Suzi Morales

At Family Weekend during their son Jayden’s first year, Amy and Jonathan Kass met his faculty mentor. “She knew everything about our son,” Amy recalls. “And it wasn’t just our son, it was every student in there. She knew where he sat, what learning style he had, and it was very impressive to see."
Since that first semester, the Kasses have been active in the Whitman School parent community, with financial support and frequent visits to campus.

Benjamin Grubbs ’10 was a Syracuse University first-year student in the late 1990s when media organizations were grappling with what the internet would mean for their future.
Growing up, Brooke Baevsky ’18 (WSM/NEW) taught healthy cooking classes to children and wanted to combine her interests in media, entrepreneurship and nutrition.
When John Spina ’27 arrived on campus in 2023, he already had tens of thousands ofTikTok followers. Students he’d never met recognized him from his videos.

Internships, case competitions and career exploration trips play a crucial role in shaping the futures of Whitman School students. Through these experiences, students hone their skills and make valuable connections.
Established in fall 2024 by a gift from Douglas ’86 and Susan Present, the Whitman Opportunity Fund ensures that these kinds of opportunities are within reach for all students.

In his prior career as a school administrator, Carlos A. García (J.D. ’05) oversaw truancy matters for a school district.
“Of the children who were referred to truancy courts, 100% of the 500 referrals each year were low socioeconomic level and were not your band students or football players,” he said.
The disproportion that García saw sparked an interest in defending people. That led him to the St. Mary’s University School of Law and a career as a board-certified criminal defense attorney.

Brand strategist Lindsay Clarke Pedersen boasts an impressive client list that includes Duolingo, Accolade Healthcare, and IMDb. But what really sets her apart is a focus on her first love—psychology.
“Marketing is psychology put inside the context of a company and inside the context of a market,” Pedersen says.

When your IP department receives a request to file a patent application for an invention, export regulations may not be top of mind. But with so many companies doing business across borders, a company can easily run afoul of export control regulations.
Anaqua recently hosted a webinar with Megan Lew, Of Counsel at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, and Maria Sova, IP Law Systems Manager at IBM. The conversation covered the basics of export control along with real-life examples.

On November 7, 2024, the Council on Library & Information Resources (CLIR) announced the award of a $300,000 grant to a library preservation collaboration. Now in its fifth year, the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources Library Preservation Project (NNDWRLPP) is digitizing 8,250 print resources from the NNDWR library. Over the next three years, the grant will enable the project to digitize a total of approximately 1,500 documents, which represents around 10% of the collection.

The University of Iowa College of Law clinical program was Kate Melloy Goettel’s (07JD) first introduction to immigration law. She went on to work in the field for more than 17 years at both the Department of Justice and in the nonprofit legal world. The clinic “really set me on the trajectory I went on in terms of my career,” she recalled.
As she worked in the clinic under the guidance of now-retired Professor Barbara Schwartz, Goettel remembers thinking something else: “Being a clinical law professor would be a cool job.”
Turns out she was right.

In June 2024, Neil Getnick ’78 received the Southern Christian Leadership Council of Southern California’s Beloved Community Award for his work in negotiating a union contract with workers at the famed Los Angeles hotel Chateau Marmont.
In some ways, the agreement was a departure from the norm for Getnick, who says he is “not a labor lawyer.” In other meaningful ways, the award represents a continuation of a commitment to social justice dating back to his time at Cornell Law School.

For David Gelles ’76 and Matthew Gelles ’10, business is in their blood and so is Syracuse Orange. The father/son duo leads NEFCO, the construction supply company that David founded in 1981. And while they have much in common — like growing up in an entrepreneurial family with strong Syracuse connections — they each bring a different approach that has enabled their family-owned business to thrive over decades.

As a Syracuse student, Gregory Lettieri ’04 was a member of the track team. The consumer studies major and retail management minor in the Whitman School ran the 200-meter dash. Twice as long as the all-out sprint of the 100 meters, the 200-meter dash requires a combination of speed, strategy and discipline. It was the perfect event for Lettieri.
Today, Lettieri is the co-founder and CEO of Recycle Track Systems (RTS). The former runner combines the work ethic from his days as an athlete with the lessons in business strategy he learned in the Whitman School to building novel solutions.

Sean Boyle’s life revolves around relationships. Whether he’s talking about work, family or mentoring Syracuse student-athletes, it’s clear that he thrives on human connection.
“People are first in everything I’ve ever done,” says Boyle, who graduated in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing management from the Whitman School, played defense on the Syracuse men’s soccer team and today is vice president and general manager of global oncology at medical device giant BD.