Young Alumni Return for Skeptics Forum

Four young alumni returned to campus on January 10, to discuss their lives and experiences after Blair, lending career and college advice to current students. Alumni speakers include fashion designer Christine Mayes ’03, restaurateur Shaun Mehtani ’02, investment banker/financial analyst Akhil Garg ’02 and electrical engineer Cara Levy ’04.

Christine Mayes ’03 – Artist and Fashion Designer
Christine Mayes graduated from Parsons the New School for Design in 2007 as a Golden Thimble winner for excellence in design with academic honors and a BFA in fashion design. Christine has worked for industry heavyweights such as Bill Blass, Ruffian and Thom Browne and has made great contributions to the success of these fashion houses. Under the direction of Thom Browne she created custom garments for prominent figures such as Kanye West, Cindy Sherman, Malcolm McLaren, Michael Maharam, John Demsey, and Damon Dash. Her work has been featured in four major publications, two of which have been published by Conde Nast. She also attended Columbia University during the summer of 2009 and completed post baccalaureate MFA courses in fine art.

Shaun Mehtani ’02 – Restaurateur
After graduating from Blair in 2002, Shaun continued his education at the Stern School of Business at New York University (with fellow Skeptics speaker Akhil Garg), majoring in economics and marketing. While at Stern, he interned/worked for Dolce & Gabbana as well at the Ritz-Carlton New York. Upon graduating from Stern, he expanded his family's existing restaurant business by opening two restaurants (Mehndi & Ming II) as well as a bar (SM23) in Morristown, NJ. In the fall of 2009, Shaun enrolled at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Upon graduation, he took over the Mehtani Restaurant Group, including five restaurants, a bar, a banquet hall, and an adult day care center.

Akhil Garg ’02 - Investment Banker / Financial Analyst
Akhil Garg graduated from New York University's Stern School of Business in 2006 with a bachelor of science in finance and marketing and minor in politics. While at Stern, Akhil gained exposure to a variety of areas in the financial services industry, working on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange (for Peter Reinhardt, husband of former Blair faculty member Jenny Reinhardt), for the accounting division of insurance provider MetLife and for the mergers and acquisitions hroup at Merrill Lynch. Upon graduating from Stern, Akhil joined Goldman, Sachs & Co., working in the firm's asset-backed securities finance group. Akhil is an associate focused on the financing and securitization of consumer assets. He earned his CFA charter in 2010.

Cara Levy ’04 – Electrical Engineer, Critical Systems
Cara Levy graduated from Bucknell University in 2008 with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering. Since graduation, she has been working for PowerCon, an engineering firm that provides a wide range of design and testing services, specializing in large power distribution systems, emergency power systems, mission critical applications, data centers, trading floors, and disaster recovery sites. The firm, based in Manhattan, serves many Fortune 500 companies in the tri-state area, and has satellite offices around the country and internationally. Cara has worked on electrical designs, short circuit and arc flash studies, overcurrent protective device coordination studies, power quality studies, electrical equipment commissionings, and thermal imaging studies.

For a listing of upcoming Skeptics programs, please click here.

Updated 1/11/12

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