Department
of Economics
2001
Newsletter
Department
of Economics
2001
Newsletter
Welcome
to the second edition of the Oxy Economics Department Newsletter! For those
of you who participated last year, we're glad you're back. For those of
you who are reading this for the first time, we'll hope you'll make the
newsletter an annual habit. Our goals continue to be:
1.
to inform you about the current goings-on in the department,
2.
to keep you up to date with the activities of many of your classmates,
and
3.
to let you develop new relationships with economics majors from other eras.
This year, we're number one! That's right, the economics department graduated 61 senior majors, an all time record, to take over the top spot in the College in terms of graduating majors. In addition, the quality of the senior majors was exceptionally high. We had two seniors named to Phi Beta Kappa as juniors (out of just nine for the entire College), and we had the highest number of College Honors students in recent memory. We even were able to claim the College's male scholar-athlete of the year as a major.
The departmental faculty retains some of the "oldies but goodies" whom you might remember like Jim Halstead, Mary Hirschfeld, Robby Moore, Mike Tamada, Jim Whitney and me, but we have had some turnover at the junior level this year. Youngsters Jennifer Olmsted and Giorgio Secondi continue, but both Jean Hamilton and Colleen Callahan are moving back East, and we'll miss them both. They'll be replaced, at least for a year, by newcomers Tim Kane (who runs his own internet startup company and who will teach our first-ever course in Entrepreneurial Economics) and Jerry McIntyre (who previously taught at Vassar).
As economists, we understand that the well-being of the department is in part a function of the well-being of the College as a whole. That's why we've been immensely pleased by Occidental's strong overall performance of late. The College's budget has moved from deficit to balance two years earlier than predicted, the number of applications for admission has hit an all time high, and the percentage of alums giving to the annual fund has gone from 29% to 44% in just two years. In addition, from the new student union to the quad renovation, the campus looks beautiful. If you haven't already visited, why not plan on dropping by some time?
Well, that should do it. If you have any questions or comments about this newsletter or about any topic relating to the department, please feel free to give me a call (at 323-259-2776) or drop me a line (at <woody@oxy.edu>). I look forward to hearing from you!
Woody
Studenmund
California's Energy Crisis: Causes and Solutions
I’ve studied these topics during my sabbatical this Spring, and I’ve come up with some answers that I’ve presented in seminars and lectures in a number of settings. While the department newsletter is too small a space to allow me to cover all that I’ve learned, there is plenty of room to attempt to answer the two most important questions--why did the energy crisis happen, and how can we fix things?
CAUSES OF CALIFORNIA'S ENERGY CRISIS
1. No New Power Plants
California built virtually no new power plants in the entire decade of the 1990s. The reasons were varied: private investors were reluctant to provide funding because they feared a decrease in the price of energy, stiff environmental laws made it more difficult and more costly to build new plants, and “not in my backyard” community groups opposed the site of every proposed new facility.
2. Demand Skyrocketed
At the same time, the quantity of electricity demanded increased by almost a third. Some of this increase was caused by increases in population, but the rest happened because of changes in the amount of technology in our lives (FAX machines, PCs left on, etc.) and a shift toward high tech industry in California, particularly in the Silicon Valley.
3. Drought in the Pacific Northwest
To make things worse, the Pacific Northwest has experienced a “once a century” drought over the last two years. In normal years, the states of Washington and Oregon provide a substantial percentage of California’s energy through the use of dams and hydroelectric generators, but the drought forced the water to be diverted toward irrigation and household use and away from the production of electricity.
4. The Price of Natural Gas Rose Dramatically
The majority of California’s energy is produced by power plants fueled by natural gas, and, when the price of natural gas shot through the ceiling in late 2000, it became much more costly to operate these plants. The only exceptions were firms or municipal utilities that had signed long-term contracts that locked in their source of natural gas at a stable price.
5. The “Deregulation” of 1996
California might have come through the afore-mentioned problems with little more than a slight increase in the price of electricity had it not been for a little-publicized change in the economic structure of the state’s energy industry that was enacted in 1996. Mislabeled “deregulation,” this program let the wholesale price of electricity be determined by the market while the retail price of electricity was fixed. Simultaneously, our two major energy producers were “strongly encouraged” to sell their power plants to out-of-state energy companies at the same time that they were “strongly discouraged” from entering into long-term contracts with these companies to supply them the electricity they needed. In essence, we began buying energy on the spot market (at the margin) every hour.
When the four supply and demand shocks outlined above rocked such a sensitive market, a huge increase in the wholesale price of energy and a massive shortfall of energy at the fixed retail price followed. The result? Instant energy crisis!
PROPOSED SOLUTIONS TO CALIFORNIA’S ENERGY CRISIS
1. Blackout Warnings
If a power company is forced to turn off the electricity in a community, it’s completely reasonable to expect that power provider to inform the community precisely when and where the blackout will occur. Such notification allows people to get out of elevators, to save important computer documents, or to power up emergency generators so that the blackout will have the smallest possible negative impact on society. It’s almost criminal that, to date, we’ve had very few effective blackout warnings in California.
