Brandeis Magazine

Jessica Rothbart, Heller MA/MBA’10, is chief operating officer at SEEDS: Access Changes Everything, which helps transform the educational opportunities of high-achieving students from low-income families. Japonica Brown, MFA’11, performed her poetry at the Democratic National Convention’s Women’s Caucus last summer. Matthew Magida, Heller MBA’11, writes he was inspired by Brenda Anderson, senior lecturer at Brandeis International Business School, to obtain his CPA license a few years after completing his MBA. He now works at EY, focusing on financial optimization and the improvement of financial reporting systems. Golan Moskowitz, MA’12, PhD’18, assistant professor of Jewish studies at Tulane University, has written his first book, “Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context” (Stanford University Press, 2020), about the late author of “Where the Wild Things Are.” Matan BenYishay, Heller MPP’13, married Rabbi Jen Gubitz in a pandemic-delayed micro-wedding in July. Matan is director of program evaluation at Boston’s Pine Street Inn, which provides street outreach, supportive housing, job training and other services to homeless individuals. Ira Blum, MA’13, became the director of Muhlenberg College’s Leffell Center for Jewish Student Life in January. Maxwell Patchet, MA’13, is an assistant professor of language and literature at Sterling College, in Kansas. The Global Forum for Education and Learning named William Tarimo, MA’14, PhD’16, a Top 100 Visionary in Education. He is the Jean C. Tempel ’65 Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Connecticut College. Physicist Sumantra Sarkar, PhD’16, has received the 2021 Irwin Oppenheim Award from the American Physical Society for his work on self-replicating materials. Since 2018, he has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Center for Nonlinear Studies, where he investigates the biophysics of cell signaling. Emily Koh, PhD’17, received a commissioning grant from Guerilla Opera to support her first full-length opera, “HER:alive|un|dead: a media opera,” about three generations of Asian women within a single family. Emily is an assistant professor of composition at the University of Georgia’s Hugh Hodgson School of Music. Mitali Pinto, Heller MA’19, writes, “I feel an immense sense of gratitude and appreciation for my time spent at Heller. It is because of my second-year practicum that I have a fulfilling job in Uganda. At S.O.U.L. Foundation, we seek to empower local communities through four areas of intervention — food security, maternal health, education and women’s empowerment. I hope to reunite with classmates soon to hear interesting stories about your lives.”