Brandeis Magazine

Kenneth Wong and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary earlier this year and continue to marvel at the incredible blessings of our family life, which include our children, Simon (12) and Monica (10). My husband is the associate dean of graduate education for Virginia Tech’s National Capital Region. Having passed my comprehensive exam, I’m entering the dissertation stage of my doctoral program in public sociology at George Mason University.

Wayne Cousin is a trial partner at the law firm Gordon & Silber, where for 17 years he has defended physicians, other medical professionals and hospitals against claims of medical malpractice while also growing a labor and employment practice. He and his wife of 20 years, Laura, have two children. Rabbi David Fine lives in Modiin, Israel, with his wife, Julie, and four sons: Etan (19), Chanan (17), Amiel (15) and Zachy (13). He is founder and dean of the Barkai Center for Practical Rabbinics and Community Development, which trains Orthodox Israeli rabbis in practical rabbinics and works with synagogue leadership to develop community. Jason Levine was appointed to the Liability Reform Advisory Committee of the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center and to the Litigation Practice Group Executive Committee of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. Jason is a business litigation and trial partner in the law firm Vinson & Elkins, practicing in Washington, D.C. Jared Lighter and wife Lisa welcomed twins Abby Rose and Max Jacob on April 22. The family lives in Delray Beach, Florida. Michael Keats, MA’92, has joined the litigation department in the New York office of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. Michael has represented high-profile clients in commercial, entertainment and intellectual-property litigation, and, as a lead counsel in the Napster litigation, was at the forefront of defining internet law. Kil Joon “Sam” Park, P’22, reports his daughter Samantha ’22, a graduate of South Pasadena (California) High School, is now a first-year at Brandeis. Edgar Romano, a managing partner at Pasternack Tilker Ziegler Walsh Stanton & Romano, was installed in May as the president of the Society of New York Workers’ Compensation Bar Association. Edgar has been selected a Super Lawyer in the area of workers’ compensation every year since 2010. Steven Sladkus formed his own law firm, Schwartz Sladkus Reich Greenberg Atlas, after spinning off from a larger firm three years ago. The full-service law firm, which now has 44 attorneys and support staff members, is anchored by real estate, litigation, health care, trust and estates, corporate, intellectual property and matrimonial practice areas. Steven says he is always looking to hire talented lawyers who attended Brandeis. Amanda Trigg, a certified matrimonial law attorney in New Jersey, has been trained by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers as an arbitrator. In 2018, Best Lawyers named her Lawyer of the Year in Hackensack, New Jersey, in the area of family law. Ivan Turnipseed was recently promoted to full professor at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, the nation’s oldest historically black institution of higher education. He also serves as coordinator of the university’s hotel, restaurant and tourism management program, and president of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Hospitality Management Consortium. Princeton historian and CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer is the Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New-York Historical Society, where he is writing a biography about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel for the Yale University Jewish Lives Series. Julian’s book “Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974,” co-authored with Kevin Kruse, is scheduled for publication in January.