Demography Alumni and Friends

The following alumni are grouped in cohort order, starting with cohort 1 in 1979. Please send us updates as your information changes and let us know if we have made a mistake in your name or cohort (some of this information comes from ancient records!). Trainees and visitors are being added in based on their first year with the Demography department. Note that all webpage links open in new windows.

Cohort 1, entering year: 1979

Bashir Ahmed
Caren Ginsberg

Much of my work since finishing up at Berkeley has been centered on public health, public hospitals and health care quality and safety. After a stint at the CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, I served as the Assistant Director of Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology and as the Director of Injury Epidemiology and Surveillance at the New York City Department of Health. After leaving New York City for Washington, DC, I joined the National Public Health and Hospital Institute (the non-profit research affiliate of the National Association of Public Hospitals) as Vice President for Research, where I directed and designed studies about the nation's public hospitals and the vulnerable populations they serve. Currently, I work at Westat, a survey design and research company in Rockville, MD. Most of my work now concerns patient safety, and quality of care in nursing homes. I have an 8 year old son, Rodion. I miss my Berkeley days and friends there! (March 2008)

Lorraine Helms

I was so excited to happen across the Demography Home Page and cannot believe how big the program (now a Department) has become! I was the first M.A. due to an unplanned pregnancy in my first year at Cal!! My daughter, Claire Helene Avitabile, will be 27 in April and lives in Minneapolis. I am unbelievably proud of her, she graduated with honors and Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College with a degree in theater. She is artistic director of her own theater company (Twin Cities Theater Company, tctwentypercent.org) and teaches theater.
An M.A. in demography did not grease my path to a well paying job so, as a single parent, I initially went back to psych nursing for a couple years at Herrick Hospital. I moved back to New England in 1988. I found a job at an HMO where I both my nursing background and new demography skills were very useful. I wish I could have completed the doctoral program, but it just wasn't in the cards for me. I have thought about coming back to CA to pick up the path and get that degree, but retirement on the beach is more enticing!

Muhammen Lecky
Prasun Sen Gupta

Cohort 2, entering year: 1980

Robert Chung

As of Fall 2007 I'm back in the Demography department for a few months, teaching Demography 110 as a visiting professor. As a member of cohort 2, it's quite disturbing teaching the students of cohort 29, though it has allowed me to move into second place on the all-time list of those who have taught 110. I have been working mostly in health policy for the last decade and a half, and was teaching health policy and modern approaches to data analysis at Sciences Po in Paris, where Magali (cohort 8) and I have been living for most of the past 6 years. We have two daughters, Emily, now 8, and Juliette, almost a year. As (nearly) always, e-mail will reach me if sent to Robert Chung. (October 2007)

Patrick Galloway
Harry Hesselgesser
Omar Khasru

For the last six years I have been working as the Special Assistant to the Vice Chancellor (President) of North South University (NSU), the first and premier private university in Bangladesh.(May 2005)

Lily Lee

Cohort 3, entering year: 1981

Yen Chen
Katrina Galway
Shelley Lapkoff
Jeffrey Thomas
Frank Zimmerman

Cohort 4, entering year: 1982

Robert Lipton

I have been writing poetry. Among my books are A Complex Bravery and Bearing Witness to the Promised Land. I saw Ken Wachter at one of my poetry readings at Black Oak Books in Berkeley last year.

Giv Nassiri
Eduardo Rios Neto

Current position: Professor, Department of Demography, CEDEPLAR - Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil.(February 2004)

Cohort 5, entering year: 1983

Carl Boe
Alfredo Cuellar
Futoshi Kinoshita
Li Ying Li
Farzanah Zayan Roudi

I left the Graduate Group in Demography in the spring of 1987 to come to Washington (where my parents and sibling lived and I had lived before) to do a summer internship at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). Since then I have been working at PRB (www.prb.org). I am currently director of a project that deals with the Middle East and North Africa region. I have two boys, now 25 and 25 years old. Both were in diapers when I started the demography program at Berkeley!
Farzaheh (Nazy) Roudi, Project Director, MENA, Population Reference Bureau, Washington DC. (November 2003; updated November 2006)

Andrew Ruppenstein
Zhen-Ming Xie

Cohort 6, entering year: 1984

Jorge Bravo

Over the last 2 years I have been working as Regional Advisor for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) of the U.N., which is headquartered in Santiago, Chile. In my current position I am in charge of mobilizing and negotiating technical cooperation projects for the entire commission, in subjects ranging the whole substantive spectrum of the mandate of ECLAC, from macroeconomic and international trade policies to environment and natural resources, including social policies, and, of course, demography and population issues in general. My plans for the near future are to switch back again to a position more in line with the kind of work I did since I graduated from Berkeley, centered on technical assistance and research in the area of population and development.(November 2003)

