV/Film, an award-winning director and producer based in Maui, teaches digital storytelling at the University of Hawaii, Maui. His most recent film, Kuleana, received audience choice awards from film festivals in Oklahoma, Texas and California.
Lane Michel, ’84 Business Management, owner and CEO of VeraHeart LLC, is also a Northern California NAVIX strategist, helping business owners plan and achieve exits that ensure the continuing financial health of the companies they leave behind. According to NAVIX reports, approximately nine million Baby Boomers own businesses in the U.S.
Michael O’Connor, ’83 Political Science, owns and operates Farmers Insurance Agency in Saratoga.
Bret Parsons, ’84 Business Administration, is a real estate agent and director of the architectural division at Coldwell Banker Beverly Hills North. He is the author of Colcord: Home (Angel City Press, 2008)and co-author of Gordon B. Kaufmann (Tailwater Press, 2016).
Greg Paxson, ’83 Aeronautical Operations, is director of maintenance for Southern California’s Air 7, a company offering private and business aircraft services.
Michael Sera, ’86 Electrical Engineering, is president of the board of directors of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose. The museum, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, collects and preserves Japanese American history, art and culture with special emphasis on the Bay Area.
Hieu Tran, ’85 MSW, retired after a 32-year career in the Child Welfare Multilingual Unit of Santa Clara County’s Department of Family and Children’s Services, where he developed programs for Vietnamese residents on cultural awareness and parenting. A native of Vietnam and member of the South Vietnam Police Force, he came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1979 after spending three years in a labor camp and making an escape to Hong Kong.
Rick Vandivier, ’82 Music, jazz guitarist, released his third album last September, Under One Roof. The Avatar Productions release was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. “I am grateful for every joy, heartache, headache, milestone and thorny opportunity for growth that being a son, brother, husband and father has provided and will continue to provide until my dying day,” Vandivier told the press.
’90s
Joseph Norita Camacho, ’94 History, was sworn in for a second term as a Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)Superior Court associate judge last November. He received his law degree from Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Wash., in 2001.
Kenneth Cameron, ’96 MS Exercise Science, director of orthopedic research at Keller Army Community Hospital in West Point, N.Y., received the 2017 Dr. Ernst Jokl Sports Medicine Award from the United States Sports Academy. His research specialties include injury prevention, musculoskeletal injury and disease epidemiology.
Adam Clark, ’92 Sociology, is the new superintendent of the Vallejo City Unified School District. Most recently he was Antioch Unified School District’s associate superintendent for education services.
Tami Berkowitz Corum, ’95 Accounting, received an MBA from CSU, Monterey Bay and is currently financial controller at S. Martinelli & Company in Watsonville.
Mark Fink, ’99 MLIS, a Yolo County librarian, also serves as a District I representative on the Yolo County Library Advisory Board. He holds a law degree from Sacramento’s University of the Pacific.
Michael Guidry, ’95 Electrical Engineering, is director of engineering at DENSO Products and Services Americas, Inc., headquartered in Long Beach. He was previously principal engineer in the advanced technology division at Honeywell Transportation Systems in Torrance.
Roop Lakkaraju, ’92 Accounting, former CFO at Maana, a software company specializing in AI, has joined Benchmark Electronics, headquartered in Angleton, Texas, as executive vice president and CFO.
Terilyn Juarez Monroe, ’90 Public Relations, was named Varian Medical Systems’ chief people officer last October. In 2015, The Economist listed her as one of the top 50 global diversity professionals.
Andrew Nordin, ’98 MFA Painting, recently exhibited his work at a show at Ridgewater College in Willmar, Minn. He received a Minnesota State Arts Board artist initiative grant to complete a body of work exploring rural architecture, landscape and abstraction. See his work at: andrewnordin.info.
Rosemarie Pottage, ’96 MBA, is assistant superintendent/chief business officer of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District. She has also worked for the Santa Clara County Office of Education and taught education finance at Santa Clara University.
Dave Sykes, ’91 BS, ’95 MS, Civil Engineering, formerly San Jose’s assistant city manager, replaced retiring Norberto Dueñas as city manager last October. A United Kingdom native, Sykes grew up in San Jose and for most of his career worked in the city’s Public Works Department, including posts as department director and city engineer.
Bernadette Valencia, ’93 Aviation Maintenance, previously general manager of Guam and Micronesia operations at Matson, was promoted to vice president and will manage the company’s new Naha, Okinawa, service. Founded in 1882, Matson is a leading U.S. carrier in the Pacific. Prior to joining Matson in 2008, Valencia held management positions at Mobil Oil Guam and Micronesia, Inc.
