Spring & Summer 2003

1969

Since 1999, Joseph Barbato has been president of his own firm, Barbato Associates, in Alexandria, VA, where he offers communications services to major nonprofits from MIT to the US Fund for UNICEF.  He’s coauthored/edited five books, most recently "Writing for a Good Cause" (Simon and Schuster, 2000); still freelances for publications from USA Today to The Writer. Joseph has recently been named to board of directors of Washington Independent Writers, the nation’s largest regional writers organization.  Visit him at www.barbatoassociates.com

1975

Warren N. Bimblic serves as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Primedia Financial Services Group, publisher of Registered Rep, Trusts & Estates Magazine, National Real Estate Investor and Shopping Center World Magazine. He can be reached at wbimblick@primediabusiness.com.  Also, Warren is president of the American Red Cross chapter in Greater New York.

1978

For the past eight years Bryna Brennan has headed the office of public information at the Pan American Health Organization, which serves as the regional office for the Americas of the World Health Organization. She wrties, “For most of my career, however, I was a journalist, which is of course what my degree was in I graduated in 1978, went on the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and then The Associated Press. With the AP, I served as a correspondent in Brazil and later in El Salvador and Nicaragua, where I covered the wars in Central Americas. I transferred to Washington in 1989 and before returning to the AP I had a guest scholarship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Later I went back to school and earned a master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. My time at NYU served me well.”

1987

This past fall, Contemporary Books, a division of McGraw Hill, published Leah Ingram’s fifth book: The Balanced Bride: Preparing Your Mind, Body and Spirit for Your Wedding and Beyond. (Leah is also the author of four other books on wedding and gift-giving topics.) In addition to book writing, Leah continues to write for national magazines on a variety of topics. Look for her byline in 2003 in Parade and Energy for Women. Leah lives in New Hope, Pennsylvania with her husband and two daughters.

1989

Lucy Picardi is still with the Wall Street Journal, editing Special Projects like WSJ Reports and the Sunday Journal, a special personal finance section that runs in a whole bunch of papers across the country. She edits and rewrites long features on everything from the Internet to heart disease, and works really closely with reporters—all “stuff she loves to do,” she writes. Ralph Ortega has been a metro reporter at the New York Daily News for the last five years. He mostly does general assignment work and breaking news. Before joining the News, Ralph worked at the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey and the Stuart/Port St. Lucie News in Florida. He also was a news clerk for the New York Times after graduating from NYU. He currently lives in the Poconos in Pennsylvania with his wife Cathy and four children.

1990

Caren Osten Gerszberg, freelance writer and sometime NYU adjunct professor, specializes in travel, education, and child development. Caren has written for The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Child, Parents and other national publications.

Lora Corrado teaches 8th Grade English Teacher in Coral Springs, Florida.

1991

Christine Sparta has her own writing business. Her work has been featured in Ladies’ Home Journal, Us and People magazines. She was on staff at USA Today for six years. While at the nation’s newspaper, she covered such historic events as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the deaths of Jackie Onassis and John F. Kennedy, Jr. She also covered a wide variety of entertainment and art auction stories.

1993

Christian Martin is a producer at Dateline NBC and has been at NBC for ten years.

1994

Upon graduating, Noel Holton Brathwaite worked for four and a half years a newspaper reporter at several papers including The Roanoke Times in Virginia, The Tallahassee Democrat in Florida and The Philadelphia Inquirer, covering health care. Noel left newspapers to write for the Web and is now the Web Content Developer for the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. Noel got married last December and plans to return to school in the fall to pursue a PhD. in Communications with an emphasis on bioethics. Emily Rogan writes a monthly column for a local paper.  Her column centers upon being a parent and raising kids in the community in which she resides.  She is working on her first freelance story for a major newspaper.

1996

Rod Brogan is in San Diego, getting his MFA in Dramatic Arts through a joint fellowship program between the University of San Diego and the Old Globe Theatres.

Scott Fallon is a staff writer at The Record (Hackensack, NJ).

1997

Catherine Donaldson-Evans is a reporter/staff writer for Foxnews.com, where she writes online entertainment, political, business and news features. For the past 3.5 years, Inbal Aharoni has lived in Tel Aviv, Israel and worked as a marketing copywriter for a hi-tech companies, doing occasional freelance stories and voiceover work. If anyone in your class is interested in asking questions about life in Israel, etc. (or anything else), I am available at bells1@hotmail.com. Adam Levine works as an assignment manager at CNN Business News.

