Class Notes

Dianne Chong, SI98, was named to the inaugural class of the Women in Manufacturing Hall of Fame by the Women in Manufacturing Association. The inductees were chosen for their significant contributions to the advancement of women in manufacturing. Chong, who is retired from Boeing, is vice president of the board of directors of SME (formerly the Society of Manufacturing Engineers). [See pg. 46 for a profile on Chong.]

Deborah Patterson, HA97, was elected to the Oregon State Senate (District 10) in 2020 and named chair of the Senate Health Committee. Patterson writes that she is grateful to WashU for the opportunities she has had in health care over the years and is looking forward to this new challenge.

Mark Pankoff, GA97, SI98, was promoted to executive vice president of the financial firm Wellington Shields & Co. In his free time, Pankoff and his wife, Rebecca, keep busy with their quartet of 5-year-old to 10-year-old children. In 2020 Pankoff coached his son’s squirt hockey team to a championship, lowered his golf handicap and mastered the fine art of creating French braids. 

Ron Eisenstein, LA97, co-founded The Solas Group, which was recognized by Tableau Software as the leader in fundraising analytics. Solas presented with its client, University of California, Berkeley, which raised a school record of $1B+ last year, at Tableau’s Higher Education Summit in December 2020.

Mark Pottinger, LA95, is associate professor of musicology and chair of the Department of Music and Theater at Manhattan College in New York City. The department recently implemented a new program in sound studies that combines the science of sound — acoustics, sound production and digital audio recording — with music theory and musicology.

Carlos Narváez-Hasfura, GL95, GL97, managing partner of Jurídicanh Abogados in Mexico, was recently named president of the Iberoamerican Association of Privacy Law.

Meenakshi “Mini” Wadhwa, GR94, director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, was awarded the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 2021 Lawrence Smith Medal, given every three years for recent original and meritorious investigations of meteoric bodies. According to NAS, “Wadhwa has deepened the world’s understanding of the evolutionary history of the solar system through her significant contributions to the sciences of cosmochemistry, solar system chronology, meteoritics and trace element geochemistry. Her work has elevated the science and knowledge of the evolutionary history of the solar system, and she has advanced scientific understanding of the geologic history of Mars.”

Megan Flanagan, GR94, took a five-year hiatus from work to take care of family health matters. Now she is working part time as an editor with EditSprings as she pursues full-time work in the field of seismology. Flanagan writes that she is pleased with the support and encouragement she has received as she reboots her network of colleagues.

Jalmeen (Makkar) Arora, LA94, is in private practice as a psychologist in Lafayette, Calif., specializing in the treatment of trauma and dissociative disorders.

Doug Lane, LW93, joined Global Compute Infrastructure as CFO and managing director. The company recently acquired a data center business in Poland, its first acquisition.