Class Notes

Dipak Rajhansa, AB ’92, was elected chairman of the board of Feeding Northeast Florida. FNEFL covers a 12-county area distributing 35 million pounds of food and serving over 270,000 food insecure individuals annually.

Patsy McNeil, AB ’92, began a fulfilling career in emergency medicine and health care after graduating from Vanderbilt Medical School in 1996. She is currently the executive vice president, second in command, and system chief medical officer of Adventist Healthcare, a health-care organization near Washington, D.C., that is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Andrew Caplan, BSBA ’91, and Seth Fink, BSBA ’91, met as first-year students at WashU. They stayed in touch and, about 30 years after they met, traveled to Argentina with their wives and children. The trip inspired a business venture that combined their love of wine, and they purchased a small vineyard in Mendoza, Argentina, and created Dos Zetas. They started out solely making Malbec wine but have since expanded their line to red varietals, a crisp white Sauvignon Blanc and a soon-to-be- launched Dos Zetas orange wine.

Michael Syrop, JD ’90, was sworn in as public circuit defender with the Georgia Public Defender Council (GPDC) in April. Syrop began as a criminal defense attorney in Cobb County in 1991 and started his own firm early in 1995. Until his 2022 appointment at GPDC, Syrop handled cases ranging from misdemeanors to felonies, including capital cases, in superior and state courts throughout Georgia.

Kristen Galles, JD ’90, received the Stonewall Award from the American Bar Association’s Commission on Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity at the ABA’s 2025 meeting in January.

Don Woodruff, MBA ’88, MS ’88, president of Woodruff Construction, was awarded the Build Iowa Award at the Master Builders of Iowa winter conference in March. The award recognizes his outstanding contributions to the construction industry and celebrates his decades-long dedication to innovation, safety, workforce development and community service. Woodruff has been an active leader in numerous industry organizations, including the Iowa Lean Consortium and the Construction Financial Management Association.

Monica McFee, CERT ’86, BS ’87, was selected docent board chair at the Saint Louis Art Museum. She joined the art museum as a member of the 2014 docent training class. McFee is also on the board of the St. Louis chapter of the National Society of Arts & Letters and past president of Women and the Kemper at WashU. She is an award-winning marketing and public relations professional, with leadership and giving ties to numerous arts and cultural organizations.

Pete Woods, JD ’84, was recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the practice areas of commercial litigation and family law. Woods is the managing partner and a family law, business and commercial litigation attorney at the St. Louis law firm Haar & Woods, LLP.

Scott Sandford, MA ’81, PhD ’85, is currently serving as NASA’s senior laboratory astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, where he works in the astrophysics and astrochemistry laboratory. He has served as co-investigator and science team member on a number of sample return missions. These include NASA’s Stardust and OSIRIS-REx missions and the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 missions. In 2024, he was awarded a Presidential Rank Award for his work with NASA.

Larry A. Jones, Res/Fel ’81, MBA ’99, is a St. Louis–based life coach and retired pediatrician whose career has been dedicated to improving the lives of children. Recently, he was invited by MEDRIX (Medical Outreach to Southeast Asia) to present a series of lectures focused on ADHD, autism and suicide prevention at the National Children’s Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam. His presentations caught the attention of the MEDRIX president, which led to a broader opportunity to contribute to MEDRIX’s mission in Vietnam in educating health-care professionals.