2. Allow the Retail Price of Electricity to Rise Moderately
To an economist, the logical way to encourage energy conservation and to stimulate the building of new power plants in the long run is to allow the retail price of electricity to rise. This policy, which was opposed by Governor Davis for months, now appears to be working; over 30% of residential customers have responded to recent price increases by cutting their power usage by 20%. To keep the price increase from having unintended negative impacts on society, however, we should protect low-income energy users by allowing households with incomes below the poverty standard to be exempt from the price increase.
One way to keep the price increase as low as possible is to raise the price of electricity only in hours of peak usage, when the threat of blackouts is large. We currently would need to install new time-sensitive electricity meters to enable such a policy, but peak hour pricing is an excellent long run policy even without the threat of blackouts, so we should begin the installation of time-sensitive meters as soon as is feasible.
3. Have the State Guarantee Long Term Contracts
California should encourage, not discourage, our major power providers to sign long term energy contracts at reasonable prices. Only a series of overlapping long term contracts can provide the state with the stable source of electricity that it needs. Unfortunately, the financial difficulties of Edison and PG&E make out-of-state energy companies wary of long-term contracts because of the quite reasonable concern that a bankrupt company cannot pay for energy it has already received. To protect all parties from the costs of this risk, the state should guarantee such long term contracts, allowing the contracts to be signed at reasonable prices.
4. Stimulate Capacity Increases
In the long run, government and business should work together to find the right mix of policies that will create more incentives to build power plants without ruining neighborhoods or the environment. In the short run, we can’t change capacity, but we can use our capacity more effectively. Currently, some older “dirty” power plants sit idle part of the year because of environmental restrictions on the amount of pollution they can create annually. If we funded the installation of emission-reduction technologies in these plants, we could increase power production (with no harm to the environment) in far less time than it would take to build a new power plant from scratch.
5. Even Out the Impact of the Energy Crisis on California’s Residents
The energy crisis has had dramatically different impacts on various parts of the state. Some California residents have experienced multiple blackouts, while others have experienced none. Similarly, some locales have experienced dramatic price increases while others have kept prices constant. While small differences are unavoidable, the state should work to even out the worst of these differences. After all, the crisis is a regional one, not a local one.
In my opinion, if we could carry out these five proposals, we’d reduce the impact of the current energy crisis on California, and we’d be on our way to becoming an energy exporter, not an energy importer, in the long run. Thanks for listening; if you have any comments or suggestions, please send me an email at <woody@oxy.edu>.
* Woody
Studenmund is the Richard W. Millar Professor of Economics and Finance and the
Chair of the Department of Economics at Occidental
College.
Three Stage Energy Alerts and Rolling Blackouts: A Simple Supply and Demand Model of the California Electrical Energy Market Mess
INTRODUCTION
For decades, both the generation of electricity and the distribution of electricity in California were undertaken in a “public utilities” market. The large utilities, such as Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison, were privately owned but publicly regulated through the California Public Utilities Commission. In 1996, various public policy makers decided to change the regulatory structure of the market. This was not DEregulation as much as it was REregulation: nearly all of the old regulations were dropped, but new and different regulations were added. In this article, I will describe the basic nature of reregulation and develop a supply and demand model that captures the essential elements of how California arrived at its current energy mess, replete with alerts and rolling blackouts.
I. THE REREGULATED MARKET
The essential elements of the reregulation begun in 1996 are:
(1) It required the utility companies to sell off their generating capacity and to buy from private generators the electricity they distribute to final users. Hence, the “utilities” are now only distributors of electrical energy, not generators.
(2) A fixed price, Pf in Figure 1, is set by reregulation for sales of electricity to final users whose demands are represented by Df. Consumer groups accept the fixed price because they are protected from price rises in the future, but not, it turns out, from shortages (blackouts). The utility companies like the fixed price because they inaccurately forecast falling spot prices, Ps, of the electrical energy they purchase from private generators.
(3) Reregulation prohibits the distributors from entering into long term purchase contracts with generators apparently for fear that long term contracts would not allow the distributors to benefit from falling spot prices. This means that distributors must buy their energy at prevailing spot prices, Ps.
Figure I also includes a certain amount of reserve capacity for the distributors represented by the emboldened, horizontal line, ab. For simplicity, I assume that the absolute amount of the desired reserve remains constant. The total demand, Dt, is obtained by adding the desired reserve amount to final user demand, Df. The short run supply of energy, S, provided by the generators of energy becomes completely inelastic at some point showing that if no new generating capacity is added to the industry, the total quantity supplied will reach a maximum at Qm. I assume that in the beginning, the regulated fixed price, Pf, for final users is set equal to the prevailing spot price, Ps96. Therefore, in the beginning, the total sales revenue received by distributors from final users equals the amount the distributors spend on electricity sold to final users. This allows for a “normal” profit from electricity distribution services.
