From the boardroom to the sulky, one alumnus has the harness racing industry covered
My Roomie is a horse who can run. Just ask David Siegel ’80, an amateur harness driver and CEO of a company that sells horse racing data. With the horse, My Roomie, leading the way, Siegel set a North American record for amateur harness drivers on Sept. 28, 2006 at the Cal-Expo track in Sacramento, Calif. Siegel and the horse completed the mile-long race in 1:52.2.
Siegel is president and chief executive officer of TrackMaster, an Equibase company that provides handicapping data for bettors. Siegel took up competitive harness racing in November 2004 and, as of late 2006, had participated in 279 races and amassed 26 wins, 27 second-place finishes and 35 third-place finishes.
While racing another of his horses, Wastin’ Time, Siegel nearly matched his amateur record. “I fell in love with horses and harness racing almost five years ago and have been driving for the last two as an amateur,” wrote Siegel in an e-mail to this magazine. “As most of my races are against professionals, I wanted to leave my imprint somewhere in the industry. I noticed the ‘fastest amateur mile’ record in the [United States Trotting Association] record book and thought that breaking it was an achievable goal.”
Siegel, 48, lives in Palo Alto, Calif. and is married with two children. He earned a degree in economics and mathematics from Union College and master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University in 1983. Siegel is the top executive at TrackMaster, which compiles and sells data relating to harness and thoroughbred racing.
He joined the company in 1993 as a vice president for marketing and development and helped develop TrackMaster’s hand-held device. In his work, Siegel still uses basic statistical analysis learned in courses at Union. He also uses TrackMaster data to build strategies prior to races at the Cal-Expo track.
“I have access to data that, I believe, helps me figure out the tendencies of other horses,” Siegel said. “If I look at this data and see three horses have a good gait speed and like to be on lead, in a race like that, I will very likely go to the rail and bank on the fact that they will battle each other.” Siegel, who is also a long-time volunteer baseball coach, makes the two-hour drive north to the track in Sacramento about twice a month. As an amateur driver, he is not allowed to keep the driver’s percentage of a purse, but does collect the owner’s portion of the purse when Wastin’ Time or My Roomie wins.
“It’s a real rush to beat guys who do this for a living. Once I am out there on the track, I am very, very competitive. And people are betting money on you, so you have an obligation to do everything you can,” Siegel said.
The sulkies being pulled by the horse travel at about 30 mph and competitors ride less than an inch away from one another. Harness drivers are regularly hurt and sometimes killed after being ejected from the sulky and trampled by the horses.
Siegel wears a vest and helmet, but acknowledged that he is taking a risk to attain the enjoyment of the race.
A diplomat and mother of two caught up in the wake of the recent conflict between Israel and Lebanon
Julie (Jamieson) Kriesel ’93 spent several hectic weeks evacuating thousands of Americans from Lebanon during a violent conflict with Israel in July and August. Kriesel is a diplomat, or foreign service officer, at the U.S. Embassy in Cyprus, an island located in the Mediterranean Sea near Lebanon. The embassy deals with Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, said Kriesel in an e-mail exchange with this magazine. She and husband, Doug, live in Cyprus with children Jack, 4, and Cate, 2.
The family has been there since 2005 and, before that, spent three years in Vienna, Austria working as diplomats.
“The recent Lebanese crisis hit us hard as we received and processed thousands of refugees from Lebanon. In an embassy-wide effort, their food, shelter, transportation, processing and evacuation were coordinated to ensure their safe and expeditious return to U.S. soil,” Kriesel wrote.
In a two-week period in July, Kriesel joined a team of diplomats and volunteers who worked 24 hours a day to evacuate American citizens fleeing Lebanon. After several years of peace, the two nations engaged in a month-long conflict ignited by the kidnapping of two Israel soldiers and murder of three others by members of Hezbollah, an extreme Islamic group based in Lebanon. Embassy staff coordinated evacuation of the injured and identified private vessels to transport Americans from Lebanon’s ports. The team also helped set up an emergency shelter at the Cyprus International Fairgrounds that, at one time, housed about 3,000 people.
What began as an empty exhibit hall was quickly filled with containers of baby formula, bottled water, shampoo kits, diapers, clothing and food donated by local vendors. U.S. Marines set up thousands of cots for refugees who were waiting to leave. The embassy staffed the exhibit hall day and night and, with help from trained medical staff, ensured the safety and safe transit of all evacuees.
Kriesel attended high school abroad and graduated from a bilingual school in Berlin, Germany. Husband, Doug, grew up in India and England. They met in Washington, D.C. in 1997 after Julie joined the foreign service arm of the U.S. Department of State.
“We are excited to embark on a lifestyle that will expose our children to different people, cultures and languages as they grow up. While we do miss family and friends (and all of our college reunions), we have gained a special appreciation for the wonders of America and all that it offers its citizens,” Kriesel wrote.
Kriesel, now 35, was a political science major at Union College in the early 1990s and spent a term in Washington interning for U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, a Democratic congressman from Indiana. Hamilton was, at the time, head of the Foreign Relations Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The work in Washington combined with instruction from Union Professors Byron Nichols, Charles Gati and Robert Scarlet helped lead Julie into international relations.
Kriesel cited a lecture given by Nichols dealing with the interdependence of nations as a major influence on her career path.
“The U.S. economy and political climate are very much linked to world events and, in that, we exist in an interdependent state for prosperity and order. Being a diplomat allows one to witness this first-hand and have an influence not only on the future state of affairs of America, but also on the country one is serving in,” Kriesel wrote.
