Notes from the Class of 1995

In June 2017, Alison (Ali) Bay (Jour) was appointed deputy press secretary in the Office of California Governor Jerry Brown Jr. Before that, she served as the deputy director for the California Department of Public Health’s Office of Public Affairs. Alison has lived in California for 20 years.

Cassandra Volpe Horii (Phys) was elected president of the Professional and Organizational (POD) Network in Higher Education, a professional organization dedicated to educational development. She will serve through spring 2019 then will join the executive board. In 2012, she became the founding director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach at the California Institute of Technology.

Heather Younger (Law) gave a TedX talk in Colorado Springs May 12 titled “Don’t Let Adversity Stop You.” Heather is the author of the best-selling book The 7 Intuitive Laws of Employee Loyalty and founder of Customer Fanatix, a consulting and training firm. She lives in Aurora, Colo. with her husband and four children.

Steve Ziegler’s (Mktg) Denver-base recruiting firm, Z3 Talent, was named Best Staffing/Recruiting/Executive Search firm by Colorado Biz magazine. Steve founded Z3Talent in 2013 as a small boutique firm leveraging his 18 years as an entrepreneur and executive in the human capital industry. He is active in the Denver-Boulder business community and serves on a handful of advisory boards.

Allison Case (ArchEngr) of Oak Park, Illinois, left a career in corporate real estate to start her own jewelry business. Allison’s love for crafting jewelry began on Pearl Street at the local bead shop and in Sewall Hall, where she would string together her own creations. 

Former Denver Public Schools board of education director Arturo Jimenez (EthnSt; Law’98) published his first book, Dreamers Nightmare: The US War on Immigrant LatinX Children. With more than 20 years of experience as an immigration attorney, Arturo examines political and social realities for DACA recipients. He lives in Denver. 

In October, Emily Wortman-Wunder (EPOBio) of Centennial, Colorado, won the 2019 Iowa Short Fiction Award for her book of short stories, Not a Thing to Comfort You. Emily teaches scientific writing at CU Denver. 

President of Let’s Grow Leaders David Dye (PolSci) published a book, Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers and Customer Advocates, based on research from the University of Northern Colorado. Leadership is important to David, who wrote that his interest “stems back to my CU days studying leadership and human organization in my PoliSci classes and within the PLC community.” He lives in Denver.

As a public librarian and arts advocate Cathy McKee, now CJ Di Mento, (Psych) led the designation effort for, and is now leader of, one of California’s first cultural districts, the Oceanside Cultural District in Oceanside, California. The designation effort was a competitive process with state legislators naming only 14 districts in the entire state. She writes she is “working in a vibrant community to help increase opportunities for arts and culture to thrive equitably without generating displacement in a time when arts organizations are severely impacted by COVID-19.”

Adam Bedard (CivEngr), co-founder of ARB Midstream, was named a finalist for the Entrepreneur of the Year 2020 Mountain Desert Region Award, which honors entrepreneurial business leaders whose ambitions deliver innovation, growth and prosperity while creating companies that transform our world.

As a junior at CU, Sande Golgart (Mktg) was a forward on the varsity basketball team. Almost 27 years later, as the president of California-based company Zonez, he has helped in the company’s creation of Clean Zonez Panels, which filter air at individual workstations, rooms and other spaces.

This January, Billy Humphrey (Engl) was featured on the Travel Channel’s Expedition Bigfoot for an encounter he allegedly had with the creature on his West Virginia property near the New River Gorge Bridge. Billy was a nonbeliever before the sighting, when he says he and his wife saw Bigfoot at about a 30-foot distance. He was also featured on Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot on Valentine’s Day.

While living in Hawaii, Lisa Lucas (EnvCon) published her book, Seed to Sea: Kumulipo Connections Volume 1. She writes that she misses Colorado, her old home.

Always working to keep his roots in the arts, Giovanni “Gino” Greco (Thtr), CEO of the American Red Cross of Colorado & Wyoming, was elected chairman of the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD), a special tax district authorized by Denver metro-area voters. With just a penny collected on every $10 spent in the district, the SCFD grants over $60 million annually across nearly 300 cultural organizations in support of arts and culture in the Denver metro area. Gino serves as the Jefferson County appointee to the SCFD Board. 

Producer Michael Scheuerman’s (MTeleCom) film Hunger Ward was nominated for the 2021 “Best Documentary Short Subject” Academy Award. The 40-minute film examines the fallout from the six-year war in Yemen — specifically, the starvation of children. This was Scheuerman’s first production role. Sheuerman told the engineering college in April: “I want to help tell stories that bring attention to important matters and help bring change.... Film is a powerful storytelling tool.” 

In July, David Sholl (PhDApMath) became director of the Transformational Decarbonization Initiative at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to elevate the lab’s prominence in carbon capture, conversion, utilization and storage. He is author of Success and Creativity in Scientific Research, a book which offers career advice to young scientists. 

Solar physicist Martin Snow (PhDAstroPhys’95) became the first SARCHI research chair at the Space Weather Centre of South Africa (SANSA) in Hermanus, South Africa, in 2021. Martin researches ultraviolet solar spectral irradiance and serves as an investigator and instrument scientist for space missions. He was also a part of the Solar-Stellar Irradiance Comparison Experiment (SOLSTICE).

Rumaih Al-Rumaih (PhDElEngr’95) was appointed as Saudi Arabia’s deputy minister of transport and logistic services. Rumaih was also assigned by royal decree as president of the Public Transport Authority, which oversees the kingdom’s land, railway and maritime transport.

Jenn Spinelli (Econ’95) is CEO of Watson Buys, a Denver-based home-buying company. In August, she was featured in an article, “How Homebuyers Can Safely Cancel Home Deals,” published by Wealth of Geeks, a financial education and pop culture site.