Harvard-Westlake Life Magazine, Winter 2018-2019

H A RVA R D-W ESTLAKE WINTER 2018–19 Ari Loeb ’98 Alum, dancer, stuntman—and HW dance teacher

Artwork by Annabel Zimmer ’20

WIN TER 2018–19 HW LIFE

HW Legacy 4 Thank You, John Congratulations to John Amato on almost four decades at Harvard and Harvard-Westlake 8 Saving St. Saviour’s Marking the 80th anniversary of moving St. Saviour’s Chapel across Los Angeles 12 Remembering Eric Zwemer An homage to Eric Zwemer, upper school history and social studies teacher since 1989

HW Today 16 Joint Venture Inside Harvard-Westlake’s student entrepreneur organization, HW Venture 20 Support Network How five high school students started the Trill Project 24 Step Change Cami Katz ’19 and her mom Deena Katz on organizing the Women’s March in LA and the March for Our Lives 32 Robots in Ethiopia Jake Futterman ’21 on starting a robotics summer camp in rural Africa

Alumni Profiles 34 Jan Mitchell ’71: Old-Fashioned Horse Sense In her own words, Jan Mitchell explains how she got from Beverly Hills to Ethiopia 40 Stephanie Klasky-Gamer ’86: Bringing It Home Solving LA’s homelessness crisis, one family at a time 44 John Kang ’95 and Jules Urbach ’92: The New Wild West How these two HW grads are using new blockchain technology to rethink the way we do business

Faculty & Staff Profiles 48 Ari Loeb ’98: From Ballet Lessons to MacGyver to Chalmers Alum, dancer, stuntman—and HW dance teacher 54 Jessica Kaufman: Speaking in Code Get with the program with computer science teacher Jessica Kaufman

Student Voices 30 Voices

By Allegra Saltzman ’21 58 Breathe

By Karen Wu ’23

Notes 60 Class Notes 62 Alumni Events 66 What’s Your Favorite Dinosaur?

By Senior Advancement Officer and Director of Major Gifts Jim Pattison

Last Look 70 Santa Claus Is Coming to Sylmar

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Letter from Ed Hu

Dear Friends of Harvard-Westlake, Todd Jackson ’99 was one of my counselees when I was a dean. He started at Brown, transferred to Stanford, and got his first job at Google as product manager for Gmail. Then he went to Facebook, cofounded Cover—an app later acquired by Twitter—and became the VP for Product & Design at Dropbox. He recently moved back to Los Angeles and came to HW Venture’s kickoff rally in September.

Todd’s latest role? An HW Works mentor.

A week-long summer entrepreneurship program, HW Inc.—the Shark Tank of Harvard-Westlake—and its year-round counterpart HW Venture (page 16) offer students project-oriented learning and mentorship from alumni entrepreneurs and founders. With programs like this at the high school level, HarvardWestlake is ahead of the curve.

And now a growing number of students involved with HW Inc. and HW Venture have come up with their own innovative enterprises, including the Trill Project (page 20), started by four Harvard-Westlake students, and the robotics camp Jacob Futterman ’21 founded with Ethiopia Health Aid (page 32).

Todd Jackson and alums like blockchain entrepreneurs Jules Urbach ’92 and John Kang ’95 (page 44) are trailblazers. And many of them are sharing the wisdom of their own experiences with the next generation as guest speakers, mentors, or field trip hosts (page 54).

If you’d like to be a mentor—or get some advice yourself—please reach out to us. We’re here to help members of the Harvard-Westlake community connect—and bring their dreams to life.

Cheers,

Ed Hu Head of External Relations ehu@hw.com

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Thank You, John

Congratulations to John Amato on almost four decades at Harvard and Harvard-Westlake

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In 1978 Boston native John Amato started teaching social studies to seventh graders at Harvard School. Among other things, he went on to become a soccer coach, the director of Harvard’s lower school, the assistant headmaster and then vice president of Harvard-Westlake, and the undisputed King of Lobsterfest, the end-of-the-year dinner tradition he started at the middle school. He was a big part of the effort to increase financial aid at Harvard-Westlake and oversaw the middle school campus modernization project. He always had a jar of jellybeans on his desk for students, a bottle of Chianti for faculty and staff at the holidays, and a warm smile for kids, parents, and colleagues alike. Some of them honor him here. mimi flood, former head of upper school, upper school history and social studies teacher: John is a mensch. His charisma stems, at least in part, from his authenticity. He has, as the British say, no “side”—no pretense, no airs, no hidden agenda. He is comfortable in his own skin—as well he should be, given his talents—and that puts whoever is with him at ease. What better example can there be in a school than a man who embodies integrity, discipline, compassion, and dedication—and who has a great sense of humor and unfailing loyalty as well? A man who has the ability to make you feel loved? John’s just the best, the man, the rock.

maria arias, middle school receptionist and admission assistant and john’s former executive assistant: John is thoughtful, devoted, and supportive. For example, whenever there was a performance or play at the school, John would write each of the students involved a personal thank-you note, which was pretty impressive.

And when his daughter Mary was in college, he used to amaze me by flying out on a redeye over the weekend just to catch one of her soccer games and then be back at work on Monday excited and ready to teach.

elizabeth gregory riordan, former harvard-westlake director of admissions: John Amato: The Man, The Myth, The Legend. Colleagues since both we and our school were young, John and I shared almost 30 years of friendship, laughter, and tears, and it has been my privilege to work alongside such a kind and trusted teammate. Hats off to you, John: You’ve touched countless lives with your wisdom, humor, and positive spirit.

cheri gaulke, upper school visual arts teacher: In 2009, John arranged for a group of students from Qatar to collaborate with my video students. They spent an amazing and intense weekend creating a short film together. It was an adventure in breaking down stereotypes across cultures that was lifechanging for all of them. I so appreciated John’s global thinking and how he facilitated an experience of crosscultural engagement through filmmaking.

laura stovitz p’16: He is that nice. I was one of the neighbors who fought the expansion of the HW campus a decade ago. John was so civil and kind during and after. John encouraged our son to apply to HW, and we are now proud to call ourselves members of the HW fan club. deborah hof p’96 ’98, former middle school dean: John and I traveled with students to Japan, Italy, England, and China, and canoed down the Colorado River with the ninth grade for ten straight years. However, I think watching him run the backpack relays on the middle school campus is where you saw his spirit in full display. Competitive, funny, supportive, and no job too small: He was all about HW and all about the students.

tom hudnut p’95 ’99, former harvard and harvard-westlake headmaster and the former president of harvard-westlake: John’s always been a bit of a dandy when it comes to dressing, and he’s always been proud of his accomplishments as an athlete. I remember when Rollerblades first came out, John-therecovering-hockey-player decided to show some of us his 5

HW LEGACY

John Amato and HW students at the middle school

moves and came flying down the driveway at the upper school campus, ready to do an ice-shaving stop right in front of Seaver. It being his first time on his new skates, he didn’t yet know that they don’t exactly slide into a stop the way skates on ice do; no, they stop. Period. So here he comes, flying in, ready for a showstopper, slams on the brakes and goes ass-over-tea-kettle right in front of an audience of his peers. He tore his trousers, skinned his knee, blood coming through, but up bounced John, grinning, still elegant, and boyishly unrepentant. I think that captures the essence of the man: ready for anything, willing to try, unafraid of failure, eager to get better—all qualities that he shared with his students every day for a professional lifetime.

If somewhere there’s a picture of a team player, it’s John’s face. He did whatever was necessary to advance the school—from lining fields for lower school games in the old days to helping raise big money in the newer days; from greeting kids as they arrived in the morning to coaching, teaching, and subbing; from giving thoughtful advice to the board of trustees to getting into a squirtgun fight on the Colorado River. He was all in, all the time.

mary amato ’08: My dad has always cared deeply about creating a positive community for young adults to learn, grow, and thrive in. This started long before he began working at Harvard School in 1978. It dates back to his teens when he was a summer camp counselor, his 20s when he was a hockey coach, and his time as a new teacher before he moved west to California. My dad has 6

never worked a day in his life because he was able to find a profession that he loved and that came naturally to him.

When Pops would meet with new seventh or ninth grade parents, he would assure them that their children would make new friends at HW and that they shouldn’t worry; HW is a welcoming, diverse, and expansive community.

In exchange, Pops would ask parents to make him a small promise: When their children made new friends and asked for a ride to go see them outside of school, the parents would do what they could to get them there. He wanted parents to understand that he needed their help to build the Harvard-Westlake community and that the community expands far beyond the limits of the campus and the classroom.

When I joined HW as a ninth grader in 2004, Pops drove me to the ends of the earth to spend time with new friends who are still near and dear to my heart to this day. A friend from Santa Monica would call and ask me to sleep over, and I never feared that I’d have to decline because I wouldn’t have a ride from Pasadena. A friend in the Palisades would invite me to her birthday party, and my dad would make sure I was there (early) and didn’t have to be the first one to leave. Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach, Sherman Oaks, Encino, no problem. He would get me there with a smile because I was making bonds that made the HW community stronger every day.

Pops has a very impressive memory and is able to recall the names of students who were in his seventh grade civics class or on one of his soccer teams years ago. It’s a

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Left: King of Lobsterfest Amato at the end-of-the-year faculty/staff dinner at the middle school Right: Amato reading to kindergartners at John Thomas Dye School, where he worked for two years after Harvard-Westlake (photo courtesy of Malia Gregory ’98)

running joke that when my sister and I go out to dinner with him, it’s not if we’re going to run into someone from HW, it’s when. A former student or parent will walk over to our table to say hello, and without missing a beat, he will introduce us. Fortunately, we love meeting members of the HW community and hearing stories of our dad from over the years.

each morning, regardless of the weather, so that they would feel welcomed. All those fortunate to have had John as a history teacher, ice hockey or soccer coach, devoted fan, colleague, middle school head, assistant headmaster, or vice president know that his most enduring and endearing teaching is that care of one another is our first priority.

melissa zimmerman, executive assistant to jon wimbish and john’s former executive assistant: John was a big

Over his 38-year tenure, he has never tired of taking care of us, always with a perfect balance of warmth and toughness. He has a sixth sense for knowing just what is needed, whether dealing with a disciplinary situation or delivering an encouraging word for a colleague or student. He is an incredible role model who lives life to its fullest, filling the room with humor, his ready smile, and his hearty Boston accent.

proponent of retreats and always went along. One year, two teachers forgot their students’ permission slips to go on the Colorado River. So at 9 p.m. one night, I’m faxing them slowly one at a time to John at a gas station in the middle of nowhere while he helps the gas station owner’s kids with their homework. That’s John. He loves kids and loves teaching.

John is a “school person.” He used to use that term as the highest compliment to mean someone who cares about and focuses on their students. And no one was more of a school person than he was.

harry salamandra, senior alumni officer and former dean and head of upper school: John embodies all that is good

It was a joy to see John proudly don his hardhat to take an alum for a VIP tour of our middle school modernization building project. He devoted over 10 years of his time and energy to the project with so many constituents, ensuring its successful, on-time completion as one of the finest middle school campuses in the country. Every day, every one of us on the middle school campus is the beneficiary of his endless efforts. We are fortunate that John Amato chose education and HarvardWestlake all those years ago.

about Harvard-Westlake School. This selfless man greeted thousands of students, parents, staff, and faculty 7

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Saving St. Saviour’s Marking the 80th anniversary of moving St. Saviour’s Chapel across Los Angeles Not everyone wanted the chapel built in the first place.

In 1911, Harvard School was purchased by the Right Reverend Joseph Horsfall Johnson, first Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles. Although Harvard had up to that point been completely secular, when the Reverend Robert Burton Gooden became headmaster in 1912, it was with the understanding that a school chapel would be built.

However, the idea was not universally popular. According to Harvard School 1900-1975, “The issue was complicated by the fact that the trustees had agreed to build a swimming pool, the opening of which the boys were eagerly anticipating in the autumn of 1914. [Still,] the last thing the trustees wanted was a resignation letter from Gooden. Therefore, they shelved the plans for the pool and announced their decision to build a school chapel.”

