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Class Notes

Class of 2003

Lisa Quiroga graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in English in 2003. Fifteen years later, her life turned upside down when her father died in a car accident in summer 2018. While sorting his belongings, she found two old shoeboxes full of handwritten letters. Not knowing what they were, she took them all home in a plastic tote and promptly forgot about them.

During the Covid outbreak, Lisa finally read through the letters. They turned out to be her dad’s letters written home during the Vietnam war! Lisa was overwhelmed with grief and gratitude at finding this last connection to him.

Lisa decided to self-published an anthology of her father’s letters on Amazon, available via this link: http://a.co/d/aSwnY5T. Her book recounts a year in the life of a 19 year old enlisted soldier from Santa Rosa, California, embedded in the Vietnam war between 1971–1972. Please check out her book and reach out with feedback at lquiroga.author@gmail.com.

Class of 2012

Cassandra Myers ’12 (Comparative Literature), is publishing her debut novel, a mystery/crime fiction hybrid called They Shut Me Up with Winding Road Stories in April 2024. She describes it as “The Godfather meets Agatha Christie with a dash of Seinfeld.” She’s currently the university science writer for San Jose State University.

Class of 2011

Karen McIntyre ’11 recently published a book titled Press Freedom and the (Crooked) Path Toward Democracy: Lessons from Journalists in East Africa.

Class of 1988

Ravi Arulanantham, M.S. ’85, Ph.D. ’88, senior principal consultant at Geosyntec Consultants, has been nominated and chosen to receive the AEHS Foundation Achievement Award, bestowed annually by the International Conference on Soil, Water, Energy, and Air. This award is given to professionals recognized to have made significant contributions to the environmental field while exhibiting outstanding environmental stewardship. The award program is in its fourteenth year at the AEHS West Coast Conference. Past winners and more information can be found at aehsfoundation.org.

Class of 2010

As an Interdisciplinary Studies Field major, wearing many different hats on her debut feature film LOST & FOUND IN CLEVELAND felt organic for writer-producer-director Marisa Guterman ’10. Using the foundation of her created focus at Berkeley – Art’s Potential for Social & Political Change – she put her studies into action.

LOST & FOUND IN CLEVELAND is a look at the post-Industrial American Dream in the Industrial Midwest – a slice of life depiction over a 24-hour period that follows the personal odysseys of five very different people, whose lives intertwine when America’s favorite televised antiques appraisal show comes to Cleveland. It’s Best in Show meets The Wizard of Oz.  

The Wizard of Oz was a political allegory at the turn of the last century, where Dorothy represented the common man, Tin Man the factory workers, Scarecrow the farmers. LOST & FOUND is a modern retelling of the condition of the American Dream 120 years later, set against the backdrop of America’s Rust Belt. Much like Tin Man, Scarecrow and Dorothy in the original myth, these everyday heroes – a retired LTV steel plant worker, a mailman and a Latino child – are emblematic of the archetypes who occupy contemporary life. Instead of a heart or a brain, they bring their objects to the Roadshow to the Great & Powerful Oz. 

Through storytelling and the power of film, she explored the themes and motifs that echoed her research at Berkeley. Guterman says, “In a world marked by cynicism, a film about the sincerity of hope becomes a rebellious act.”

The kernel of the idea for the movie gestated while she was a student at Berkeley. It came to fruition when she met Keith Gerchak, co-founder of their production company Double G Films. For a better part of a decade, they navigated the rigorous and unpredictable course of the independent film world on their own Yellow Brick Road journey. With the film now completed, they are gearing up for an anticipated Holiday 2024 release. 

Casting the film themselves, their award-winning ensemble includes Martin Sheen, Dennis Haysbert, Liza Weil, Stacy Keach, June Squibb, Santino Fontana, Esther Povitsky, Loretta Devine, Jon Lovitz, Jeff Hiller, Rory O’Malley, Dot-Marie Jones, and Mark L. Walberg (Host of Antiques Roadshow). 

