Alumnx notes
1975
Barbara Dole Acosta ’75 is loving retirement and being back in the MDI area. She’s going to be a grandma in May! Get in touch if you plan to be in town.
1979
Andrea Lepcio ’79 is now health and fitness director at the Neighborhood House in Northeast Harbor. Andrea teaches yoga, Tai chi, and Mat Pilates classes, and offers personal training and private yoga. She still writes plays and lives in Bar Harbor.
1993
Jeffrey Frazier ’93 is living in High Springs, Florida and has been a clinical case manager at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine for the last five years. He enjoys working with children from birth to three years old. He makes art, plays music, and paddles as often as possible in beautiful North Central Florida. Just this year a little baby manatee was born in a river near his place!
Sarah (Cole) McDaniel ’93 completed training as a mediator last year at Harvard’s program on negotiation. She is expanding her law practice to include mediating real estate disputes between neighbors and families in Maine. In her work representing land trusts and landowners in conservation transactions, 2021’s projects put her over the mark in helping to protect over 130,000 acres over the years! Her conservation work often connects her with Pat Watson ’93 and Bob DeForrest ’94 at Maine Coast Heritage Trust. She is always open to chatting with alumnx who are considering a law degree. www.douglasmcdaniel.com
1999
Jill (Montgomery) Kiernan ’99 and her husband Joseph Kiernan ’01 met at COA and have two beautiful children, Aiden and Aevary. Aevary was one of the first 13 people in the world to be diagnosed with a very rare disease called Tatton Brown Rahman Syndrome (TBRS). Jill has started a nonprofit organization to support all families affected by TBRS and to advance research toward interventions. Joe helps a lot behind the scenes and provides encouragement and support. She is happy to report that the TBRS community was recently awarded the Rare As One Grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Find their profile on chanzuckerberg.com. The Rare as One Grant is an amazing opportunity as it provides $600,000 worth of funding over three years, but also provides resources and tools to be more effective advocates for—and partners in—research, with the ultimate goal of curing rare disease.
2002
Caleb Davis ’02 mentored students in the fall Human Ecology Core Course who rebuilt a dry-stack stone wall near Witch Cliff on the south end of campus. Caleb owns and operates Songscape Gardens songscapegardens.com, an ecological landscape design/build studio on MDI that he founded 17 years ago. He and his partner, Emily Henry, welcomed their daughter, Juliann Peregrine Davis, at the end of April, 2021.
2004
On January 19, 2022, Dustin Eirdosh ’04 completed his PhD in biology education at the University of Jena, Germany, as part of his continuing work at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. His thesis, Teaching Evolution as an Interdisciplinary Science, explores how science education can use themes of human cooperation, cognition, and culture as an interdisciplinary nexus for 21st century curriculum design. openevo.eva.mpg.de
2007
Anna Goldman ’07 completed her PhD from the University of Hong Kong in December 2021. Her thesis was titled Trophic Interactions Between Mammals and Insects and Implications for Conservation in Tropical Asia. Currently, she’s a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Hong Kong working with the Hong Kong Government’s Agriculture, Fisheries, and Conservation Department on rediscovering local Chinese pangolin habitat and developing active conservation strategies. She spends most of her days exploring the mountains in Hong Kong, looking for signs of pangolins.
Kate Sheely ’07 completed her master’s in English at Connecticut’s Trinity College in May 2021. She received The Paul Smith Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award for her thesis, The Ones Who Entered for Us: An Introduction to the Literature of Slaughterhouses.
David Camlin ’07 and Megan Grumbling are codirecting We Are The Warriors, a documentary film following residents of Wells, Maine as they decide the fate of their high school’s American Indian mascot after facing public allegations of racist behavior at a football game. Joanna Weaver ’16 is a coproducer and assistant editor. The film is nearly ready for consideration by PBS stations. For more information and to watch the trailer, visit WeAreTheWarriorsFilm.com.
2009
Noah Hodgetts ’09 was promoted to principal planner at the New Hampshire Office of Planning & Development (OPD) in Concord, New Hampshire. In this position, Noah will be OPD’s lead on housing initiatives and planning and zoning legislation, while also providing technical assistance and training to planning and zoning board officials throughout the state.
In April 2021, Katie Holler ’09 was hired by the University of Pittsburgh Program Evaluation Research Unit as a senior program implementation specialist within their Overdose Reduction Technical Assistance Center. Within this position, she provides technical assistance to counties across Pennsylvania as they work to eliminate overdoses and implement supportive programming for persons with substance use disorders. She writes, “It’s wonderful to be able to support coalitions across the state that are passionate in implementing evidence-based programming to address the opioid epidemic. I earned my master’s of public health at the University of Pittsburgh, so I was excited to be hired back to support the work they are doing throughout the state.”
Mike Kersula ’09 and Annika Earley MPhil ’14 welcomed their first child, Elliot, in February 2021. As of April 2021, Annika is the new managing director of SPEEDWELL projects in Portland, Maine. SPEEDWELL is an artist-run, nonprofit gallery dedicated to promoting the work of women, gender-fluid, and nonbinary artists.