Figure 1: In the Beginning, c. 1996
II. THE MARKET REACHES THE “POINT OF ALERT,” c. 1998
As time passed, demand by final users grew rapidly, principally because of the robust California and national economies. However, there was no new significant addition to generating capacity. There are many reasons why capacity did not rise. First, building new high tech generating plants is a lengthy and costly business; second, a variety of environmental concerns, ranging all the way from what to do with dangerous wastes from nuclear generating plants, to air pollution problems from coal, oil and natural gas burning plants, and even to protecting the spawning salmon from hydroelectric generating plants in the Pacific Northwest, slowed new production; and, third, the NIMBY, or “not in my back yard,” movement blocked erection of new plants. As a result, spot prices began to rise, to Ps98 in Figure 2, while final user prices remained at Pf. Because of the increasingly inelastic supply and the constancy of Pf, the distance between Df and Dt had to grow in order to maintain the reserve capacity, ab. Figure 2 pictures the market just at the point where the supply curve becomes completely inelastic. Any further growth of final demand will begin to erode reserve capacity because the quantity supplied cannot increase, and distributors are required by law to provide the quantity demanded by final users at the fixed price, Pf. The stage is set for energy alerts.
Note also that the sales revenue received by distributors at price Pf fell short of the distributors’ expenditures on energy at Ps98. The utilities began to operate at a loss, and debt began to accumulate.
Figure 2: An Intermediate Stage, c. 1998
III. ALERTS AND BLACKOUTS, c. 2000, 2001
As final user energy demand grew beyond Df98 in Figure 2, it began to erode the desired reserve capacity of the distributors. In Figure 3, final demand has grown to Df00. Since distributors are required to provide quantity Qf00 but can only purchase Qm, their reserve capacity falls below the desired reserve by the amount cb. Distributors were able to provide final users with the quantity they demanded, but distributors also began to issue energy alerts, indicating that reserve capacity was perilously low. And distributor debt continued to grow amid warnings from generating firms that they might not continue to supply California distributors with electricity unless they were assured that the distributors could pay down some of the debt. Meanwhile, Wall Street became jittery about the financial solvency of the distributors and downgraded their credit ratings.
Figure 3: The Energy Alert Stage, c. 2000
Eventually, the final demand for electricity grew to the point that reserve capacity was gone. Figure 4 shows final demand Df01 at which the quantity demanded by final users is Qf01. However, this exceeds the available quantity supplied of only Qm. The only resolution to the excess demand is to institute “rolling blackouts.” We have arrived at the California energy market mess.
Figure 4: The Rolling Blackout Stage, c. 2001
* Jim Halstead is Professor of Economics at Occidental College.
Faculty News
Last year was Jim Halstead's first year in the College's Early Retirement Incentive Program. Under this program, professors teach reduced workloads with a proportionately smaller reduction in salary. He will continue to teach his favorite classes: Principles of Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy and the History of Economic Thought. Jim continues his work as Director of Academic Advising for the College, and last year he served with Jim Whitney on the College's Subcommittee on Finance and on the Trustee Investment Committee. During spring semester, Jim substituted as Department Chair while Woody Studenmund was on leave. This past year was a little slow for brewpub touring, so Jim's total has risen only to a little over 375. He promises to do better this year. Most late Friday afternoons and early Friday evenings, Jim can be found sitting in the "post" position at Crown City Brewery; he says he'll buy you a beer if you stop by to see him at the Crown.
Mary
Hirschfeld
has had a last minute change of heart, and will be staying at Occidental for at
least the next year or so. She looks forward to further developing her Senior
Seminar, which explores the philosophical underpinnings of Economics. While this
sounds a bit obscure, the class is actually a lot of fun -- a chance to think
about what it really means to be rational, and what the point of all that
constrained maximization really is. In addition, she has begun
discussions with faculty in the Philosophy and Politics departments about the
possibilities of establishing a new major in Politics, Philosophy, and
Economics.
In more fun news, Mary continues to spend her
free time tracking down her 3 wacky cats and her 1 completely crazed dog.
There's a chance she'll be filming an episode trying to win Ben Stein's money
this August -- though she is not at all optimistic about her chances in such a
challenging setting!
Robby Moore spent the entire academic year teaching at his alma mater, Pomona College. While he thoroughly enjoyed his experience, he reports that "there is no place like Occidental," and is happy to be back. He also participated in the AEA Poster Session in New Orleans in January. He served as the external reviewer for the Scripps College Economics Department in November, and has been hired by Trinity College (Connecticut) to consult with their Economics Department in the fall. Along with several other economists from Southern California, he was selected by the AEA Committee on Instruction to run a Regional Teaching Workshop, to be held at Claremont McKenna College. Robby continues his research on the economics of stock options (see last year's newsletter), and looks forward to his newest challenge, serving as President of Faculty Council.
Jennifer Olmsted just completed her first year as a visiting professor at Occidental college, after a two year break from teaching, in which she was a researcher with the federal government. In addition to teaching principles and intermediate economics, and developing a new course on Industrial Organization, Jennifer managed to edit a book, as well as a quarterly newsletter, during the past year. She also enjoyed trips to Florence, Italy, New Orleans, and Orlando, where she presented aspects of her work in Middle East economics. Over the summer, in addition to getting lots of research done, Jennifer has been working on two new courses which she will teach this coming year. The first is a section of the senior seminar, dealing with race and gender issues in the global economy. The second is a core class, team taught with English professor Dan Fineman, titled Culture and Economics. This course will involve studying how economic issues are portrayed in literature.
