By the Numbers
2024 Alumni Weekend and Reunions

The campus was abuzz for Alumni Weekend with one of the biggest crowds to return to campus in many years. From the weekend’s kickoff on Thursday to its close on Sunday, alumni and guests enjoyed milestone reunion celebrations along with a range of programs and activities for all: distinctive faculty and alumni award winner presentations, academic department receptions, dining on Marston Quad, alumni vintner wine tasting in Memorial Garden, fitness classes and pickleball, art, music and more!

1,515 Attendees with class years ranging from 1950 to 2021. Most attended events: Saturday All-Class Lunch (1,286); Party at the Wash (1,140); Friday All-Class Dinner (1,040); A Taste of Pomona Wine Tasting and Mocktails (994); Sunday Champagne Brunch (862); Return to the Coop Young Alumni Food Truck Fest (278).

Visit the Reunion Leaderboard at pomona.edu/reunion-leaderboard to see the number of attendees for each class and top 10 classes for Most Donors, Largest Class Gift, Highest Participation and Largest Reunion Recognition Total—or to contribute to your Reunion Class Gift. The Reunion Giving Campaign ends June 30.

See more Alumni Weekend photos at pomona.edu/alumni-weekend-photos.

Celebrating Our Distinguished Alumni Award Winners

We were fortunate to have all of our 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award winners on campus during Alumni Weekend this year to honor them in person for their remarkable impact beyond the Gates and dedicated service to the College. Read about this year’s awardees at pomona.edu/alumni-awards-2024.

Top from left: Blaisdell Alumni Award recipients Evelyn Nussenbaum ’84, Anson “Tuck” Hines ’69 and Mary Walshok ’64. Past Alumni Association Board President Frank Albinder ’80.
Bottom from left: Alumni Association Board President Alfredo Romero ’91, alumni award recipients Julie Siebel ’84, Tom Doe ’71, Kelebogile “Kelly” Zvobgo ’14, Jon Siegel ’84 and Faculty Alumni Service Award winner Donna M. Di Grazia. Not pictured: Verne Naito ’77.

The Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award:

Anson “Tuck” Hines ’69, Evelyn Nussenbaum ’84 and Mary Walshok ’64

The Alumni Distinguished Service Award:

Thomas Doe ’71, Verne Naito ’77, Julie Siebel ’84 and Jonathan Siegel ’84

The Inspirational Young Alumni Award:

Kelebogile Zvobgo ’14

The Faculty Alumni Service Award:

Donna M. Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music

2023-24 Alumni Association Board

From left, front row: Linda Luisi ’81, Robi Ganguly ’00, Nina Zhou ’19, Tricia Sipowicz ’85, Te’auna Patterson ’18, Andrea Venezia ’91, Carol Kruse ’84, Julie Siebel ’84, Jim Sutton ’84. Back row: Toran Langford ’21, Andrew Brown ’77, Michael Bright ’10, Alfredo Romero ’91, Stuart Friedel ’08, Miguel Delgado ’20, Joshua Rodriguez ’13, Soren Austenfeld ’15. Not pictured: Aldair Arriola-Gomez ’17, Marcel Green ’90, Jeff Levere ’12, Lew Phelps ’65, Amy Van Buren Rhodes ’07.

I’m Honored. Thank You!
A farewell message from the Alumni Association Board President

Dear Sagehens,

Alfredo Romero ’91

Alumni Weekend 2024 was a wonderful celebration and showcase of the Sagehen spirit, displaying the diversity of thought and broad engagement that make us who we are. I’m grateful for every alum I had the opportunity to meet or reconnect with in person, especially as my term as Alumni Association Board President is ending on June 30. A big thank you to the hardworking Alumni Association Board, additional alumni volunteers, our dedicated Alumni and Family Engagement team and the Advancement team overall, who made it possible to welcome an exceptional number of Sagehens back to campus.

And hey, I’m already excited for next year’s! If you weren’t able to join us this time, I truly encourage you to join us for Alumni Weekend 2025.

