Class Notes

Glenn Asakawa (Jour) returned to Boulder in 2008, after nearly 25 years working as a newspaper photojournalist in Boulder, Los Angeles and Denver, to work for his alma mater as a staff photographer in its marketing and PR department. Asakawa was recently promoted to director of multimedia production. He was on the photo staff that was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for coverage of the Columbine shooting. A career high point happened when the Dalai Lama grabbed ahold of his hand while he was taking a selfie with His Holiness during a 2016 visit to CU Boulder.

Since 2014, Brian Rooney (Jour) has been managing director of Goldman Sachs in New York City. Previously, he spent more than 20 years working for Bloomberg. Brian lives in Katonah, New York, with his wife, Carolyn. 

Timothy Tomasik (Jour) has been a practicing trial attourney in Chicago for 28 years and recently became a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers. He's the president-elect of the Illinois Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocated and has been inducte into the International Society of Barristers, where he now serves o the board of governors. Away from his work, he has served as board president of Lawyers Lend-A-Hand to Youth, a foundation that provides grants to mentor programs dedicate to serving Chicago's underprivileged youth. He lives in Western Springs, Illinois, with his wife, Jennifer and two daughters, McKenzie and Maeve. 

Marcia Jarmel (Phil’80; MJour) has produced and directed a slate of award-winning films for PatchWorks Films. The most recent, Los Hermanos/The Brothers,won the Best Documentary Award at its Woodstock Film Festival premiere and was the only independent film nominated in the competitive Best Music Documentary category by the International Documentary Association. It was previously featured in Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope festival and was shown at theBoulder International Film Festival (BIFF)––the annual event co-founded byRobin Beeck (Comm’88).

Patrick Saunders (MJour) has worked for The Denver Post for two decades and is the beat writer for the Colorado Rockies. In 2018, he was named the National Sports Media Association’s Colorado Sports Writer of the Year. In 2017, Patrick served as president of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

After close to 20 years in broadcast television, Kelly (Farmer) Rostad (Jour) segued into media relations and is now a principal at KGR Media, a PR and communications agency that she founded. She works with a wide range of industries, including education, biotechnology and environmentally based companies, and recently worked with a client sponsoring the 2019 Birds of Prey World Cup in Beaver Creek. She has three children and lives on the North Shore of Boston in Wenham, Massachusetts, with her husband, Johan.

Eve Bryon (Jour) recently moved to Missoula, Montana, where she covers natural resources for the Missoulian after 25 years as a reporter in Helena.

In 2019, Julie Gillum Lue (Jour), a former park ranger living in Montana, published her third children’s book, What I Saw in Rocky Mountain: A Kid’s Guide to the National Park. Her earlier book, What I Saw in Grand Teton, was a 2018 finalist in the High Plains Book Awards. Her writing has appeared in publications including High Country News and Montana Outdoors.

In 2016, Jeff Shearer (Jour) joined Auburn University athletics as a senior writer. Previously, he served as sports director at WSFA-TV in Montgomery, Alabama, for 25 years, anchoring the 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts. He and his wife, Rhonda, have two daughters, Sara Schiller (Chris) and Meagan, and two young grandsons, Carter and Dawson.

Patrick Ryan (Comm) is a senior director in the Office of Alumni Relations and Development at Northwestern University and has worked on the Evanston, Illinois, campus since 2012. He was a four-year starter and letter winner for the CU football team. He held development positions at Loyola University Chicago, the University of Illinois–Chicago and Miami University. Pat has a master’s degree in sports studies from Miami University and lives in Chicago with his wife, Alyson.

Brett Duffy (Comm) has worked in commercial property management, leasing and residential sales for 29 years and is a realtor with Berkshire Hathaway. He recently earned the Chairman’s Circle designation for being in the top 2% of agents nationwide. He, his wife and two children reside in Pacific Palisades, California. His daughter Carly is a sophomore studying strategic communication at CMCI. 

Tami Dokken (Jour, Art) recently moved to Washington, D.C., to become the World Bank’s first chief data privacy officer. She previously lived in Dallas and worked as a global data privacy and protection officer and associate general counsel at MoneyGram International. Her son, Jack Sandberg, is a junior in CMCI’s Department of Information Science.

Kevin Corke (Jour; MJour’02) lives in Washington, D.C., and is a White House correspondent for Fox News. He travels the globe on Air Force One, including trips to Finland, England, Scotland, China, Canada, France and Argentina, where he covered the 2018 G20 Buenos Aires summit.

Sisters Robin Beeck (Comm) and Kathy Beeck (Eng/PolSci’86) founded the Boulder International Film Festival, which will celebrate its fourteenth year next Feb. 22-25, 2018. The festival has become a hot spot for movie stars and film enthusiasts from around the country.

Look for Scott Takeda (Jour) on your TV this fall. He is a recurring guest star on a new comedy called Panhandle and recently shot with Catherine Zeta Jones in the new Disney+ series National Treasure. He still appears on General Hospital.

While working at IBM, Jennifer Hatfield (Advert) submitted many patent disclosures for the IBM Call for Code Embrace initiative, which seeks to support racial justice by calling on Congress for change. Jennifer writes that it was very rewarding to connect with others and use technology to make the world a better place.

Mari Kim (Coleman) Novak (Comm) is chief marketing officer at YieldMo, an advertising technology and data company based in New York City. She lives in Morris County, New Jersey, with her husband of 20 years, along with her son and daughter.

James S. Singell (Comm) just returned to Indianapolis from an assignment in Tokyo as marketing director for Eli Lilly in Tokyo, Japan. He was worked for Lilly since 1992 in a variety of sales and marketing roles in the United States and also in Shanghai, China.

​​Pete Baumgartner (Jour) is the managing editor for Central Asia and the Middle East at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Prague, Czech Republic. Baumgartner served as a senior correspondent for RFE/RL in Munich, Germany, and Washington before moving to Prague. Before moving to Europe, he was the sports editor of CU Boulder's Campus Press and worked for the Longmont Daily-Times Call and the Rocky Mountain News. He enjoys traveling, skiing and attending European soccer games. He lives outside of Prague with his wife.