Giorgio Secondi was pleased that his third-year pre-tenure review went well and that his contract with the college was renewed for three more years. He taught principles, comparative and transition economics, intermediate macroeconomics, and economic development. He hadn't taught development in a while and was reminded of how much he likes sharing with students his passion for this material. Giorgio's paper on the economics of biased male/female ratios in China was accepted for publication in the Journal of Comparative Family Studies (it will be published in 2002). For the second year, Giorgio served as the Faculty Associate in Newcomb, and had a wonderful time hanging out and playing ping pong with the residents. He also became the Oxy Liaison for the Luce Scholars Program, a prestigious national scholarship that allows a handful of college graduates nominated by their alma mater to live and work in Asia for one year. Giorgio was thrilled when the two alums nominated by Oxy were both selected as winners for 2001-2002 (Harvard and USC were the only other schools in the country to have two winners).
Woody Studenmund spent his Spring semester on sabbatical doing research on the California energy crisis, and he has given four seminars and public presentations on his findings. In the Fall, he once again served as department chair and taught applied econometrics and managerial economics. The fourth edition of his econometrics book has been very well received; sales have almost doubled even though the third edition was the best-selling elementary econometric text in the world. He continues to serve as the College's Director of Institutional Planning and as the chair the all-College Planning and Budget Committee. In his spare time, Woody serves as a little league coach for son Scott (11), takes piano lessons with daughter Connell (7), and sings in the Occidental-Foothill Master Chorale.
Mike Tamada continued as the Director of Institutional Research. Projects included a survey of graduating seniors, using panel data to study the relationship between schools' graduation rates and admit rates (percent of applicants admitted), and measuring departmental workloads (econ faculty workloads were high). Mike usually teaches one class per year. He continues to advise the men's Ultimate Frisbee Club and for three of the past four years has traveled to Potlatch, a large coed Ultimate tournament, to play with the Oxy reunion team.
Jim Whitney recently tried a full-scale online version of the consumer theory part of his Intermediate Microeconomics course, complete with step-by-step diagrams. Some students appreciated online access to the complete course notes, but overall, so far at least, the chalkboard wins again. Jim also served as the Chair of the faculty's Subcommittee on Finance (SCOF) in academic year 2000-01, a particularly challenging time in light of the College's recent budget difficulties. Fortunately, Occidental's financial situation has improved considerably, so Jim hopes for a more upbeat environment for his upcoming, final year as SCOF Chair. The year ahead is also "decision year" for his daughter, Cami, as she enters her senior year in high school and gets serious about her college decision.
Please
click on the class year you are interested in or scroll down the page to
look at all of them
Note:
Names
in blue
are clickable and linked to e-mail addresses or personal web pages. Names in purple
are not clickable (contact Giorgio
Secondi if you wish to get in touch with these alums).
| 1957 | 1958 | 1963 | 1964 |
| 1966 | 1967 | 1968 | 1970 |
| 1971 | 1972 | 1975 | 1976 |
| 1977 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 |
| 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1990 |
| 1991 | 1993 | 1995 | 1996 |
| 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 |
| 2001 |
Ronald
Oswald worked for Kemper Insurance and then for Los Angeles Unified School District for 36 years as an administrator. After retirement in 1996, he has been doing interim
administrative jobs and consulting for the school district, and leading seminars for new administrators. He is in his second year as an adjunct professor at Oxy in the Education Department. His four kids have all finished college. He and his wife travel around the country in their
motor home at every opportunity.
Well, Lee
Helie tried to retire but just spent 4 months in Manhattan building a retail store called The Childrens Place. Betsey,
his wife, class of 1965 (Economics) is off for the summer from teaching in Santa Ana, only 2 years to go.
Their daughter, class of 1991 (Political Science) is expecting in August. She sells for Bristol-Myers. This week
they are leaving for our ranch in Northern California for two weeks. He would imagine that if the birth goes as planned
he probably will work part time this fall and winter in California or Ore. or Wash. or Nv. or Ariz. but who
knows.
David Young is Professor of Accounting and Control at the Boston University School of Management and is a visiting faculty member at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he teaches executive education courses on management for physicians. He has a new book in press with the working title
Management Accounting for Managers: An Interactive, User-Oriented Focus. He also is revising (for a 7th edition) his text (co-authored with Robert N. Anthony)
Management Control in Nonprofit Organizations. And he is shopping a new book with the working title
Leadership in Action. For additional details see http://management.bu.edu/research/fac/ad.asp.
Pat McNally applied his economics for 26 years at Accenture (Andersen Consulting) where he led part of the strategy formulation practice, and the world wide productivity measurement practice.
Currently he teaches Lab Classes at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
Recently he spent two years working with econ professors from Berkeley and the University of Chicago in building an internet based MBA program.
Randy Bartlett is currently a Professor of Economics at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Before coming to Smith he taught at Williams and the University of Washington and also spent two years working for the Federal Trade Commission. He has three children--one just out of college, one just in, and the youngest starting to look.