Their impressive creative team includes Cinematographer Davon Slininger (La La Land, Don’t Look Up), Editor Tricia Holmes (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), and Composer Sven Faulconer (The Elephant WhispererTop Gun: Maverick). Their producing partners are Oscar winners Shaun Redick & Yvette Yates (Get OutBlackkklansman) and Tony winners Kevin McCollum (Rent, Avenue Q) and Hunter Arnold (Dear Evan Hansen, Hadestown). Their score is played by a 50-piece orchestra comprised of the musicians from La La Land and John Williams’s films. 

Class of 1966

Roberta Satow ’66, Ph.D., is a practicing psychoanalyst in Washington, CT. She is a senior member of the faculty and control analyst at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. Roberta is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In addition to her non-fiction book Doing the Right Thing: Taking Care of Your Elderly Parents Even if They Didn’t Take Care of You (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006), she is the editor of Gender and Social Life (Allyn and Bacon, 2000) and she has written a novel, Two Sisters of Coyoacan (2017). Roberta writes a blog for Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-after-50). She has been a contributor to ThirdAge.com (http://thirdage.com/authors/roberta-satow-ph-d/) and is a frequent contributor to Psychotherapy.net. Her new novel, Our Time is Up, is partly based on her undergraduate experience at Cal in the 1960s.

Class of 1973

Mary-Margaret Anderson ’73, a retired administrative law judge with the California Office of Administrative Hearings from 1997 until 2017, has been elected chair-elect, or 2025 chair-in-waiting, of the Board of Trustees of The National Judicial College, the nation’s oldest, largest, and most widely attended school for judges. In 2009, she was appointed to the Medical Quality Hearing Panel, which hears physician discipline matters. She also presided over the full range of cases heard by OAH, including those brought by state, county, and local agencies, such as school districts. She has been a trustee of the judicial college since 2016.

Class of 1975

Judy Kutulas ’75 writes: “Enjoying retirement, but I’ve just published one last scholarly work, Sitcom Mom: The Evolution of a Classic Television Character, on Lexington Press.”

Class of 1996

Jill Cheng (BA Architecture, 1996), AIA, LEED AP BD+C, was recently promoted to Associate Principal at Los Angeles firm CO Architects. She has more than 20 years of experience in planning, design, and project management in institutional projects, include healthcare, higher education, justice, and K-12 facilities. A member of the firm from 2001-2017, Jill rejoined CO Architects in 2020 to lead the day-to-day management of the UCI Health-Irvine Medical Center project, the country’s first all-electric hospital.

Class of 1973

Author and educator Keith Hatschek’s (’73) most recent book, The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation, was selected for the prestigious ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Book on Popular Music for 2023. Hatschek majored in History and says that the research methods he learned during his undergraduate years were essential in discovering the untold story of the Brubecks and Satchmo Armstrong who set out to overturn segregation using wit, musical ability, and celebrity to demand changes in America at the height of the Civil Rights movement.

Class of 2004

Jason Anderson (2004 MBA, Haas School of Business) says: “While my Haas classmates would never have predicted this from my horrible showing in speech class, in early January I became a candidate for the Kansas Senate legislature. Recent years found me working on public education advocacy work back home in the Kansas City suburbs, and redistricting in 2020 created new challenges and demands. It‘s already been a rewarding experience that‘s created so many opportunities to meet with business leaders and community organizers. Like most state legislators in Kansas, I still have a day job — in my case, leading engineering for a growing biotechnology startup. I wouldn’t dare make any predictions about what I’ll be doing in 5 or 10 years, as all of my past expectations have been pretty far off.”

Class of 2013

Elaina Dente ’13 was promoted to Associate by Delawie (San Diego, Calif.) in 2023. Dente joined Delawie in 2021 and boasts over a decade of architectural experience. She supports Delawie’s Science + Technology endeavors and is the Project Manager of several ongoing projects in the Sorrento Valley and Torrey Pines neighborhoods of San Diego.