It’s been an incredible ride and an honor to serve our community on the Alumni Board these past seven years, particularly these last two as president. What a privilege to serve alongside Sagehens from a wide span of class years, geographies, backgrounds, careers and life experiences—all with the best interests of Pomona College in mind and at heart. I am deeply proud of the board’s accomplishments during my years in building engagement and reconnection within our community, including the resurgence of regional alumni chapters, our involvement in planning and boots-on-the-ground support of Alumni Weekends and, one of the best parts for me, supporting our students (and future alumni!) through career development programs and other opportunities.

Andrea Venezia ’91

And so, it’s time for me to say farewell, but I plan to continue serving our community. Please consider volunteering for the Alumni Board; it is an enriching experience. I leave you in great hands with incoming Alumni Board President Andrea Venezia ’91,
current board members and our new members, who begin serving July 1.

Yours in Sagehen service, always,

Alfredo

Alfredo Romero ’91
President, Alumni Association Board
pomona.edu/alumni-board

Photos from Alumni Weekend

More photos from Alumni Weekend are available at flickr.com/photos/pomona-college.

Monika Moore ’03

Monika Moore ’03 returned to her alma mater in March as the director of alumni and family engagement. She is an integral member of the senior team with the Office of Advancement, responsible for developing and implementing strategic oversight of Pomona College’s growing alumni and family engagement program.

Moore and her team will further strengthen Pomona’s expansive portfolio of activities and programs that engage the College’s global network of alumni, parents, families and volunteers. Working in close partnership with faculty, staff, and alumni and family leaders—including the Pomona College Alumni Association Board, Alumni Association Past Presidents Council and Family Leadership Council—Moore will lead efforts to re-envision events and programming, celebrate Pomona’s well-steeped traditions and create plentiful opportunities for engagement locally, regionally and globally. For more information, learn more at Monika Moore.

It wasn’t until after I retired in 2008 that I realized my entire career—first as a specialist on U.S.-Latin American relations, then as a theorist on global implications of the information revolution—sprang from two casual remarks by my great friend Henry Bastien ’63.

The first was in the summer of ’61, when he said, “Let’s go to Mexico for our junior year.”

If he’d not suggested studying at Mexico City College, I never would have become a Latin American specialist. I changed my major every semester my freshman and sophomore years. First it was English (gonna write a Great American Novel). Then psychology (gonna learn how minds work). Next art (gonna be an architect). And then, government (I forget why). Going to Mexico ended that uncertainty.

Soon as I returned for my senior year, I settled on international relations, with additional studies in Latin American history. I lucked out in having two terrific professors, Henry Cord Meyer and Michael Armacost, plus a fine visiting prof on Latin American history, Donald Bray. Then came Stanford University for an M.A. in Latin American studies, plus a Ph.D. in political science.

Next, on to RAND in 1972 as an analyst on U.S.-Latin American relations, mostly regarding Mexico, Cuba and Central America, plus aspects of international terrorism.

Henry reoriented my career a second time when I visited him at home in Mount Baldy Village around 1975. As I was leaving, he waved Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book Future Shock and urged me to read it. It forecast a world-changing information revolution. I suddenly wanted to work on its global implications for political and security matters.

It took me 10 years to re-educate myself and make the transition, but I finally came up with results: a paper predicting the rise of a new form of government—I called it cyberocracy—that would redefine technocracy and democracy. Accordingly, the information revolution would favor network forms of organization, making them more attractive than hierarchies as a way to get stuff done. We would live in a world of networks versus nations.

Soon after the publication of the paper in 1991, a new colleague walked into my office and declared, “David, I have a single word for you: cyberwar.” Thus began a collaboration in which we formulated new concepts for rethinking the entire future conflict spectrum with terms like cyberwar, netwar and swarming (coordinated, networked strikes from multiple directions).

Plus, I got to meet Toffler, who wrote a foreword for one of our volumes.

