Reflections of '96

Reflections of 96 is a podcast about the remarkable individuals who once roamed the hallowed halls of Ward Melville High School.

Karin Marcello 09/24/2024

Jason Kolomick 09/19/2024

Liam Mbuthia 09/19/2024

Summer Lin Connor Hall 09/19/2024

Chris Davenport 09/19/2024

Brooke Ellison Tribute 09/19/2024

Brooke Ellison Tribute Brooke Ellison (in her own words) It has always been fascinating to me how the way we are viewed by the world can only vaguely resemble the way we view ourselves. I am many things and am seen in many, sometimes contradictory ways. I am a PhD and an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University, where I teach and study health policy and medical ethics. This is where I make a living, but it is also the very same place that saved my life. In September, 1990, I was hit by a car while walking home from school. I was crossing a major highway nestled in the Long Island suburbs and, in that accident, suffered innumerable injuries that have affected my life in immeasurable ways. But, I was a fighter. I am a fighter. My disability in no way compromises that. In fact, my disability amplifies that. Details of my life and experiences that my family have undergone have been chronicled and relayed in narrative and cinematic form. I received my undergraduate degree in cognitive neuroscience from Harvard University, and then returned to Harvard to do my Master in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. A lover of mobilizing change, I ran for New York State Senate in 2006 and followed that with the creation of a nonprofit organization, the Brooke Ellison Project, designed to provide education about stem cell research. I'm now a scholar. I'm now a researcher. I am now a professor. But, I am a fighter. My life has been shaped by challenges and adversity of all different kinds, but it has not been characterized by them. I am not defined by them. For every obstacle I have sought opportunity. In each instance of sorrow I have sought strength. When there has been challenge and adversity I have looked for resilience and hope. That is what I want people to know about me, as that is how I see myself. That is also what I want people to know about themselves, as that is how I view the world. Website: /episode/index/show/b0300984-90b0-4fd7-a622-04593fd79ef7/id/33117637

