Alumni Class Notes

  • Rodney J. Hobbs ’94 appeared on “The Price Is Right” on June 6, 2023, and won the Showcase—for the second time! His first appearance and win occurred in May 2012. His latest prizes included a refrigerator and trips to Bali and New Orleans, which he will be taking later this year with his wife, Freda Johnson Hobbs (A&S ’94).

  • Siddharth Malik ’97 has joined Deutsche Bank as Global Co-Head of Consumer & Retail. Based in London, he joins the company from Bank of America, where he spent eight years as a senior member of the Consumer & Retail team and was responsible for some of the bank’s biggest relationships. Previously, he spent 12 years at Goldman Sachs, first in Telecom, Media, and Technology, and then in their Consumer & Retail team.

  • Laura Berman ’06, Project Manager II at Liberty Mutual Insurance, has received the Liberty Mutual Insurance Global Retail Markets President’s Award for creating extraordinary value within the company.

  • Justin C. Jacobs ’96, Managing Director at Mill Road Capital Management LLC, has been appointed to the board of directors of Natural Gas Services Group, a leading provider of gas compression equipment and services in the energy industry. Mr. Jacobs has more than 25 years of experience as a public investor, private equity investor, operator, and member of boards of directors. He also has significant experience in turnaround situations. Mr. Jacobs is currently a member of the board of directors of Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Inc. and has previously served on numerous public and private company boards.

  • Dr. Virginia Sharma ’99, , has been named to Dataquest’s “Powerhouse 40: The Women in India’s Tech Revolution” in celebration of the magazine’s 40th anniversary. The list showcases 40 women who are leading the charge in India’s tech industry, driving innovation, pushing boundaries, and creating opportunities for women in tech.

  • Natasha Subhash ’23 was named to a 2023 Academic All-American women’s tennis team, by College Sports Communicators. Subhash, who will pursue her M.S. in Accounting in the fall, also received the 2023 Walter B. Doggett Accounting Award at the McIntire School graduation ceremony in May, in recognition of her distinguished academic achievement and outstanding scholarship in the discipline of accounting, as well as the 2023 ITA Arthur Ashe Leadership & Sportsmanship Award.

  • Andy Schoonover ’01, CEO of CrowdHealth, discusses improving the U.S. healthcare system in a recent Q&A on Medium. The company also recently launched “The Sovereign Health” podcast; its first episode is titled “Understanding Metabolic Health.”

  • Christina Polenta ’09 and Eric Magenheimer ’09 welcomed their first child, Grace Elizabeth Magenheimer, in February 2023. The family lives in Oakton, VA.

  • Carl Markowitz ’67 has published two novels. Churching Carla Carson is a story about religious zealotry and small-town corruption. Let Them Die at West Point is the story of an assassination attempt on the U.S. President and a group of NATO officials who are attending a summer seminar at the U.S. military academy. His third novel, Here Lies Greasy D, will be published in late June. It is the story of four generations of a family-owned farm in North Carolina, struggling to prevent an organized crime family’s efforts to take their property. Before retiring in 2015, Markowitz practiced law in Virginia Beach, VA, for 45 years.

  • Mark E. Greene ’79 has published Lobster Wars, a satire about what happens when reality TV comes to a lobster fishing village in Maine. After a long business career with many reinventions, publishing the book is the realization of a lifelong passion.

  • Marisa Drew ’86, Chief Sustainability Officer at Standard Chartered Bank, was recently featured in Wessex Partners’ second episode of “Fireside Conversations with Senior Women Working in Finance.” During the conversation, Drew discussed her sustainability journey within financial services, how she started working in sustainability, and her current role at Standard Chartered.

  • Erika Maguire (A&S ‘12, M.S. in Commerce ‘13), a Research Manager at Deloitte, ran the London Marathon in April on behalf of The Outward Bound Trust, after completing a hike of the Appalachian Trail. She raised £2,010 for the organization.

