Santa Clara Magazine

Gordon Brion ’85 writes: “I always think of the great experience I had at SCU. It gave me the option in life to pursue a near life-long dream. Specifically, a path to becoming a physician. I never take that for granted. It is a remarkable honor that people trust me with their actual lives at times. Also, my patients have helped me over the years, and that was an unforeseen and unexpected benefit. I am grateful to have been in such an inspirational environment and met such great friends along the way. It made me think big.”

David Bowlby ‘85 is the chairman of the Alamo Municipal Advisory Council, an advisory body formed last year that gives recommendations to the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors and planning agency on issues that affect Alamo. He's also a current member and Chair-elect of the Contra Costa Council Board of Directors, and serves on the Board of Trustees for the ÿDe Marillac Academyÿ, a nonprofit school for underprivileged kids in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. He founded and directs the Bowlby Group, an advocacy firm in 2005 to provide consulting for communications and messaging, crisis management and community outreach issues. Clients include Safeway and California State University, East Bay. Bowlby has an economics degree from SCU and previously had a career in real estate.ÿ For two years he was a congressional aide for current U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Affairs Ellen Tauscher, whom he says remains one of his closest friends.

Ellyn Bloomfield MBA '85 has been appointed Registrar at Lincoln Law School of San Jose. Lincoln Law School is an evening law program in downtown San Jose. Previously she was employed in the lending and mortgage industry.

Mike Blach '85 reports that his company, Blach Construction, was ranked #1 in the "Best Places to Work" in the Greater Bay Area in the Large Company category (100-499 employees) by the San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal and the San Francisco Business Times.

Andrew Bewley '85 has picked up stakes and moved to Tennessee, where he will be taking a position as Director of Sales for the Compass Efficient Model Portfolios, an institutional and retail asset manager. He and his wife are expecting their first child together, and seventh overall, in December. They reside in the Chattanooga area, where Andrew's oldest son is a junior at the University of Tennessee campus, and only two hours from the University of Alabama where his second son has just started.

Debbie (Evans) Baker B.S. '75, MA '85 wishes to announce that daughter Julie Baker received her MBA from Santa Clara in June 2009. Subsequently, she married Ryan Broms at the Mission Church on Oct. 3, 2009. In addition, Debbie and her husband, Paul were blessed with their first grandchild, Logan Swirsding on Jan. 22, 2009. His parents are Debbie and Paul's older daughter, Katie, and her husband, Dave. Debbie lives in Los Altos, Calif., and is a volunteer with Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County working with the clients of the Refugee Resettlement Program and has had a Bhutanese family and an Iraqi woman living with her and her husband within the last couple of years. Life is great!

Joseph Alvarnas '85 is an associate professor of medicine in the division of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation at the City of Hope in Duarte, Calif. He is also the director of Quality Systems for Experimental Cellular Therapeutics, overseeing quality assurance for T-cell, hematopoietic stem cell and gene therapy-related therapeutic cell manufacturing at the City of Hope.

Joe Allanson ’85 writes that he was recently appointed to the board of regents at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco. Joe is an alum of the high school and his son is currently there. Joe is the corporate controller of salesforce.com in San Francisco. He's been with salesforce for the past nine years and has helped grow the company from 400 employees to over 8,500 today.

Merlene (Medeiros) Akau '85 continues to live in Hawaii with her beautiful 17- and 19-year-old daughters. She is a human resources professional and oversees the Benefits Section for the State of Hawaii, Department of Education.