2010
Aly Bell ’10 and Christian Millan Hernandez got married this summer in an intimate ceremony in her parent’s backyard with their families.
Andrew Coate-Rosehill ’10 and his partner Sarah Rosehill welcomed their third child, Linden Jonathan, in a (surprise!) home birth at their new home in Westhampton, Massachusetts, on March 31, 2021. Linden joins older siblings Alexa and Julian and looks forward to being able to chase them around and join in their shenanigans.
Sarah Colletti ’10 and Kyle McMillan got married in July surrounded by their parents and siblings in the backyard of their new house in Abingdon, Virginia. While smaller than originally planned, it was a beautiful day and loved ones were there in spirit. They honeymooned in Maine and were able to catch up with many COA folks during alumnx weekend. Sarah wrote that she “enjoyed sharing this special place with Kyle.”
2011
Emily Postman ’11 graduated from Stanford Law and joined the Office of General Counsel at the Service Employees International Union. She was able to be home for most of the summer and fall—which was glorious—and landed in Washington, DC in winter 2022, where she is currently Craigslisting miscellaneous furniture items and eating Ethiopian food (DC alums HMU!).
Maddy Cutting Vorio ’11 got married in April 2021 in a small elopement ceremony with her children present. She and her husband, Dan, welcomed twin boys, Liam Bayard Vorio and Theodore “Theo” Michael Vorio, in September 2019. She continues to work as a nurse in the neonatal ICU. The family lives on a small farm in Durham, Connecticut with their three dogs, Bear, Zero, and Millie, and a whole bunch of chickens, ducks, and geese.
Hazel Stark ’11 and Joe Horn’s Milbridge-based business, Maine Outdoor School, L3C, passed the threshold of five years in business in 2021 and hired Rain Perez ’12 as their first communications and marketing assistant. In the third week of October 2021 alone, Hazel brought over 200 public school students from Downeast Maine outdoors to learn from nature at their schools or along local hiking trails. Hazel and Joe’s weekly five-minute radio show and podcast, The Nature of Phenology, also aired its 200th episode in November 2021. Meanwhile, Hazel and Joe continued building their house in Gouldsboro, estimated to be complete by spring 2022.
2012
Jill Piekut Roy ’12 is the special collections librarian at University of Southern Maine. She works with the collections of the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine and the University Archives. She is currently processing the records of the Gorham Normal School and teaching students how to engage with primary sources.
2013
Angeline Annesteus ’13 moved back to Haiti in 2014 and got married the same year. She now has two lovely children and her own house. Since 2015, she has been working for ActionAid International. She started as program officer for three consecutive years, then moved to program coordinator for two years, as of 2021, is country director. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in business administration.
2014
Magdalena Garcia ’14 is living in Surprise, Arizona and working as a livestock manager at Blue Sky Organic Farms, in Litchfield Park. She takes care of goats mostly but also horses, pigs, chickens, and donkeys. She is taking classes at Glendale Community College to complete prerequisites required to apply for the doctor of veterinary medicine program at Midwestern University.
2015
This past fall, Lucia Allosso ’15 became an eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) trained therapist at a private group practice in Manchester, New Hampshire. In December, she received her license as a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in New Hampshire. In the next year, she and a colleague who specializes in somatic healing (EMDR, yoga, and group fitness… to start) are planning to open a healing center. Lucy is still living in New Hampshire with husband Bob, two lab mixes, a cat, and a duck.
2016
Connor Huggins ’16 and Emily Peterson ’15 are living in Bowdoinham, Maine and got married in October 2021! Emily finished her master’s in anthrozoology in August 2020. Connor finished his master’s of public health at University of Southern Maine in August 2021, and now works for Medical Care Development as a senior program associate.
In August 2021, Ellen Sumire Iida ’16 and her husband, Fernando Herrera, finally got married after two previous wedding cancellations. They had a Zoom wedding party, which turned out to be a game changer, because it let them have people close to their hearts, but far away geographically, join in from the US, Japan, Europe, and other countries. They are currently living in Mexico City, Mexico, where Ellen works as a certified Japanese-Spanish translator and Japanese teacher.
Kira Marzoli Jones ’16 is living in Deer Isle, Maine. She got married on June 23, 2019, bought a house in October 2019, and welcomed a son, Elias, in June 2020. Kira and family are expecting a little baby girl in July 2022!
2017
Sophie Cameron ’17 and Jacquelyn Jenson ’15 moved to Silver Spring, Maryland together for Sophie’s new position as the co-executive director of Lumina Studio Theatre, a multi-age theater company with a focus on Shakespeare.
2021
Stephanie Guarachi Ayala ’21 joined the Hatchery during her last term at COA. Thanks to that program, she started a summer camp named Ampuy Camp in Bolivia. She has been working on this startup during fall 2022 and has joined a Bolivian incubator to continue building out the project.
