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Growing up in Portland, Ore., Max Podemski ’06 became interested in urban planning at a very early age. “Portland has a reputation for progressive urban planning, and every day I’d read The Oregonian and decided that’s what I wanted to study,” he recalls. “I also wanted to go to a liberal arts college, so Occidental checked those boxes for me.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times journalist and Emmy Award recipient ’74 returned to campus March 1 for an invigorating conversation with Larry Mantle, the host of AirTalk, the longest-running daily talk show in Southern California. Their far-ranging discussion, co-hosted by the Times and  newspaper, touched on famous interview subjects, changes in the media landscape, and the importance of storytelling.

Tamás Lengyel, professor of mathematics, died February 6, 2024. He was 73. Tamás graduated from the prestigious Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary, in 1974 and earned his Ph.D. in mathematics, with a specific focus on probability theory and statistics, from Eötvös in 1979. Prior to moving to the United States in 1986, he worked as a research associate, a research fellow, and a head of department for the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Greetings from the Alumni Board of Governors Career and Mentorship Committee! Our committee is dedicated to fostering meaningful connections among alumni and between alumni and students, empowering individuals on their professional journeys. Through a variety of networking events and professional development opportunities, both in-person and virtual, we strive to create a vibrant community that supports career growth and mentorship at �ƹ���Ƶ.

After graduating from Occidental as an economics and Spanish literature double major, José Francisco Silva ’84 was among a core group of alumni “who not only realized Latinos did not have networks in place but did something about it,” Sophia Izquierdo Garbellini ’85 wrote following José’s death in 2008. “He is the reason there is a Latino Alumni Association.”

Jon was one of then-President Ted Mitchell’s first hires, coming to Oxy after 16 years as vice president for development and external affairs at Claremont McKenna College. During Jon’s tenure, overall giving to Occidental grew from under $9 million to more than $25 million annually. Of the College’s 10 all-time best fundraising years up to that time, seven happened on Jon’s watch. Jon and his team played a pivotal role in restoring Occidental to solid financial footing at a critical juncture in the College's history.

By any measure, 2023 was a milestone season for Occidental men’s soccer—the Tigers’ first regular-season SCIAC title after 56 years of conference play; its first SCIAC Tournament championship; two historic wins in the Division III Men’s Soccer Tournament; All-SCIAC laurels for eight Tigers (First Team honorees Evan Karp ’24, Andrew Notter ’25, and Joey Schwartz ’23, and Second Team selections Oury Diane ’25, Lukas Howlett ’24, Vicente Navarro ’26, Riley Nyhan ’25, and Max Stanley ’25). Lafaurie and his assistant coaches (Brian Wright, Fabien Segalini, Ernesto Ramirez,

During his 11 years as president of �ƹ���Ƶ, John Brooks Slaughter habitually took his phone and correspondence to the benches outside of his office in the Arthur G. Coons Administrative Center—so often that trustees installed a plaque that read “John Slaughter Cigar and Conversation Bench” to commemorate his retirement in 1999. As students headed back to their residence halls after their morning classes, he later recalled, “Many of them would come sit down on the benches and we'd talk.

Even before he arrived at Occidental, Ben Bauermeister ’82 knew the name Brigida Knauer—“Brig” for short. “My mother had met Brig at a seminar at Bryn Mawr the summer before my freshman year,” he recalls. At the time, Knauer was associate dean of students at Oxy, and “my mom had basically warned Brig to keep an eye on me, which she did.”

As a senior history major at Occidental, Gary Kaplan ’71 served on the search committee to fill a full-time faculty position, with an emphasis on Asian studies, in the History Department. “I was specializing in American and Far Eastern history,” he recalls, “so that’s probably how I got the gig.”