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Top right: Abby Harris ’94 marries James Woods Jr. at St. Saviour’s in July 2017 Right: The chapel during the move

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Photo by Utkan Kocaturk

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Dedicated on November 19, 1914, the chapel was designed by Reverend Johnson’s son, Reginald Johnson, and built for $2,500. The Mission-style building was patterned after the chapel at Rugby School in England, with a bell tower, white walls, little ornamentation, and pews facing the center aisle. It was named St. Saviour’s after the cathedral where John Harvard, the founder of Harvard University, was baptized in in Southwark, England.

Twenty-three years later, when Harvard School moved from its original location at Venice Boulevard and Western Avenue to its new home on Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Ventura Boulevard, the plan was to build a new chapel on the site. The cost was estimated at $15,000, plus another $2,500 to furnish it. George and Harriet Wadleigh, who were friends with Grenville Emery, Harvard’s founder, offered to lend the school $15,000 to build a new chapel, and Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company was willing to buy the old chapel and furniture for $4,000, but that would still leave the school with $13,500 of debt. So the school called George Kress of the Kress House Moving Company.

By this time, Kress was well known for moving buildings in Los Angeles. In 1924, he moved an MGM sound stage with 70 feet of glass windows on one side over a distance of 12 miles without a single crack. When Downtown’s Olive Street was widened in 1935, he offered an alternative to tearing down the Commercial Exchange Building to make room for a new sidewalk: Instead, he cut eight and a half feet out of the middle of the building, then simply pushed the front half back. He even cut a 10,000-square-foot mansion in two and moved it on rollers pulled by trucks over three miles to a new lot in Larchmont Village while a party continued inside.

Kress agreed to move St. Saviour’s for $10,500, including moving the furniture and re-erecting the building. During the winter of 1938, the chapel would be cut into three pieces and moved one by one on flatbed trucks to the new site, where the sections would be put back together. However, just after work began, in February 1938, an entire year’s worth of rain fell in three days, flooding the Los Angeles River, wiping out dozens of bridges, and killing more than 100 people. In fact, it was largely in response to this flood that the banks of the Los Angeles River were paved with concrete later that year.

The San Fernando Valley took the worst hit from the flood, since much of it was built on low-lying former farmland and dry river beds. Ventura Boulevard was underwater for several weeks, but piece by piece, the chapel was brought over the mountains on Sepulveda Boulevard and then east to the new site. Even the final leg of the trip was difficult, since the road up the hill through campus was so steep and narrow. Finally, the three sections of St. Saviour’s were re-erected, patched back together, and made earthquake resistant via steel crossbeams that can still be seen in the vaulted ceiling. By April, the chapel was once again filled with schoolboys. Although the organ wouldn’t be reinstalled until May, the school band led the chorus in a rendition of “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” the first hymn to be sung in St. Saviour’s new home.

Declared a Los Angeles cultural and historic monument in 1965, St. Saviour’s holds a special place in the hearts of countless Harvard and Harvard-Westlake alumni. In the words of former headmaster Tom Hudnut on the 90th anniversary of St. Saviour’s in 2004:

“It is a chapel that has seen babies baptized and graduates march off to war—some never to return; it has seen alumni and faculty married here, and it has seen us bid farewell to old boys, old faculty, and old friends—some of whom, sadly, were not so old…. St. Saviour’s breathed new life on the high point of ground of Harvard’s new campus, the literal, physical, tanglible apex of the school’s existence, the spot toward which the rest of the campus might reach up and aspire.”

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REMEMBERING ERIC ZWEMER Honoring Eric Zwemer, upper school history and social studies teacher since 1989 12

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A fixture outside Seaver and Harvard-Westlake’s resident authority on former President Franklin Pierce, Eric Zwemer was famous for both his immense knowledge of history and his spot-on impressions of Simpsons characters. Sadly, less than three weeks after school started this year, Zwemer passed away.

Here, he is remembered through the words of a few of his former students and fellow teachers, along with some words of his own. kimberly (parks) west ’96: I was a student in Mr. Zwemer’s tenth grade European history course back in 1994. To this day, although I became an attorney and not a historian, I am an avid reader of history in my spare time and attribute that in large part to Mr. Zwemer’s influence. I remember being captivated by his description and interpretation of major chapters in history like the French Revolution. He had a dry wit, could be quite sarcastic, and was thoroughly engaging, if not slightly intimidating. I still can picture him in a brown suit, pacing back and forth in front of the class with a walking stick as he held forth before the class. A compliment from Mr. Zwemer on a test or essay really meant something, as he didn’t toss praise around easily. He truly challenged us to be scholars. Mr. Zwemer simply was one of those teachers you remember well past high school and, indeed, for a lifetime. lucas gelfond ’19 at zwemer’s memorial service: Mr. Zwemer made his class a stage, bringing an unequaled vivacity to each lecture. A deft facilitator, Mr. Zwemer ignited fascinating discussions, encouraging us to disagree and validating our voices as young academics. Our campus has lost a friendly face at the top of the hill, quick to wave and warmly greet familiar faces. We’ve lost a true academic, endlessly well read, the most intelligent man I’ve ever met. I’m grateful that I got to experience his dry wit, sarcasm, and legitimate dedication to learning over grades.

emma spencer ’18 in the chronicle: His lectures were like 45-minute one-man shows, packed with information and energy.

ellie burrows gluck ’02: I double majored in art history because of my experience in Mr. Zwemer’s class. Out of all my Harvard-Westlake classes, his is the one I remember most. My first visit back after college, I remember seeking him out to tell him how special and influential he was in my academic life. He was all smiles, kindness, laughter, and humility. He was without question one of the most spectacular teachers I ever had.

ted walch, upper school visual arts, interdisciplinary studies & independent research, and performing arts teacher, who taught zwemer in eighth grade at st. albans school in washington, dc, at the school assembly the morning after zwemer’s passing: When I got a call to come here two years after Eric [started working at Harvard School], two things crossed my mind, and I mean this in my heart of hearts: I want to be in a place that has students like Eric was when I taught him at St. Albans School. I also want to be in a place where my colleagues are like Eric.

So I got two in one. Well, actually, I got three in one. I got a great friend.

katherine holmes-chuba, upper school history department chair and zwemer’s car pool partner for many years, at zwemer’s memorial service: Eric could talk about history like no one else. He consumed books voraciously. Every time Eric left the office to teach, he would say, “It’s magic time!” And when he left on Friday, he’d say, “So long, suckers!” More than anything, Eric loved Harvard-Westlake, teaching, his colleagues, and although he would grumble about them and try to pretend it wasn’t true, all the students who came through his classroom over all these years.

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A Few Moments with Eric Zwemer Upper School History and Social Studies Teacher A supplement to the April 2011 issue of the alumni newsletter

Teenagers, to paraphrase W. C. Fields, are like elephants: they’re interesting to look at, but I wouldn’t want to own one.

The fact that I don’t (own one, that is) and never have has always, I think, given me a certain professional objectivity in my dealings with adolescents as a group; still, at the same time, I lacked the sort of parental experience that might lead to a better understanding of, and deeper empathy with them, than I’ll probably ever have. Not to put too fine a point on it, teenagers drive me nuts.

First of all, there’s this weird obliviousness to the people and things in their immediate vicinity. Take any doorway in the school and count the number of people who need to walk through it: the higher the number, the more certain that three teenagers will park themselves in it, lost in conversation.

The same pattern is revealed by the packs of them who regularly occupy the center of the cafeteria— the most space-challenged spot on the campus—when not a single member of the pack is apparently interested in purchasing any food.

And then there’s the daily spectacle of the sophomore girl charging up the dead center of the road from Taper to Seaver with a retinue of three cars creeping patiently behind, unable to get around her and hoping she’ll notice them without the necessity of honking the horn (she never notices, and they never actually honk).

I won’t even mention teenagers with backpacks, except to warn you to give them as wide a berth as possible: one quick turn and these kids could take out a Prius.

And the beverages—I do not get the beverages they consume. (What are they called? Power Water?

Sports Water? They involve electrolytes, I believe, whatever those are.)

What alarms me is the colors of these concoctions, not one of which exist anywhere in nature. A particularly popular shade, I believe, is an electric blue that is identical to the color of Windex and a number of well-known toilet bowl disinfectants. Of course, I have no idea what flavor that color is supposed to represent—there’s some vague reference to “berries” on the label—and it can’t be very pleasant, since, of the hundreds of bottles left lying around every day in the lunch area, I have never seen an empty one.

Then there is the “too much information” syndrome. I think teenagers have always been inclined to overexplain themselves, rather like a guilty suspect trying to convince the police of their innocence.

Of course, current technology has only exacerbated the problem.

At one point in the history of education, the illness of a student, as unfortunate as it was, meant simply that the student was absent from class that day and the teacher manfully got through it anyway.

Now, it is apparently understood that the student must announce his illness by email, and, if at all possible, incorporate a catalog of his symptoms, as if the teacher will otherwise assume he isn’t really “sick enough” to be missing school. It isn’t that the kid’s current temperature or gastrointestinal status isn’t interesting. It just isn’t interesting to me. (These emails typically end with a query as to whether the kid “missed anything,” a question to which no satisfactory answer is possible.)

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If you are (understandably) wondering at this point why anyone with such a jaded attitude toward kids would want to teach them, full disclosure: I love my job, and I don’t dislike teenagers any more than I dislike elephants. I’m actually quite fond of elephants. And I’m really not that jaded about kids.

It is easy for teachers to forget that we expect kids, especially Harvard-Westlake kids, to jump through an awful lot of hoops every day. I’m trying to remember more often these days that, five minutes after my “history students” are done with me, they’re delving into areas of mathematics or science light years beyond my comprehension, or they’re pondering the choice of words in a literary masterpiece I might never have read, or they’re carrying on a conversation in a language I might never have spoken a word of myself, or they’re creating artworks in media I’d be afraid to try.

It’s amazing, when you think about it: it requires a sheer flexibility of intellect that leaves me fairly shaking my own comparatively ossified head in admiration. Of course, a few will always luxuriate in protestations of their levels of stress and exhaustion—they make it sound as if they just finished working the graveyard shift at the ball bearing factory—but the great majority of them make it look easier than I suspect it is.

And one more thing about this generation of adolescents, or at least the slice of it that I know: These people are among the most enlightened, the most tolerant, the most prejudice-free human beings who have ever lived.

As a guy who was born during the earliest days of the civil rights movement, who was younger than 10 when Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, and younger than 20 when the boys at the Stonewall Inn took on the cops, I can only rejoice at the readiness of the teenagers I know to embrace, as a matter of common sense and settled fact, the fundamental equality of all human individuals.

I still don’t wish to own a teenager, or, for that matter, an elephant. But I’d miss them both if they weren’t around.

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HW TODAY

JOINT VENTURE

Inside Harvard-Westlake’s student entrepreneur organization, HW Venture 16

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“The goal is for Harvard-Westlake to become the innovation hub for Southern California, to become to Silicon Beach what Stanford is to Silicon Valley,” says Rob Levin, the faculty advisor to HW Venture, the student organization that aims to inspire student entrepreneurs to solve human and social problems through meaningful innovation.

HW Venture is a spinoff of HW Inc., a summer entrepreneurship intensive that’s grown from a weekend event led by an outside expert to a week-long program that’s overseen by Levin but run by students.

Participants come up with ideas, develop them, and pitch them to alumni and venture capitalists. By week’s end, “teams emerge with some pretty amazing ideas,” notes Jonathan Damico ’19, who has served on Inc.’s leadership team for the past six years.

Three years ago, Levin challenged students to go beyond Inc., to envision, create, build, and run HW Venture, a full-blown, full-year entrepreneurship program. “I don’t teach kids entrepreneurship; I help them learn it,” he says. “Twenty-first century teaching is about project- and experiential-based education. You want to learn journalism, run a newspaper. You want to learn entrepreneurship, launch a startup!”

Damico, along with Cameron Schiller ’19, cofounded Prova, a backpack company they launched with HW Venture’s help. “We redesigned the student backpack from scratch, including features informed by our high school experience,” says Damico. “HW Venture provided invaluable connections to alums who helped us navigate the process of building a company and answered questions about everything from logistics and shipping to marketing and advertising. Samantha Ho [’16, who’s currently studying mechanical engineering and product design at Carnegie-Mellon], for example, helped us nail the look of the product, and after iterating through several prototypes, we are now producing our initial order of 1,000 bags. It’s been a wild ride from ideation to realization—and the most amazing learning experience!”

Levin hopes HW Venture can also help Harvard-Westlake students realize their purpose beyond themselves.

