Hello, and happy new year, Class of 2017! You’ve all been up to a lot of cool stuff this year — please don’t hesitate to reach out with all your great updates for future issues! I do have some quick news to share about myself as well — in June 2021, I was promoted to a clinical research specialist II at Boston Children’s Hospital, where I work with institutions across the country to design and implement clinical trials of adherence solutions for people with Cystic Fibrosis. I’ve been with this team since right after graduation, when I was hired as a clinical research assistant, and am beyond grateful for the mentorship I have received that has allowed me to take on this new role!
We are skipping our usual sports news this time around to bring you news about your classmate’s entrepreneurial efforts instead! First up, we have Bradford Carpentier and Gabriel Purves, who have recently been able to launch and achieve full funding for their Kickstarter campaign to bring us Cover 10 Cornhole, a new lawn game that is a spin on the classic cornhole.
Christina Robichaud G has accepted a position as economist with the EPA in the Office of Chemical Safety.
Patrick Breeding ’19G and Amber Boutiette ’19G are familiar faces to this column, after developing a cream to fight dry skin featuring a protein extracted from lobster circulatory fluid. Their company, Marin Skincare, was established last November and quickly sold out of their signature cream. Marin Skincare now has an office in the New England Ocean Cluster in Portland, which is a waterfront business incubator in Portland that is working to find other ways to grow Maine’s “blue economy.” As Patrick noted during a Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce meeting, “It’s [the circulatory fluid] creating this completely new stream of revenue for lobster processors.”
Maine Business School has featured a few of their prominent alumni this year — please check out their website to read full profiles on the alumni below!
Christine Le, who works for KPMG International Tax (where she advises multinational companies on business and tax planning decisions at KPMG’s Silicon Valley office), has been very busy since her graduation in 2017 and was featured as Maine Business School’s (MBS) Alumni Profile in June (check out her profile for more awesomeness!) She settled in the San Francisco Bay area after a couple of years of work at KPMG’s Boston and Toronto locations, and also runs a travel blog, LuxuryUnderBudget.com. Le credits much of her success to the mentorship she received and the connections she made through MBS.
Ben Smith ’19G also credits MBS for “challenging [him] to think for [himself],” which has served him well as an IT delivery manager at Unum, where he interned for two summers as a student and has worked as a business analyst since June 2017. He’s currently responsible for a software/application development team following his promotion. To learn more, check out his alumni profile (May 2021) on MBS’ website.
That’s all, folks! Keep the good news coming, and I hope 2022 brings you and yours joy.