Rafael Vasquez, ’99 BS, ’01 MS, Criminal Justice, was appointed to Monterey County’s Superior Court by Gov. Jerry Brown. Vasquez received his law degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 2004 and has worked as a prosecutor in Alameda and Santa Cruz counties for the past 13 years.
’00s
Ryan Baker, ’08 MLIS, Sierra Madre’s former library director, currently serves as library director for the town of Los Gatos.
Evelyn Clancy, ’05 MA Educational Administration, a 20-year special education and educational administration professional, is the new director of Timothy Murphy School, an all-boys school that serves approximately 30 special education students in San Rafael.
Tracy Cruz, ’05 Music, a soul singer specializing in jazz and hip-hop, celebrated the release of her new record H3artifacts by headlining at Yoshi’s in Oakland. She also opened for Arrested Development at Berkeley’s UC Theatre in September. A native of the Philippines, Cruz grew up in a family “where singing was second nature,” she told the Mercury News. “I wanted to be happy too so I started singing.”
Daniel Efting, ’08 BS, ’12 MS, Justice Studies, was sworn in as a Pleasanton Police Department officer last October. He previously worked as a parking enforcement officer and community service officer in Sunnyvale, his hometown.
Ryan Farsai, ’03 Marketing, is director of marketing at Proofpoint, a cyber security firm based in Sunnyvale. He was previously interim director of global brand marketing and advertising at Juniper Networks, also in Sunnyvale.
Ramona Giwargis, ’08 Communications Studies, a native of San Jose, covers state government and politics for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. She joined the newspaper in 2018 after covering City Hall for the Mercury News.
Curtis Jacobson, ’08 Public Administration, former San Jose fire chief, assumed the post of fire chief for the city of Fremont in December. During his 25-year career with the city of San Jose, he also held leadership positions in the Bureaus of Fire Prevention, Field Operations and Training.
Amy Kutzkey, ’01 Accounting, was promoted to shareholder at Perkins & Co., a Portland, Ore., accounting firm. She joined the company in 2015. A member of the Perkins Legacy Planning Practice Group, she also oversees Jessie F. Richardson Foundation’s Ageless Awards, a program that recognizes individuals 75 years and older for their contributions to society.
Rodolfo (Rudy) Loo, ’01 Business, based in Chicago, Ill., was promoted to engagement director at Isobar, a digital marketing agency.
Mary Pezzetti, ’01 MLIS, most recently a supervisory librarian at La Palma Library in Orange County, accepted a position as San Juan Capistrano Library’s branch manager.
Arturo Rodriguez, ’02 MA Education, is dean of educational programs and student affairs at Santa Barbara City College.
Anthony Stenberg, ’01 Art, teaches art at Morgan Hill Art School, a nonprofit he started to “build community through art and literacy,” he told the Morgan Hill Times. “The earlier children get exposed to art, the more opportunities they’ll have to appreciate it,” he said. Upcoming courses are posted at: morganhillartschool.org.
Michael Tsuchimoto, ’03 Business Administration, joined IntrapriseTechKnowlogies, an advisory-focused CPA firm in Honolulu, as principal consultant. His duties include creating cloud migration strategies for CPA firms, small businesses and law firms.
’10s
Robin Bolster-Grant, ’12 MUP, is Santa Cruz County’s cannabis licensing manager. A 16-year employee of the county’s Planning Department, she received her law degree from Monterey College of Law in 2016.
Pamela Cheng, ’17 PhD Educational Leadership, principal of Lakewood Elementary School, received the 2017 Outstanding Educator Award from city of Sunnyvale. She has worked in the Sunnyvale School District for 17 years and helped form partnerships with Google and the nonprofits Project Cornerstone and Reading Partners.
Kristin Hosfelt, ’11 Broadcast Journalism, anchors Oregon’s KOBI-TV/NBC5 News at 6.
Ana Kiev, ’15 Communications Studies, reports for USA Today Sports Media Group’s Mountain West Wire and for San Francisco-based Sports Radio Service.
Joanna Reyes, ’15 Biological Science, currently earning a pharmacy degree at Loma Linda University, finished the 2017 Los Angeles Marathon in fourth place. She ran on SJSU’s cross-country team.
Angie Snyder, ’14 MLIS, is the children’s librarian at Ramona Library. “What I like about working with kids is … I get to see their imaginations grow,” she said. From 2001 to 2003, she served in AmeriCorps.
