People
As a James Beard Award–winning journalist for New York Magazine, Sierra Tishgart ’12 ate at some of New York City’s finest restaurants, but she wanted to cook better meals at home and realized she needed different pots and pans. Frustrated by the potential expense and unsure about what cookware she needed and why, Tishgart set out to create her own line of kitchenware, Great Jones.
Rosanna Hertz, author of Random Families, interviewed more than 350 children, their parents and gamete donors to explore how they used cultural narratives about genes and genetics to understand their relationship to their immediate families and donor networks.
Drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for kids between the ages of 1 and 4, with more than 3,000 children drowning every year. Shocked by those statistics, mother and swim coach Michelle Lang penned a guide to teach parents simple techniques to keep their children safe in the water.
Lee Overtree presides over one of the best improv talent incubators around — just ask any savvy kid under 12. “Our secret is that we don’t think of it as making comedy for kids; we think of it as making comedy for each other.”
Benjamin Dreyer, author of Dreyer’s English, talks about finding the voice for his best-selling book on Twitter. The Random House copy chief also discusses his writing pet peeves and reveals what he learned about editing from working on scripts.
Phil Sklar co-founded the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, which opened its doors near Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward this past February. More than 6,500 bobbleheads are featured on location, a display so large that Guinness World Records may name it the largest bobblehead collection by this summer.
When Jody Reeme ’01 MS purchased her first classic car, a 1939 Ford De Luxe Fordor Sedan, she expected it to be a one-off. Sure, she had always been interested in classic cars — Reeme grew up in Detroit, shares a birthday with Henry Ford and loved playing with slot cars as a kid — but she didn’t expect to wind up with a collection of almost a dozen vehicles.
Growing up in Burlingame, Calif., Rebecca Friedman ’15, ’15 CERT loved her hometown hockey team, the San Jose Sharks. The now 25-year-old says that it was her childhood dream to work for the NHL.
Gail Becker ’88 MS managed communications for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, worked as an executive at Warner Bros., and spent more than a decade as a president at the global communications juggernaut Edelman.
Marc Schulman, president of Eli’s Cheesecake, oversees an operation that produces 20,000 desserts daily and served cheesecake for the inaugurations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama ’06 H. Schulman is also an outspoken advocate for career and technical education.
