364 Boyer Ave
Baker Center, 2nd Floor
Walla Walla, WA 99362
Meet the Alumni Board
Evan Jones ’97, President, is the Director of Business Development for United Educators Insurance Company, in which former Whitman Trustee Janice Abraham is the President and CEO. Evan is originally from Cheverly, Maryland and was a Sociology major at Whitman, and was a two-year co-captain of the men’s basketball team, a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity and the Black Student Union. After graduation, Evan served as Assistant Men’s Basketball Coach, Admissions Officer and Director of the Intercultural Center at Whitman before moving back to the Washington DC area. Evan now resides in Pasadena, CA with his wife Adrienne and is excited to give back to Whitman as a member of the Alumni Board.
Email: EJones@ue.org
City: Pasadena, CA
Term Expires: 2022
Since moving to Portland in 2006, Ben Kubany ’05, Vice President, has sought to bolster the local Whitman community, attending or organizing over 30 alumni events. Professionally he’s led teams of designers and developers at interactive agency, Fashionbuddha, Portland’s news weekly, Willamette Week, and software innovator, NAVEX Global. Currently he leads a team of web developers at enterprise WordPress agency, 10up. As a volunteer he’s served on the boards of non-profits PDX Pop Now!, Willamette Light Brigade, and Young Audiences of Oregon and Southwest Washington. Beyond his Politics major, Ben credits study abroad, ASWC, KWCW, and ballet, for helping shape his personal and professional story. Savoring freshly imported breakfast tacos, celebrating anyone’s wedding, and serenading grandparents with oldies at cruise ship karaoke are a few of his most cherished pastimes. His mission on the alumni board is to reinforce the cross-generational value of the Whitman experience.
Email: kubanybq@alumni.whitman.edu
City: Portland, OR
Term Expires: 2023
Emily Arneson '06 has Whitman, quite literally, in her blood: her grandparents, James '50 and Mary Null Boule '50, met and married at Whitman. Arneson was a Sociology major with a French minor and a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma. She studied abroad in Paris and worked in the bookstore all four years in college, including as its student manager. She has spent the last six years in her home town of Spokane with her daughters McKenzie, Addison and Avery.
Arneson earned her law degree from the University of Washington School of Law and, after seven years as an attorney in private practice, serves as the Community Ombudsman and Accessibility Officer for the Spokane Transit Authority. She serves on the board of the United Way Emerging Leaders Society and has served a variety of roles in the Junior League of Spokane as well as the Spokane Young Lawyers Division of the Spokane County Bar Association. Additionally, she is an associate class representative for the Annual Giving Office.
"I feel a responsibility to give back to Whitman, as it has given so much to me; serving on the Alumni Board would be an ideal way for me to support the College," Arneson says. "I believe that alumni are the strongest ambassadors of an institution, as the successes of the alumni reflect upon the quality of education provided by the school."
Email: emily.arneson@outlook.com
City: Spokane, WA
Term Expires: 2022
Samantha Howell Barnhart '04 is an excellent example of what it means to be an engaged alumni from a distance. She has served as an Associate Class Representative for nearly 20 years and attended every one of her reunions, also serving on the committee for her 10th. She has been a mentor to Whitman students for the past several years. Sam is the Pro Bono Director at Southern Legal Counsel in Gainesville, Florida.
Theatre major Aaron Blank ’01, has been an active Whitman alumnus in New York, where he works as a producer for Penguin Random House Audio. He has organized events and helped fellow Whitties connect with other alumni professionally. Blank was active in the Whitman Drama Club, worked with Off-Campus Studies and the Coalition Against Homophobia, and took part in several Harper Joy Theatre productions. He wanted to join the Alumni Board to help strengthen the northeast alumni community and to help future students have “the same opportunities that I had through Whitman.”
Email: whitmanaabpres@gmail.com
City: New York, NY
Term Expires: 2022
Laura Bales '89 credits her strong ties to Whitman alumni to the fact that she lived in numerous places across the U.S. and in Singapore; she made a point of making and maintaining those connections that helped her feel not quite so far from home. Now back stateside, Bales lives in the Tacoma area with her husband, Geoffrey Dugan, and sons Eli and Seth.
A Psychology major and member of Kappa Alpha Theta while at Whitman, Bales has held various roles - paid and volunteer - from college admissions, fundraising and grants writing, to managing digital and print communications. She has worked for Knox College, the MacArthur Foundation, Seattle Art Museum, Microsoft Asia Pacific's Citizenship team. She now serves as the Upper School Admissions Director at Annie Wright Schools in Tacoma.
Bales began her Whitman volunteering as a member of the Senior Committee and later served as a associate class representative. She chaired the Seattle Whitman College Alumni Club in the early 2000's, planning and marketing alumni events. In 2014, Bales co-chaired the Class of 1989's 25th Reunion Fundraising Committee (from Singapore), successfully raising more than any previous 25th reunion class. (FROM SINGAPORE!).
"Being on the Alumni Board provides an opportunity for me to give back to Whitman and engage a broader community in a much larger way than I have been able to contribute previously," says Bales.
Email: emily.arneson@outlook.com
City: Tacoma, WA
Term Expires: 2022
Jane Carmody ’14 is an environment, natural resources, and energy lawyer in Seattle, Washington. At Whitman, Jane was a Politics major and credits her interest in law to several internships she was able to obtain as a student, including for a congressional campaign in her hometown, Albuquerque, New Mexico and in the U.S. House of Representatives. Outside of academics, Jane was involved in Residence Life as a Student Academic Advisor and Senior Resident in Jewett Hall and was also a member of ASWC and Model United Nations. One of her favorite activities as a student, however, was working for the Penrose Library Circulation Desk (the true hub of social activity) during all four years. Jane is deeply connected to Whitman and the greater Walla Walla community. She visits Walla Walla several times a year to see her dad, a ’75 alum, and her little sister, Class of 2022. In 2018, Jane married Phoebe Horvath ’14 in Walla Walla with their reception on the Reid Side Lawn.