Students involved with Venture have already created the Trill Project [see page 20], a safe, anonymous social network for self-expression, and Artelli, an application that aims to use artificial intelligence to predict stroke and cancer. Artelli was created by Caroline Choi ’19, who hopes to test her product on CT scans from CedarsSinai, thanks to connections she’s gained via HW Venture.

“Harvard-Westlake is an incredibly supportive community with a tremendous amount of talent and goodwill,” says Levin, who wants to make HW Venture a “hotbed for innovation and social impact.” Step one was the newly launched HW Venture Summer Social Startup Fellowship. The brainchild of Elly Choi ’18, who started Bear Boxes, a charity that sends care packages to children around the world, the fellowship supports students who propose entrepreneurial solutions to pressing social problems.

The first fellowship was granted to Soles4Good, a nonprofit started by Alec Katz ’19 and Amaan Irfan ’21.

Katz says his initial idea was to “provide microloans to Senegalese youth, while Irfan’s proposal was to ship donated shoes to India. During our pitches for the HW social entrepreneurship fellowship, the committee, including Mr. Levin, alumnus Nate Snyder [’94, a healthcare entrepreneur], and several students, proposed a merger of ideas. In a matter of days, our proposals had materialized into a social enterprise, and we were immediately planning shoe drives and logistics with the money that we received from the fellowship.

Left: HW Venture COO Jonathan Damico ’19 with a prototype for Prova, the backpack company he and Cameron Schiller ’19 founded with Venture’s help

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“Mr. Levin also connected us with other alumni with entrepreneurship expertise. For example, he introduced us to alumnus [and business consultant] Jon Cinman [’90], who had worked in Africa and was able to provide helpful insights in launching this venture. Mr. Levin’s support as head of HW Venture has been phenomenal.

If you show interest, he immediately goes out of his way to help you find possible contacts. I have learned so much from his mentorship, as he has provided constructive feedback to many presentations as well as written work. HW Venture is an example of how Harvard-Westlake goes above and beyond a classroom experience to provide its students with real-life business opportunities.”

And now, just as summer program Inc. sparked full-year HW Venture, the Summer Social Startup Fellowship has spawned HW Impact, HW Venture’s year-round social impact arm. Through Impact, a growing number of students interested in social entrepreneurship are getting help taking their ideas to the next level. For example, Jake Futterman ’21 is expanding his program teaching robotics to kids in Ethiopia [see page 32], Cassius Bythewood ’19 is exploring starting his own label to produce hip-hop with a positive message, and Helen Graham ’21 wants to sell jewelry to fund women getting started in business.

HW Venture “brings the real world to school,” says Coco Kaleel ’20, one of Venture’s co-CEOs. The experience and insights of entrepreneurial alumni including Snyder, Kelly Hanker ’99 (an attorney turned venture capitalist), Jon Levine ’94 (cofounder of the nonprofit MindsMatter), Ari Engelberg ’89 (cofounder of Stamps. com and now Harvard-Westlake’s head of communications and strategic initiatives), and Nick Abouzeid ’15 (who is studying business administration at Babson College and started a paintball equipment company as an eighth grader) have been crucial to HW Venture’s success.

“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed mentoring HW’s smart, driven, talented students and alums via HW Venture,” says Tarlin Ray ’92, a business strategist and cofounder of Kaplan Labs, “providing counsel on negotiating with potential advisors and investors, guidance on the education and ed-tech industry, career coaching, and feedback on entrepreneurial ideas.”

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Top and opposite: Photos by DJ Lesh ’18

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Sameer Gupta ’99, an entrepreneur who has started six companies and been a judge for HW Inc. and HW’s student hackathon, a moderator for panel discussions about entrepreneurship and technology, and a mentor for students, agrees. “I’ve been so proud to see Harvard-Westlake students graduate and start companies of their own, then come back and grow HW Venture with the benefit of their experiences.”

In HW Venture, “kids get this great learning-through-doing opportunity,” says Levin, “and through working with alumni, the students organically have this amazing network. Then they become alums themselves who return to teach and mentor. And HW Venture isn’t just a student program. It exists as much to benefit alums as to benefit the students.” In other words, alumni entrepreneurs can also come to HW Venture to get free advice from students.

“If anyone—including individuals not related to Harvard-Westlake—wants to get additional perspective on a challenge they’re facing or an idea they have, we’ll arrange a panel of students to discuss and consult,” explains Damico. “We’re always happy to workshop an idea.”

A year ago, HW Venture students advised Mike Tour ’07 about his idea for a business offering a curated gap year for 20-somethings. This year, Zach Schwartz ’98, a business consultant and one of Levin’s former students, is seeking students’ input on marketing and product development for a startup of his own. The Venture team is also working with Brooke Levin [no relation to Rob] ’12, a former head prefect whose new company, called (ate)ifī, aims to revolutionize custom-crafted healthy snacks. “There are extremely savvy students here ready to give feedback,” says HW Venture co-CEO Lucas Gelfond ’19.

What’s next? “Maybe HW Venture tackles hearing aids, or traffic in LA,” Rob Levin says. “As we build the program, we want the HW community to bring us problems they’d like us to attack. This country needs to create new intellectual capital, and Harvard-Westlake has a responsibility to lead. The ability for this school to make a difference in this city and the world is huge. We can change the planet.”

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HW TODAY

Support Network

How five high school students came up with the Trill Project Started by Ari Sokolov ’19, Izzy Reiff ’18, Alexandra So ’19, Sara Kangaslahti ’19, and Georgia Messinger (Brentwood School ’18), the Trill Project is a social media app for anyone who wants to share their thoughts anonymously, including LGBTQ+ teens, users dealing with mental illness, and residents of countries with restricted or censored Internet. Ari Sokolov, who is now a student at the University of Southern California, explains the inspiration for the app and what’s next for Trill.

Top: Sara Kangaslahti ’19, Alexandra So ’19, Ari Sokolov ’19, Izzy Reiff ’18, and Georgia Messinger

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WINTER 2018–19

what made you start the trill project?

We wanted to create an app that addressed the fact that 40% of transgender people attempt suicide.

Through interviews, our team found that LGBTQ+ teens often lack a supportive community, so we decided to create that community on Trill. Our fundamental goal is to make the Internet a safe place where everyone feels they belong. We have been amazed to see many suffering from mental illnesses and experiencing trauma find refuge on Trill.

how would you describe the app?

Trill is a safe social network that fosters tight-knit communities built upon support rather than judgment for users from over 42 countries. Because Trill users follow topics instead of other users, it’s not a popularity contest, and users can find support from others who relate to their issues.

To ensure users’ privacy, you only need a username to register. We have also partnered with teen hotlines and other nonprofits to provide support. Trained moderators address posts that are offensive to our community or are about suicide, abuse, rape, and other sensitive topics.

Machine learning helps moderators identify posts that need attention.

what role did girls who code play in your developing the trill project?

As the president of Girls Who Code last year, I helped lead the club through the curriculum for the Technovation Challenge, which encourages high school and middle school girls to create apps that solve a problem in their communities. Trill was a product of the Girls Who Code club’s participation and ended up winning the North America Regional Award in the Technovation Challenge.

how did your involvement with hw venture help you with the launch?

HW Venture named us a recipient of their social entrepreneurship grant and helped us perfect our business concept and pitch when we were applying to be part of a summer incubator called Founders Bootcamp. We were selected as one of five teams out of 1,100 applicants for Founders Bootcamp, which gave us office space, mentorship, and $50,000 in exchange for future equity.

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HW TODAY

what have you done with that $50,000?

We have mostly invested it in improving the app to be even more supportive for our community and making sure it’s stable enough to scale for more users to come on board. However, we have a good amount left and plan to use it to acquire and retain our first 100,000 users.

did you face challenges with being taken seriously because you are young and female?

No. We were all individually very accomplished prior to creating Trill, which has helped assure investors and mentors that we are equipped to tackle this project. Personally, I started my own iOS development company at 13 and have since won awards from Apple, South by Southwest, the National Center for Women in Information Technology, and the U.S. Congress.

In fact, being young and female has been more advantageous to us than harmful. The female tech community has been extremely supportive of the Trill Project, and initiatives, contests, and individuals who specifically hope to help females in tech gain a stronger presence have been invaluable in propeling our progress. Additionally, being young makes us closer to the demographic we serve, which allows us to help this population more effectively.

how has harvard-westlake factored into your success?

We’ve really benefited from the support that Harvard-Westlake has given us. I don’t think we could have accomplished this project without the Advanced Topics in Computer Science class Izzy and I took. That’s where we came up with the idea for the app, launched our beta, and were given time out of our busy schedules every day to dedicate to creating something meaningful with technology. Our teacher and classmates were extremely helpful in giving us feedback and developing the project. I was extraordinarily lucky to have experienced HW’s strong computer science curriculum and community.

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WINTER 2018–19

Artwork by Samantha Ko ’19

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HW TODAY

STEP CHANGE Cami Katz ’19 and her mom Deena on organizing the Women’s March in LA and the March for Our Lives

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Photo of Women’s March LA by Mako Koiwai

Cameron Katz ’19 and her mom, Emmy Award–winning television producer Deena Katz, helped organize the first Women’s March in LA in January 2017 to advocate for women’s and human rights. The march drew an estimated 750,000 people. A year later, they also helped plan LA’s second Women’s March, the mission of which was to mobilize women to vote and run for office; about 500,000 people showed up for that. Finally, a month after February’s school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, they put together the March for Our Lives in Washington, DC, which attracted more than 200,000 people. Here, they talk about all the legwork behind the marches. cami: My family and I were not really politically involved until after the 2016 election. That’s when we felt a call to action and decided to go to the Women’s March in DC. Obviously it’s a very expensive trip, and my mom started thinking, “Hmm, we’re lucky enough to be able to do this, but not everyone can.” So she reached out to the DC march leaders to let them know that she had a little experience producing events—would they be interested in her organizing a sister march in LA? They said yes, so we started planning it. Then [Women’s March LA co-executive director] Emiliana Guereca got involved. She handled all the permits and technical aspects. My mom lined up the celebrity speakers, and we figured out what food would be there, what the apparel should look like, etc. The first permit was for 2,000 people—and the march ended up being gigantic! Once we started organizing the LA march, the march became a nationwide, then worldwide, thing.

The March for Our Lives happened because someone my mom knew from the Women’s March got in touch with her about doing a march for gun control. So my mom contacted all of the kids in Parkland [the town in Florida where 17 students and staffers were killed in a school shooting on February 14], and we organized the march. We got all the speakers, picked the food, arranged the security. We didn’t know much about DC, so we hired event planners and lawyers and people who throw political events to help us. It was much better funded than the Women’s March because of how outspoken the Parkland kids were. Something like $12 million was raised through a GoFundMe page and other donations for the march. We came in significantly under budget, so we donated what was left over to the Parkland kids. They are all in for March for Our Lives and are still working on the cause on a bus tour.

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HW TODAY

March for Our Lives photo by Phil Roeder, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

deena: Women’s March LA was part of a bigger organization. So, while we had 100% autonomy, we also had the support system of the sister marches around the world. March for Our Lives was our invention. So we not only had to make every decision for the national march, but we were also the leaders for the over 850 sibling marches around the world.

cami: My mom is a superhero. She works a million hours a day as a TV producer. I don’t know how she did it, but as the saying goes, the busiest people are the ones who can get the job done the fastest. She found the time because it was important to her. We’ve always been incredibly close. It felt great knowing we were working together to make a change. I was busy before, but I figured it out because I felt I had to. Any free moment I had, I devoted to the marches.

As the Teen Outreach Committee Chair for the Women’s March LA and the March for Our Lives, I was involved in both organizing the march and getting kids to show up. I worked with the adults around me to make the event as enjoyable for kids as possible because, as a kid, I had a good sense of what would draw in younger crowds. I also helped get younger people to show up through social media and word of mouth.

deena: Working with Cami was truly amazing. She wasn’t just my daughter, she was a cofounder who brought so much to the table. Along with her insight and creativity, she provided the perspective of a different generation, which was extremely helpful.

cami: When we were planning the first LA Women’s March, most people I talked to liked the idea, but some took a tone of, “oh, that’s cute” and thought it would be small and meaningless. We thought it might be small too, but we wanted to try it.

