Say There Alumni Newsletter Fall 2018
Colleen Crawford Dillon (1970, 1975)
From note card to Jan – Colleen lives in West Alexandria, Ohio, and retired from teaching Spanish at Miami University in Oxford in 2010. She now works each spring at Stockslager’s Greenhouse & Garden Center, and attends weekly sessions of international folk dance at Miami Valley Fold Centers. She had the opportunity to visit Mexico over Christmas and Nicaragua during Holy Week.
Paul Zito (Salzburg 1984)
After six years in Toledo as Vice President of International Development RGP Northwest Ohio, Paul’s work is going wonderfully. He frequently travels to Europe, Canada, Asia, in addition to an annual trip to Washington and a few other places in the United States. He is currently serving as Chairman of the International Advisory Committee of the IEDC (International Economic Development Council), where the President of IEDC is also a Bobcat, Jeff Finkle.
Shannon Okey (Salzburg 1993)
Shannon is taking her publishing company to the Frankfurter Buchmesse. She is also on the board of the Independent Book Publishers Association and will be helping in their booth, plus trying to find some more companies to buy foreign rights to her books. Her company’s novel Beautiful Wreck was picked up by a German publisher last year.
Karen Gurney – (B.A. Spanish 1995)
Karen earned a Ph.D. in Economics and Workforce Development policy and is the author of Stacked: Double your Job Interviews, Leverage, Recruiters, Unlock LinkedIn, The Mom Gap, and Career Strategy for Stay at Home Moms.
Michelle Howry (Salzburg 1995)
After two years working at Hachette Books, Michelle is moving to G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin Random House. “It’s a ‘full circle’ moment for me—I started my NYC publishing career there as a summer intern in the ’90s and now I look forward to my role as Executive Editor.”
Jonathan Leal (French B.S. 1998, French M.A. 2000
Jonathan is the owner of Milo’s, a specialty foods manufacturer based in Athens. The company makes Vino de Milo, JB’s Best, and Brownwood Farms brands. The products are sold in specialty stores across the country and in Canada. He lives in Athens with his husband Barry Tadlock, an Ohio University Political Science professor, and 16-year-old cattle dog Geffi.
Megan Stratton Drews (Salzburg 1999)
Megan frequently travels abroad, including Europe and Australia, in her position as International Sales Representative for Rocky Boots.
Gina “Honigford” Towner (M.A. French 2000)
Gina lives in Milledgeville, GA, with her husband and two children, Laura (12) and Nathan (10), and works part-time at Georgia College, teaching elementary levels of French for the Department of World Languages and Cultures and water fitness for the Wellness and Recreation Center. She volunteers in the local public schools, both as a reading tutor and as one of the coordinators of the school district’s recycling program.
Annie Major Urbanek (Salzburg 2000)
Annie is in her second semester as an online graduate student in Health Law at Ohio University.
Meagan Sills (B.A. French 2001, M.A. French 2004)
Meagan has worked in the field of speech recognition for the past 10 years. As a Data Resource Manager at Sensory Inc., one of her primary functions is to collect the audio data that trains the speech engine. Prior to her role at Sensory, Inc, Meagan was the Language Resource Manager and a member of the speech recognition team at Rosetta Stone for 9 years. Meagan enjoys her fast-paced and satisfying job and loves to interact with languages and linguists and be a part of an emerging technology.
Christophe Corbin (M.A. French 2001)
Christophe joined Haverford College in 2017 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he was Assistant Professor of French. His research focuses on cultural memory; in his book, The Resistance Revisited. A Cultural Journey, due for publication by the end of 2018, he examines the relationship between collective memory and popular culture through the fictional representations of the French Resistance in films, comics and graphic novels, novels, poetry and television, from WWII to the present day. His current book project examines cultural responses from Francophone and French artists to terrorism from the 1940s to the present day. In addition to his teaching and research, he continues to work with study abroad programs in Paris with the University of Pennsylvania and in Avignon with Bryn Mawr College.
