Class Notes Archive 1931-2014
Class Notes are searchable back to our spring 2000 issue. You can browse the notes by decade (click on a decade to view its class notes):
Class notes from the 2000s
| 2004Olowo-n’djo Tchala by Anna Hennings
Occupation: founder of Alaffia Sustainable Skin Care
From Africa to the U.S.: Olowo-n’djo Tchala ’04 (pronounced Olo-WAN-jo CHA-lo) grew up in poverty in Togo with his seven brothers and sisters, collecting the nuts of wild shea trees to pay for school supplies and clothes. Many years later, Tchala fell in love with Peace Corps volunteer and UC Davis student Rose Hyde, who is now his wife. In 1998, the two traveled back to the Unites States and continued their education at UC Davis. Six years later, despite having immigrated with only a sixth grade education, Tchala graduated from UC Davis with a bachelor’s degree in sociology—organizational studies and started a fair trade shea butter cooperative that supports the community in which he was raised.
Fair trade skin care: Tchala hires mostly women to work for his Alaffia/Agbanga Cooperative in central Togo, giving them an opportunity to benefit from their shea butter-making knowledge and to feel empowered. They also earn a fair, livable wage and health benefits by handcrafting shea butter, specialty oils and extracts from the area’s wild shea trees. It’s a process that takes many arduous hours: an estimated 20-30 to handcraft a single kilogram of shea butter. The raw material is hen shipped to Tchala’s company, Alaffia Sustainable Skin Care in Olympia, Wash., where Tchala, his wife, Rose, and other Alaffia employees repackage the shea butter and formulate creams, lotions and soaps, according to organic and fair trade guidelines.
Community empowerment: Alaffia contributes 10 percent of its total sales to community enhancement projects in Togo, already raising over $400,000. The money has provided school supplies and uniforms, school building repairs, prenatal care and reforestation plantings. One of their most effective efforts was the donation of hundreds of bicycles that allow children to travel five to 10 miles to their local schools. For more information about Tchala’s work, visit www.alaffia.com.
“My basic needs are met. I have food. I have a roof over my head. I think that the only thing I have left is help for other people.”
(appeared in the Summer 2007 issue) • April Zeman married Lance Lowe in September in Coloma. At the ceremony were her mother, Dora “Marie” Adams ’72, M.A. ’74, bridesmaids Kathryn Murphy-Frank, J.D. ’07, and Kristin Parks. Other Aggies attending included Kathryn’s husband, Charles Frank ’07; April’s aunt, Carol Sue Adams ’76; Marie’s longtime friend Sally Rae Stewart-Andersen ’72, Cred. ’73; Gerard “Gerry” Adams ’75, M.S. ’75, Ph.D. ’81; John Adams Hillebrand ’78; and April’s father, Phillip Zeman, who attended UC Davis and played football alongside current head coach Bob Biggs ’73.
(appeared in the Winter 2011 issue) • Ryan Cummings is senior manager for Waggin’ Train and was an equity partner in the pet treats company’s sale this fall by VMG Partners to Nestle Purina Pet Care. He has spent the past three years in Nanjing, China, overseeing quality assurance for Waggin’ Train’s manufacturing operations and identifying potential global manufacturing partners. The company sold about $200 million in all-meat pet treats in 2009–10.
(appeared in the Winter 2011 issue) • Zeb Hogan, Ph.D., an assistant research professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and host of National Geographic’s Monster Fish, received the Young Alumnus Award at the Cal Aggie Alumni Awards Gala in February. As a graduate student, Hogan developed the Megafishes Project, which works to conserve the largest freshwater fish in the world. Now as director of the project, he works with nearly 100 scientists in more than a dozen countries with expeditions to study the most diverse freshwater systems in the world. In 2004, he was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He lives in Reno, Nev.
(appeared in the Spring 2011 issue) • JOSH FERNANDEZ’s first full-length collection of poems was released in May by R.L. Crow Publications. Spare Parts and Dismemberment focuses on a young Latino struggling to feel comfortable in his own skin.
(appeared in the Summer 2011 issue) • Eric Kuper, M.F.A., directed “The Dislocation Express,” a collaboration between AXIS Dance Company and Dandelion Dancetheater supported by the Hass Creative Work fund. Performances were free and took place the last week of July at the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley and two BART stations. Kuper is the artistic director of Dandelion Dancetheater.