Late in the 1990s, we worked on broader implications for statecraft. The information age will mean that “whose story wins” becomes almost as decisive as “whose weaponry wins.” The importance of “soft power”—e.g., narrative strategy, cognitive warfare—will grow relative to the traditional importance of “hard power.” But how to express that? Hard-power strategists had their classic realpolitik concept; soft-power strategists had nothing comparable.

So we turned to a century-old scientific vision whereby Earth first evolved a geological layer, the geosphere, then eons later a biosphere full of plant and animal life, including people. In this vision first proposed in the 1920s, a third layer would emerge next: the noosphere (from the Greek root “noos” meaning “mind”)—a globe-circling “thinking circuit” that would interconnect all cultures, religions, ideologies and mentalities, thus enabling higher levels of global cooperation, but also conflict.

We saw it was already taking shape, with immense implications for strategy. So we came up with a comprehensive new soft-power concept: noopolitik as an alternative to realpolitik—and later added noopolitics as a contrast to geopolitics. All this is playing out now in the fights over Ukraine and Gaza, where both noopolitical and geopolitical maneuvering are vigorously in play.

Meanwhile, while wondering what forms of organization besides networks were important, I unearthed a new framework about past, present and future social evolution. Accordingly, societies have relied across the ages on four cardinal forms of organization: tribes, hierarchical institutions, markets and information-age networks—in that order. This framework proved immediately useful, not only to forecast cyberwar and netwar as modes of conflict, but also to herald new modes of collaboration and coordination for those such as activists in non-government organizations working on human rights, environmental and other social problems.

I wanted to finish this framework at RAND but opted to retire in 2008 and continue at home. Here’s one implication I’m still trying to write up: For 200 years, our society has had three major realms: civil society, government, the economy. In the decades ahead, a fourth—a “commons sector”?—will slowly materialize around the network form. It will become the new home for those interconnected challenges that the existing three sectors no longer handle very well, such as health, education, welfare, the environment. They will all move, and be moved, into this next realm, vastly strengthening and improving our society.

My classmate Henry Bastien and I remain great friends, with keen memories of Pomona’s value to our lives. And in keeping with Pomona College Magazine’s most recent issue, I’m sure Pomona’s emphasis on liberal arts educated me to have sufficient flexibility and adaptability to refocus my career. But I better be careful around Henry now—I’m not sure I could handle a third shift at this point in life.

Melissa Barlow ’87

Melissa Barlow ’87 was selected to the officiating crew for the NCAA women’s basketball Final Four for the 12th time in her career this past season. She called the semifinal game between eventual national champion South Carolina and North Carolina State.

Barlow has officiated on the floor in 11 Final Four games and worked as the alternate at the scorer’s table one other time. She was the senior official of the 11-person Final Four crew for the most-watched women’s Final Four in history, with viewers drawn by Iowa star Caitlin Clark and South Carolina’s undefeated season.

Mindful of staying in sports officiating when she no longer wants to run up and down the court for the better part of an hour, Barlow has now trained as an NCAA football replay official who works from the booth. This football season, she’ll work in the role of communicator in the booth in the Big Ten Conference after wrapping up last season on the crew for the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium in New York.

Mike Budenholzer at a press conference. Courtesy of Phoenix Suns.

Mike Budenholzer ’92 grew emotional as he returned to his native Arizona in May and was introduced as the new coach of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns with family members and friends from his hometown of Holbrook on hand.

“My dad, Vince Budenholzer, 94 years old, sitting here in the front row. We call him the original Coach Bud, ’71 state championship with my brother Jim,” Budenholzer said at his first news conference. “I love you, Dad.”

Budenholzer, who won the 2021 NBA title as coach of the Milwaukee Bucks and twice has been chosen NBA Coach of the Year, grew up following the Suns.

“I don’t know what the word is, surreal or wild,” said Budenholzer, who reminisced about past players including Alvan Adams, Walter Davis and Paul Westphal and “my dad taking me in the backyard and teaching me Paul Westphal, reverse pivot into a pump fake into a step-through.”

