Newsmakers

It took 13 years for Annie Sundberg '90 and Ricki Stern '87 to finish their Oscar-nominated documentary, The Trials of DarrylHunt. But their new film about the ongoing crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, TheDevil Came on Horseback, was completed at breakneck speed. "We came back from Sundance after showing Hunt (in January 2006) and began shooting this. That summer we edited it and went to Sundance this January," Stern told TheNew York Times last July, when the documentary opened. This accelerated schedule was due partly to Brian Steidle, the former African Union peacekeeping monitor who is the focus of the film. Steidles photographs first brought the Darfur atrocities to light following publication in the Times in 2005. "He'd come out with all these damning photographs, very little happened and he was very insistent that we make this film as quickly as possible," said Sundberg, who worked with Gretchen Wallace, Tu'O1, as one of the film's producers....ln a letter to a friend from her Wellesley undergraduate days Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote of a date with a "boy from Dartmouth." Robert Reich '68, who befriended Bill Clinton when both were Rhodes Scholars at Oxford and later served as Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration, was the mystery date, according to The New YorkTimes last August. On his blog Reich recalled that because both he and Rodham were student class presidents, he proposed a "presidential summit" date. He took her to see the film Blow-up. "She wanted a lot of butter on her popcorn," he said. 'A lot of butter. Significant? You be the judge."...As the child of two Denver schoolteachers it's no surprise that Jennifer Henry'99 found a career in education. The Oakland Tribune reported last July that Henry is the new executive director of the West Contra Costa Public Education Fund, a nonprofit based in San Pablo, California, that provides grants and scholarships to teachers and students....In other education news Derrick L. Lopez '87 was recently hired as the new chief of high school reform for the Pittsburgh public schools. The PittsburghPost-Gazette reported that the former Michigan high school principal will work to improve the district's low test scores and 35 percent dropout rate. "I can't think of more meaningful work," he says....As an undergrad Alan Trefler '77 tied for first in the 1975 World Open chess tournament and programed computers to play chess. A few years after graduating the computer science major applied this programming experience to business software, founding Pegasystems Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. TheBoston Business Journal reported last July that the company, which counts Bank of American and Aetna among its clients, has added nearly 200 workers in the past two years and expects revenue to grow to $l60 million this year. "He's very hands on," says company chief information officer Jo Hoppe of CEO Trefler. "He's always on the beta team."...Ten years ago, when Henry Homeyer '68 welcomed into his home international student Emma Kulwa 'Ol, he never dreamed he'd be able to accept her family's offer to visit them in Tanzania. But the former Peace Corps volunteer made the trip last fall and wrote about his 19-hour bus ride to their home in Mwanza in the August 22 edition of The Christian Science Monitor. ...Julie Gordon Willis '93, senior VP of marketing for the Discovery Channel, was named one of Advertising Age's Top 10 entertainment marketers for 2007. Her cam paign for the spring miniseries Planet Earth utilized movie screen trailers and Bluetooth technology to stream video footage from bus stops into the cell phones of passing pedestrians. "The whole mission was to get the video in as many hands as we possibly could," said Willis, who brought in 65 million viewers for then 11 episodes....When the story broke at Milton (Massachusetts) Academy two years ago about a 15-year-old girl who engaged in sexual activities with five hockey players in a locker room, Abigail Drachman-Jones '03 and fellow Milton alumna Marissa Miley were shocked. They decided to investigate, and the result is their nonfiction book, Restless Virgins: Love,Sex, and Survival at a New England Prep School. The pair interviewed 28 members of the class of 2005, ultimately focusing on seven students at the prep school. "Oral sex and sex aren't new. But it's the extreme nature regarding hookups: how far they go, and with how many people, that is new," Jones told The Boston Globe last August.... Imagine being approached on the streets of New York City by a stranger sporting a cheap suit and a Village People-era handlebar mustache and demanding a hug in an indeterminate foreign accent. When this happened to Jeffrey Lemerond '97 he yelled, "Go away!" as he was chased down Fifth Avenue by the persistent stranger (actually actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen). The scene was captured on film and included cluded in the movie Borat, which has grossed $320 million in ticket and DVD sales since its premiere last October. In June, according to thesmokinggun.com, Lemerond filed suit in U.S. District Court claiming that Twentieth Century Fox violated his civil rights by using the footage without his permission. He is seeking unspecified damages....As incoming president of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Eugene Jones '37 eight years ago attended a seminar sponsored by the American Symphony Orchestra League on the impact of arts on student learning. "I came out of that room on fire," he told The Arizona Star last July. So in 2000, at the age of 84, he founded Opening Minds Through the Arts, providing $50,000 in seed money for a program that now brings more than 50 professional musicians, dancers and artists from such organizations as the Tucson Symphony and the Arizona Opera into Tucson classrooms. The programs arts professionals reach 17,000 students in more than 40 local elementary and middle schools twice a week throughout the school year. School systems around the country have taken note as test scores rise among the students. In September Jones was awarded a $l00,000 Purpose Prize by Civic Ventures given to people over 60 who are engaged in transforming social projects... More than 18,000 You Tube fans have watched Jamey Hampton '76 dance with a 23-ton John Deere excavator in the short film, Deere John. But last summer Hampton and Body Vox, the dance company he co-founded with wife Ashley Roland, could be seen performing live at the La Jolla Music Society's Summer Fest. The pair met while both were dancing with the Moses Pendleton '71 troupe Momix and 10 years ago formed their own dance company in Portland, Oregon. Since then their ensemble has performed around the world and choreographed music videos for Sting, U2 and David Bowie. "The years we've worked together have made us great collaborators. Marriage and a family are an extension of that," Roland told The San DiegoUnion-Tribune last August.

Julie Gordon Willis '93

Alan Trefler '77

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "The notion that simply by virtue of their having attended Dartmouth alumni have a perpetual right to govern the College is preposterous." JOHN H. MATHIAS JR. '69, IN A SEPTEMBER LETTER TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL