Our class had so much to share with one another, that in a room booked for 90 minutes, we finally left after three hours! Lisa sent the following email to classmates, summing up the reunion.
“I write with enormous gratitude to all of you who came to New Haven for our 30th reunion- both in person (braving red eye flights, thank you David Beenhouwer) and in spirit (thank you Kelsey Martin for joining in virtually and Jordan Sink and Colin Grissom for sending updates to share)- and thank you to Chinweike Ukomadu for your wonderful dinner welcome - and to Randi Hutter Epstein and Dora Calott Wang for sharing such personal readings from your incredible books and to Alex Flather-Morgan Cist for remembering Adrian Lunn’s signature exclamation, Lisa Quattrocki-Knight for your patented women’s drug!, Susan Carter for managing her daughters’ squash tournaments and Ophthalmology Society obligations and choosing our dinner, Rich Gellman for training orthopedic surgeons around the world, Jenny Bock Hughes for skipping your college reunion to come to ours, Mark Miller for continuing to entertain us and John Whalen for driving all the way from Albany for the Friday dinner, Jen Hirsch as the class photographer and keeper of history, Anita Goodrich Licata for reminding me that I really should do yoga, Steve Kolenik for taking care of VA patients in the midst of your dermatology empire, Chris Wolf-Gould for joining into the 7 am class run, to Craig Fleishman for taking care of children’s’ hearts, and to all for sharing your stories and adventures and misadventures around the world.” -- Lisa
Hal Barron, MD Hal sends his regards and regrets that he was unable to attend the reunion due to being in England, where he is President of Research of Glaxo Smith Kline Pharmaceuticals.
David Beenhouwer, MD David, Adrian Lunn and Mark Barad still play music together every weekend, as they did as medical students. David has a specialty in infectious diseases, and is Professor of Medicine in Residence at the UCLA School of Medicine. He met his wife while doing his residency in New York. They have four children, and live in Beverly Hills, CA. A note from David, “Had an amazing time at the reunion. See you at the next one.”
Susan Carter, MD Susan specializes in oculoplastic surgery. She came to our reunion over her college reunion. She spent the day at the Payne-Whitney Gym, where her daughters were engaged in a squash tournament.
Alex Flather-Morgan Cist, MD Alex continues to be on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, where her career had shifted increasingly from pulmonology to ethics. She is married to David Cist. They have two daughters.
Craig Fleishman, MD Craig is Director of Non-Invasive Cardiac Imaging and Chief of Pediatric Cardiology at the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children in Orlando, Florida. He lives in Orlando with his wife, Sandy, and two daughters, Emily (age 24), and Ashley (age 22).
Jennifer Hirsch, MD I spent a brief stint in academic medicine at Washington University in St. Louis before joining Princeton Anesthesia Services in Princeton, New Jersey. I have been with the group for 22 years. My husband, Don (Yale ’93 PhD), is a Professor of Chemistry at the College of New Jersey. Our older daughter (who was born at Yale-New Haven Hospital!) got married last year and is a Family Med resident at Jefferson in Philadelphia. Her husband is a chemist. (See a pattern here?) Our younger daughter is completing an MFA in Creative Writing (poetry) at NYU. Time will tell if she does post-bac work and applies to YMS Class of ??
Shridar Ganesan, MD, PhD Shridar was at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard for many years. He and Chinwe Ukomadu were roommates. Shridar is now Chief of Molecular Oncology and Associate Director for Translational Research at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey.
Richard Gellman, MD Rich has a thriving orthopedics practice in Portland, OR. He and his wife have four children.
Jennifer Bock Hughes, MD Jennifer has had an ENT practice in San Mateo, California, for 25 years. She is married to Harold Hughes, and has three step-children.
Lisa Ragen Ide, MD Lisa is currently the Chief Medical Officer of Zipnosis, a virtual care medical software company. She worked in Emergency Medicine after an ER residency and then worked in Occupational Medicine after a second residency in Oncology Medicine. She is married to Buddy Ide and they have four children - including one Yale grad and one a rising Yale senior right now. Lisa lives in Minneapolis, and runs, skis, paddles canoes and loves Minnesota winters.
Lisa Quattrocki-Knight, MD and Stephen Knight, MD Lisa and Steve live in Boston. Lisa is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and has patented a medication that addresses sexual dysfunction in women. After medical school, Steve completed his internship. He is now a venture capitalist focused on biotech. They have two daughters who are undergraduates at Stanford, while their youngest daughter continues to live at home.
