Brandeis Magazine

Rick Alterbaum, MPP’16, and Arielle Schwartz ’11 were married on March 31. Rick is a senior research analyst at McKinsey and Company. Jesse Appell started a comedy club, the U.S.-China Comedy Center, in Beijing, where he lives. He performs comedy throughout Asia and the U.S. “Be in touch if you’re coming through Beijing,” he writes. Marc Eder and Lena Vaynberg ’13 were married in Florida last year during Memorial Day weekend. Joshua Eisenberg completed his PhD in computer science at Florida International University in December. His dissertation is titled “The Automatic Extraction of Narrative Structure From Long-Form Text.” He has been awarded his first patent by the U.S. Patent Office for “Features for the Automatic Classification of Narrative Point of View and Diegesis.” Tova Ferstenberg Katims received the Legal Rookie of the Year Award from the New York City Law Department in recognition of her work with the Labor and Employment Law Division. Dafna Gamzeh recently bought a home in New Jersey, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. The house is close to her husband’s dental practice and her job as new-business manager at Risk Strategies, one of the largest privately held insurance brokers in the U.S. Ethan Levin Goldberg and his spouse, Shoshi, welcomed daughter Hadar Rita in November. Ben Harel and Carina Platner were married in November. Ben Henig and Julia Jerusalmi ’13 welcomed their first child, a future member of the Brandeis Class of 2040. Anna-Lisa Francesca Macon married Matthew Robert Vanzo on Oct. 7 at the Gramercy Mansion, in Stevenson, Maryland. Wajida Syed practices acupuncture as a graduate clinical intern at the Maryland University of Integrative Health. She is pursuing a master’s in Chinese medicine, herbal medicine and Zero Balancing bodywork therapy.