Class Notes

Judd Shader (EthnSt’10) is founder, board member and CEO of Leeds West Groups (LWG), based in Greenwood Village, Colorado. He launched the company from his apartment while a junior at CU Boulder. LWG is a management platform capitalized by family office funds that acquires, owns and manages national automotive repair franchise brands including Midas, Big O Tires and SpeeDee Oil in addition to a national real estate portfolio and other outside investments. Today, he has more than 1,000 members on his team across 117 automotive retail locations and operates in 18 states.

Michelle Tamayo (AeroEngr’10; MS’10) has worked as a dynamics engineer at United Launch Alliance (ULA) for 10 years. She worked for four years on the integration for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which launched from ULA’s Atlas V rocket to the International Space Station in May. She also has spent seven years working on development for ULA’s Vulcan rocket.

Corbin Clement (Mktg’10) is a digital analyst for the ecommerce team at Specialized Bicycle Components. The new position allows him to return to the Denver area after spending two years at Salomon’s North American headquarters in Ogden, Utah.

Two-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Jamie Boyle (Film’10) released a feature documentary, Anonymous Sister, which premiered at Doc NYC — America’s largest documentary festival — in New York. Shot over 30 years, it tells the story of her mother and sister's opioid addiction. The film was also shown at the Denver Film Festival with an accompanying panel featuring leaders of the local and national efforts to end the opioid epidemic, including Colorado’s attorney general.

A former environmental journalist based out of Colorado and Arizona, Emery Cowan (Jour, Span’10) now works as program coordinator for the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition, nonprofit that works with collaborative conservation and natural resources policy, in Hood River, Oregon. The position closely aligns with her interest in the environment.

After several management jobs at corporations including L’Oreal and many startup experiences, Ehsan Shariati Varnosfaderani (MElEngr) co-founded the Functionland corporation. The company provides open-source technology to help users create their own personal server. 

Jacqui Dietrich (MBA) is head of brand, sales and marketing for Startup Space, which helps economic and small business development organizations connect entrepreneurs to resources in their communities while providing data analytics and management systems.

In May, Gerardo Ortiz (Advert) delivered the CMCI commencement address virtually. For the event, he created a powerful video, ROAM., available to watch at colorado.edu/cmcinow. Gerardo is creative director at Uninterrupted, founded by Maverick Carter and LeBron James. He lives in Los Angeles.

Sara Price (Mktg) joined the FX hit series Mayans M.C. as a member of its writing staff this year, before the release of the show’s third season. Sara is a former Buffs track and field athlete and club soccer player, who moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in TV writing. Although she grew up in Colorado, she writes, “I found myself equally at home in the California waves and Eastern Sierras.”

NASA engineer Nick Bradley (AeroEngr, MS) was awarded the Early Career Public Achievement Medal last year for his work at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. The award is given to individuals who have significant performance during the first 10 years of their career. 

Sarah Kleinman (PolSci, Art), a doctoral candidate in art history at Virginia Commonwealth University, received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award to do research in Trinidad and Tobago. At the University of the West Indies she’ll work on her forthcoming dissertation, “The Curatorial Practice and Exhibitions of Kynaston McShine.” McShine (1935–2018) organized some of the most consequential art exhibitions of the 20th century, writes Sarah, and is recognized as the first curator of color to work at a major museum in the United States.

For Sarah Off (Mus), good music and doing good are all in a day’s work. After earning her undergraduate degree in violin performance at CU, where she studied with Lina Bahn and Judith Ingolfsson, Sarah continued her academic pursuits at Arizona State University, earning master’s and doctoral degrees in violin performance. Along the way, she co-founded the Mt. Blanca Summer Music Conservatory, a nonprofit organization that provides high-quality, affordable performance experiences for young musicians.

Heather Hansman (Jour’10) wrote the book Downriver, which will be published by the University of Chicago Press in April 2019. The book discusses fights over water rights to the Green River, the most significant tributary of the Colorado River. The Green River runs 730 miles from Wyoming to Utah. In her research for the book, Heather set out on a journey in a one-person inflatable raft to paddle the entire river. 

Daniel McCormick (ChemEngr’01; Law’10) was elected partner at Kilpatrick Townsend. He is a member of the electronics and software team in the firm’s Denver office.

Chasing Coral, a Sundance Film Festival award winner and Netflix original feature produced by Larissa Rhodes (Film, Span’10), received an Emmy Award in the outstanding nature documentary category. The film discusses how coral reefs, a vital part of Earth’s ecosystem, are vanishing at an alarming rate around the globe. Larissa is a film producer and director of creative development at Exposure Labs, where she develops environmentally and socially motivated projects. She previously worked on the Emmy Award-winning documentary Chasing Ice.

"If all goes well, I'll be sending Buff love just shy of the North Pole this August!” writes Neil Almy (Fin), who is on a year-long sailing expedition with the goal of sailing farther north than any other vessel in history, through the Northwest Passage to the very edge of the Polar Ice Cap. The mission, called the Infinity Exhibition, includes a team of 22 individuals hailing from 10 countries and is being filmed as a follow-up documentary to Sea Gypsies: The Far Side of the World. Read more about his journey. 

On Oct. 19, Nestor Bravo (MSpan) became a U.S. citizen at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Centennial, Colo., office. Nestor is vice principal of John F. Kennedy High School in Denver and serves as its athletic director. He manages the Spanish curriculum for Denver Public Schools.

After graduating, Tiffany Gambardella (MusEdu) took a job teaching music at Lompoc Valley Middle School in California, where she’s in her fifth year of teaching. She connected with Wayne Asbury (MusEdu’72), a music teacher retired from the school and fellow Buff. Tiffany enjoys that they both attended college at CU and ended up teaching at the same middle school in California.