Steven A. Kolenik, III, MD Steven has several thriving dermatology clinics in Connecticut. He also teaches at the West Haven VA. Steve and his wife, Kara, have raised three children. Here’s a note from Steve:
“I just want to thank everyone who attended. It was truly touching to be welcomed back so warmly by each and every one of you after so many years. It reiterated for me what a special bond we all forged those many years ago which time seems not to have eroded. To hear what you have all accomplished and experienced since med school proved again what a remarkable group of people the class of 1989 was and is. I feel so honored to be part of this amazing group! A special thanks to Lisa and Dora for making it all happen.”
Elan Louis, MD Avra and I were married 3 weeks ago! I am on faculty here at Yale in the Neurology Department.
J. Adrian Lunn, MD Adrian, David Beenhouwer, and Mark Barad, have a salsa band in Los Angeles. As students at Yale, they drummed for us—and since leaving Yale, they continue to play together. Adrian is on the faculty of UCLA Medical School and is a gastroenterologist in Loma Linda. He is the father of two children.
Kelsey Martin, MD Kelsey joined the reunion by Zoom audioconferencing. She is Dean of the Geffen UCLA School of Medicine. She is married to psychiatrist and historian Joel Braslow, MD. She has two children.
Marcia Delman Morris, MD and Michael Morris, MD I am grateful for the wonderful opportunities Yale School of Medicine provided me, most importantly meeting my classmate and now husband Michael Morris. We are fortunate to have two wonderful children - a twenty-five-year old son and twenty-three-year old daughter. I have focused my career as a psychiatrist on college mental health, and in 2018 published a book, The Campus Cure: A Parent’s Guide to Mental Health and Wellness for College Students. I am an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and the Associate Program Director for Student Health Care Center Psychiatry at University of Florida, as well as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Michael is an ophthalmologist specializing in glaucoma at a thriving multi-specialty ophthalmology private practice. He was managing partner and president of the practice for several years. He is also an Assistant Professor at University Central Florida, training transitional year residents in Ophthalmology. Wishing everyone the best and much wellness for years to come.
Sanjoy Sundaresan, MD I’m engaged to Masy (Masoumeh Hadjani). I have a son who just graduated from college and is applying to med school. I have a daughter who graduated high school and is a freshman at Tulane.
Naomi Taylor, MD I spent 20+ years in the south of France (Montpelier- question of a 2-career couple and my spouse is French) and in addition to running a lab, our 3 kids grew up there. While I still have a group there, we moved to the NIH in Washington where I’m heading up basic-translational research in pediatric oncology.
Chinweike (Chinwe) Ukomadu, MD, PHD I still live in Boston. I left academia four years ago to go to Novartis Research Institute. I head the translational medicine liver program. I live in Brookline outside of Boston with my wife, Emily (Oken), a Professor at Harvard Medical School, my son, Obi, 15 years of age, and my daughter Amara, 13 years of age. We share our home with our dog, Strider.
Dora-Linda Wang, MD, MA After leaving Yale, I did my residency in psychiatry at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, and I finished an MA in English Literature at UC Berkeley. I’ve had a specialty in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry like my mentors at Yale, Robert Byck, MD and Seth Powsner, MD. I was Chief of CL Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico Medical Hospital, and then at some point, I became the school’s historian. I’ve written a memoir about working in the noble profession of medicine, as it morphs into a profit-driven industry,The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist’s Reflections on Healing in a Changing World (Riverhead, Penguin Random House, 2010). My second book was The Daily Practice of Compassion: A History of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Its People and Its Mission, 1964-2014(University of New Mexico School of Medicine Press, 2014). My blogs have been in the Huffington Post and Psychology Today. I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico with my 16-year-old daughter.
John Whalen, MD I have worked in Albany, NY doing orthopaedic and spine surgery since finishing my residency in Albany and a spine fellowship at the University of Colorado in Denver. I am in private practice with OrthoNY, a group which has grown to almost 40 doctors from 8 when I started in 1995. My wife, Maggie, and I have 4 kids, 3 boys and a girl, ages 12 to 16. We live out in the country surrounded by the forest, deer, turkeys, coyotes, etc and spend much of our summers on the beautiful waters of Lake George, NY.
Christopher Wolf-Gould, MD and Carolyn Wolf-Gould, MD Carolyn and I work in a family practice office in a small town in upstate New York (Oneonta) where we raised our three children. We have built a Gender Wellness Center, where we care for transgender and gender non-conforming patients.
-- submitted by Lisa Ragen Ide and Dora Wang