1998

Ashley Parrish lives in Manhattan and was recently promoted to Online Editor at Harper’s Bazaar.

1999

Tatiana (Fish) Siegel oversees the press monitoring effort for the Environmental Policy Center in San Francisco. She also writes about the environment for a number of publications, including The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, Sierra magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle and the Providence Journal.

Yu-Tzu Chiu is a reporter at the Taipei Times, one of Taiwan’s English-language newspapers.  She also writes news stories for the IEEE Spectrum magazine, Reuters Health on-line news agency, and Environmental Science & Technology magazine of the American Chemical Society.  In 2001, she was awarded Taiwan’s National Press Council’s Outstanding Journalists Award, marking the first time in the 11-year history of the award that a reporter from an English-language newspaper won.

Sharon Guynup has a new job, working for the Bronx-based Wildlife Conservation Society. She is editor of a publication-to-be entitled State of the Wild, which will be book-length and be published annually, with a focus on international wildlife conservation. Lisa Orkin has been working at the Associated Press bureau in Athens, Greece since graduating in December 1999. Her beat is writing about the preparations for the 2004 Olympics and anything sports related.

2000

Karen Bannan writes, “I am freelancing full-time and doing quite well. This month, I have stories in Time magazine (March 5 issue), Family Circle (cover story), Oxygen, Energy (cover story), Woman’s Day, and Internet World (cover story). And I just added assignment from Yankee and Reader’s Digest this week, and filed my second story for Time Magazine.”After NYU, Sara Cagno moved back to her native Pittsburgh, PA. Recently, she was promoted to Communications Coordinator at The Pittsburgh Foundation, a community foundation which manages small endowments benefiting local nonprofit organizations. Dawn Papandrea (formerly Kessler) was married in September 2002. She is Senior Editor of The CollegeBound Network, which publishes College Bound Magazine, SUCCEED Magazine, and several online products. Dawn has served as an expert for ABC’s World News Now on college dorms and is the head editor of College Bound’s California and Chicago editions, as well as the Web site StudentScoop.com

Liz Randolph has gotten married since grad school, and now goes by her married name, Liz Rappaport. Since finishing she has worked for NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund for their media project, Women’s Enews, and went from there to Institutional Investor in December 2001, where she is a financial reporter with one of their weekly publications, Corporate Financing Week. Liz’s beat is the equity and debt capital markets, about which she writes: “It’s a fascinating time to be learning about and writing about Wall Street. Things really are in the midst of permanent change.”

Emily Spilko works a copywriter for an advertising agency called Digitas. Matt Creamer covers media for PRWeek magazine and lives in Brooklyn. He formerly worked as a reporter for The Anniston Star, out of Alabama. Mina Feig moved to Montclair, N.J. and works as a catalog fashion writer for Newport News in the city. “Ever watch Seinfeld?” Mina asks. “Basically, I’m Elaine.”

2001

Aileen Chang writes that she “had the hardest time finding a full-time job in New York after graduation,” owing to the state of economy at the time.  She moved to Washington, DC and currently works as a Program Associate at a non-profit programming agency called the Meridian International Center.  Aileen works with the U.S. State Department and foreign embassies in developing programs for "international visitors," who are emerging leaders within their respective countries.  Though she never imagined myself in the non-profit sector, she writes, “I love my job and happy here in Washington.” 

Allison Mezzafonte works at Glamour Magazine as an editorial assistant, while Nadia Abji has been working at MTV since she graduated. She’s currently working on a show entitled: Fight For Your Rights: The Gender Gap Show. Jessica McRorie is a staff reporter at the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

2002

Jen MacNeil is freelancing and she likes it, she writes. She’s also performing with the sketch comedy group Resiner and Co., the Upright Citizens Brigade Harold Team Atat and the house sketch team at Above Kleptomania. Matt Sedensky is a reporter in the Honolulu bureau of the Associated Press. Xaviera Dionne Silva is living in Houston, Texas (where she is originally from) and pays the bills doing office/clerical/assitant work as a temp and is in the process of submitting her resume and tape to the local stations. Wendy Manwarren is an editorial assistant at InStyle.com while Jessica DeCostole works at the American Society of Magazine Editors and tries to freelance in her spare time. Melissa Maguire is a staff news writer at New York 1 News.  She was hired as a freelancer after the NYU Journalism Job fair last April and started that June. By October, she was made a staff employee. Sarah Bronson is working part-time as the New York correspondent for The Jewish Chronicle (of London). She’s also been freelancing for The Jewish Week out of New York and for Hadassah magazine. She plans to move to Jerusalem in July.