John B. Doolittle enjoyed his first full year of retirement, traveling and trying to improve his golf (#$%@&). He and Nora took a trip to Portugal and Spain in the Spring and are returning to Spain and France in the fall to sail the coast. He is still the Director of the Homewood Volunteer Ski Patrol at Lake Tahoe which keeps him busy in the winter. Nora and he continue to wonder how they had any time to work. It was good seeing friends at the 35th reunion.
Dave Milam is founder and CEO of CAUSAE CORP., a firm dedicated to coaching executives and management teams in personal and organizational evolution and transformation. He entered Oxy as a math/physics major.
Although he dearly loved his intro classes in psychology and philosophy he stayed with the #'s as an
economics major graduate, and with a Masters Degree from Harvard Business School with a
financial emphasis. Now he sees himself as a business philosopher-psychologist. Creating value through improved goal driven people dynamics is the thrust of his consulting/coaching practice.
He and Carol married his senior year at Oxy and continue to grow young together. They lead faith-based small groups and cancer workshops for patients and their caregivers. They are enjoying their adult children: John, a craftsman and artist, Joel, a
Ph.D. candidate in behavioral research in health outcomes and positive psychology at USC Medical School, and Deana, a Masters candidate in Public Policy at UCLA.
Family, writing poetry and multidiscipline reading are his favorite pastimes.
Proving that the best laid plans do sometimes work out, Jim Dunlap and family are moving to Lima, Peru from Bolivia on August 14th. Once in Lima, he will take up USAID Regional Contracting Officer duties for Peru, Ecuador and as of the present, Colombia. Anyone interested in development economics would have a field day analyzing today's Bolivia, to wit: the damage being done to the Bolivian economy by blockades and business activity interruptions on the part of indigenous groups bent on getting a piece of the action, in juxtaposition with the political leaders trying to negotiate settlements who have minimal credibility due to corruption and less than sterling performances. Not pretty.
Wally Frank reports that consulting for companies in the Saudi Arabian high tech market continues to be both interesting and frustrating. Wally's most significant news is that his son graduated from the Taft School in May and will be a freshman at Oxy this Fall.
Jeanne Ormsby (who was married while at Oxy and you may have known then as Jeanne Gibson) is living in Arlington, VA and is VP of Finance & Administration for Red Hot and Blue, a chain of BBQ restaurants. She and her husband are almost done renovating their house and enjoy having 3 of their 4 children nearby.
Robin Smith and family (Lynne, w/twins Chris and Lauren) have been living in beautiful Mill Valley, California enjoying all the benefits of a small town and lots of outdoor recreation. After 20 years in the sporting goods industry in senior positions with firms like Cutter, Avia and Mizuno, he took a major step into the dot com world 5 years ago. As an early pioneer at Fogdog.com, he helped build the strategy, develop alliances and take the company public. The company was sold 6 months ago. After some time off for trips, and a little consulting, he is now looking for a new challenge. (Ideas anyone? Retirement seems sooooo foreign.) He and his wife are finding out what the teenage years are all about, but wouldn't change it for anything in the world. "It all passes so quickly."
After more than 30 years 'doing' and managing technology, Mike
Wolfstone has semi-retired to spend time with his 3 grandsons. Skip children and go directly to grandchildren! Now consulting for small businesses on a
part-time basis, he is able to enjoy life and still keep up with the ever-changing wave.
Reed
Johnson works as a research economist in health and environmental
economics. He recently moved to the position of principal economist at Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina after several years as vice president for research and development at Triangle Economic Research.
John
Garner's
employee benefits consulting firm (Garner Consulting) moved to larger office space last year, but is still in Pasadena. John continues to
crank out new editions of the Health Insurance Answer Book. He is President
of the Employee Benefit Planning Association of Southern California. He is chair of the Community Education Committee for the Los Angeles Division of
the March of Dimes. As chair of that committee he sits on the Los Angeles Program Services Committee for the March of Dimes, which caused a scheduling
conflict that meant he had to resign from the Board of Directors of Occidental Business Associates.
After graduation from Oxy, Wayne
Lau was a George Baker Scholar at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and received
his MBA (Finance) in 1974. Moving back to Seattle, he had various commercial and mortgage banking jobs, all in the beautiful Pacific NW (Seattle and Portland). In 1990,
he helped start a commercial bank with a special niche in the immigrant Asian community.
He moved last year to a waterfront condo with a gorgeous view of downtown
Seattle. He enjoys running, inline skating, and tennis.
Lorraine (Anderson) Dunlap attended graduate school in Italy, and has been employed for 24 years at Hewitt Associates, a Human Resources consulting firm. The majority of her work there has been in designing and conducting on-going salary surveys in a number of industries and countries. Lorraine's husband of 20 years, Roger, is a commercial real estate appraiser, and they have 2 daughters.
In January of 2001, Kathryn Shaw left the White House as she finished the year and a half she had spent there as a Member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. Her period of
government service began with Senate confirmation hearings, which were fortunately anti-climatic, and proceeded to cover a full range of micro and macro issues. She spent much of her time working on proposals on the Hill, on issues of health care tax deductions, immigration, social security, the budget, and was quite impressed with the degree to which economic reasoning and research did shape policy proposals. In addition, as Member, she often worked on events with President Clinton, and was quite impressed with his command of the economics and politics behind all issues. Monthly meetings with Alan Greenspan also displayed the economics and the art behind monetary policy (Kathryn had worked at the Federal Reserve Board years ago). Kathryn has since returned to her position as Professor in the Business School at Carnegie Mellon University, and returned to her three kids and husband who stayed behind in Pittsburgh.
