Brandeis Magazine

Deborah Bial, founder and president of the Posse Foundation, spoke at Kalamazoo College’s 2018 commencement. Posse gives talented, high-achieving students from urban public schools the opportunity to attend top colleges and universities on full scholarship amid a supportive cohort of fellow students. Posse has sent more than 8,400 students to its 56 partner schools. Kalamazoo College was Posse’s first partner in Michigan. Roberta Brown has joined the staff of Vienna’s English Theatre Academy, an international training school for professional actors. In the summer, she directed a production of “Much Ado About Nothing” in German for Austria’s Shakespeare im Park. Most of the year, she lives in Santa Monica, California, with her son, who started high school this fall. Steve Garber’s article “Incentives for Keeping Space Clean: Orbital Debris and Mitigation Waivers” was published in the Journal of Space Law. Alan Halperin reports his oldest son graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., and started working; his daughter completed her freshman year at Tulane and transferred to Cornell; and his 11-year-old twins have started middle school. Alan’s law firm, Halperin Battaglia Benzija, is a bankruptcy/restructuring boutique. Sid Hellman, P’22, is thrilled daughter Goldie ’22 is now a Brandeis student and looks forward to a lifetime of embarrassing her in front of her friends at reunions. Sid’s company, ISTI — a scientific software development firm working in the fields of earthquake/tsunami monitoring and nuclear monitoring — is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Brian Ross, P’22, is delighted to report daughter Ellie ’22 is a first-year student at Brandeis. In her travels to Japan, France and Germany this summer, Reva Schlessinger Winston visited her family’s ancestral hometowns of Flehningen and Karlsruhe, Germany, and participated in a “stolpersteine” commemoration ceremony for relatives who perished in the Holocaust. Daughter Lily celebrated her bat mitzvah in November. Son Leo is in the sixth grade at Solomon Schechter, and son Ethan is a business analyst in the Boston area.