  • D. Cotton Swindell ’85 was elected President of the Adams Diversified Equity Fund Inc. (NYSE: ADX), one of the nation’s oldest closed-end funds, effective last month. Mr. Swindell was an Executive Vice President and a Portfolio Manager of ADX since Jan. 21, 2015, and served the fund in a variety of capacities for the past 20 years. He joined ADX in 2002 as a Research Analyst covering the industrials sector. He was promoted to Vice President-Research in 2004, covering the financials and industrials sectors. In his role as Executive Vice President, Mr. Swindell covered the industrials sector and the auto and media industries within the consumer discretionary sector. Prior to joining ADX, Mr. Swindell was an Equity Analyst with Wachovia Securities and, for 10 years, an Equity Analyst with Alex. Brown & Sons. Earlier in his career, he worked at Prudential-Bache Securities in investment banking and fixed income trading. He is a CFA® charterholder.

  • Jonathan Carter ’08, Managing Partner at BlackBarn Capital, has been named to Institutional Investor’s 2023 class of Hedge Fund Rising Stars.

  • David T. Young ’02 has been appointed Executive Vice President & Head of U.S. Operations at Royal Helium Ltd. Mr. Young has more than 20 years of experience as an investor, adviser, and operator across a range of industries. For over a decade, Mr. Young has operated with a primary focus on the natural resources space, where he has invested in and advised upstream development and midstream operations across North America. Most recently, Mr. Young was a Principal at The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and preeminent private equity firms, with over $300 billion in assets. While there, Mr. Young was part of the leadership team managing over $4 billion in natural resource investments, with a primary focus on upstream development and midstream related assets. Prior to joining The Carlyle Group, Mr. Young was a Director of Talara Capital Management, where he led the team’s control-oriented private equity investments in the natural resources space. During his tenure at Talara, Mr. Young represented its interests on the board of directors of multiple upstream oil and gas development companies and, most notably, led the distressed acquisition and subsequent take-private transaction of Caza Petroleum. Mr. Young led the team in building Caza Petroleum from less than 50 barrels per day of production to its current standing as a regional leader in the Delaware Basin. Mr. Young previously held positions at leading New York-based investment banks, including Perella Weinberg Partners, Kramer Capital Partners, and Houlihan Lokey. He has frequently returned as a guest lecturer on investment topics, including control investments in the oil and gas industry.

  • Brad Miller ’89, CFO of Riverside Medical Group, has been named to Finance and Investing’s Top 25 CFOs of Virginia for 2023. He first joined the company in 2009. Previously, Miller was a CFO at Ferguson Enterprises, and before that a Manager at KPMG.

  • Jeff Dunn ’01 has been promoted to Seattle Seahawks’ Chief Strategy Officer. Dunn joined the Seahawks in 2013 and was promoted to Vice President of Business Strategy & Analytics in June 2014. In his role as Chief Strategy Officer, Dunn provides strategic and analytical support to each department of the Seahawks business operations. He also leads special strategic initiatives including major stadium capital projects. Dunn serves on the Board of Trustees of Alex’s Army Childhood Cancer Foundation and the PNW Regional Advisory Board of the One Love Foundation. Dunn is the former Chairman of the Make-A-Wish Alaska & Washington Board of Trustees and served on the Board of Directors of the Portland Trail Blazers (2011–2018). Prior to joining the Seahawks, Dunn worked in the private equity investment group of Vulcan Capital for nine years. He started his career as an Investment Banking Analyst with Greenhill & Co. in New York City.

  • Farhad Zaman ’93, PwC U.S. Chief Network Officer, received a 2023 Ascend A-List Award. The awards highlight the power of resilient, impactful, and courageous leadership. The honorees, who represent a cross-section of Asian ethnicities, are selected for their professional accomplishments and advancement of others in their industries or communities.

  • Caitlin Johnson ’11 has started a new position as Vice President of Finance at Momentus, a U.S. commercial space company that offers in-space infrastructure services, including in-space transportation, hosted payloads, and in-orbit services. To date, Momentus has deployed eight satellites for its customers.

  • Melody Bianchetto ’88, former Vice President and CFO at UVA Finance, is a 2023 recipient of UVA’s John T. Casteen III Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award. Bianchetto, now retired, expanded the finance department’s focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, which led to new recruiting and hiring practices. Under her guidance, the UVA Finance Leadership Team partnered with the Racial Equity Group consulting firm to establish training sessions that gave employees the ability to promote inclusivity and equity within the organization.

  • Akshat Modi ’13 is a Director at MI Industries, a manufacturer headquartered in New Delhi, India, that produces various types of woven fabric, including cotton, cotton spandex blends, viscose, modal, tencel, linen, and polyester cotton blends.