Tom
Ratkovich
is the president and founder of ASTECH InterMedia, a Denver-based marketing technology and consulting firm specializing in the media industry.
After a brief stint as a corporate attorney, Robyn L. Mosman Bahlinger
is now a financial planner with Towneley Capital Management in Laguna Hills, California. She lives in Huntington Beach with her husband, Michael, a dentist, and her two children, Justin, age 9 and Lauren, age
6.
After years of working for non-profits,
Bill Snider joined the corporate world in a big
way (IBM) when his daughter was born. Five years later, he is senior copywriter/editor for Brann Blau agency in Durham, NC. He is an avid viewer of "The Good Life" and may soon jettison the corporate
perks to open an artisan bread bakery.
After receiving her MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA,
Sue Schroeder spent several years working in the financial services industry. In 1997, she made a career transition into management consulting. She currently works at SCA Consulting in Los Angeles which specializes in aligning the interests of shareholders and managers. SCA works with companies worldwide who are interested in identifying the factors that drive value, developing performance measures
and target-setting systems, and designing compensation systems that reinforce business objectives. Currently, Sue is doing research on how companies are dealing with the economic slowdown from a performance measurement and compensation perspective. For more information on this issue, visit
www.scaconsulting.com or contact Sue. Sue stays active with Occidental through her
participation on the Alumni Board of Governors.
Mike Cornelison is working as an Account Manager for BP (British Petroleum) Company in Downtown Los Angeles. He lives in Torrance, California with his wife Cathy (Smith), who graduated from Occidental in 1989. He has 2 daughters named Ashley (age 5) and Sarah (age 3).
Marion Fong is currently a Partner in the Real Estate Advisory Services
Group at Ernst & Young. She has three children, ages 8, 5, and 3 months.
John Hall is happy to report that his first child, Elizabeth Anne Hall, was born on July 13. He's still with Kaiser Permanente, though he's now a Project Manager based in Redwood City, CA.
In August 2000 Grey
(Guy) Staples moved with his family of four to Irvine, California. He and his wife, Lisa, have a son, Noah, who is five and a daughter, Emmy, who is 15 months. Grey is a corporate strategy consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, specializing in the energy industry.
Erich Marx currently lives and works in the SF Bay area for Nissan North America. He is married (Michele) and has two girls (Makenna 5 & Audrey 2.5). He is interested in hearing from Oxy classmates, but doesn't necessarily want to talk about economics.
Gary
Skraba
recently resumed his position as VP-Marketing at First Financial Credit Union in
downtown West Covina -- if there's an uptown West Covina, please let him know.
He just finished a 15-month stint in the dot-com world, where he experienced
B-to-B, B-to-C, B-to-B-to-C, and plenty of B&B's. He's still
apartment-dwelling in Pasadena (listed only for FBI-tracking purposes), and
otherwise is simply enjoying life, rationalizing that he won't hit his mid-30's
until he is 38.
Joe Downey is quite busy these days. In addition to working a traditional 8 to 5 job, Joe has opened his own business with partner in crime Bill Olson. The name of the business is Chevelle Specialties, where Joe and Bill specialize in 64-72 Chevelles and El Caminos. Currently Joe works his own business at nights and on the weekends. The initial response has been very good; they have more work than they can handle. In his spare moments, he spends time with his wife Elizabeth Hollis '93 doing home improvement projects on their house in Scottsdale, Arizona. He has kept in touch with classmate Tim Tierney who recently purchased a 71 Chevelle Convertible and had it worked on by Chevelle Specialties.
As the Managing Director of The Colony Theatre Company in Burbank, CA for the past 10 years, Amanda Diamond has been integrally involved in transforming the 26 year old Equity "99-Seat Plan" company into a legitimate, professional regional theatre operating under full contract with Actors' Equity Association. This process has involved her in contract negotiations with Equity, the labor union representing professional stage actors, and with Burbank city officials who built a new theatre for The Colony in 2000. In her spare time, Amanda has been planning her wedding which will take place in Santa Barbara on September 30th when she will marry Douglas Bashaw of Ventura.
After graduating from Occidental, Randy Gerchick went on to UCLA Law School where he served as an editor of the law review and obtained his J.D. degree in 1994. He now practices business litigation and insurance coverage law at Latham & Watkins in Orange County. Randy lives in Tustin with his wife Aneeta Kumar ('88), and three children, Ryan, Marissa and Darren.
David
Montesano currently lives in San Francisco where he is a principal with Agent, a branding and communications company that specializes in brand strategy for non-profits. He is planning to move to Amsterdam in September to develop his international communication skills working with Greenpeace's European headquarters as a marketing consultant.
