Newsmakers

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "Guantanamo is now a relic." NEAL KATYAL '91, APPOINTED PRINCIPAL DEPUTY SOLICITOR GENERAL BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

Sarah Sommerfield '02 competed for $25,000 ontheFoodNetwork's UltimateRecipe Showdown 2 in January as one of four finalists in the burger category. Although her signature dish, Croque Monsieur Burger—which combines childhood favorites French toast and hamburgers—did not win, the parttime M.B.A. student and marketing professional enjoyed the challenge. "I love my kitchen at home," said the New York City native. "Even though its really small it has more counter space than anywhere in my apartment. I've had to come up with techniques to make the most with what I have."...As noted in the Wall Street Journal Online last September, James W. Giddens '59 is working to resolve the nations financial crisis as the court-appointed trustee for the liquidation of Lehman Brothers Inc. Giddens is a partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, where he chairs the corporate reorganization department. The Securities Investor Protection Corp. liquidation of Lehman is being conducted under the jurisdiction of the Hon. James M. Peck '67 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York....MaiaJosebachvili'05enjoyedherDartmouth Outing Club expeditions so much that she started an adventure travel company, Urban Escapes (www.urbanescapesnyc.com). The Thayer grad, who worked on Wall Street after graduation and has traveled to more than 40 countries, now leads weekend outings into the wilds of the Northeast—and New York City (where city social guide Flavorpill recently highlighted one of her snow tubing events). "I was doing it part time but not really for profit, more for just my peace of mind and my friends," she told the Web site SportzUndercover last fall. "So I was doing the same thing I'm doing now, organizing rafting trips and hiking trips and skydiving trips."... Camp Thoreau, a 400-acre summer camp in Strafford, Vermont, that closed in 2004, reopened again this past summer thanks to Dan Zenkel '80, the chief executive officer of CampGroup in New York. Zenkels company paid nearly $2 million for the property in 2006 and two years later opened Camp Akeela, a coed, sleep-away camp for children with Asperger's syndrome and non-verbal learning disabilities. "Demand was fantastic," Zenkel told the Valley News last March. "The opportunity made economic sense and also is about doing something positive."...Dr. Sara Tancredi, the character played by SarahWayne Callies '99 on Fox's Prison Break, met an untimely demise at the end of last season. But fans were so outraged by her departure that the show's producers will resurrect her for season four. "For a long time all I wanted to do was get back to the theater as quickly as possible," she told the Honolulu Star Bulletin last November. "But at this point what matters to me more is to tell stories that people respond to and stretch our sense of what it means to be human."...Major League Lacrosse's Boston Cannons drafted former three-time All-Ivy and two-time Ail-American midfielder Benjamin Grinnell '05 in the fourth round last December....Harry Wallace '75, chief of the Unkechaug Nation on Long Island's South Shore, along with several other tribal owners of cigarette shops on the Poospatuck reservation, is being sued by the City of New York. New York City officials claim the reservation is a "tax evasion haven" because shop owners refuse to collect taxes on sales to non-Indians, which officials charge costs the city and state more than $1 billion annually in tax revenue. "For [Mayor] Bloomberg this is about his budget deficit, but for us this is survival," Wallace, who opened his smoke shop in the early 1990s after leaving a private law practice in Manhattan, told The New YorkTimes last December. "This is sovereign territoiy and they are not going to collect a nickel without our consent."... Complicit, a new play by visiting faculty member Joe Sutton '76, began preview performances on January 7 at London's Old Vic Theater, where it was slated to run through February 21. The drama deals with a journalist facing a Supreme Court inquiry, according to an October item in The New York Times. Actor Kevin Spacey, the artistic director of the Old Vic, will direct, and Richard Dreyfuss will star....Steve Brosnihan '83 recently published a drawing instruction book, Anyone Can Draw Cartoonagrams, with editor Richard Goldman '83. Brosnihan, who has been teaching cartooning to patients at Providence's Hasbro Children's Hospital since 1991, told EastBayRI.com, "I found that a lot of kids were very uncomfortable listening to directions like, 'Make a line that looks like that.' To take the pressure off, I'd say, 'Make a C, an S, an O.' And the kid would say, 'Yeah, I'll make a letter.' I realized maybe this was the right way to do it."...As the president of Miamibased Alterna Corp., Nick Gunia '97 is becoming a leading supplier of green building products in Florida, Georgia and the Caribbean. Last November he was invited to participate in the South Florida Business Journal's inaugural Business of Green panel discussion. "One of our large areas of focus is on water conservation, and the regulatory environment is helping us out," said Gunia, who co-founded Dream in Green, a nonprofit organization for educating K-12 students about environmental and energy challenges....Tanner Glass '07 and Ben Lovejoy '06 were called up from their minor league affiliates to the NHL in early December. Glass is making his third appearance with the Florida Panthers, while Lovejoy was elevated from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton by the Pittsburgh Penguins. Both have been blogging about their pro experiences (find links on the Dartmouth hockey Web site). Two former Big Green teammates are also skating in the NHL: Lee Stempniak '05 with the Toronto Maple Leafs and David Jones '08 with the Colorado Avalanche....Former IBM CEO Louis V. Gerstner Jr. '63 has been working on school reform for 40 years, founding the high-powered Teaching Commission in 2003 and chairing it until 2006. Among the recommendations he made to the Obama administration in a December op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal were paring the nation's 15,000 public school districts down to 70 local school districts and establishing a set of national standards for a core curriculum. 'And we need to drive into the consciousness of every American politician that education is not an expense. It is, rather, the most important investment we can make as a country," Gerstner wrote.

www.urbanescapesnyc.com

Sarlh Sommerfield '02

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "Kirsten [Gillibrand '88] has been a strong voice for transparency and reform in government and shares the belief that government should be open, accessible and work for all our citizens." PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, ON GILLIBRAND'S APPOINTMENT TO REPLACE HILLARY CLINTON IN THE U.S. SENATE