Jasna Capo
Markos Ezra
Hans Johnson

I am a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco. I don't miss Berkeley, because I still live there. I am married to Bettina Nicely and we have two children (Alexander 10 years old and Blake 5 yers old). I do miss my friends and colleagues from the Demography Department.(November 2003)

Joseph Lau
Eiko Saito
Ping Tu

Cohort 7, entering year: 1985

Tanya Mann

Cohort 8, entering year: 1986

Magali Barbieri, magali@demog.berkeley.edu

After completing my Ph.D. at Berkeley, I got a research position at the French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris, working mostly on the demography of developing countries (Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia, with a growing emphasis on Vietnam). In 2006 I returned to Berkeley with a joint position between INED and the University of California to work partly on John Wilmoth's mortality project. My specific job is to reconstruct long term statistical series of deaths by cause in a handful of industrialized countries. I continue with my previous research the rest of the time. As for my personal life, I got married to Robert Chung a few years back and we are now the proud parents of Emily, 8 years old, and Juliette, 10 months old. (September, 2007)

Shue-Leung Chan
Branislav Djurdjev
Yongping Li
Randy Milikien

Cohort 9, entering year: 1987

Deborah Balk
Barney Cohen

I am currently the director of the Committee on Population at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. Since 1992 I have worked at the Academy on a wide variety of projects including studies on urbanization, mortality, adolescent fertility, forced migration, aging, HIV/AIDS, the demography of American Indians and Alaska Natives, and racial and ethnic differences in health. Currently I am working on developing learning partnerships with African Science Academies. (October 2004)

Christoph Lefranc
Jiang Lin
Tim Miller

I am working here in the Demography Department on Ron's National Transfer Accounts project (http://www.ntaccounts.org), an accounting system for measuring intergenerational transfers at the aggregate level in a manner consistent with National Income and Product Accounts. I also work at the Northern California Cancer Center (http://www.nccc.org) where my research focuses on cancer risk at advanced ages. (May 2007)

Cohort 10, entering year: 1988

Debra Blackwell
Kasuko Hashimoto

Here is a brief summary of my activities since I graduated: 1990 May: left UCB. 1991-1993: UNFPA Programme Officer. 1994-1999: JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) Population and Health Officer. 1999-2003: Ministry of Health, United Republic of Tanzania, Advisor. 2004 April: Waseda University Law School (Japan). (February 2004)

Yon-Woo Lee
Hiromi Ono
Rafael Rofman

Cohort 11, entering year: 1989

Beate Herrchen-Danielsen, Director, Health Information Solutions, 916 435-4676. My personal webpage is http://www.our-i-tuepfelchen.com but you must ask me for a password to get onto this site. (November 2006)
Gilbert Ko

Cohort 12, entering year: 1990

Philip Chu

Cohort 13, entering year: 1991

Michael Anderson

I finished law school last May (JD from Boalt School of Law) and I'm currently clerking for a federal judge in Philadelphia. I'm still working with Ron Lee on Social Security projections. My wife (Marilyn) and I plan to head back to the SF Bay Area some time in the foreseeable future. (October 2004)

Jin Woo Bak
Tracy Brunette
Joshua Goldstein

I finished my PhD in 1996, was Assistant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University from 1996 until 2002, and am currently Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Affiars there. I am also a faculty associate of the Office of Population Research. Since starting at Princeton, I've had the pleasure of spending a few months as visitor at INED (in 1998), at the Berkeley Dept. of Demography (in, I believe, 2000), and most recently at the newly established Vienna Institute for Demography. (November 2003)

Thet-Shay Nyunt
Jesus Sanchez

After receiving my Ph. D. in Demography at U. C. Berkeley (1996), I worked several years as Assistant Professor in the Public University of Navarre (Spain). Later, I moved at the Carlos III University in Madrid where I work as Associate Professor teaching several courses of demography in the Sociology Department. I spent several marvelous years at Berkeley studying hard and enjoying the city. I recommend everybody interested in studying demography to apply to this competitive and lovely department. Best wishes to everybody at Berkeley, Jesus. (August 2007)

Guy Stecklov
Lin Su
Karen Swallen

I'm an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin, in the Sociology Department. (February 2004)

Zhiyun Tu
Long Wang

I now live in Shenzhen, China, next to Hong Kong. Briefly, I am still running my own business; I go back to the Bay Area two or three times a year.