After graduating from Oxy, Kristi (Peroff) Lefforge joined KPMG Peat Marwick, where she worked for five years in the tax and audit departments. Kristi continued her accounting classes in the evening at UCLA extension and became a CPA in 1997. She left her Corporate Tax Manager position at KPMG to work for one of her clients as the Manager of Financial Operations. Kristi has continued to stay involved with Oxy as a former member of the Board of Governors and most recently as a participant with the CyberTigers. She and her husband, Kevin, live in Pacific Palisades.
Helen
Hsin Nakamoto took 2000 off to study for the CPA exam which she has passed. She began working as a tax accountant in January 2001 at Nishihama & Kishida, CPA's, Inc., the largest local accounting firm in Hawaii. She still has her real estate license, but will concentrate on accounting as her career. She managed to get a week off during the busy tax season to marry Kirk Nakamoto. Unfortunately, they have not figured out when to go on their honeymoon yet. Although living in Hawaii could be a life long honeymoon itself.
Kyle Patino was recently promoted to Assistant Vice President at the investment banking firm, George K. Baum & Company.
After completing her master's degree at Georgetown University, Karina Ramos accepted a position as an international trade specialist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service. She recently passed the foreign service exam and hopes to move overseas in the near future.
Yady (Garnett) Guardado is still at Oxy! She just received an MBA with an emphasis in international business from the University of Phoenix Online. Now she's ready to get out into the real world. Any job offers are more than welcomed!
Lisa
Yang
recently moved back to Los Angeles after a four-year stint in San Diego as a law student, then a new attorney. She is currently working as a litigation associate at Lim, Ruger & Kim, LLP in downtown Los Angeles, practicing business and commercial litigation. If you're in LA, drop her a line at
lisajyang@hotmail.com - she'd love to hear from you!
As of August 2001, Pieternel Barel will be attending the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University to study for a master's degree in public policy.
Keegan McNamara now resides in the Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego. He was recently promoted to Senior Consultant at Robert Charles Lesser & Co., and continues to telecommute from his home office. New hobbies for Keegan include surfing, beach boot camp, and brewing some of the county's finest beer.
After graduating from Occidental,
Paulette Palafox joined the Oxy Admission staff where she worked for 3 years. You might have heard from her at some point as she was the Alumni In Admission Program Coordinator and Admission Campus Event Coordinator. This year, she's accepted a position as Assistant Director of Admission at (our bitter rival) Whittier
College (HA!). If you are interested in information about applying to colleges and universities, please do not hesitate to contact her.
Shaun Beaudette is currently living in beautiful Santa Barbara and works in the Defense Industry for Raytheon Systems Company, where he is a Program Financial Analyst. He currently works on several contracts involving a new Radar Warning Receiver for the F-18 Falcon. Recently, however, he has been focusing his attention on the implementation of a new Financial System, which he enjoys immensely. Shaun has still been very much involved in baseball and has also rekindled his passion for surfing.
Sara Bushey just finished 2 years living and teaching English in Japan, and now will spend the next 6 months traveling Asia--to Thailand, South Korea, China, and ultimately landing in Nepal to participate in a language-training/sustainable development work camp for almost 3 months, before returning to the US to plan the next adventure.
Matt Crawford is still working for the City of Los Angeles. He is working his way up the promotional ladder, and is now the Budget Analyst for the Animal Services Department and the Ethics Commission.
Well, all in all the year has been just smashing for Brendon Friesen. He only used the word "smashing" because he is studying at Oxford University in England right now and the Brits seem to say that a lot...that and "cheers". It's a five week comparative law program that his school has been running for the past fifteen years. Prior to coming to Oxford (a great little town by the way), he had been running around Europe visiting Madrid, Salamanca, Granada, Alicante, Valencia, Barcelona, Lussanne, Munich, Prague, Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Cinque Terre, Siena, Rome, and London. Brendon embarked on this incredible journey after completing his first year at Ohio State law school. He has met some great people and is looking forward to his second year back in Columbus, Ohio. This third person thing is a little weird. Cheers, folks. Hope all is well.
Yvonne (Viera) Garcia currently works for a hospital management company in Pasadena, CA. She is a senior financial analyst within the IT organization. In June 2001, Yvonne and her husband purchased a home in the San Fernando Valley. She is hoping to enroll in an MBA program by Fall 2002.
After spending 2 years working for Deloitte Consulting and its venture capital arm DC Ventures, Jon Lanning has returned to academia. Beginning in Fall 2001, Jon will begin his pursuit of a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Michigan. He is spending his summer in Ann Arbor attending a series of workshops that explore math as used by professional social scientists. It is his hope that in the span of a mere 5 years he will earn his doctorate, at which point he will look to obtain a professorship.
Talia Starkey is working as a features reporter at the San Gabriel Valley Weekly, a weekly features supplement to the Los Angeles Times. She recently moved from Pasadena (where she was living with Oxy alum Andrea Azuma, also class of 1999) to a new place of her own in Altadena. She is still running and plans to start doing more freelance writing this fall. Last year, Starkey earned her Masters in Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Justin Tran has been working as a senior finance associate at Community Partners, a non-profit located in downtown Los Angeles after a year and a half. During the workday, Justin daydreams about his weekends.
After graduating from USC with a Master of Accounting,
Laurie Zane began working for PricewaterhouseCoopers as an auditor. She enjoys life in Hawaii with her boyfriend but wishes there were more time to go to the beach. In the meantime, she is praying that she will pass her CPA.
