ALUM UPDATES Devin Kleiner, Grade 7, 1987,
writes, "With our kids visiting their grandparents, my wife Christa and I were able to sneak away this summer for our first weekend getaway since the pandemic started. Our goal was to spend as much time out in the Pacific Northwest nature as possible so we hiked Hurricane Ridge and the Hoh Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula where we first met 20 years ago. "The pandemic has been an eye-opening period for both personal and professional growth. Our architecture firm received a 2021 COTE® Top Ten Award for sustainable design excellence which lifted our hopes during these uncertain times for a resilient future balancing ecology with our built environment."
Maxwell Bennett, HS Class of 2008, profiled in the Winter, 2016, issue of the SFWS magazine, has been the resident blacksmith at Intracoastal Ironwork and Metalwork in Wilmington, NC, since February, 2021. His sculpture can be seen at the Ellsworth Gallery in Santa Fe and @maxwellbennettworks on Instagram.
Sarib Jot Kaur Khalsa, Grade 7, 2013, is currently on a gap year
after graduating from Miri Piri Academy in Amritsar, India in 2018 and getting her EMT license from Santa Fe Community College. She has worked as an EMT for Taos County and has been a member of the Ski Santa Fe ski patrol since she was 18. She plans to go to college next fall at the University of Montana. This winter, she says, "I want to enjoy Santa Fe and find a place with more snow!"
Kaela Childs, Grade 7, 2014, is finishing her final semester at
Santa Fe Community College and is planning on attending NMSU in the spring to major in fine arts and minor in psychology and or social work.
IN MEMORY Siri Atma Kaur Khalsa, Grade 6, 2015, died suddenly on May 12,
2021. Khalsa loved SFWS and kept in regular touch with her classmates over the years. She will be deeply missed. A tree was planted in her memory on November 23 outside of Hooper Hall, which is surrounded by a ring of painted rocks in her honor. Anyone is welcome to add a rock if they wish. 16
Alexandria Chastenet de Gery, HS Class of 2015, is living and
working in Brussels, Belgium. She received her MA in Global Peace, Security and Strategy from Vesalius University, Brussels, in January 2021, and is currently a Program Assistant at The German Marshall Fund of the United States in Strategic Convening, where she focuses on public diplomacy in the Transatlantic.
Sophia Gundrey, Grade 8, Class of 2015, finished a year and a
half at Barnard College in New York before deciding to take a gap year and work locally. "I’m just reevaluating where I want to go and what I want to be," she reports, adding that she is applying to universities in Scotland and Ireland, planning to major in religious studies with a possible focus on druids.
Gabrielle Chastenet de Gery, HS Class of 2016, is pursuing a
MA in Journalism, Media, and Globalization through the Erasmus Mundus Journalism consortium. She is currently at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and will spend spring semester 2022 at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, in Santiago, focusing on investigative documentary and audio journalism. Chastenet de Gery will complete her degree with a focus on totalitarianism in transition at Charles University, in Prague, Czech Republic.
Shaefer Bennett, HS Class of 2016, graduated from UNM in
2020, and is now in his first year of veterinary school at Colorado State University.
Martine Perez, HS Class of 2018,
writes, "After graduating from SFWS in 2018, I started my college education at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. I am studying marketing in the Business School as well as minoring in psychology. I am currently taking a gap year from school and plan to return in the fall of 2022 to finish my final year at the U. "During this time off from school, I have started my own clothing company called BigSistr. The idea is that I find thrifted clothes and enhance them. I rework them to add embellishments using paint, sewing, or embroidery. It’s all sustainable, one-of-a-kind, upcycled clothes. Starting this business has been really amazing! I have applied what I learned from school and translated it to my business. "I have also called upon the creative Waldorf skills I learned, such as how to use a sewing machine, embroidering, and sketching design concepts. I am grateful for my creative arts background from Waldorf because it gave me such a helpful and relevant platform to start BigSistr. I am excited about the future and can’t wait to see what comes next! Please check out my Instagram account (@big. sistr) and my shops on Etsy (BigSistrShop) and Depop (@bigsistr)."