Harvard-Westlake is a supportive community, so I didn’t really experience any pushback. I would have been easy to push back on—I was 16 and in the tenth grade with no experience—and I know people who didn’t go and posted against it on social media. But I also had friends who got so involved and were influenced by the change the marches created. So many people were genuinely shocked by how impactful and inspirational it was. I’ve seen the campus get so much more passionate and involved overall. With the [Brett] Kavanaugh [Supreme Court] nomination, for example, everyone knew everything about what was going on and and had an opinion on it.

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WINTER 2018–19

deena: My mom was an activist when it wasn’t cool. We grew up in a very conservative town. She didn’t care; neither did my dad. They did what they thought was the right thing even if it wasn’t the popular belief.

They taught me that you fight for people. Take care of humans and their rights. I am so proud that Cami is following in my mom’s footsteps promoting decency and humanity.

cami: Maybe I’m being idealistic, but I think the marches had a huge impact. There are so many more women in politics now. And so many more people have become politically active, it’s almost become part of pop culture. The marches helped make activism more mainstream.

There have also been some amazing changes with gun control laws. [In fact, 50 new state gun control laws have passed since the Parkland shooting.] It’s a testament to how much of our country really wanted change.

During the first Women’s March, we were backstage when a big buff guy walked into the crowd wearing a mask from the Purge [a horror movie series centered on America’s fascination with guns and violence]. It was terrifying for a second, but we had security guards everywhere, and when they told the guy he had to take the mask off, he was like, “Oh, of course.”

Nothing went wrong, nothing bad happened. It just shows how much everyone wanted to be there. That was a lot of the sentiment afterward. So many people told us they felt like they needed this. Everyone wanted to be a part of something.

deena: I will never forget standing on the stage after the first Women’s March taking a picture with my 90-year-old dad, my husband and daughter, and my sisters and two nieces in front of 800,000 people. And beaming with pride that while we were on stage feeling this feeling, millions around the globe were sharing the same moment with their families at the same time.

If something is really important to you, you have to do whatever you can to help. If you care about something, you have to fight for it. cami:

If there’s a silver lining to the last couple of years, it’s that it’s been a wake-up call for a lot of people, including my mom and me, who had become complacent. A couple of years ago, we didn’t really need to care that much about what was going on in the world because it wasn’t affecting us that much. But I feel like everything is so messed up now, we have to do everything we can to fix it. And it’s our job to help as much as we can...because we are affected less.

I am so hopeful that this generation will continue the activism. They realize how important it is right now. And it is on them for their future. They have seen how they can make a difference and I honestly don’t see anything stopping them from carrying the torch forward. deena:

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HW TODAY

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WINTER 2018–19

Harvard-Westlake students participating in the National School Walkout on March 14 to honor the lives lost at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School one month earlier. The empty desks represent the 17 victims of the school shooting. Photo by Pavan Tauh ’18.

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STUDENT VOICES

VOICES

BY ALLEGRA SALTZMAN ’21

When I was nine years old, I saw on the news that there was a shooting at a midnight screening of a Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, and one of the 12 people killed was only six years old. I didn’t have to look up the details to write this, because I remember them vividly. I also remember weeks later when my family wanted to go see one of the Step Up movies, but I didn’t want to go because I was scared. Six years later, a fear hidden deep under the surface is still drawn out when I catch a glimpse of a large backpack in a crowded movie theater.

I often wondered when I was young what I would do if I were ever in a situation with an active shooter.

That same year, six months after the Aurora shooting, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting flooded the news. Twenty-eight people were killed, and 20 of them were only six or seven years old. I was only nine, and already I had noticed a pattern here.

According to Time magazine, [as of February 2018] there have been 290 shootings since 2013, shortly after Sandy Hook occurred.

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Artwork by Remi Patton ’20

WINTER 2018–19 I have seen some coverage about a handful of the shootings from this year and am a little ashamed to admit that I may have just skimmed over them or even scrolled past. Because to me, most of them were just another. Just another shooting, just another victim, just another failure of our country and society to keep people safe.

Some people argue that mass information on social platforms desensitize us to the world around us.

I disagree. I think that if anything, what might desensitize us is the fact that this keeps happening. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over—okay, you get my point, but if I had continued for as many overs as it would take to show you the number of times it has happened, you wouldn’t be paying attention anymore.

Sometimes our anger about certain issues can be fleeting, because honestly a person can only pay attention to so much. So a shooting happens, and we get angry and we get sad and people say they will do things to make change, but then we forget and move on to the next issue, and before we know it we’re back to this issue again.

It is 10:37 p.m. on a Thursday night in the middle of February, and I have homework to do. I haven’t eaten dinner or showered yet, and I haven’t responded to my friend’s texts, but a sudden outpouring of emotion on this topic is driving me to keep writing anyway, because that’s all it feels like I can do. I’m not part of the government, I’m not an adult who can vote for the people in the government, and I’m not a celebrity with a platform. But there is one thing that we all have, one thing that continues to be protected in this country, and that is our voice. I have a voice. You have a voice. Our entire country has a voice, and not everyone is using theirs.

We don’t need wishes, we don’t need regrets, we don’t need “what if”s, we don’t need empty promises, WE NEED CHANGE. Thousands of people have said it before me and most likely thousands more will say it after me, but I’m still using my voice to shout it because apparently the people who have real power haven’t heard us yet.

Maybe my voice won’t have an impact, and maybe barely anyone will hear it. But I’m using my voice, and maybe not to the best of my ability because now it’s 10:53 and I really need to shower and eat dinner, but I’m TRYING. Are you?

I wrote all of that on Thursday night, and you wouldn’t believe what happened the next day, or maybe you would because barely anything is that surprising anymore. On the bus five minutes from my house, I received an alert explaining that there was a threat to the school and it was therefore closed. So we all got off the bus and called our parents, still not understanding what was going on, and went back home. And yes, a lot of people celebrated the fact that they got an unexpected day off. But the very same people also reached out to their friends to make sure they were okay.

Rumors swirled as to what kind of threat it was, who made the threat, whether it was even a threat to our school—and then a photo started circulating. A photo of a rifle with bullets, tagging people and tagging Harvard-Westlake. Thankfully we are fortunate enough to go to a school with an amazing security staff and administration that recognized the threat. But not all schools have the resources to safely prevent something like the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School from happening. So I think we should take this opportunity to channel our own emotions into a united voice for those who are not as well protected as we are.

And to anyone who might try to turn this into an ill-informed political statement or antigovernment propaganda—really? I’m only 14 and I’m just trying to say that we’re all humans, and we need to protect each other, and we need to use our voices to make change, or at least try to. And if that’s a political statement, if talking about humanity is inherently political, then so be it. If you want to paint a wellintentioned, tired, four-foot-nine girl as some sort of crazy representative of an outrageous political movement, then I won’t stop you.

You know why? Because at least you’re trying to use your voice.

But our voices are a gift, so in honor of all the voices that have been silenced, please use them kindly.

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HW TODAY

ROBOTS IN ETHIOPIA

Jake Futterman ’21 on starting a robotics summer camp in rural Africa In July, Jake Futterman ’21 traveled to Ethiopia to run a week-long robotics summer camp for middle schoolers. In this Q&A, he explains why teaching kids about robots is relevant even in a remote area of one of the poorest countries in the world.

what did kids do at the camp?

They learned the basics of robotics by designing, building, programming, and operating simple robots with LEGO Mindstorms EV3 technology, culminating in a final competition where student teams could apply what they learned. My main goals were to help the students learn how to innovate, problem-solve, work as a team, and develop an understanding of innovation design.

why robots?

Upon arriving in Ethiopia and seeing the living conditions, I had a moment of doubt—was bringing robotics to Ethiopia the appropriate mission for kids who barely had food, water, or a roof over their heads? Situated amidst beautiful, lush farmland, Gode village is an hour’s drive on dirt roads from the nearest paved highway and seven hours from the capital city of Addis Ababa. They have no plumbing, bathrooms, Internet, or even lights in the classrooms. Only one in eight students is female. The kids in Gode village have only recently been exposed to computers supplied by Ethiopia Health Aid (EHA), the nonprofit I worked with to start the camp.

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However, as a student once told EHA, “You may see us as a primitive community with no running water or electricity—much less in need of technology when we barely have books. But please remember that our future is out there in the world, and we need computers to compete.” Like kids all over the world, the students of Gode Primary School are striving to be the best in a very competitive environment. That’s why I decided to undertake this educational mission in Gode, sharing my knowledge, experience, and passion for robotics with other students.

how did you plan for the trip?

I developed a curriculum, lesson plans, presentations, model robots, and other materials for the camp completely from scratch. Based on my own robotics experience from fifth grade on, I had an idea of the concepts that needed to be taught. However, I had to balance the complexity of some of the highly technical ideas with the students’ limited knowledge of English and lack of prior experience with robotics, computers, or technology. I also created a web page for EHA Robotics on EHA’s website and initiated a CrowdRise fundraising campaign for the robotics kits and school supplies. I achieved my fundraising goal of $2,000 in under five days and ultimately raised over $2,500.

WINTER 2018–19

what challenges did you face?

As a 15-year-old, I had planned to teach younger middle schoolers so that I could retain some control of the class.

However, when we arrived, I was surprised to find that almost all of the kids were between 16 and 18 years old, not 11 to 14, as I’d expected. Many children in Gode delay their schooling to help on the farms or with daily home life. However, age didn’t really matter, and the kids were very respectful to me and each other.

The biggest challenge, however, was to accommodate more students than anticipated. Though originally designed for 16 kids, it was impossible to turn away the numerous students who begged to participate. The class topped off at 24, although many more tried to sneak in or peer through the windows.

how did the students react?

The kids absolutely loved the program. They had never experienced anything like this before and were extremely excited. Their enthusiasm was evident throughout the week and especially in the final competition. Every team was very engaged and did everything they could to try to win. Overall, they were overjoyed with the opportunity to learn a new, foreign technology that could change their lives.

And as it turned out, these kids, who had never seen a computer or LEGO before, greatly surpassed my expectations. They learned to design their own robot components and write working programs on computers they were introduced to just days before. It was a light

bulb moment for both me and the kids. They realized that they were capable of solving problems and possessed the knowledge and skills to succeed. And I realized that even those who who have no prior exposure to new technology, live in mud houses, and get to school on horseback have the potential to do something great.

what’s next for the camp?

While my trip this summer was a success, the EHA Robotics mission is not over. To keep the kids engaged in robotics, I developed an after-school program, which includes a 70-page workbook, videos, and instruction manuals, for them to work on until I return next summer.

Next time, I will include some of the veterans from this year along with some brand-new students. In time, the program will expand to a point where the kids from Gode are able to compete in robotics on a global level. My vision is to create a sustainable robotics program that can be expanded and used in other rural schools.

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ALUMNI PROFILES

JAN MITCHELL ’71

OLD-FASHIONED HORSE SENSE In her own words, Jan Mitchell explains how she got from Beverly Hills to Ethiopia

In 1996, I was reading the Horse Whisperer on a bike trip in Fiji and thinking about how I really wanted to do something big in my life for animals. Suddenly I meet a man from a British organization called the International League for the Protection of Horses, and he says, “I’m going to the mountains tomorrow to teach the villagers there to care for their horses. They want to run a business taking tourists on treks, but right now the horses are so emaciated, no one will ride them. Your camera looks better than mine. Will you take pictures?” I had to ford a river to get there in a sarong and hiking boots with a water buffalo crossing right beside me in the opposite direction. I thought, “What am I doing?”

But I took a few hundred photos, and the guy took them home and used them to share ILPH’s work. A year later the man called to ask if I wanted to come along on another trip to take pictures in one of the worst places he had ever seen for horses: Ethiopia.

leading a horse to water So off we go to the middle of Ethiopia, to an area called Debre Zeit. The people there thought that letting their horses drink during the workday would give them colic. The horses started working as soon as they could walk and carry a cart, and most only lived three or four years [as opposed to a horse’s average life expectancy of 25 to 30 years]. Many horses had lymphangitis from a parasite they got from drinking from a lake. It causes open sores along the lymph system, and the horses’ owners were pouring gasoline on them to cauterize the wounds.

So this man from the ILPH and I teamed up with some Ethiopians and stood in the narrow streets with brightly colored buckets full of water for the horses. One villager started filling the buckets with her hose so that horses passing by while they were working could get a drink. It became our mission to help Ethiopians create more of these water stations.