Christina Burbank is working for Viacom Consumer Products, which is the licensing group for Paramount Pictures. She is living is West Los Angeles with her boyfriend, Niko, and her psycho cat, Feynman.
Kirk Kaminsky is presently working as an investment banker for Lehman Brothers in San Francisco. After almost a year of all work and no play, he is spending his spare time giving back to mother nature by volunteering at PREA (The Preservance of Rare and Exotic Animals). He is mostly focused on the resurgence of the Hawk species because as he puts it, "Hawks simply bring me happiness and I feel everyone should have the opportunity to be around the fascinating bird on a regular basis".
Mikkel Louie is working for Fidelity Investments in Bellevue, WA and plans to return home to the Bay Area sometime this fall at the San Francisco Investors Center.
Sean Miller has fought through his first year as a financial analyst with the Financial Analysis group of Toyota Financial Services. Having been hired into a special rotational program, Sean will rotate to the Competitive Intelligence division of the Strategic Planning department at the end of July '01. In his spare time, Sean continues to pursue his education with courses from UCLA Extension.
Conor McNamara is starting his second year as an analyst with Lehman Brothers Investment Banking. Because of the slow markets, Conor has had more free-time to pursue his career as a professional golfer. Conor lives with Kirk Kaminsky (c/o 2000), but doesn't see him very often, as Kirk spends most of his free time volunteering at a local bird shelter.
Matt Mihm is working in Century City at Economic Analysis and will soon be a homeowner in the Highland Park area. Matt will soon be leaving the insipid and depraved world of corporate litigation and begin teaching in the L.A. area.
Brian Reich is moving to England where he will attend graduate school to study the effect of the fork and knife on early Byzantine Empire.
Charlotte Rich is currently absorbing the beautiful Hawaiian sun and culture while planning a move for this fall to mountainous (and cold!) Denver, Colorado. Hawaii has afforded Charlotte a wonderful atmosphere for her post-graduation year of contemplation and relaxation. After a few months of substitute teaching, mostly with the Head Start program, she settled into a job with the University of Hawaii's grant writing program, Creating Futures. She will continue pursuing a career in the not-for-profit, educational sector in Denver. Any contacts out there? Aloha!!!
Jennifer Sakurada has been at Fireworks Pictures for over a year now. She is working as the Coordinator of International Collections in the sales/collections department for the international film company. The company is co-releasing "Rat Race" on August 17th and is expected to be a strong release for both Fireworks and Paramount. Most of all she likes dealing with the international clients from around the world, and hopes to start traveling to the film festivals in the next year or so.
Arman Sertyan is working in business development for a Pasadena firm that is run by primarily Oxy rugby players and other oxy alums, who have teamed up with Cal Techy software developers and are planning to take over the world some time in the next couple of years...
Ha Thai currently lives in San Francisco and works as a Client Executive at Burson-Marsteller, a Public Relations firm. She is also studying for GMATs and is preparing to apply to Business School.
Caroline van Oosterom is living in West L.A. and working at the Los Angeles Make-A-Wish Foundation as a Wish Coordinator.
Stephen
Vitalich graduated from USC's Leventhal School of Accounting in May 2001 with a master's of business taxation. He recently moved back to his home town of Seattle and has begun working as an associate in Arthur Andersen's Tax and Business Advisory practice.
After traveling in Spain, Christina Ahn returned to living in Northridge. Christina is currently working as a Loan Officer at the Small Business Administration Department at Pacific Union Bank in Los Angeles.
Kevin Armstrong lives in the beautiful hills of Mt. Washington with Arman Sertyan ('00), Matt Larson ('00), Chad Karthauser ('01) and Jeremy Castro('99). He is presently working as a buyer/manager for Federal Metals Co. in Los Angeles.
José Arzate went to Buenos Aires (aka Paris of Latin America) for a week after graduation, and had a fabulous time. He's been working at Aplomb Consulting for the last two months, and loves it! Aplomb is a Marketing and PR Consulting Firm in San Francisco. He will be taking the GMAT this fall, and plans to attend b-school Fall 2004. He would love to hear from yal! His email is JoseA2@aol.com.
Olivia Gin is still living in Los Angeles currently working at Aon Risk Services (insurance brokerage) as a Documents Specialist in Downtown. She hopes to attend Grad school soon, that is if she can afford it!
Kristian Kratz is currently serving as "The Masked Crusader" for Los Angeles. He enjoys a mild mannered life during the day. Come dusk, he dawns a black cape and cowl to prowl the streets cleansing them of vermin. The image of his shadow leaping between buildings is a symbol of safety. Fear not.
Bess Pope is working as an event coordinator at Stanford University for the Dean of Students office.
Demaree Raveaux has accepted a position as a member of the 2001-2002 JET program teaching English for the Japanese government. On July 28th Demaree will depart for Kurisawa, a farming town of 7,000 on the Northern island of Hokkaido.
Doug Schnell is attending law school at Cornell University.
Heather Thompson will be working for the next year in New Zealand and Australia as part of a work abroad exchange program.
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