Erin Solnick 02/29/2024

Joseph T. Hamill 02/29/2024

Bill Cleaver 02/29/2024

Jake D Feinberg 02/29/2024

Lisa Byun Forman 02/29/2024

Scott Milner 02/29/2024

Molli Brittman Hauser 02/29/2024

Jerry Rivers 02/29/2024

Zach Grumet 12/21/2023

John Chiaramonte 12/21/2023

Desirea Adamo Richardson 12/21/2023

David Richtberg 12/21/2023

Virginia Graziano 12/21/2023

Corey Cohn 12/21/2023

Jennifer Coffey 12/21/2023

Deborah Eichenwald Parmelee 10/29/2023

James Folk 10/29/2023

Robert Meister 10/29/2023

Dara Sulyma Mayola 10/29/2023

Jason Goldschmidt 10/29/2023

Laura Craig Cloud 10/29/2023

Brian Taranto 08/16/2023

Mary Cadigan 08/16/2023

Mary Cadigan Mary's story in her own words I graduated from Johnson & Wales with a degree in Culinary Arts in 2000. (After deciding Criminal Justice was not my gig.) After graduation, I toyed with private catering while I waitressing at the good 'ol Red Lobster on 347. They offered me a management position and I took it to for the experience of managing the culinary team in the back of the house. That didn't go as planned and I wound up with the task of "fixing the front of the house" in the second worst location on Long Island, so the burnout happened fast. At just the right time, I was recruited by 7-Eleven, Inc. They hired me as a Field Consultant, and my job was to help franchisees be successful and build there business. I climbed the ranks from there, and became a Senior FC, and then took on a national role in Merchandising Foodservice. My role was to travel the Eastern States and determine the flavor profiles/preferences of each region and help the Category Managers develop items in support of the regions. At that point, my folks have retired up to Northern Maine and a regional CM role opened up in New England, I asked for the promotion and relocated to Massachusetts to live in the markets I was developing for. I picked Scituate, MA as my new home- I knew this town from my childhood since my Dad is from Hingham, and it reminded me of Stony Brook. It's a seaside town tucked on the south shore, about 40 minutes outside of Boston. It's got criffs and nooks and crannies and get smacked around in storms (we are on the news EVERY time a storm hits.) but I love it. As I settled in, I developed all of the fresh food and bakery items for New England stores and coached the ops team on foodservice standards and practice, etc. The partners were unbelievable, and though I knew I had made the right decision to move, today, I am certain- more on that in a bit. Anyway, the corporate alignment changed and I wound up in a Division Merchandising role in charge of all non-alc bevs, services, and non-foods categories. I think I was 3 months into that role when my VP called and promoted me back to Ops as a Market Manager. I have about 100 stores and a team of about 12 Field Consultants in each market I ran. I was "Mop and Bucket Mary" and "fixed" two under-performing New England Markets to become profitable and turn the Boston Market to "Investor-ready." During this time, I met Jim- we've been together almost 12 years. he was a single dad with 3 kids, and so we were an instant family. We bought our house in Scituate about a year and a half after we met, and I've helped him raise our three kids (their mum is not in the picture) as my own. We never got around to the wedding and that's ok. Haley is 25 and engaged, James is 20, and Mia is 17, about to start her senior year. So. While I was with SEI, I was getting really burnt out. It had been 15 years and I left to take a strange opportunity and get back to cooking. I won a bid on a two year contract to operate the "pub" at Widow's Walk Golf Course in Scituate. We turned it into the North River Grill and it was way cool, dream come true stuff at the beginning. I was the Executive Chef, and CFO among other things, and quickly became the bar-tender/server one-woman show as I found my partner was the worst decision I ever made. At the end of the first season, I accepted the Role of Category Manager, Bakery for the Trader Joe's Company and left my partner to steal her own profits and materials from the NRG. And probably saved my life. TJ's was pretty cool. I developed the Artisan Bread Category and the Sweets/Desserts for all TJ stores in the enterprise. It was phenomenal learning, crazy cool travel and I made some of the most talented bakers in the world into good friends I still stay in touch with. The first call I made when I got to TJ was to Jeff, the CEO of Bake Fresh, who owns the Bakery I worked with when I was developing for 7-Eleven. I asked him if he wanted to get in, and today, TJ is one of Bake Fresh's3rd largest customer. Without sharing the item I intro'd first, I will share that the first total of PO's in 2018 was 18,000 cases. This year, that same item will ship over 100,000 for one selling season of August-October. Kinda proud of that. So with TJ's during a category shift, I found myself with HABA, Household, Cereal/Breakfast, Vitamins and Nutritional Bars as my category responsibilities. And Covid hit. Hand sanitizer, cleaning products, toilet paper, vitamins- all ME. It was complete chaos. At one point, we couldn't get a single roll of TP. So I called around until I found the guy who sold TP and soaps to Hilton. I bought all of the single rolls of hotel TP that they had sitting in warehouses and put it on the shelves of Trader Joe's. It was a great idea at the time and I can't believe I pulled it off. Fast forward to an exhausted call to Jeff of Bake Fresh. "I want back into Bakery. Where should I look?" He said, "no where. You're coming with us. We'll get you an offer in a couple of days." So for the last three years, I have gleefully managed the customer relationships and brought on new business for our group of 5 bakeries. Most recently, we made a large deal with Target stores and will begin shipping our first seasonal item in august and four "every day" items to them nationally in Q1 of 2024. It's busy and chaotic and awesome, and joining the team was like coming home. Plus, when I'm not traveling, I work from home, usually in my running clothes, with my best girl at my feet. (Tessie, she is a yellow lab who snores like a drunk old man and she is the BEST.) So that's it. Interests? I love to travel, I get to the beach and into the woods as much as I can, I am a long-distance runner (I finished the Boston Marathon in 2018 as my crowning achievement- and while registered for Chicago this October, unfortunately will not make it due to a knee injury I am nursing. I also still cook constantly and I love to garden. It's a fairly quiet world and that's how I prefer it. My two besties from HS are still my besties- Krista MacPherson (Lapresti) and Michelle Bergin-Hayes(not a WM grad). One of my regrets has been not getting down to the island as much as I'd like and I'm working on that. I've been back twice in the last two months and got to catch up with some of our HS friends I haven't seen in way too long which was awesome. I'll be back at the end of July for a quick trip and can't wait. When I look back, I almost have trouble remembering details but they come back. I remember fondly, debates in English class senior year, CPR with O'Leary and barely making it to home room every day. And then getting the hell out of there by 12:50 to get to West Meadow and to work...I'd love to have my memory revived. /episode/index/show/b0300984-90b0-4fd7-a622-04593fd79ef7/id/27766959

Jessica Rotondi 08/16/2023

Jessica Rotondi Jessica wears many hats but also has tunnel vision focus on everything she works on. She's an actress, comedian, screenwriter, director and producer. Jessica has always been true to her heart as well as to her sense of humor. She loves creative, honest expressions of all kinds and genres, but has always had a special place in her heart for comedy. As a comic she’s performed at a variety of New York’s best venues, including The Stand, New York Comedy Club, Broadway Comedy Club, The Village Lantern and many glamorous bar basements. She went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she studied acting and directing. After graduating she collaborated with several up and coming theater companies, including directing three plays in the NY Fringe Festival. She later went to Columbia University's Graduate Film Program, where she wrote, directed, and produced a strong body of film and TV projects. Around that time she developed a strong passion for improv and sketch comedy, and trained and performed at a variety of theaters, including Upright Citizens Brigade and the PIT. Many of her films, pilots, and web series have been honored in a variety of festivals and script contests including the PAGE Screenwriting contest, TV Guide Writing Contest, Hollyshorts Film Festival, The Harlem Film Festival, LA Comedy Shorts Festival, World Of Comedy Film Festival, etc. In recent years she's worked as a writer, director and producer in both narrative (film, television, web series, and music videos) and non-narrative projects (promos, educational and corporate videos). One of the web series she was a staff writer for was recently optioned by a TV network. She also co-hosts and co-produces the podcast The Test. Inspired by The Bechdel Test, The Test is a podcast that is essentially a Bechdel Test in itself - Two women in the entertainment industry interviewing other women who work in a variety of roles in the film and TV industries. The Test is sponsored by the film organization Cinefemme and has interviewed an amazing, diverse group of women writers, directors, producers, etc. and it can be found on iTunes. Some other career highlights include: Semifinals in the Sundance Writers Lab, a Student Academy nomination, an Audience Choice Award in the Columbia Film Festival, and an award from the New York TV Festival (NYTVF). Website: https://jessicarotondi.com/ Facebook Contact https://www.facebook.com/jessieroro /episode/index/show/b0300984-90b0-4fd7-a622-04593fd79ef7/id/27766905

Reflections of '96

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