If people would pay villagers for water, we would work on the horses’ wounds for free. A bucket of water only cost about one and a half cents, but we knew if we did everything for free, people wouldn’t value what we were doing and they’d continue to mistreat the horses.

Then the ILPH pulled out. I thought that would be the only time I’d ever come to Africa, so when I left, I went to Kenya to climb Kilimanjaro. After that, I had plans to go lie on the beach for a week in the Seychelles—but when I got to the airport, I couldn’t do it. I ended up forgoing my ticket and went back.

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WINTER 2018–19

“ I started working directly with one of the Ethiopians, Wendewessun Abebe, and did as much as I could to help. It was just the very basics. That’s all the horses needed for the most part— give them food and water, and don’t let them drink from the lake.”

Photos courtesy of Jan Mitchell

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ALUMNI PROFILES When I got back from Ethiopia in 1996, I came home so upset about what I had seen. Mindy Sterling [’71] and I had reconnected when I moved to Colorado in ’76.

Mindy’s a big animal lover too—she used to ride her horse every day when we were at Westlake—so she said, “Let’s create an organization to help, let’s do this!” I was like, “Uhhh, that sounds—I don’t know.”

I was torn about what I’d been doing in Ethiopia. I felt it wasn’t my culture, yet I was telling these people how to do things. Mindy knew of a veterinarian named Jarra Jagne from the Gambia who had recently graduated from Cornell. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I asked Jarra if she would be willing to come to Ethiopia with Mindy and me and tell me if it was the right thing or if I was just an arrogant white person putting my values on others. So Jarra came along on the second trip.

Jarra pointed out that many of the horses were suffering from moon blindness caused by flies laying eggs in the horses’ eyes. To prevent it, all you had to do was to wash the horses’ eyes out every day with water. We were out in the streets every day, and there were always a hundred people watching what we were doing. Mindy asked a man if she could use him for a demonstration, put her hands over his eyes and said, “Go!” Everyone was laughing because he couldn’t figure out where he was going, and the point was made: If you let the horse go blind, this is what it’s like to ask your horse to work for you. Jarra told me at the end of the trip, “Yeah, keep going.” She was my permission to move forward.

So Mindy formed a nonprofit and raised all the money and did the PR and put a website together. She came along on the trips a couple of times too, but she really made it happen on this side of the world.

I came back twice a year for two or three weeks from 1996 until 2000. Over time, the people there saw what we were doing and started giving their horses water to drink and washing their eyes and wounds with clean water. We also built an animal clinic. Later, I heard about a woman who had done her thesis on water stations in Ethiopia.

The idea had spread beyond Debre Zeit to towns we’d never been to or even heard of. The horses were doing better, and we had done enough that it was going to be a sustainable effort.

At the end of our trip in 2000, Jarra contacted me and said, “I have a friend in Ghana who wants you to come to his village to do there what you’ve done in Ethiopia.” I said okay.

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taking the bull by the horns It was a 14-hour drive from the Accra airport to this remote village called Yua in the north of Ghana. The village wasn’t even on a map. No electricity, no running water. Kids had to walk two hours to get to a school. They had nothing.

These were farm animals, not horses, and many of them were dying. Jarra’s friend, Akunz, wanted me to talk to the villagers about not beating their animals. So I stood in the middle of these villagers and thought, I don’t know the first thing about farm animals, but I do know that if I were a bull and someone put a ring in my nose and pulled me by it, it would hurt. I told them I would only help them if the nose rings were taken out. I said, “Let’s figure out a better way to get the animals to come to us.” Some put a rope around the bulls’ horns so it wouldn’t hurt them.

Others tied a rope loosely around their necks. They could still get the bulls to move forward, but without causing pain.

A couple of years later, a man told me he couldn’t plow his field because he had no bulls. Traditionally, the villagers would keep three bulls. They would beat the bulls, and after a while each bull would refuse to work, so they had to go to the next one. One of the villagers this man knew had three bulls, but one just wouldn’t listen.

So this guy asked if he could take it. “I remembered when you told us to talk nicely to the bulls,” he said. “And that we had to feed them even when we barely had enough for our own family if we wanted them to live. I built a little stall for the bull. Every day I fed this bull and asked him if he would work for me, and every day, he tried to bite and kick me. But one day, he didn’t. That day, he took grain from my hand. And the next day he started working for me, and now I only need one bull when everyone else needs three.” It was amazing.

Ten years later, everyone has only one bull, so it’s two less mouths to feed. Whenever I go, I sit with the chief of the Yua village and we talk about how things have changed.

Last time he told me nobody beats their bulls anymore, except one guy—there’s always one person, isn’t there?— and he still has three bulls because he refuses to stop beating them.

We also started a vaccination program for the chickens, bulls, and goats and sheep. At the beginning, it was a few hundred dollars every year, but now it’s thousands of animals and dollars. I remember seeing recent scarring on one bull from being whipped. I told the man I am going to vaccinate your bull now, but if he has scars next year, I won’t do it next time. The man did come back, and no scars. That’s the cost of everything I do. You don’t pay money; you pay by not beating your animals.

WINTER 2018–19

a different school of thought Three years into my trips to Ghana, the mayor of the northern region came and gave a speech. “Since the white lady has come, we have to build schools!” It was very strange to be referred to as the white lady, but if that’s what it took, I wasn’t going to argue. Sure enough, a school was built the following year, and more schools have been built since. The animals were doing better too.

I started to feel like my work was done there, but then I saw how they were teaching in the schools.

The most uneducated teachers were being sent to these areas. They were still flogging students. One day I heard the teacher ask, “Do you know what I just said?” and the students said, “Yes, sir.” I asked, ”Can someone tell me what they just understood?” Nobody. Finally one kid raised his hand and repeated word for word what was just said to him, like a sentence read out of book. There

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ALUMNI PROFILES

was no understanding, it was all just memorization. So, I went to the head teacher and asked if I could teach a different way to help them find meaning in the words.

When I was in school, I hated math, but I loved my geometry teacher at Westlake. It was the only math class I did well in. Instead of saying, “Jan, can’t you get it yet?”, he made it fun. I was always afraid I would get called on, but not in his class.

I think because of my own negative experiences, I could relate to a lot of these kids. I share my story about how I was afraid of getting it wrong too. I tell them, “When I’m here, if you raise your hand and try to answer, it doesn’t matter if it’s not right, I’ll still give you a pencil or a piece of paper and some praise just for being willing to say something.” When kids act up, instead of beating them, I say, “Okay, you can talk in class as much as you want, but when you do, you’ll stand and address the class.” That gets them to be quiet.

I started teaching sex education and gentle handling.

Instead of just lecturing, I would use pictures and slideshows and movies. But then I noticed the girls weren’t saying anything in sex ed class. They would hide their heads. So I separated all the girls, and that’s when they started talking. I asked where students were having sex, and they said funerals. The adults would get so involved with each other, no one was paying attention to the kids. So they’d go off into the bushes and get pregnant.

So when I got home, I connected with a sewing group who made a bunch of “funeral pockets” with condoms in them for girls to pin under their dresses. The girls loved them! Now I bring fabric and thread every trip and the girls in Yua teach each other to make them.

I also came across an organization, Days for Girls International, that makes washable menstrual pads for girls around the world. Menstrual pads are very expensive in Ghana, and if girls can’t afford them, they just use newspaper or leaves or whatever they can find and don’t go to school during their period. I found someone from Days for Girls in Ghana to teach the girls to sew washable pads themselves, and now they’re making them too.

Students also weren’t getting the books and supplies they needed. In Ghana, the teaching is all in English, and the students knew how to read, but they had hardly any books. When I got a box of book donations, the villagers were thrilled. We set up a teeny library—just a few shelves—at the school, and I started bringing over more children’s books whenever I could.

My teaching skills are just based on how I learned and how I didn’t. But the head teacher noticed what I was doing and started asking for my feedback and incorporating what I was doing into his own teaching.

He ended up being hired to teach other teachers at a big seminar run by AfriKids [an organization dedicated to protecting children’s rights in Ghana].

We recently got some money from a family foundation, enough to build a real library in Yua. For the last couple of years, we’ve packed up and shipped 42 boxes of books from school libraries in the U.S. One of the teachers from Yua is going to run the library. He will also tutor kids and hold classes and reading groups there. We hope to get enough money from donations to pay him in years to come. I believe it’ll happen. I’ve never had a plan for all this—things have just kind of come together. It just makes me so happy to be a part of something that’s helping people.

Jan and Mindy’s organization is called Kindness International. Find out more at kindnessinternational.org.

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“In Ghana, kids have to pass tests to be able to go onto high school.

Before 2000, none of the kids in Yua were passing. But a year after I started going to Ghana and the teachers started teaching differently, the students started passing their tests—not getting high marks, but passing so they could go to high school.”

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ALUMNI PROFILES

STEPHANIE KLASKY-GAMER ’86

Bringing It Home Solving LA’s homelessness crisis, one family at a time 40

WINTER 2018–19

LA Family Housing, a nonprofit helping families transition out of homelessness, opened a new housing center on the site of an old North Hollywood motel this year. Stephanie KlaskyGamer, LAFH’s president and CEO, reflects on the chronic issue of homelessness in LA, what LAFH is doing about it—and how we can help.

WHY IS HOMELESSNESS SUCH A GROWING PROBLEM IN LA?

Our housing crisis in Los Angeles is our homelessness crisis. With three decades of slow-growth land-use strategies, we simply didn’t build enough housing—at all income levels—to meet the needs of the community living here. It’s pure economics: with such a limited supply of housing, the cost of housing has soared far beyond the affordability and accessibility of people working low-wage jobs.

The national average rental vacancy rate is about 7%, but in Los Angeles it’s about 2.5%—meaning that 97.5% of all apartments in LA are occupied. We have to increase the rate and density of new housing development across Los Angeles to help meet the needs of those who have been pushed out of the market.

One sobering statistic: last year we moved 16,000 people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing...but 14,000 new people fell into homelessness. So while we’re taking great strides forward, it doesn’t feel that way because we still have to address why people are falling into homelessness to begin with.

WHAT DO YOU THINK LA NEEDS TO DO IN ORDER TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM?

Build more housing! And understand what individuals and families need to remain stable and successful in that housing in order to prevent their falling back into homelessness.

WHY SHOULD THE AVERAGE ANGELENO CARE ABOUT HOMELESSNESS?

This is the humanitarian crisis of our time. We created this crisis and need to do everything possible to address it. People are experiencing homelessness in all of our neighborhoods. It would be far better—healthier, safer, cleaner—if we moved people indoors.

For example, homeless individuals are frequent users of the public health system, which spends so much money in ER care for homeless individuals without a place to go. How can you treat someone’s chronic health conditions if they have no place to store medication, no regular diet, no home, no stability? If we invested ER dollars in supportive housing instead, how much further would we get in treating people’s chronic health conditions?

HOW DOES LA FAMILY HOUSING HELP?

LA Family Housing reaches out to people experiencing homelessness and exposes them to paths to homes. We’ve developed and own and operate 25 properties, including permanent affordable housing and interim housing, also known as bridge housing. That’s the term we use instead of “shelter”; people don’t come in and leave in the morning.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE DEVELOPMENT YOU JUST OPENED?

The Fiesta apartments, on the old Fiesta Motel lot at Lankershim and Arminta, serves both families and individuals experiencing homelessness. It provides permanent supportive housing and bridge housing. Regional service hubs for partner agencies ranging from the VA and LAUSD to neighborhood legal services and employment programs are also on site. There’s a health care center and dental services. And finally, it’s LA Family Housing’s headquarters.

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Permanent supportive housing is a nationally recognized model of housing to help chronically homeless individuals who live with disabilities, some of which could include chronic health or mental health conditions. Because you can’t require participation in services as a condition of tenancy, we designed both the building as well as the services provided here to foster natural points of engagement with all of our tenants. So in addition to the light-filled rooms and corridors through the Fiesta apartments, you’ll also find staff offices located directly across from the mailboxes or the elevator on each floor. We are engaged and connecting to the tenants in small and big ways throughout the day. If I’m walking by the laundry and I see you, I’ll ask, “How are you doing? I know you were trying to reconnect with your daughter; how’d it go?” Our goal is to meet people where they’re at, literally and figuratively, so that no one falls through the cracks but is instead lifted up to succeed in every way.

