1992

Lots of news came rolling in these last few weeks—thanks to those of you who took the time to write in! This month we have a theme near and dear to many Big Greeners.

Vania Grandi e-mailed, and I will start with her as our theme develops:

"I have been working for Rio Tinto's Kennecott Utah Copper mine in Salt Lake City since 2005," she said. "I led their sustainable development program for three years and was recently promoted to general manager, marketing and sales. It has been an awesome experience because I'm always learning something new, and there are so many opportunities with such a large, global company. On the personal side our oldest son starts first grade tomorrow! We are all very excited. Our younger son is almost 5. As you can imagine we have got them both skiing, so if any classmates are coming out for a ski trip to Utah, give us a call."

"Thought I would check in to say hello," said the always well-traveled Jen Bergeron. "I did not make it to the 15th last year as I was in Dubai at the time and had planned to return to the United States for a separate trip about two weeks later. As I write this I am preparing to return to Kabul, where I will spend the next year at the U.S. embassy. I have spent the past year in D.C. and seen a number of classmates, all of whom are doing well and enjoying success in their respective endeavors. I continue to work at the State Department and have spent the past five years finishing my M.B.A. and overseas in various Middle Eastern resort towns such as Beirut, Basrah and Dubai. It is never dull and the skiing in Lebanon and Dubai was surprisingly good!"

For those of you whose interest is piqued by skiing in the Middle East, I've got another tempting offer!

'At the beginning of 2007 I left Goldman Sachs after 12 years with them in Tokyo and New York," Kenta Takamori wrote recently. "I struck out on my own to try to engineer an acquisition of a ski resort in Japan. Working with a U.S. private equity fund, we closed a deal at the end of 2007. Since then I have been overseeing the company that owns and operates the ski resort and have been leading the effort to master-plan a ski resort base village at our mountain located in Hakuba in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. While master-planned base villages are common at North American ski resorts, it is a completely unusual model here in Japan. Japan has unguestionably the best mountains for skiing in Asia and we hope to attract the rapidly growing population of skiers and snowboarders from throughout the Asia region."

Since I'm running out of space I would like to add this nugget that I'm sure will resonate with plenty of classmates these days. Remember earlier when Vania expressed excitement about her son starting first grade? Compare that to this e-mail I got from Christine (Coons) Cunningham: "Feeling my age this week, as I just sent my twin boys off to their first day of high school. High school! How can I be old enough to have kids going to high school?"

Plenty more news still to come in the next edition, including an update on "Where in the World is Nancy De Sa?" (Although I guess by that time it will be "Where in the World was Nancy De Sa?")

Perm Athletic Communications, 235 S.33rd St., Philadelphia, PA 19104; (215) 89 8-9232; mahoneyw@pobox.upenn.edu