Email: jane.carmody17@gmail.com
City: Seattle, WA
Term Expires: 2023
City: Seattle, WA
Term Expires: 2023
Robert Street Clark '07 has been a volunteer for Whitman in multiple ways; from working with Whitman applicants in the admission office, to serving as a class representative and associate representative since graduating, he is a committed champion for the College. Robert is an upper school dean at the Kinkaid School in Houston, Texas, working with high school students on academic advising and the entirety of the college search process.
Tyler Dann ’00 lives in his hometown of Anchorage, Alaska with his wife and two children and works as a Fisheries Geneticist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He has worked in fisheries since graduating and currently uses molecular tools to advance salmon conservation and sustainable fisheries management. Tyler was a Politics/Environmental Studies major and member of Beta Theta Pi while a student at Whitman, earned a MS in Fisheries from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and is pursuing a PhD from the University of Washington with a focus on salmon genetics. As a member of the Alumni Board, Tyler looks forward to giving back to Whitman and helping the College meet the challenges of our time.
Email: tylerdann@gmail.com
City: Anchorage, AK
Term Expires: 2023
City: Anchorage, AK
Term Expires: 2023
Adam Delgado '12 joined the Board for a three-year term on July 1, 2021. A politics major, he is currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area and works as a User Experience Researcher at Facebook, Inc., where he co-founded the new Community Trust & Safety team to focus on equitable engineering and product development. Previously, as a Product Researcher at Instagram, he supported launches of the COVID-19 and US 2020 information centers, helping millions of people find vaccines and register to vote. Since graduation, he has worked for Google, Cooley, International Monetary Fund and Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington, D.C. Adam is also an alumni fellow of Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT), a national nonprofit supporting career development and advancement for underrepresented students, and participates in the MLT Ascend program to support early persistence and career readiness for first-generation, low-income college students. He has supported and advocated for first-generation, LGBTQ and students of color on campus through the Intercultural Center and was the first student representative for diversity and inclusion to the Whitman Board of Trustees. With his service on the alumni board, Adam hopes to connect with alumni and advance the current diversity, equity and inclusion efforts of the college.
Email:
City: San Francisco, CA
Term Expires: 2024
Nehali Dave ’13 is a management consultant and chief of staff helping expand Slalom's global reach by opening new markets, measuring sales and partnerships, and acquiring new talent. Prior to her career in consulting Nehali took an interdisciplinary approach working in digital advertising with Razorfish and investment management with Smead Capital. At Whitman, Nehali was an Economics and Mathematics major and passionate about many parts of campus as an Outdoor Program and Scramble Leader, CEO of the Whitman Investment Company, Membership Chair of Kappa Kappa Gamma, and active member of the Entrepreneurship group. Though based in Seattle, Nehali is an avid traveler and often exploring the world for work related and outdoor pursuits.
Email: nehali.dave@gmail.com
City: Seattle, WA
Term Expires: 2023
Bruce J. Jones, a History major, continued his education at Wesleyan University and Cal Berkeley. He was a public school educator for thirty-seven years before joining Whitman’s Office of Admission in 2005 as the New England Associate Director of Admission, working from his Cape Cod home. Bruce and his wife, Maggie Sullivan, hosted several alumni clambakes and Bruce helped organize Class of ’67 50th and 55th reunions as well as the 2018 Track & Field/Cross Country reunion. A prolific writer, his novel, Slow Eddie: a Cape Cod story, was published in 2010. At Whitman Bruce ran cross country and track and was co-captain of the ’66 Cross Country team that took third place in the national championships. He was an RA at Jewett Hall and a political activist involved with Civil Rights.
Ellie Klein ’10 currently resides in Seattle, Washington with her husband Nicholas, and works at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where she evaluates the impact of K-12 Education investments in order to improve student outcomes. She previously lived in D.C. where she worked at the Government Accountability Office, the Brookings Institution and the Aspen Institute. At Whitman, Ellie was a Rhetoric and Film Studies major and an education minor. She was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and Hillel Shalom, Public Events Chair and a senator for ASWC, and an admissions tour guide. As an Alumni Board member, Ellie hopes bring generations of Whitties together and gather feedback on how to enhance alumni engagement.
Email: ellie.anne.klein@gmail.com
City: Seattle, WA
Term Expires: 2021
Shireen Nori '16 joins the board as a young alumni representative. Her eagerness to serve on the board stems from the dynamic and rich experiences she had as a student, including ASWC, Power & Privilege, Whitman Inclusion & Diversity, and Schwa, to name just a few. She hopes to continue to empower her peers to thrive in all aspects of their student life and beyond, particularly queer students and students of color. Shireen is the Organizing Director at Kairos Fellowship in Seattle, where she started as Program Manager in September 2020.
Paulina Oceguera ’06 is an integrated communications strategist and corporate reputation manager. She lives in Portland and most recently led external communications for transportation electrification initiatives at Portland General Electric. Prior to that, Paulina worked on traditional and social media campaigns for corporate clients such as 3M and FedEx at Ketchum Public Relations in New York City. She is a first-generation college graduate earning her degree with a double major in Politics and Spanish Literature. At Whitman, Paulina served as a student leader in various organizations that focused on diversity and advocated for equity on campus. She enjoys spending time with loved ones, musicals, sunny days, talking about mental health, reading, and dancing. Paulina hopes to elevate the voices of alumni from underrepresented communities and support accessibility efforts as a member of the board.
Email: oceguera.paulina@gmail.com
City: Portland, OR
Term Expires: 2023
Alumni