WHO ARE THE FIESTA’S NEW TENANTS?

This building is designed and funded for the most vulnerable people, who, if unhoused, would die in the streets. The priority of new dollars from Measures H [a sales tax increase funding homeless services and prevention] and HHH [a $1.2 billion initiative to build 10,000 housing units in LA] is to serve the most vulnerable with permanent housing. Our tenants all pay subsidized rent—essentially 30% of whatever their income is. Most are living on disability. Some are so off the radar, when we move them indoors, we’re still trying to figure out who they are; they might not even have ID. Fiesta tenants are living with severe mental and physical health conditions. The goal is not that they go back to an office job; that’s not where they’re at. Becoming stable and re-engaging in more typical behaviors is our goal.

WHAT WAS THE FIESTA’S OPENING LIKE?

The Sunday before we opened, an outpouring of 150 volunteers from all over LA showed up. They made beds, built tables, filled cabinets with dishes and towels, hung shower curtains. They got the apartments ready, furnishing them not just to meet tenants’ basic needs, but also with love.

Volunteers painted tiles that said “Welcome Home” to hang in each apartment, so when people moved in, they knew someone cared about them living there.

I’ve been doing this work for 25 years and opened lots of buildings, but none has been as personally rewarding and emotional than moving tenants into the Fiesta apartments. Opening day, our outreach van was picking people up in the rain who slept in their own apartment that night. It’s just 49 units; we need to build 40,000 units, so it’s a drop in the bucket, but you have to be on a path. We are committed with an army of incredibly dedicated staff and volunteers.

WHY DO YOU DO THIS WORK?

I truly have the best job in the world. A couple of years ago, I was on a panel with Councilman Mike Bonin advocating for HHH when one of his staffers walks up and says, “LA Family Housing saved my family 15 years ago.” Magali Núñez was one of five kids living in a garage with her parents when they were granted housing and moved into an LAFH apartment building. It changed her life. She graduated from Berkeley and is now at Harvard getting a master’s in public health. There are moments like this every day.

HOW CAN OTHERS GET INVOLVED?

Stop to give a kind word of encouragement and a smile to someone who’s dealing with homelessness on their daily path, and support an organization who can work with that person; it’s a longer term solution than giving someone on the street a dollar. Go to LAFH.org to find out more about what we do. Volunteer. Send a check. Go on a tour. Get to know somebody. When you know somebody’s story, you’re more connected to making an impact. You can make a difference.

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WINTER 2018–19

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FACULTYPROFILES ALUMNI & STAFF PROFILES

ARI LOEB ’98

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Illustration by Kyle Valentic

WINTER 2018–19

John Kang ’95

Jules Urbach ’92

JOHN KANG ’95 AND JULES URBACH ’92

How these two HW grads are using blockchain technology to rethink the way we do business John Kang, a founding member of the UCLA Blockchain Lab and the cofounder and CEO of Reasi, uses blockchain smart contracts to manage real estate sales and purchases. Jules Urbach, cofounder of OTOY, crowdsources graphics work with blockchain technology. In this primer, they explain what blockchain is, why you didn’t use it to buy a latte this morning, and how it’s still the biggest technological leap since the Internet.

BLOCKCHAIN 101

john kang: At its core, blockchain is a publicly accessible ledger that cannot be altered. Records are saved to this ledger in batches called blocks, and each subsequent block is uniquely and securely linked to the previous block—hence, “blockchain.” Blockchain employs both cutting-edge cryptography [complicated secret codes] and network redundancy [even if one part of the network fails, the rest of the network keeps information secure] to maintain data integrity.

Take Bitcoin, the world’s the first blockchain use case and today’s most popular cryptocurrency [digital cash]. If you give me Bitcoin, that transaction record is stored forever on the Bitcoin blockchain, and multiple identical copies are pushed through the network. If any bad actor attempts to change this record, the network immediately recognizes the out-of-sync chain and rejects it.

Blockchain is borderless, so it works anywhere. And it’s decentralized, so it’s safer from data breaches.

BLOCKCHAIN-BASED BUSINESSES

kang: Tamperproof record-keeping can be beneficial in many areas—think medical records, voting, insurance, etc. However, the peer-to-peer efficiency of blockchain delivers the most immediate gains in financial transactions. Cryptocurrency is truly remarkable because we can now send money—for example, Bitcoin—without using a bank. And because Bitcoin has removed the middleman bank, there are no bank fees.

Similar opportunities exist within real estate. I founded a startup called Reasi, where we’ve eliminated escrow fees for home sales or purchases by using blockchain to automate home-closing paperwork. Like Bitcoin, Reasi is a peer-to-peer solution that circumvents expensive middlemen, getting rid of most costs. Instead of stacks of paper, Reasi uses a digital checklist for the home closing called a “smart contract,” and this smart contract autoidentifies missing disclosures and requirements. Escrow used to cost $2,000, but now costs $15 with Reasi.

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Blockchain also provides higher quality control and security. Today, real estate is fraught with countless ways to lose money, ranging from wire scams to penalties for missing loan documents. The automation blockchain brings is far-reaching, secure, and very promising.

jules urbach: The future of the web isn’t apps or bandwidth; it’s blockchain. With blockchain, OTOY democratizes photorealistic CG [computer graphics], enabling artists to render [add color, shading, and texture to] 2D graphics to create beautiful 3D imagery at a fraction of the cost. Think of the opening sequences for Westworld or The Crown, for example, which were rendered using OTOY software. This type of photoreal rendering work requires a tremendous amount of time and computing power, creating way more demand than the public cloud could meet. But with blockchain, people around the world can lend us their computers’ graphic cards for jobs that can be done on their own machines— like SETI [the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] at home. Today, we use blockchain to crowdsource our graphic capacity and pay contributors in RNDR, our own cryptocurrency.

Down the road, blockchain will power complex VR [virtual reality] environments. We’re moving toward VR video you can walk through. Imagine having virtual wallpaper in your home, so your walls could turn into holographic two-way windows looking out on anywhere in the world.

You could visit Harvard-Westlake without driving there.

Blockchain will be an important part of that.

GOLD RUSH

kang: Bitcoin operates via digital mining—a great real-world analogy would be gold. When you mine gold, you bring in equipment. With Bitcoin, you use computing power instead of equipment. “Miners” run the Bitcoin network by competing to solve a complicated math problem, and the first to solve a given problem claims the digital gold, or Bitcoin.

Bitcoin will probably turn into something like gold. Gold has value, it’s rare, and there’s only a certain amount of it. But you don’t transact with gold. Gold you put in a safe; you urbach:

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can’t buy anything at Starbucks with it. Bitcoin will be similar; something else will take its place for everyday transactions.

BITCOIN FOR THE UNBANKED

kang: Blockchain is potentially revolutionary for the unbanked—income-challenged groups who cannot afford or access financial services. Today, these people frequently get taken advantage of. Just consider payday loans, where borrowers effectively get charged 30-50% interest rates that are hidden in fees. With Bitcoin, they could download a digital wallet and have the full functionality of a bank in their phone, so they could securely send money back and forth without fees.

The tricky part is getting cryptocurrency coins to send in the first place, since for now you still need a bank account to exchange dollars for Bitcoin. But as demand grows, Bitcoin could democratize the financial services landscape.

And although Bitcoin has been volatile in the United States, it is actually less volatile than some official currencies experiencing hyperinflation. In Venezuela, for example, the official currency is useless, and the economy has devolved to bartering physical goods.

So Bitcoin becomes an attractive alternative, and we’ve seen some Venezuelan citizens using it to purchase goods from the U.S. WAITING GAME

urbach: Hypothetically you could buy a coffee with Bitcoin, but the problem is, it’s too time consuming to mine and keep the ledger going. The more popular Bitcoin gets, the longer it takes to run transactions because each transaction is linked to the ones that came before. There needs to be a breakthrough where we can go to an alternate blockchain that can operate almost instantly. That’s what will make cryptocurrencies competitive with credit cards and payment apps.

kang: Today, buying a soda at a convenience store could take hours, depending on network congestion.

That’s why few stores will accept cryptocurrency at this point. I recently sold some Ethereum [a Bitcoin competitor] on Coinbase, and it took over a day.

WINTER 2018–19

The energy required to run Bitcoin [via all the computers powering the blockchain transactions] is equivalent to the electricity it takes to run a small country [in fact, it already sucks up more energy than Ireland]. And in addition to cryptocurrency’s energy and scalability issues, the digital wallet companies playing middleman are subject to fraud and privacy concerns; for now, it’s too complicated for users to initiate transactions on their own. There’s also the possibility that a government could outlaw cryptocurrency.

THE NEXT FRONTIER

Cryptocurrency is like the Wild West. It’s crazy. That’s why you have all this volatility [Bitcoin’s value went from $998 to $20,000 over the course of 2017 and back to under $4,000 in November]. urbach:

I don’t think Bitcoin is going away, because it’s the oldest and most established cryptocurrency—it goes up and down, but when people say Bitcoin is going to zero, I doubt it. But trying to invest in cryptocurrency is dangerous. Is Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency a bad investment? Not necessarily. Lots of people were bearish on the Internet—“only a moron would invest in YouTube,” and of course now it’s worth billions. But it reminds me of the dot-com bubble and all the speculation around Internet companies in the early days of the Web. I think there are a couple of Googles and Amazons in the cryptocurrency mix—but it’s hard to know who they are.

We don’t know what Bitcoin will be worth in five years, but smart contracts and cryptocurrency will be the next equivalent of the Internet. Once we have stability and scalability, you will see cryptocurrency payments become common. Blockchain is a fundamental part of the future of the Internet and the communications age we live in today.

HOW DOES

BLOCKCHAIN WORK

A transaction is requested

The transaction is broadcasted to a network of nodes

The network validates the transaction using known algorithms

VALIDATION MAY INCLUDE Smart Contracts Cryptocurrency

Other Records

The transaction is unified with other transactions as a block of data

The new block is added to the blockchain in a transparent and unalterable way

The transaction is complete

BENEFITS OF THE BLOCKCHAIN Transparency and Tracking

Reduced Costs Increased Trust

elenabsl/Shutterstock.com

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FACULTY & STAFF PROFILES

ARI LOEB ’98

From Ballet Lessons to MacGyver to Chalmers Alum, dancer, stuntman—and HW dance teacher

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WINTER 2018–19

Ari Loeb has been chased down a mountain by a wild boar for a U.S. Cellular commercial. He performed at the 2007 Academy Awards with the modern dance company Pilobolus and toured all over the globe as an acrobat in Cirque du Soleil’s Delirium.

He’s worked as a stuntman on productions including Kong: Skull Island, the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, The Walking Dead TV show and video game, and Pharrell Williams’s music video for “Freedom.” After teaching dance at HW this past fall, he is working as a stuntman in a forthcoming animated film this spring and planning to return to Harvard-Westlake in the fall.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO DANCE?

My two sisters took ballet class when I was a kid. They would show me what they learned, and I was good at it. So my mom—who’s also a musical theater Broadway nerd—stuck me in a ballet class when I was nine, and I liked it. It was my place to listen to music, learn new things, and do my own thing away from my family. I got serious about it right away. I wondered when kids would start making fun of me for dancing or being unique or independent, but they never did—at least, not enough to bother me. Everyone thought it was kind of cool, actually.

I didn’t love it every day—sometimes it could be boring or painful, but I stuck with it. Training in the summers at ballet schools across the country was really fun. I loved traveling and meeting new people, which is a lot of what constitutes a dance career.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE KIND OF DANCE?

If I had to choose one, counter-balance technique, or complex partnering. It’s when one dancer puts their weight and energy into another dancer, and that dancer pours the same weight and energy back into the first. My student described counter-balancing in this pitch-perfect way: “I enjoy interacting as if we are one apparatus, physically and mentally. We become monsters that move. It’s scary and it’s beautiful.”

WHAT MADE YOU START DOING STUNTS?

When I played Spider-Man on Broadway, I did a lot of intense aerial work and fighting scenes, and fight choreography was an instant love. I also met some stunt guys on that show. I had no idea about that world; I’d never paid attention to it. Next I got cast in Kung Fu, a play about Bruce Lee by playwright David Henry Hwang [’75], who’s a Harvard School grad and Pulitzer Prize finalist, and really got into fight choreography with [Emmy Award–winning choreographer] Sonya Tayeh from So You Think You Can Dance.

