Class Notes

Class of 2010
Christina Conell

Christina Conell (MPP ’10) moved back to D.C. from San Francisco in June 2016 and has been enjoying catching up with D.C.’s Batten community. She currently serves as the senior technical advisor in the United States Department of Agriculture’s Office of Community Food Systems, supporting school districts in buying as much local food as possible.

Brendan Burdette (MPP ’10) married fellow Double Hoo award- winner Page Zakas on June 17, 2017 in Atlanta, GA. He was proud to have Jeff Bashaw (MPP ’10) as his groomsman. Page and Brendan settled in Atlanta after an amazing honeymoon in Japan and Bali.

Class of 2012

City Council Chronicles, a project about city council meetings created by Michael Karlik (MPP ’12), was named one of the top 100 local government influencers for the second year in a row by the municipal trade organization Engaging Local Government Leaders (ELGL). As of March 2018, Michael has profiled city councils in eight countries on four continents. More information about the project is available at www.councilchronicles.com.

Class of 2014
Wes Malychev

Wes Malychev (MPP ’14) is a mobile lead at Google in London. In addition to his core role at Google, Malychev has also trained Ann Arbor public school teachers on how to use Google Apps in their classrooms, helped an East Oakland-based nonprofit manage a $100,000 Google.org grant, and facilitated a negotiations course for communities in Manchester and Edinburgh as part of Google’s Digital Garage.

Lena Shi

Lena Shi (MPP ’14) married her husband Josh in October. The two of them and look forward to welcoming Batten friends to Cambridge, MA.

Sheridan Fuller (MPP ’14) was one of 40 doctoral students nationwide to be named 2018 health policy research scholars by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The program is designed for second-year doctoral students who are interested in translating their research into evidence-based health policy. As part of the program, Sheridan will learn how to advance a “culture of health,” enabling people to live longer, healthier lives. This is the third year the foundation has given the awards, which are valued at $120,000 each and will be disbursed over the next four to five years. Sheridan, who is a human development and social policy doctoral student in Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy, focuses on how families’ interactions with the social safety net influence the direction of their lives, including their long-term health.

Class 2015
Baylee Eby

Last April, Baylee Eby (MPP ’15) launched Dreamer & Co, a small social impact company with a mission to provide job skills and a steady income to young women in the Horn of Africa, helping them to feel empowered, to realize their potential and to flourish in their daily lives.

Class of 2016

Marissa Bialek (MPP ’16) is a people analyst at the People Innovation Lab at Google in the Bay Area. She nerds out to social psychology research, animation and video games.

Mayura Iyer (MPP ’16) received her Master of Education degree from Southern Methodist University in May 2018. Currently, she is a second-year corps member with Teach for America, and teaches 11th grade U.S. History in Dallas, Texas. As a policy advocate, she has worked with several organizations, including D.C. Public Schools and the Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership. Her articles have been featured in several online publications, including The Huffington Post and Mic.com.

Michael Russell (BA ’16) recently joined the Global Partnerships Department for the National Basketball Association, where he is responsible for generating revenue through sales of marketing and media platforms, and for finding creative ways to integrate partners within the NBA’s business. Previous to joining Global Partnerships full-time, he spent two years in the NBA Associate Program, a rotational program across different departments within the company.

Class of 2017
Grace Mason

Grace Mason (BA ’17) is a federal customer success manager at Quorum, a public affairs software start-up based in Washington, D.C. Before starting at Quorum, Grace worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and served as a 2017-18 Coro fellow in public affairs in St. Louis.

Sumedha Deshmukh (MPP’17) started working at the World Economic Forum as a project specialist last December. This was following a position at Devex, where she worked as an associate producer.