Empire of the Griffin

Meet and Magritte

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By Beverly Lau ’06

Magritte

NYC alumni had a successful event at the Museum of Modern Art: a private tour of the Magritte exhibition with Jim Coddington ’74, head conservator at the museum! We had 30 attendees, all Reedies, with another 90 people on the waiting list. The questions were great and the answers even better. A few of us met at a coffee shop prior to the event to meet and greet. Overall appraisal: a terrific evening! 

Freedom Summer, 50 Years Later

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By Paul Levy ’72

Thirty members of the D.C. chapter gathered at the Newseum to view an exhibit on the role of students in the civil rights movement, taking advantage of free tickets to this otherwise pricey private museum that a chapter steering member had managed to snag. Our guide was Bernard Wasow ’65, one of 10 Reedies who went to Mississippi as part of Freedom Summer in 1964. Bernard described the training, his motivations, and his confrontation with his own fears in the wake of the assassination of three civil rights workers just before he and the other Reedies arrived, as well as his experience living with a local family and doing voter-registration work. After we explored the civil rights exhibition, the group dispersed to peruse the rest of the museum’s voluminous collection of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs, newspapers covering major events over the past 150 years, and other features. 

Know a Firecracker?

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What do Richard Danzig ’65, Barbara Ehrenreich ’63, and Gary Snyder ’51 have in common? They are the first three honorees of the Thomas Lamb Eliot Award. Who will be the fourth? Help us grow the pool of potential recipients by nominating a worthy graduate. The awardee should have achieved distinction in one or more fields of endeavor based on the quality and importance of his or her contributions. The record of achievement should be both intrinsically impressive and importantly consequential for the world. The awardee should have produced a record of achievement over a sustained period. It is also important that the awardee exemplify qualities valued by the college, including intellectual rigor, independence, and integrity.

See complete description and details.

Switchboard Lights Up

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Kaori Frieda ’14 used this web exchange to connect with alumni in Florence and had the experience of a lifetime.

Kaori Frieda ’14 used this web exchange to connect with alumni in Florence and had the experience of a lifetime.

The Reed Switchboard, our trailblazing method of connecting students and alumni, is lighting up! The basic concept is simple: Switchboard allows you to ask (for connections, insights, help) or to offer (job leads, internships, intelligence, resources). Art major Kaori Freda ’15 used Switchboard to connect with alumni in Florence, had the experience of a lifetime, and is now the Switchboard’s campus ambassador.

Learn more about the Reed Switchboard online.

Reedies Take Spotlight in Portland’s Tech Scene

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By Randall S. Barton

Reedies are taking an increasingly prominent role in Portland’s high-tech sector.

Last year, Twitter snapped up Lucky Sort, an analytics company founded by Noah Pepper ’09, for an undisclosed sum.

Now two other local tech firms founded by Reedies—Puppet Labs and Urban Airship—have been identified as likely candidates to go public in the next year.

CB Insights, a venture capital database that tracks activity related to private companies, speculates that both Puppet Labs and Urban Airship are poised for an IPO, or initial public offering—a critical step in the life of a tech start-up, much like a Broadway debut for a young playwright.

Puppet Labs, founded by CEO Luke Kanies ’97, is an information technology company whose primary product, Puppet Enterprise, provides a platform for transparent and flexible systems management. The company employs 190 people and is headquartered in the Pearl District.

Michael Richardson ’07

Michael Richardson ’07

Urban Airship, founded by Michael Richardson ’07 and three partners, provides services for mobile developers and publishers with push notifications, location-based marketing, and analytics. Michael is the company’s EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) technical director.

Reed’s growing prominence in the Portland software scene is all the more remarkable because Reed offers no computer science major. Luke majored in chemistry, Michael majored in political science, and Noah in economics.

Dozens of Reedies have infiltrated the Portland tech sector, including Merrit Quarum ’81 at Qmedtrix, Christopher Grant ’83 at Tripwire, Steven Swanson ’84 at Elemental Technologies, Ted Slupesky ’89 at Plasq, Stacy Westbrook ’97 at Webtrends, Erin McCune ’03 at Integra Telecom, and Juliana Arrighi ’07 and Brent Miller ’00 at New Relic.