Class Notes

Chris Deardorff’s (Fin, MBA) marketing agency, Market Compass, has been renamed Magic Flight Studios. The company is based in Superior, Colo. 

Boulder resident Peter Booth (Jour) was elected a shareholder in the Denver office of national law firm Polsinelli PC. Peter lives with his wife, Lisa Schneider (Engl’96), an adjunct instructor at Front Range Community College, and their children, Sidney Ivy and Sebastian. 

Katie Blomquist (Soc) is founder and executive director of the nonprofit Going Places, inspired by a GoFundMe campaign she ran from fall 2016 to spring 2017. She raised more than $80,000 to buy a new bike, lock and helmet for all 650 students at the North Charleston, S.C., elementary school where she taught. Katie left teaching to run the nonprofit full time.  

This April Dustin Sanza (Fin) is running the Boston Marathon in honor of Martin Richard, who was killed in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Dustin committed to raise $7,500 for the Martin W. Richard Charitable Foundation Inc. This will be Dustin’s second marathon. 

Musician Mark Nowakowski (MMus) released his first album, Blood, Forgotten, through the world’s largest classical label, Naxos. The album received a glowing review in Gramophone magazine. He also composed the soundtrack to the documentary Discovering Tolkien, which aired nationally on EWTN in November. He is serving his second year as assistant professor of music at Kent State University, Stark, where he lives with his wife and three children.  

Jordan Valutas (Mgmt) married Toby Jacobs Oct.7 in Bermuda. CU friend and business school study-buddy Jennifer Hessenbruch (Acct,MS’08) was a bridesmaid. Other CU alumni in attendance were Brittany Burgess Ramsey (Mktg’07), Anjuli Singhal (Psych’07), Annie Teten Behrent (Psych’07) and Noelle Wesolek Andres (Mktg’07). After honey mooning in Thailand, the couple relocated to San Diego, Calif., for Toby’s job in biomedical engineering at NuVasive. 

Adam Laughrey (Fin) and his wife, Kristie, started a business in Longmont, Colo., called The Hop. It is a mobile fashion boutique run out of a refurbished 1956 Mercury camper trailer selling vintage and new men’s and women’s clothing and accessories. 

After graduating from CU Margot Hensler Phelps (Astro) worked at Caltech, helping install the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Hanford, Wash., and Livingston, La. During her time on the team (three members of whom won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics), she patented an optics cleaning process. She then completed her doctorate in gravitational  wave research at the University of Glasgow. In March she will begin a post-doc position at the Albert Einstein Gravitational Wave Institute in Hanford, Germany.  

Matt Kramer (PolSci) of Broomfield, Colo., co-founded The Application Authority three years ago in Ann Arbor, Mich. The business guides students on creating stand-out college applications. Last year, the firm opened a second office in Broomfield. Matt aims to mentor CU business students. His company is actively engaged in Boulder Startup Week.  

Attorney Adrienne Scheffey (PolSci) joined the Denver office of Littler, a global employment and labor law practice. She previously clerked for two years for the Hon. Rebecca Freyre of the Colorado Court of Appeals. 

On Dec. 29, 2017, Matthew Evett (Ling) and Amanda Fendrick Evett (IntlAf, PolSci’13) celebrated their second anniversary. They returned to Colorado after living in Washington, D.C., post-graduation and now live in Fort Collins. Amanda works at Colorado State University. Matthew works in Cheyenne as a speech pathologist at LifeCare. 

Last fall George Bryant (MBA) was named vice president and general manager of Colorado outdoor product company Sierra Designs. He previously served as retail and national accounts manager for Textron Specialized Vehicles. He is an active member with Colorado Trout Unlimited.  

RMH Group engineer Matt Guerin (ArchEngr) passed his professional engineer exam in mechanical engineering. He has five years of experience in Colorado designing mechanical systems for facilities, plants and laboratories.  

Since graduation, Wisdom Amouzou (Comm) has worked with Teach for America and the African Leadership Academy. In 2015, he co-launched his own venture called the HadaNõu Collective, which aims to create resource centers and schools that partner students directly with the community to help solve real-world problems. 

Maria LeFebre (Anth) and Charlie Barkmeier (Econ) were engaged Dec. 15. The couple plans to marry in Boulder in 2019. They live in Cleveland, Ohio.  

Comic artist Emma Oosterhous (Span) was awarded a Marshall Scholarship, which offers recipients a full ride to any university in the U.K. Emma will work on a master’s degree in comics and graphic novels starting in September at the University of Dundee in Scotland. She is creator of the web comic Alphabet Soup. 

Teacher Rawa Abu Alsamah (MEdu) writes that she is CU Boulder’s first Saudi Arabian woman to earn a master’s degree with an emphasis in teaching English to culturally and linguistically diverse students. Rawa is a sixth grade special education teacher at Denver’s STRIVE Prep-Kepner.