(appeared in the Fall 2011 issue) • Christopher Stephenson and Lindsey Riemenschneider ’06 were married in July, eight years after working together as advisers in the UC Davis Summer Advising Program. They live in Chicago, where Riemenschneider is an environmental engineer. Stephenson is working on his M.B.A. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
(appeared in the Fall 2011 issue) • Crystel Stanford, of San Carlos, a financial planner and adventurous athlete, died in May from injuries sustained in a bike accident during a 100-mile race in Fresno County. She was 29. She was vice president of sales and marketing at Redwood Mortgage and sponsorship director at the Financial Planning Association of San Francisco. She spoke several languages and sky-dived, base-jumped, para-glided, biked and did yoga. In 2009, she crossed the Andes mountains on a motorcycle. After her death, hundreds of bicyclists participated in a memorial ride. She is survived by her parents, Larry and Penny; sisters, Callie and Lacey; grandparents, Eleanor and Rudy Moreno; and her boyfriend, Dirk Morris.
(appeared in the Fall 2011 issue) • Andrea McNees is serving in Tanzania as a project coordinator for the nonprofit group, 2Seeds Network, helping small villages improve their farming methods. She blogs at kwakiligaproject.blogspot.com.
(appeared in the Winter 2012 issue) • George and Kristen (Niedecken) Bruque recently celebrated their second wedding anniversary in Europe. They live in Oakland, where George is finishing his residency training in pediatrics at Oakland Children’s Hospital. Kirsten is a seventh-grade math teacher in Castro Valley.
(appeared in the Winter 2012 issue) • Lena McDowall, M.B.A., is associate director for business services for the National Park Service. She started the position in February. Officials credited her with streamlining business policies and practices in previous positions—most recently at Yosemite National Park, and before that at the National Park Service Office of the Comptroller.
(appeared in the Summer 2012 issue) • A debut novel by Melanie Thorne, M.A. ’06, Hand Me Down (Dutton Books, 2012), has been selected by the School Library Journal for its “Adult Books 4 Teens” list. The book tells the story of a girl who travels between California and Utah in search of a safe home after her mother marries a register sex offender.
(appeared in the Fall 2012 issue) • Ian Fraser-Shapiro recently completed his Ph.D. in archaeology at the University of Alberta. He received his master’s degree in archaeology at California State University at Long Beach in 2007.
(appeared in the Winter 2013 issue) • Anna Muraco, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, authored Odd Couples (Duke University Press, 2012). The book examines gay-straight friendships.
(appeared in the Spring 2013 issue) • Andrea Stewart, a West Sacramento fantasy writer and painter, was among writing contest winners honored at the L. Ron Hubbard Achievement Awards in April at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. Her winning story, “Dreameater” appears in the anthology L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Vol. 29 (Galaxy Press, 2013). She works as a state contract analyst. Her website is andreagstewart.com.
(appeared in the Summer 2013 issue) • Emilie Cameron joined Sacramento-based 3fold Communications as a senior public relations manager this summer. She previously worked for Lucas Public Affairs and the Northern California Division of Safeway.
(appeared in the Fall 2013 issue) • Michael Kurland recently completed his Doctor of Education degree in educational psychology and leadership at the University of Southern California. This summer, he launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $10,000 for publishing his new children’s book, The Peach Twins, an updated version of the Japanese Momotaro, or Peach Boy, folktale.
(appeared in the Fall 2013 issue) • Jon Ruel, M.S., has been promoted to president of Trefethen Family Vineyards in the Napa Valley.
(appeared in the Spring 2014 issue) • San Rafael business attorney Michael Lopez spent six weeks in London studying the English legal system this past spring as part of an American Inns of Court exchange program. He was one of just two U.S. lawyers selected by the professional organization to be a 2014 Pegasus Trust Scholar. (appeared in the Fall 2014 issue) • Adam Smith, a middle-school math, science and ukulele teacher in Hood River, Oregon, joined an expedition to the Arctic in June as a National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow. He blogged during his trip to the Svalbard archipelago at arcticadam.wordpress.com. In an essay for the Hood River News, he called the expedition “the best professional development ever.” (appeared in the Fall 2014 issue) |