Brandeis Magazine

After almost 18 years of serving as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division, Caryn Mark Finley is moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, to become an assistant United States attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, focusing on complex financial fraud cases. Caryn is looking forward to meeting other Brandeisans in the area and hopes to start a Charlotte chapter of the Alumni Association. Adrienne Hullum has worked in the area of Social Security disability at the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission in Boston for the past 17 years while raising her daughters, Janelle and Jada. Now she’s working on creating a new chapter by writing her first novel and applying to law school. She fondly remembers the first time she was welcomed to Brandeis as a Transitional Year Program student by former TYP director Thompson Williams Jr. Before coming to Brandeis, Adrienne went to Boston’s Copley High with Mark and Donnie Wahlberg. In July, Ariel Margolis left his position as director of online learning at Hebrew College to start his own company, E-Learning Solved, which aims to make adult learning as relevant and exciting as kindergarten. Ariel’s wife, Elana, is senior director of state government affairs at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Their kids are doing great: Jacob is an aspiring chef, and Sophie is beginning middle school. Arin Amanda Prisand and Ian Hirsch welcomed a baby boy, Hudson James, on Feb. 15. Arin is managing director, head of corporate access, Americas, at Mizuho Securities, and serves as president and founder of Hannah Banana Foundation, a nonprofit that provides interactive gifts to hospitalized adults. Jeffrey P. Rice has had a private practice in marriage and family therapy for seven years and for the past several months has been a practice manager in a counseling practice that specializes in addiction. He lives in Houston and has been married for 14 years. Marc Rosenfeld writes, “After almost four years of effort, we have launched CommCan — the Commonwealth Cannabis Co. — a medical marijuana dispensary group in Massachusetts. Our first dispensary, located in Southborough, opened its doors in July. CommCan has approvals in place to open additional locations in Mansfield and Millis, and will eventually serve both the medical and the adult-use markets.” Elie Schochet has opened South Florida Colorectal Institute, the only anal-cancer prevention program in south Florida serving the LGBTQ community. His Florida AIDS Walk team, the Happy Hineys, raised $170,000 in March to benefit local HIV service organizations. Aleksey Tsalolikhin is on the board of directors of the nonprofit League of Professional System Administrators and runs LOPSA’s LA chapter. He’s teaching for a second year at LISA, an international conference for system administrators.