Jan. 28, 2020: Ray ’82 Defends Trump in Impeachment Trial; Olympian Sharkey ’13 Retires

Kat Sharkey ’13 retired from the U.S. women’s national field hockey team after a nine-year run that included a trip to the Olympics in 2016. Sharkey is pictured second from left above, celebrating her goal against Peru in the Pan American Games last August. Read more in her hometown newspaper, the Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Citizens’ Voice.

Attorney Robert W. Ray ’82, who succeeded Ken Starr as the independent counsel investigating President Bill Clinton nearly 20 years ago, joined Starr on President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team. — The New York Times

Alex Halbardier ’08 is the chief customer officer of Dallas ride-hailing service Alto, which is trying to stand out from its competitors via slow growth and clearer profitability. — Texas Monthly
 
Mason Morfit ’97 is the newest CEO of the activist investing fund ValueAct Capital, succeeding the firm’s founder, Jeff Ubben, who has become chairman. — Financial Times
 
Investor Carl Icahn ’57 is backing a bid to replace the entire board of HP to facilitate a merger with Xerox. — The Wall Street Journal

“The book is the act, or the performance, of a teacher: Although written with graceful precision and sly wit, the book retains a tone of orality that, to me, is distinctly reminiscent of Perez’s voice — in particular, his classroom voice.” 

— Richard Brody ’80 reviewing The Eloquent Screen, the last book of his late friend and former cinema studies teacher Gilberto Perez *67. Read more in The New Yorker.

The nine nominees for two open seats on Florida’s Supreme Court include Jonathan Gerber ’80, currently a judge on the state’s Fourth District Court of Appeal. — Tallahassee Democrat
 
Reagan-era solicitor general Charles Fried ’56 believes the Trump Administration has abused executive power and that the Senate has a duty to fairly consider impeachment. — Newsweek
 
Personal effects of Alan Turing *38, including his Princeton diploma, were recovered in Colorado, 35 years after being stolen by a fan of the late computer-science pioneer. — The Daily Mail
 
MIT professor Sili Deng *16 is analyzing how soot is created in an effort to improve the efficiency of combustion-based power plants. — MIT News
 
Michael Goldberg ’92 was named executive director of Case Western Reserve University’s new Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship. — Crain’s Cleveland Business
 
Some pro-life Catholics want to cut ties with businesses that match employee donations to pro-choice nonprofits, but Boston College professor M. Cathleen Kaveny ’84 argues that these boycott movements don’t necessarily align with Catholic tradition. — The Washington Post
 
Research by NIH doctor Aaron Cypess ’92 indicates that usage of the drug mirabegron could lead to growth of beneficial “brown fat.” — National Institutes of Health
 
Monica Youn ’93 began her career as a lawyer. Now, she’s an award-winning poet and back at Princeton as a lecturer in the creative writing program. — The Big Bend Sentinel
 
Composer and music historian Robert Greenberg ’76 has spent nearly 30 years providing crash courses on classical music for audiences of the Alexander String Quartet. — Hoodline San Francisco