Class Notes

Andia Augustin-Billy, GR09, GR15, GR15, was granted tenure at Centenary College of Louisiana, the first Black professor at the college to achieve the standing in its 196-year history. An award-winning associate professor of French and Francophone studies, she leads students on trips to Paris and to Haiti, where she grew up as the daughter of missionaries. Augustin-Billy’s  other research interests include analysis of gender and sexuality in 19th- and 20th-century French literature and travel literature.

Tanya Roth, GR08, GR11, penned Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945–1980 (UNC Press, 2021), an examination of how the armed forces handled permanently integrating women into the military, a traditionally understood all-male bastion. By challenging traditional gender conventions and perceived gender roles, women serving in and with the nation’s military renegotiated the meaning of equality and the place of women in the defense of the nation since World ­­War II.

Chad Fite, LA08, is vice president and head of data at Machine Learning – Data Science Company. His work centers on improving lives by deriving actionable insights from unstructured and structured data in an automated fashion. Fite has delivered keynote addresses on applying artificial intelligence solutions to industry at several conferences.

Sebastian Deken, LA08, penned Final Fantasy VI: Boss Fight Books #28. In the book, he conducts a critical analysis of the musical structures of the Final Fantasy VI video game, which pushed the Super Nintendo’s sound capabilities to their limits and launched composer Nobuo Uematsu’s reputation as “the Beethoven of video game music.”

Leana Wen, MD07, wrote Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health (Metropolitan Books, July 2021). Much of the book focuses on the work Wen did in Baltimore to tackle the opioid epidemic, improve maternal and child health, and address violence as a public health issue.

Rebecca S. Silverman, LA07, earned a master of public health degree from the University of Illinois Chicago in May 2021.

Daniel Mamah, GM07, was tapped for the Dr. John M. Anderson Excellence in Mental Health Award by the St. Louis American Foundation/St. Louis Children’s Service Fund for his significant contributions in the field of behavioral health. He is the founder and director of the Washington Early Recognition Center at the School of Medicine, which identifies and treats young people in the early course of their illness. There is no charge for the clinic’s services.

Rebecca Lester, SW07, earned a 2021 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize Honorable Mention from the Society for Medical Anthropology for Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America (University of California Press, November 2021). Lester is a professor of sociocultural anthropology at WashU.

Anne Wynter, LA06, has written two more books for children: Hands On! and One Big Day (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, January 2022). Both are board books illustrated by Alea Marley.

Alona (Banai) Fisher, LA06, and Tim Fisher, LA06, met serendipitously in Chicago 12 years after graduating from WashU. The two married in 2019 and welcomed a son, Miles Aubrey Fisher, in July 2020. The family, along with their Corgi, Dennis, resides happily in Seattle, where Tim works in transfer pricing at Amazon and Alona cares for Miles and works on contract with the Chicago Area Runners Association and Sustainable Ballard.