Then, after 15 years in New York, I started getting tired of the city, and my father in LA became ill. I was so in love with the idea of doing stunts, and I believed in myself—and the money’s better too.

So I decided to give it a shot. I hung up my dancing shoes, divorced New York, and came back to LA to be closer to my dad and do stunts.

I didn’t train dance for two years and instead trained in martial arts. I also learned how to repair cars—if you’re a stunt guy, you have to know things like how to clean the brake system and tighten the emergency brake, how to prevent the car from upshifting so you can do slides and skids, how to fix your car if it breaks down on set.

I also learned about weapons, how to ride a motorcycle, fire and water safety, how motion capture works, lenses, set terminology, how to make reactions work for the camera, how to coordinate my own car chases.

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YOU’VE ALSO DONE STUNTS FOR VIDEO GAMES. HOW DOES THAT WORK?

It starts with putting on a Lycra unitard covered in a constellation of little reflective balls precisely Velcro’ed all over your body. You stand in a ball of infrared light, and a computer records the movement it sees. The data comes out looking like a list of numbers with a single wave, kind of like an audio file, next to it. That’s what the technicians use to change or elongate certain areas of your body and draw up a skeleton that moves as if it were being filmed. Then the animators do their work, ingeniously bringing the characters to life.

It’s fun being the artificial-intelligence bad guys that the game’s main character slaughters in hordes. And I’m a dancer, so being in a plain room with nine buddies acting out scenarios through movement is kind of my wheelhouse. As long as there’s coffee, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

Now there’s a petition going around to create an Academy Award for stunt work. I don’t have a strong opinion about it, but I do feel a certain hesitation when I think about stunts becoming a competition. As a dancer, I never competed. I only strived to better myself. There’s already a constant flood of action movies—John Wick, Mission Impossible—and they’re all about the stunts. Add an Oscar to the mix, and the competition to pull off the biggest stunt just gets more intense—and potentially less safe. Besides, I like that there are 3,000 stunt workers in the business and I know a lot of them; I’d rather not draw more attention to stunt work and attract 300,000 of them. It’s selfish, but it’s not like I have stunt jobs coming out of my nose.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE STORY ABOUT DOING STUNT WORK?

On one 17-hour day in Georgia, I doubled the lead on an episode of WHAT’S IT LIKE WORKING IN SUCH A RISKY MacGyver. I had to jump out of a PROFESSION? helicopter onto a speeding truck, I actually saw more injuries dancing than in stunts. then cut a hole in the tarp that During one show, I saw a dancer fall 40 feet and break covered part of the truck, drop in, 52 bones. I was in the basement of the theater, where he fight the guy protecting the bomb, landed, and heard the bones break. He was back in the show four and a half months later flying in a harness. and throw him out the back of the truck. I can’t diffuse the bomb, so I like danger and risk, and I’m good I cut up the tarp into a parachute at what I do, but if someone asks me and chute out the back as the truck to do something I’m not comfortable speeds off and explodes. I then fly with, either I’ll figure out how to do across the highway and land on it or tell them I can’t do it. Fighting, cement, rolling, as cars swerve falling, wire work, that’s all fine. Basic around me. stuff. I did a shootout in Atlanta two I didn’t know a single person on set that day. They all weeks ago and was thrown into a bar covered with broken glass, easy peasy. decided to trust me, and I decided to trust them. People just looked at me and yelled “and…GO!” and I just did it.

But if they tell me I’m going to get Come to think of it, with that blond wig on, no one even hit by a car or jump off a rock 25 feet knew what I looked like. into a lake head first, I’d have to train for that.

Top right: Striking a pose atop a broken picnic table while on a hike Right: Just another day on the job (photo by Rory Mitchell ’92)

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FALL/WINTER WINTER 2018–19 2018

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Another story: When I was working on The Originals, a vampire show, my affinity for cats and my shining ability to communicate with them became well known. There was a crypt and cemetery that had been built in the woods for the show, and it had been there for a few years. When the show ended after its fifth season, they tore down the set. But there were three cats living in those fake crypts! So the production coordinator hired me to capture the cats in the night before the demolition team showed up the next morning. I had nets and all kinds of tools.

The cats were really cute. But I didn’t catch any of them.

WHAT’S IT LIKE TEACHING STUDENTS TO DANCE?

Teaching dance is wonderful. It’s everything natural, from the body to the mind and spirit.

The students enjoy having a way to express themselves, to look within and discover music and friendships at their age. I’m glad to be a part of their lives in this way. My class focuses mostly on choreography and making dances. I basically teach the students to collaborate, to follow and lead, to be themselves and enjoy dance. We are gearing up for a studio showcase of student choreography, and we’re having a blast.

This page: Wearing a motion-capture unitard Top right: On location with zombie stunt performers on Fear the Walking Dead Right: Teaching Art of Dance I in the Chalmers dance studio (photo by Matt Sayles ’00)

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WINTER 2018–19

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FACULTY & STAFF PROFILES

ARI LOEB ’98

Jessica Kaufman:

speaking in code

Get with the program with middle school computer science teacher Jessica Kaufman

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Jessica Kaufman has taught programming to HarvardWestlake middle schoolers since 1993. Mom to Tierni ’19 and Kyle ’21, Ms. Kaufman (formerly known as Ms. Chou) takes a break from screen time to talk about floppy disks, field trips, and what it’s like to teach when you’re shy. how did you come to work at harvard-westlake?

I was student-teaching at an elementary school, and the kids were eating me alive! My career counselor at UCLA noticed I had a computer science background and thought I might like teaching older children instead, so she told me to call HarvardWestlake. I ended up talking to John Romano, who taught at the upper school from 1985 to 1994.

Unexpectedly, Harvard-Westlake was interested in hiring a computer science teacher at the time, so they called me for an interview, and I was hired a few days later. This is now my twenty-fifth year! why teaching?

It was a fallback. After four years at UCLA, I didn’t know what to do. I’d enjoyed working with children, so I got my master’s and teaching credential, but I was quiet, so teaching wasn’t easy for me. Now looking back, teaching middle school was my calling. I remember driving home from work the first few weeks thinking, “Wow, I’m getting paid to do this, this is so fun!” Landing a teaching job at HW right out of college is one of the best things that’s happened to me. how has teaching programming at harvard-westlake changed?

At first, I taught Pascal, then C++, and for the past 15 years, Java. We used to program on desktops with boxlike monitors and save to floppy disks; now students bring their own laptops. And when I started, we didn’t have smartphones and the Internet was in its infancy.

My first year, I had 35 kids total in my Intro to Programming classes and one girl [Lara Devgan ’97, who is now a surgeon and the chief medical officer of a tech company]. Now I have 180 students, including 63 girls.

There weren’t many kids interested in programming then.

It was considered a fringe hobby, not trendy like it is now.

how did you learn to program?

I went to a math, science, and computer science magnet school in San Diego where every kid learned to program.

Then at UCLA, I majored in cognitive science with a specialization in computer science. how do you think being soft-spoken has affected the way you relate to students?

I believe I contribute more to my students’ learning with what I do than how I speak. I tend to pack a lot of activities into each class and not go off topic.

I’m organized, resourceful, and sincere. Those are the upsides, but who doesn’t love a funny teacher?

Fortunately, although that’s not me, I can usually count on students to provide comic relief. do you think students who tend to be more serious and quiet relate to you more and do better in your class, or enjoy it more, as a result?

My hope is students do well in programming because they like it—regardless of me. Sometimes chatty students will become quiet while programming because they’re engrossed in problem solving. I’m glad our school is discussing ways to recognize reserved students. It’s easy to overlook quieter students because the “squeaky wheel gets the grease.” I was that quiet student who didn’t raise my hand.

[Middle school history teacher] George Gaskin has said he appreciated it when his college professor specifically thanked him for “listening with his eyes”—a nod to the fact some students actively learn without speaking aloud. It’s nice to acknowledge the diversity in temperaments, learning styles, and perspectives that are not immediately visible.

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how did your first field trip come about?

Margaret Stohl [’85 P’11 ’13 ’19] used to volunteer in the middle school library as an HW mom.

In 2006, she and her husband Lewis Peterson [P’11 ’13 ’19] invited me to bring a group of middle schoolers to visit their company 7 Studios. My students were over the moon and loved meeting their artists, animators, and software engineers. Since then, I’ve organized 23 trips to 12 companies. what was your most memorable field trip?

Last spring, Harry Salamandra, Ed Hu, and I brought 20 students to Silicon Valley and toured Facebook, Google, and Apple. Alums at these companies showed us around and gave us a glimpse of what it’s like to work there. We’ve also toured JPL, SpaceX, Activision Blizzard, and many other places. how do you find your guest speakers?

That’s one of the perks of staying here for so long: Every year I teach more than 150 kids, so now I know more and more alums and their families. So far, I’ve invited 12 alums in the tech field to speak at the middle school. In 2011, Scott Becker [’05], whose latest venture is programming viruses to selectively destroy cancer cells, talked about what it’s like to be a tech entrepreneur. In 2012, Jason Fieldman [’98], who is now a principal engineer at Bird [electric scooter company], came to speak to students—and then returned to Harvard-Westlake to teach computer science at the upper school for two years. He still has screenshots of a project he did in ninth grade, a game called Underground Caverns, on his web portfolio! My most recent alum guest was Josh Glazer [’96], a principal engineer at Riot Games, who spoke with middle schoolers about what it’s like to develop video games. what has kept you going for 25 years?

I love being in touch with alums and connecting them to my current students. I feel renewed in my teaching at the beginning of each semester when I show students how to write “Hello, World!”, the first program you write when learning a programming language. It’s a perennial reminder of how exciting it is for students to discover the joy of programming. As an eighth grader recently put it after he wrestled with a program and got it to run, “It’s so satisfying!”

Jessica Kaufman and students showing off Magic the Gathering cards in the mid ’90s

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Middle school students touring Apple with Jessica Kaufman, Harry Salamandra, and Ed Hu

Jessica Kaufman with students in the computer lab in the mid ’90s

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STUDENT VOICES

Breathe

By Karen Wu ’23

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Artwork by Cleo Maloney ’21

WINTER 2018–19

I can’t breathe.

The air claws at my throat like a monster. No matter how many gulps of water I drink, there is no relief.

It was better last time we came, I think. I could barely see the sun or the stars or the moon, but at least I could breathe. It was summer then, and the heat felt like a boa constrictor, choking me before crushing my chest. But now it’s winter, and my chest stills hurts.

As I walk along the streets of Beijing, clinging to my mother amidst the thousands of people, a smothering mask covers my face to keep me from breathing in pollution.

I desperately want to rip it off but don’t want to expose myself. I didn’t have to wear it last year, and I feel sick as I think of how the darkness in the air is rapidly consuming China. This place is not my home, but I love it nonetheless.

How could I not, with the long roots binding me here?

Which am I? Foreign to this land, or native?

I still can’t breathe.

Māma says that Shenyang will be better, but it barely is. I notice the cold first, but I ignore it. I am not cold. I grew up with cold, in the mitten state, Michigan.

It’s warm and cozy inside my grand-aunt’s house, where we’re staying. My relatives dote on my little sister and me, cooing about how much we’ve grown, how pretty and smart we are, and I feel drunk on happy feelings as I lie down to sleep. For a split second, China feels like home, like somewhere that I would want to stay forever.

And yet the sharp pain in my throat reminds me I don’t belong.

(Māma said that the air is familiar to the people here.)

I wake up early because of the time difference, stumbling around like a ghost. The house is still, as if it is suspended in time, the only sound being the faint chatter of Chinese cartoons from the TV. Over the Shenyang skyline, the sun rises, so clouded from the pollution that it’s only a dim orange circle.

I remember my grand-uncle talking about his experience with the Chinese military. He said that Chinese soldiers were supposed to fight Americans. Mĕi guó rén. Me (or not me—it’s all about who you ask). Another time my grandaunt said that I spoke Chinese like a Taiwanese person (of course, if you asked a Taiwanese person, they would probably say I spoke like a Hong Konger). In the end, I’m not really Chinese, not with my accent and my passport—a dark navy blue instead of a rusted red.

But in America, people act as if I’m not really American (even though I technically am)—I’m the Chinese kid, the one with slanted eyes who speaks a strange language, who everyone thinks is related to another random Asian person in our grade. It’s a constant thorn in my side, but by now, I’m used to it.