Jason Sills (B.A. French 2001, M.A. French 2004)
As the Service Unit Manager for AMPLEXOR LLC, a top 10 Translation and Localization company, with headquarters in Lisbon, Portugal, Jason manages a team of Project Managers and Project Coordinators who manage translation projects or assist in various aspects of these projects. They translate a wide variety of materials, from user manuals to software and web sites, and can literally translate into any language. Prior to AMPLEXOR, Jason held a similar role at SDL International (another top ten Translation and Localization company), worked as a French-speaking customer trainer for a medical financing company, and worked as an Instructor of French at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Kathryne Adair Corbin (M.A. French 2006)
Katie is a Senior Lecturer in French at Haverford College. After completing her B.A./BSJ in 2001 and M.A. at OHIO in 2006, she earned her Ph.D. in French from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2012. Her research focuses on the intersections of literature and journalism in 19th-century France, and her current book project explores the spectacle and style in the works of France’s first woman reporter, Séverine (1855-1929).
Charlie Schwartz (B.A. French 2006)
Charlie is currently the Associate Director for International Admissions at the University of Cincinnati. “The time I spent in the Modern Languages program instilled in me a passion for global connections, which I have been fortunate to be able to turn into a career.” It also encouraged a love for international travel that is a major part of his life. “My work consistently takes me to Asia – India, China, and Vietnam, especially – and for my recent honeymoon, we traveled to Italy, Greece, Montenegro and Croatia.”
Sarah West (B.A. Spanish 2005, M.A. Spanish 2007)
Sarah is working in a tenure-track position in World Languages and Cultures at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago as an Assistant Professor.
Roger Anderson (B.A. French 2006, M.A., French 2009)
Since 2013, Roger Anderson has taught English as a Second Language in four programs at Ohio State University. He also spent two summers teaching English in Indonesia. He is currently working on his dissertation on the language development of International Teaching Assistants. This summer, he is teaching French at Columbus State Community College, teaching English in Ohio State’s Summer Program for Mexican (EFL) Teachers, tutoring Japanese executives, and mentoring teen boys and young men of a Syrian family through Columbus Refugee & Immigration Services (CRIS).
Alicia Miklos (B.A. Spanish 2007, M.A. Spanish 2009)
Alicia is an Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University. Miklos and Suyapa Portillo Villeda published their article, “Central Americans Under Trump: Uncertainty on Both Sides of the Border,” from the LASA Central America Section.
Alicia Buckenmeyer (Spanish Minor 2009)
Alicia earned a Ph.D. from University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville, VA.
Tatiana Argüello (M.A. Spanish 2010)
Tatiana is an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Spanish and Hispanic Studies at Texas Christian University. Her article, “War and its Impact on Central American-American Literature,” was published at the Oxford Research Encyclopedia, in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Jacqueline Rigg (Global Studies-European Studies and B.A. Spanish 2013)
After Jacqueline left OHIO she moved to New York City and worked at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in outpatient clinics utilizing her Spanish. She now works for the Spanish Ministry of Education in A Coruña, Galicia. “The program is for language assistants in public schools, it’s called ‘auxiliares de conversación.’” She recommends this program to any Spanish major that is interested in living and working in Spain.
Brian Vadakin (Ecuador 2013, HTC B.A. Spanish 2015)
Brian is the Social Enterprise Coordinator at Rural Action in Southeastern Ohio and travels the world whenever he can.
Hannah Abrahamson (B.A. Spanish 2015)
Hannah published the fifth chapter of her HTC thesis this month with Chasqui and just finished coursework for the Ph.D. at Tulane University. She is scheduled to take comprehensive exams in the fall. She will be in Yucatan for the summer, scouring the peninsula for archival documents from the sixteenth and early 17th centuries.
Grace Pauley (B.A. Spanish 2016)
Pauley earned a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to support her upcoming 10-month research project in Bogotá, Colombia. Pauley, who majored in English and minored in Spanish, finds that the combination of these majors has prepared her for an international research experience. She also has a Global Leadership certificate from OHIO.
Cora Lipscomb (B.A. Russian 2017)
Cora has been working at an internship since May. She looks into people’s backgrounds and crimes before the judge sentences them in court. She hopes to attain work in investigation for a few years before beginning an M.A. program. She continues her Russian through lessons from a tutor. “Right now, we are reading and watching Master and Margarita in its entirety and going through a book of philosophy. It sounds cheesy, but I have made some of my best and closest friends through the Russian program, especially because of study abroad.”
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