At Pomona, Budenholzer was a four-year player and senior co-captain of the Sagehens basketball team and also played golf, while majoring in philosophy, politics and economics. Though he didn’t play for former coach Gregg Popovich at Pomona-Pitzer, he spent 19 years working for Popovich with the San Antonio Spurs, first as a video assistant and then for 17 seasons as an assistant coach, helping the Spurs to four NBA titles.

He’ll be trying to get the Suns, led by Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal, to the NBA title he helped deny the Suns in the 2021 Finals.

“I can’t wait to get to work,” he said.

Robert E. Tranquada ’51

Robert E. Tranquada ’51

Public Health Advocate and Trustee
1930—2022

Bob Tranquada ’51, former chair of the Pomona College Board of Trustees and former dean of the medical school at USC, died on December 4, 2022, in Pomona. He was 92.

A diabetes researcher turned public health advocate, Tranquada was instrumental in increasing access to health care for underserved communities across Los Angeles County. He was a founding board member and chair of L.A. Care, today the country’s largest publicly operated health plan.

The son of two Pomona alumni and father and grandfather of others, Tranquada was a constant friend of the College. As a Commencement speaker and recipient of an honorary doctorate in 2007, he said, “I have been couched in the arms of Pomona College for a long time. It would be impossible to return more than a fraction of that I have received.” Awarded an Alumni Scholarship as a student, he returned much, both in service and financial support. The student health facility that serves The Claremont Colleges bears his name as the Robert E. Tranquada Student Services Center.

Tranquada’s path to medicine began early. Hospitalized with a broken leg at age 5, he was so impressed with the doctors who treated him he decided to become a physician. After graduating from Pomona College, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, he attended the Stanford University School of Medicine and joined the faculty of the USC medical school in 1959.

Tranquada’s career took a dramatic turn in 1965, when the California Army National Guard medical battalion he commanded was activated during the Watts Uprising to treat casualties of the violent confrontations between L.A. police and residents. Afterward, he was asked by then-USC Medical School Dean Roger Egeberg to head the new Department of Community and Preventative Medicine and to organize a public health clinic in Watts. Tranquada was one of the founders and the first director of the South Central Multipurpose Health Services Center in 1965 (now Watts Healthcare Corp.), one of the country’s first community health centers.

His experience in working to launch the health clinic, which opened its doors in 1967, led to a 40-year career in public health. Two years later, as associate dean of the medical school, Tranquada was appointed medical director of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. After five years as medical director, he became director of the Central Health Services Region of the L.A. County Department of Health Services.

Following other leadership positions, in 1986 Tranquada was recruited to become dean of what is now the Keck School of Medicine at USC with a mandate to develop a new private teaching hospital, today’s Keck Hospital of USC. It was while serving as dean that he was appointed to the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, better known as the Christopher Commission, formed in the wake of the 1991 Rodney King beating. He also headed the Los Angeles County Task Force on Access to Health Care following the 1992 civil unrest, which led to the creation of Community Health Councils, a nonprofit that works to promote health and wellness in under-resourced communities.

After stepping down as USC medical school dean in 1991, Tranquada held an endowed chair in health policy before becoming professor emeritus upon his retirement in 1997. During his long and distinguished career, he was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In addition to his service on the Pomona College Board of Trustees beginning in 1969, Tranquada was chair of the Claremont University Consortium board from 2000 to 2006. He served on numerous boards and was a particularly effective advocate for increasing the number of women and people of color in medicine, serving as a longtime board member of New York-based National Medical Fellowships, a member of the founding board of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and a board member of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital.

Born in Los Angeles, Tranquada was the son of Ernest Tranquada ’27 and Katharine Jacobus Tranquada ’29. He married Janet Martin Tranquada ’51 after meeting at Pomona. In addition to his wife of 71 years, he is survived by children John ’77 (Lisa Sackett Tranquada ’77), Jim (Kristin) and Kate Tranquada; grandchildren Matt ’08, Jessica and Alex Tranquada; and his sister, Carolyn Prestwich ’54.