Cohort 14, entering year: 1992

Susan Ayasse
Michael Clune

I am a Principal Budget Analyst at the University of California Office of the President. My area of the budget is general campus instruction across the UC system and I conduct analyses and prepare reports related to enrollment planning and projections, recruitment and retention of faculty, instructional costs, and other instruction-related initiatives. (November 2003)

Chris Ertel

Co-Head of Practice at Global Business Network. (February 2005)

Reinaldo Gregori
Hans-Peter Kohler

I received an M.A. in Demography (1994) and a Ph.D. in Economics (1997) at Berkeley and I continue to have fond memories of the Demography Department and all the great people I have met during my five years at Berkeley. In the meantime, I have been the head of the research group on Social Dynamics and Fertility at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, and more recently I have become Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. In the fall of 2002, I also had the opportunity to spend a semester at Berkeley, teaching Demographic Methods 110/210 exactly ten years after I took these courses with Ken Wachter. My current research focuses on social interactions and demographic behavior, patterns of lowest-low fertility, demographic methods for low fertility contexts, HIV/AIDS in SubSaharan Africa and the biodemography of fertility. Feel free to contact me at hpkohler@pop.upenn.edu or take a look at my work at http://www.ssc.upenn.edu/~hpkohler. (October 2004)
My information is still correct, except you can drop the "Associate" and change it to "Professor" of Sociology. (November 2006)

Jose Ortega

Upon graduation I went back to Spain where I was subsequently Assistant Professor in the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Associate Professor at the Universidad de Salamanca. I was teaching Economics and doing research on demographic methods and fertility. As of November 2006 I have moved to the United Nations in New York where I am chief of the Fertility and Family Planning section at the Population Division. The work involves global monitoring of fertility, marriage, family planning and reproductive health as well as servicing intergovernmental porcesses and doing original research. I think it is a great job for a demographer, and for those of you with an international vocation there are very interesting opportunities as demographers in the United Nations and other international organizations.

Cohort 15, entering year: 1993

Minki Chatterji
Cynthia Peete
Toru Suzuki

Cohort 16, entering year: 1994

Laura Hill
Erik Smith

Practitioner at Global Business Network. (February 2005)

Lijing Yan

Hi everyone! The 5 years at Berkeley have left me with many fond memories. I hope we can keep in touch. After spending several years at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL), my whole family relocated to China this summer (June 2006). Both my husband and I now teach at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing, China. I am in the Department of Health Economics and Management. Our 2 kids (Cindi, born in 1997 and Randi, born in 2001) are doing well. We are still affiliated with Northwestern University and plan to spend each summer in Evanston (near Chicago) and maybe visit the Bay Area sometimes. If you happen to come to Beijing anytime, please be sure to drop me an e-mail (yanlijing@gsm.pku.edu.cn) -the best way to keep in touch. (November 2006)

Cohort 17, entering year: 1995

The empty cohort!

Cohort 18, entering year: 1996

My current webpage is
http://www.ined.fr/fr/recherches_cours/chercheurs/bdd/nom/Rossier+Clémentine/

Cohort 19, entering year: 1997

Edit Corominas
Christopher Crowther
Jie Huang

Cohort 20, entering year: 1998

Aaron Gullickson (first Sociology/Demography graduate!)

http://www.sociology.columbia.edu/fac-bios/gullickson/faculty.html (November 2006)

Kerry Klein

I'm still working for Deloitte Consulting and am now a Manager in their Human Capital Practice. My focus is on organizational design, talent management and the use of surveys and metrics to analyze organizational performance. I'm also engaged in some research on managing generational conflict in the workplace andd would appreciate any advice on scholarship in that area. Eric and I recently bought a townhome in Mountain View and are settling in nicely. You can reach me at kerklein@yahoo.com. Take care. (May 2007)

Jesse Moen
Gretchen (Stockmayer) Donehower

As of December 2005, I am back at Demography, working as a researcher for CEDA. I'm involved in some research projects directly but my big work challenge is to coordinate the many forecasting and simulation tools developed by our brilliant CEDA researchers. We hope to make many of these tools web-accessible with online documentation, facilitating their use by other researchers and the public. It's all about enhancing the impact of good research! (Februrary 2006)

Andrew Noymer (NICHD 1998-2002; NIA 2004-05)