Griffith Hansen ’77 shares engineering lessons with young women
Jean Griffith Hansen ’77, one of the first women to graduate with a degree in civil engineering, came to Union because of Professor Gil Harlow.
Decades later, the woman known by many as “Gigi,” is still sharing with others, particularly young women, the lessons she learned from Harlow. Harlow is a professor emeritus and a 2006 Founders Medal recipient for distinguished service to the College.
“I give Gil Harlow credit for everything,” Hansen said.
“Everything” is a construction management career that began at General Electric and took her to her current role in contract dispute resolution for The Nielsen-Wurster Group in Princeton, N.J. Along the way, she made stops at U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh and Gilbane Building Co. in Providence, R.I.
Hansen said, “[Professor Harlow] drilled into us that as an engineering student, you have earned the right to be licensed and nobody could take that away. He really made us proud.” With that bit of confidence, she went on to become licensed as a professional engineer, and later earned a Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute. For most of the past two decades at Nielsen-Wurster, she has resolved construction disputes, determining who is responsible for cost and schedule overruns. It is a job that requires a diverse array of skills—engineering, business, even law. Mostly, though, her job requires problem solving skills. That’s a lesson she passes on to young girls who are considering engineering. Hansen, who is past president of the New Jersey Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers, has long been active in promoting engineering with young women. At a program last summer at Middlesex (N.J.) Community College, she told two dozen young women about the value of engineering, even for those who don’t choose it as a profession.
“I tell them that engineering is very valuable because it prepares you to organize and approach problems. It’s a great background for business, law or medicine. I knew by the time I graduated from Union that those who graduated with a degree in engineering don’t necessarily go on with it,” Hansen said.
Hansen and her three sisters grew up in Goshen, N.Y. Her parents are both still working realtors. Her father, still working at 82, is also a commercial builder. Engineering, then a male-dominated field, fascinated her. She often joined her father at his work sites while growing up.
In her sophomore year of high school, her father tried to get her a job with a surveyor. “The surveyor looked at me and said, ‘No girl is going to work with this surveyor.’ I didn’t understand why until later.”
She then offered to work—for free—for the Orange County Planning Department. They accepted. Recently, she acted as the project engineer on her dad’s current project, assisting in resolving contractor problems and interacting with a bank.
Today, she tells young women, “Engineering is for all different types of people. Male, female, and now there’s a lot of different ethnic backgrounds. It’s for you.”
After applying to a number of colleges and universities, she came to visit Union on a lark. Once here, Harlow took her in. “He just charmed me,” Hansen recalls. “And the campus was so beautiful.”
Hansen also recalls a valuable lesson from William Aubrey, emeritus professor of mechanical engineering. Aubrey taught Hansen that what’s important is not solving the problem, but understanding the problem and laying out a solution. When she took Aubrey’s class in thermodynamics, the bane of many engineers, calculators were rare and Hansen had only a slide rule.
“He let me get away with setting up the problem and not doing the math. He knew I was never going to need that slide rule again,” Hansen said.
As one of the few women engineers at Union in the late 1970s, she found good company in Allison (Donenfeld) Nichols ’77, now a program manager at Harvard University. The two became close friends and shared housing one memorable summer before their senior year in the former Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house. Hansen interned with GE. Nichols worked with the Schenectady County Planning Department. The two are among the first women civil engineering alumnae to have attended Union all four years.
Hansen shares with young women one other thing she learned after Union: the importance of family. The mother of two boys, Jon, 21, and Thomas, 17, she has been married for 26 years to Ken Hansen. Her family, including her supportive in-laws, have made it possible for her to continue her career full-time. Her life rounds out with church activities, being an elder and chairwoman of the Building Commission of the Somerset Presbyterian Church.
“There are a lot of reasons you progress in life,” she said. “But a strong family is very important.”
A Billboard music mogul
Julie (Greifer) Swidler ’79 was named one of the top 20 women executives in the music industry by Billboard magazine in October 2006. Swidler is the executive vice president of business and legal affairs for the BMG U.S. Label Group and heads up legal and business affairs for the company.
The company’s record labels work with well-known artists like Alicia Keys and Avril Lavigne and rock bands like Pearl Jam, My Morning Jacket and a new band called Say Anything. The Billboard list included MTV President Christina Norman and Atlantic Music Group President Julie Greenwald.
In the mid 1990s Swidler, while at Polygram Records, helped coordinate the Woodstock ’94 festival in Saugerties, N.Y. The event marked the 20th anniversary of the original Woodstock music festival. Since 1994 Swidler has shifted jobs and witnessed a sea change in the music industry.
“The sale of physical CDs has gone down dramatically,” Swidler said. “I don’t think we are decreasing the amount of money that we invest in new bands. The scary part is that we can’t spend as much time allowing them to start selling records. But we still try.” Digital music players like iPods can store thousands of songs and have diminished the need for CDs. That means artists like Avril Lavigne have turned to Web sites like iTunes to sell both albums and single songs. But sites like iTunes face competition from illegal file-sharing sites that allow users to download music for free.
“When I went back to my law school, the students thought it was their inalienable right to download music for free,” Swidler said. “Suddenly there was this idea that the record companies were ripping you off because of the price of music. The sad part is that these music fans don’t understand that they are hurting the music they love. They are hurting their ability to get new music.”
Swidler is a graduate of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and still lives in New York City with her husband and three children. At Union, Swidler hosted an eclectic music program on the College radio station, WRUC. She also organized weekly live shows featuring local artists at Hale House. The Friday night series was called The Coffee House.
“The funny part about The Coffee House was that I basically wrote the contracts between the college and the artists,” Swidler said.