I suppose you can get used to anything with enough time….

Who am I? We go to Qingdao next. Māma says that Qingdao will be better (what she said about Shenyang), except this time, it actually is better. And so I go outside, drinking in the brilliant yet gray world around me. There’s a park outside my grandparent’s apartment with a pond that has stepping stones. When I was a little child, I would hop around on them, lost in my own faraway world.

My grandmother takes me to the open-air market for the first time. The marketplace is more vivid than anything I could possibly imagine: spices that seem to sing a secret song of their own, red children’s clothes that flutter in the wind like banners, crimson strawberries, chickens squawking in cages alongside the haggling marketgoers, and animal bones still red with blood. There is a beggar man with a radio and only one leg. I tug on my grandmother’s sleeve upon seeing him, and she quickly pulls me along.

As we walk home, I think about how intense that place was—a raucous, messy symphony of life. America doesn’t really have any place like this—at least, not as graphic as this. A small piece of me wonders how my parents could have left that behind.

Where do I belong?

As we board the plane to return home, my hearts twists in two. Outside, the sky is gray like the concrete buildings that crowd the streets. Part of me wishes I could be back in America right now—it’s alluring, whispering to me with luminous dreams. But the other part of me wishes that I could always be in China. I want to to be with my family, to hear the familiar lisp of the language, and walk through the busy streets. China has a different feeling to it—more ancient, thousands and thousands of years carving through history like the Yellow River carves across that country.

As I take my seat on the plane, I somehow know that no matter where I go, I will always feel a foreign, detached feeling. China is the rock my soul was sculpted from and America is the river that carved my soul into what it is now.

But in the end, despite this whole mess of emotions, I am happy when the plane touches down in America.

Because I can breathe.

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NOTES

Class Notes Class Notes is a regular feature in the semiannual Harvard-Westlake Life magazine. Notes are submitted by alumni, and each magazine includes submissions received in the previous six months.

If a decade/class year is not included in the notes, this means alumni from those years did not submit any updates. If you have news you’d like to share with the alumni community, you can submit it via the alumni website (www.hw.com/alumni) in the password-protected Alumni Community section. If you need help with your username or password, please contact Katie Lim ’13 at klim@hw.com.

HARVARD CLASS NOTES

1960s

LOU HAYS ’62 writes, “I am now living in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. I am recently remarried, to Michelle Boomgaard, who is also an Episcopal priest. Although I retired in early 2017 as rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, I am now serving as part-time interim rector of the Church of the Epiphany in Oakville, Ontario.”

1990s

DAVID WIENIR ’91 writes, “Excited to share that my fourth book, Amsterdam Exposed: An American’s Journey Into the Red Light District, was published this year and has received great reviews. Kirkus Reviews called the memoir a ‘provocative, enlightening, humorous, and impressively executed guide to Amsterdam’s twilight world.”

IN MEMORIAM Robert Kroger ’45 Harry Macy ’48 Penn Post ’51 Bob Sunshine ’56 Mike Willcocks ’61 Thomas Henn ’62 Ian Small ’62 Peter Truex ’72 Eric Brechner ’73 Clay Crouch ’74

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IN MEMORIAM BOB SUNSHINE ’56 While a student at Harvard School, Bob Sunshine ’56 proved himself a talented athlete, participating in football, baseball, and basketball. In fact, Bob was a part of the ’55–’56 basketball team, only the second team in school history to reach the CIF semifinals. At the time, Coach Clustka described his team as the “best I have ever coached.”

Bob was also the Company Commander of B Company, which took second place in the Desmond Trophy competition. B Company’s Second Platoon won Harvard’s platoon competition and was selected to represent the school in the Naval competition in San Diego in 1956. That same year, Bob was also Third Prefect and Senior Class Student Cabinet Representative.

On his senior yearbook page, Bob wrote, “I, Bob Sunshine, leave my best wishes to all lower classmen, hoping that they may take advantage of the unlimited opportunities offered by Harvard.

To the Faculty and Father Chalmers, I leave my best wishes and sincere thanks for six very memorable years.”

Bob went on to join the Army, work in the insurance industry, and settle down in Santa Ana, California. He is survived by his wife, Sylvia Sunshine, his brothers Russell ’60 and Douglas ’66, his children, Beth Christie, Brooke Williams, and Thom Sunshine, and his grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

WINTER 2018–19

WESTLAKE CLASS NOTES

1940s

HARVARD-WESTLAKE CLASS NOTES

1998

David Sun writes, “I am a detective with the LAPD and currently serve as the department’s legislative liaison. Some of my previous assignments have included patrol, custody, foot beat, bike patrol, and burglary investigations.”

2004 BEVERLY JACOBSON JACKSON ’46 writes, “With my 90th birthday just one month off, I’m still going strong. I am a consultant to the National Museum of Edinburgh because of one of my six published books, Kingfisher Blue. My prizewinning book on Chinese foot binding, Splendid Slippers, published originally in 1997, is still selling well. I write a Santa Barbara newspaper column, ‘Mixing Yesterday and Today.’ I’m currently writing a book aimed at young people considering studying abroad to avoid giant student loans. It is based on a prominent Santa Barbara doctor who wanted to study medicine at Sapienza Medical School in Rome.

Only problem was all was taught in Italian. So he moved to Perugia for one year to learn Italian. And did six years at Sapienza totally in Italian.”

IN MEMORIAM Jeanine Hendricks Torrence ’59 Wendy Wylie Winegar ’67 Pilar McCurry ’81

Meghan Hart writes, “I graduated last May with an MBA from the USC Marshall School of Business and now work at Universal Studios Hollywood as the associate manager on the integrated marketing strategy team.”

2014

academics and leadership,’ and they lead their school’s procession during commencement. This year, Jonathan and I both had the honor of being the flag bearers for our schools! (The School of Computer Science for Jonathan and the College of Engineering for me.) This was a great way to round out our college experience and represent both CMU and HW!” IN MEMORIAM Mat Hand ’94 Andrew Smith ’08 Kyle Martin-Patterson ’10

VARUN GADH writes, “Jonathan Burns ’14 and I were good friends at Harvard-Westlake starting in ninth grade. We roomed together freshman year at Carnegie Mellon and have lived together since. On May 20, 2018, we both graduated; I in mechanical engineering and Jonathan in computer science.

At CMU, each school selects one undergraduate to be the flag bearer of that school at graduation. The flag bearer is supposed to ‘have excelled in

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HW LEGACY

2018 REUNIONS THIS PAGE TOP Harvard Class of 1988 BOTTOM Class of 1993 RIGHT PAGE TOP LEFT Westlake Class of 1968 TOP RIGHT Aaron Lyons ’13, Robert Flom ’13, and Brian Bagdasarian ’13 MIDDLE LEFT David Ross ’68, Michael Hirsch ’68, Jim Collins ’68, and Ernie Wolfe ’68 MIDDLE RIGHT Stephanie Dashiell ’98 and Lauren Abrahams Posamentier ’98 BOTTOM LEFT Juanita Jones Kamm ’53 and Joan Agajanian Quinn ’53 BOTTOM RIGHT Gabby Horton ’08, Paul Royster ’08, and Lizzy Brooks ’08

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HW LEGACY

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2018 REUNIONS LEFT PAGE TOP LEFT Westlake Class of 1978 with former history teacher David Coombs TOP RIGHT Eric Greenfeld ’78, Mark Schine’78, Brian Jerrems ’78, and Graham Boshier ’78 MIDDLE LEFT Ashley Daneshgar Josephson ’95 and Natalie Adar Wolfe ’95 MIDDLE RIGHT Class of 1998 BOTTOM LEFT Mike Riordan ’73, Brad Peppard ’73, Graham Moses ’73, Flip Cuddy ’73, Lee Walker ’73, Stups Stuppy ’73, and George Cox ’73 BOTTOM RIGHT Class of 2008 THIS PAGE TOP Class of 2013 BOTTOM Westlake Classes of 1953 and 1954

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NOTES

What Is Your Favorite Dinosaur?

By Jim Pattison

My wife, recently retired, taught four- and five-year-old children at a school in Santa Barbara. As she introduced the children to the alphabet, she would ask them to bring in things to share that started with each particular letter. One year, for “M” week, a number of the children brought in their mothers. One particular student not only brought her mother, but also her grandmother and great-grandmother, who was 98 years old.

This great-grandmother told the children that when she was their age, they didn’t “even have cars and certainly not airplanes.” The children were wide eyed in wonder thinking about the possibility of such a time. One boy made the mental leap into what must have been a “long time ago” and then asked, “So…what was your favorite dinosaur?”

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It’s a cute story and refreshing to hear such innocence. It also reminds us how much change in the world has occurred in our lifetimes. Not only are there now cars and airplanes, but space travel, instantaneous communications, technology improvements galore, staggering political changes, and medical and scientific advances. Some of the change has been evolutionary, but a great deal of it has been truly lifechanging, even revolutionary. What else can be done, how much further can things or people go? What sort of dreams will come true over the course of this century?

Our future lies in the promise of our children. Here at Harvard-Westlake, we provide students with the teachers and coaches to nourish their dreams, fuel the fires of their ambitions, and hone their razorsharp minds with the time, affection, and care it takes to grow young adults. Natural development occurs, but there’s also a transformation, a life change, that happens.

Although the term transformational borders on overuse, a Harvard-Westlake education can be truly revolutionary by touching and changing hearts as well as heads, opening eyes, and pushing past what were once thought to be limits. We know that facts are important but feelings are vital; knowledge is essential but wisdom is better. Our students—in their brilliance and spirit —are capable of catching fire, creating beauty never seen, and becoming a vital part of America’s tomorrow. At Harvard-Westlake, we give kids the confidence to try new things and take on opportunities and problems that they might otherwise pass over.

We want to ensure that our students’ education nurtures their absolute potential. The space we are able to give our students helps determine how big they’ll grow, for as we know, a young person’s dreams take up a lot of room. Our success is measured by the preparation we provide for the demands of both the workplace and the society our young people will enter.

Our ability to nourish hopes and ambitions is dependent on the thoughtfulness of those who believe in them. Donors help the school develop naturally—and sometimes take a big leap forward in making our institutional dreams come true. A change often occurs in the lives of those making these gifts— expectations are raised, hearts are changed, a new dimension of a life is realized.

The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Transformation—any change, really—requires a first step. A few resources for those who are ready to take that step: ■ The school’s website has a sophisticated gift planning section (www.hw.com/give) with a full menu of investment opportunities that allows donors to learn about how and why they might want to help the school.

■ The school’s annual report highlights and articulates how some donors are realizing their aspirations for the school via various endowed and special funds. A copy of the annual report can be sent by request to provide examples of what has been done.

■ The Canyon & Glen Bequest Society has been established for those who want to leave a legacy by putting the school in their wills, estate plans, or retirement plans.

■ A gift of real estate via a charitable remainder trust is a creative way to fund a transformational donation that can significantly benefit both the donor and the school.

Jim Pattison is the senior advancement officer at Harvard-Westlake and spearheads the school’s gift planning efforts. For more information on making a gift to the school, he may be reached at jpattison@hw.com or 818-487-5471.

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HARVARD-WESTLAKE HOMECOMING, SEPTEMBER 2018

“ At homecoming, we’re all one team. It’s a welcome home for alumni and a chance for HW friends and family to come together to celebrate our community.”

TERRY BARNUM, HEAD OF ATHLETICS

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Last Look

SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO SYLMAR Bill Stinehart Jr. ’61 and Father John Gill, who was a Harvard School chaplain from 1942 to 1986, deliver Christmas gifts to Olive View Hospital (now known as Olive View–UCLA Medical Center) in Sylmar, California, in December 1960.

Artwork by Jasper Richards ’20

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CREATIVE DIRECTOR & DESIGNER: AGNES PIERSCIENIAK CONTENT DIRECTOR & WRITER: ELIZABETH HURCHALLA ILLUSTRATOR: KYLE VALENTIC PHOTOGRAPHERS: MATT SAYLES ’00, UTKAN KOCATURK, MAKO KOIWAI, RORY MITCHELL ’97, DJ LESH ’18, PAVAN TAUH ’18, PHIL ROEDER FRONT COVER PHOTO: JESSE CHEHAK ’97

Artwork by Jadene Meyer ’18

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