Cohort 21, entering year: 1999

Adam Davis
Sara Laufer

What manifests when a humanities geek masquerading as a social scientist starts to marshal reams of data and resources for writers is the, well, resource for writers that I finished a couple of months ago. I call it Characters by the Numbers, and it includes baby names, food consumption data, historical marriage patterns, and a bunch of other facts that writers can use to create more realistic characters in their fiction work. I am selling it through CafePress.com.
In addition to my own writing, I have my "ears" website up and running now—www.whatgirl.net. My goal with the site is to give (mostly) non-elderly people resources and information for managing their hearing losses through positive examples and advocacy-related guidance. There is also information on hearing service dogs, and I am regularly reviewing closed-captioned exercise DVDs for the site as well. I am putting my hearing health care research up on the site--mostly descriptives and trends, with more on the way--and writeups on hearing health care policy in an effort to eventually mandate third-party coverage for hearing aids and assistive technology. Web site readers can submit their own writing and profiles for posting consideration too. My e-mail: sara@whatgirl.net (January 2007)

Pierre Vachon
Ryan Edwards (NIA Trainee, 1999-2002), Economics Professor, Queens College, CUNY.

Cohort 22, entering year: 2000

Peter Brownell
Omer Gersten

Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica (opens in new window)

Assistant Professor, Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Bogota.

Cohort 23, entering year: 2001

Joyce Aivalotis

I am the Executive Officer of the US Coast Guard's Integrated Deepwater System - the largest acquisition effort in Coast Guard history. The $24 billion, 25 year program's mission is to recapitalize all major operational assets using a system of systems approach. Rather than replacing resources individually, we are building a fully integrated system of air, surface, logistics, and communications assets. Some of our new platforms were used in the response to Hurricane Katrina during which the US Coast Guard rescued over 34,000 people. Once again, I'm not using my Demography skills but am using the quantitative and analytical skills I developed at Berkeley. (December 2006)

Ayesha Haroun

I am doing well - I am in my second year at Columbia Law School...I will be visiting at the end of this academic year, as I will be working at a law firm this summer in San Francisco.(November 2003)

Margarete Kulik

Well, things haven't really changed so drastically for me since the summer of 2002. I am still in Rostock, a regular PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, enrolled at Rostock University, as the institute itself cannot give you your degree. I really like it here and then I even get to see Berkeley people. Omer was here over the summer and Ken keeps coming for short visits. The world of demography is pretty small! I guess I will be here for another two years. (November 2003)

Trevon Logan
Bernardo Queiroz

I am a Ph.D. graduate (2005). I moved back to Brazil in January 2005 to start a postdoctoral position at Cedeplar/UFMG. My current research focus is on intergenerational transfers in Brazil, adult and elderly mortality in developing countries, and the impact of demographic changes on living arrangements (marriage, divorce, etc.). I am part of Ron's NTA team. Feel free to contact me at lanza@cedeplar.ufmg.br or visit my webpage, http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~lanza. I am also waiting for you to visit down here. (November, 2006)

Stacy Sneeringer
Rachel Sullivan
Daniel Williams
Danzhen You
Elizabeth Handwerker (Weber) (NIA Trainee, 2001-2005.) I have taken a job as a research economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (January 2008)

Cohort 24, entering year: 2002

Michelle Deasy
Bryan Sykes
Sarah Tom
Sarah (Walchuk) Thayer
Gustavo Bobonis (NICHD Trainee, 2002-2004)

I was a Demography Trainee at Berkeley during 2002-2004 and received a Ph.D. in Economics at Berkeley very recently - in May 2005 (I’m “PhinisheD”!). I have just moved to Toronto, Canada, to start my first job as Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto. My current research focuses on social interactions and gender relations among households in developing countries, and the political economy of education and health policy in Latin America. Feel free to contact me at gustavo.bobonis@utoronto.ca or visit my webpage at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~bobonis (December 2005).

Francisco (Paco) Martorell (NICHD Trainee, 2002-2004)

Cohort 25, entering year: 2003

Sarah Megan Heller

I am currently working on my Ph.D. in Anthropology at UCLA. (October 2004)

Hideaki Nakamura

Cohort 26, entering year: 2004

Billy Li (1/2 year coursework)
Kate Jordan

Cohort 27, entering year: 2005

Yun-Hsiang Hsu
Eddie Hunsinger

I have a webpage that I keep updated at:
http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~eddieh.

Eric Schiff

Cohort 28, entering year: 2006

Victor Lotti

questions regarding program: Monique Verrier, monique@demog.berkeley.edu	questions regarding webpage: webmaster@demog.berkeley.edu