Class Correspondent

Sharon Astyk volunteers at the Vale Urban Farm, in Schenectady, New York, which encourages city dwellers to plant crops. Sharon has written four books: “Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front,” “Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage and Preservation,” “A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil” and “Making Home: Adapting Our Homes and Our Lives to Settle in Place.” Over the past eight years, she and her husband have been foster parents to 26 children. Adam Baruchowitz is founder and CEO of Wearable Collections, a leading clothes- and shoe-recycling company. By the end of this year, Wearable Collections will have diverted more than 15 million pounds of clothing, shoes and textiles from landfills. Audrey Latman Gruber is vice president of news development and content at Spectrum, the third-largest cable provider in the U.S. Michael Mayer was inducted into the Joseph M. Linsey Brandeis Athletics Hall of Fame on Oct. 7 during Homecoming. A three-time participant in the NCAA Fencing Championships, as a junior he finished fourth in the nation in the saber, at the time the highest finish ever for a Brandeis men’s athlete. Michael earned two University Athletic Association titles and received Brandeis’ Charlie Napoli ’58 Scholar-Athlete Award in 1994. Rachel Rabinovich is program director at the Harold Grinspoon Foundation’s Life & Legacy program in Phoenix. At the organization’s national conference, she met up with Rachel Rosenman ’00, a Life & Legacy program director in Seattle. Maya Stein continues to write poetry (her online “10-Line Tuesday” poems now reach more than 1,500 people each week) and runs a creative-arts workshop, studio and gallery space — the Creativity Caravan — with her partner in Montclair, New Jersey. Rachel Loonin Steinerman is a parent ambassador for Eden Village Camp, an organic-farm Jewish summer camp. She also runs a lifestyle brand called Whole Phamily, which sells HeadyBands, OhKeePahs and hoodies. “We quickly sold out of our first run of Phish kippot last summer,” she writes. Rachel and husband Joshua, a research physician and healthcare entrepreneur, have four children, ages 3-13. The family lives on the Philadelphia Main Line.

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