Class Correspondent

Leslie Sara Hyman and fellow attorney Meagan Gillette received the Champion of Justice Award from the National Criminal Defense Bar for their pro bono, humanitarian work in securing asylum for an Eritrean refugee under the Convention Against Torture. Their client had fled Eritrea after being tortured, beaten and arrested simply for engaging in prayer. After her long journey to the United States, Leslie was detained and slated for deportation before the attorneys intervened. She is a shareholder at Cox Smith in San Antonio, where her practice normally includes antitrust, intellectual property, business litigation and arbitration, trade regulation counseling, and appellate matters.

Steven Samuels
was named a full professor of behavior sciences and leadership at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he has worked since 1993. He has also been a fellow at the U.S. Naval Academy’s Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics and a visiting scholar at the University of Colorado’s Matrix Center for the Advancement of Social Equity and Inclusion. Samuels and his wife of 22 years, Dena (Citron) ’87, have two children, 15-year-old Rachel and 17-year-old Alex; Alex recently visited Brandeis as he looks at colleges for next year.

Rabbi Susan Joy Lazev is the founder and director of Child’s Way, a Jewish Montessori school in West Orange, N.J.

Richard Epstein is vice chair of the litigation department at Sills Cummis & Goss. He and his wife, Susan, have three children: Jonathan ’14 (18), David (15) and Dalia (10).

Ben Rooks has left Wall Street and is a self-employed strategy consultant who focuses on health care information technology.

Cary Zel has lived in Miami Beach for the last 17 years. In addition to raising three sons, he operates a growing consumer marketing outsourcing company for magazine publishers.

Staci Berkson works at Omgeo as governance program manager and is, she says, “raising two inexplicably wonderful teenagers, with all the parent volunteerism that goes along with that.”

Stephanie Propos-Fishkin works in the Lawyers Professional Liability Group at CNA. She writes, “I have been married for 20 years and have two beautiful girls, one a high school senior, the other in eighth grade.”

Sherri Alpert-Crohn
wrote “Cassandra Gets Her Smile Back,” a picture book that helps prepare children for their first visit to the dentist. It includes instructions for parents to care for their child’s teeth. Sherri also recently opened a new dental practice in Suffern, N.Y.

Paula Shoyer’s first cookbook, “The Kosher Baker: Over 160 Dairy-free Recipes from Traditional to Trendy,” has received many positive reviews since it was published in August 2010 by Brandeis University Press. The book was published with the assistance of Shula Reinharz, Ph.D.’77, and is part of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Series on Jewish Women. Paula is the owner of Paula’s Parisian Pastries Cooking School in the Washington, D.C., area.

Maxwell Lazinger
married Julie Steffenson on Oct. 11, 2009. They have two children, Maayam, 2, and Ari, 10 months. Maxwell’s son Sean celebrated his bar mitzvah in May 2010. His son Matthew is in fourth grade. 
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