President’s Message: April 2023
April 2023
On behalf of the Yale Club of South Florida (YCSF), I am pleased to offer you, our valued members, an update on the Club and its activities.
True to form, our energy and momentum from a busy 2022 has carried us into 2023. And we’ve been recognized for our efforts! This past November, the Club received an Excellence Award for Programming from the Yale Alumni Association at its Annual Assembly in New Haven. This recognition would not have been possible without the tireless effort and enthusiasm of our Board and its Executive Committee (EC). Please join me in congratulating the following Club leaders, including our newest member of the EC, Leila Iskandarani:
Grant Schafle (YC ’11) – Co-Vice President
Jennifer Gammond (SOM ’19) – Co-Vice President
Tyler Godoff (SOM ’16) – Director of Programming
Giovanni Christodoulou (YC ’12) – Secretary
Leila Iskandarani (YC ’22) – Director of Social Media
Sam Thypin-Bermeo (YLS ’15) – Former Director of Communications
As always, I encourage you to reach out to any of the EC Officers in addition to myself if you have any questions regarding the Club and its activities. More importantly, if you’re interested in assisting the Club in any capacity, please contact us.
In particular, we’re looking for anyone interested in helping the Club with Yale Day of Service (YDOS) activities, including both one-day service events, which typically occur during the month of May for Yale clubs worldwide (so probably too late for this year), as well as efforts to forge ongoing relationships with service-oriented organizations—ideally ones with ties to Yale alumni in the region. We’re also looking for someone to fill our Treasurer role as our most recent Treasurer left Miami to begin a new job in Seattle and our Director of Communications role as our current DOC, Sam Thypin-Bermeo, who has been with us from the beginning, will be taking a well-deserved break to focus on other work and family commitments.
While we accomplished much in 2022, there are still areas we’ve yet to address. For example, we fully appreciate that the YCSF covers not just Miami-Dade but also Broward County. Accordingly, we are rededicating efforts to offer more events and activities that are easily accessible for alumni who live and/or work in Broward.
To that end, we’ve also recently begun to pool efforts with the Yale Club of the Palm Beaches to the north of us in co-hosting and cross-promoting events we hope will appeal to alumni from both regions. The first joint effort involved a private art tour & reception last December during Art Basel at the NSU Art Museum in Ft. Lauderdale, which the clubs coordinated with the Yale School of Art. The exhibition Lux et Veritas explored a transformative period in contemporary art by focusing on a generation of artists of color who attended Yale School of Art for graduate studies between 2000 and 2010.
Signature events will continue to a Club focus given the record-breaking attendance we’ve experienced in 2021 and 2022.
Due to the outstanding organizational efforts of our Co-Vice President, Jennifer Gammond, the Yale-Harvard Game Watch Party was held in-person in November with over 100 Yale alumni registered at American Social on the Miami River. As a fitting end to a storybook season, the Bulldogs won the Ivy League title outright, avenging a heartbreaking loss to Harvard in the final seconds the previous year.
On February 24th, the Club hosted its most recent Feb Club Emeritus evening as part of a month-long series of social gatherings by regional Yale clubs worldwide. Our venue for close to 70 Yale alumni was The Reach in Brickell City Center and included pizza from the first Frank Pepe’s to open in Florida, a spread from Sushi Maki, Wenzel sandwiches featuring sauce from the company founded by all-star lacrosse goalie and fullback for the Yale Bulldogs, Eric Wenzel, and lots of Yale-related SWAG and giveaways. Once again, our Director of Programming, Tyler Godoff, led the charge on this event, which concluded to rave reviews by attendees, some of whom came into town from as far away as New York City just for the evening.
Crowdfunding continued at our Feb Club evening for the Club’s quest to obtain its own Mory’s Cup from the same silversmith that provides cups to Mory’s in New Haven. Those who participate in the crowd fund will have the opportunity to have their names engraved on the Cup, which will reside in New Haven for use by YCSF members when they visit Mory’s and which will be sent down to Florida for special Club occasions.
Close on the heels of Feb Club, on March 1st, the Club welcomed the Yale Whiffenpoofs to South Florida once again. The venue was the Mary Anne Wolfe Theater at the Wolfe University Center on North Miami Beach. Last year’s performance drew over 90 Yale alumni, family, and friends, and this year’s performance included an equally enthusiastic audience.
The following evening, for the second year in a row, the YCSF co-hosted a hockey night with other regional Ivy clubs, including Harvard, HBS, Princeton, and Wharton as they Florida Panthers take on the Nashville Predators at FLA Life Arena. Highlighting the evening, a chalk talk with Panthers’ Executive Vice President and Yale alum, Rob Stevenson (SOM ’21) kicked off the event.
On March 11th, Yale alum and author Paul Kaplan (YC ’94, SOM ’01) gave a book talk at Temple Beth Am on his book Jewish South Florida. Attendees had the opportunity to hear little-known stories behind many local personages and key synagogues, delis, bakeries, community centers, and performance centers, including the Jewish Museum of Florida, Miami Beach Preservation League, Rascals, Wolfies, Holocaust Memorial, old Jewish downtown Miami, the Flagler Museum, old downtown West Palm Beach, historic houses in Fort Lauderdale, and much more.
This Spring, the Club also expects to launch a Book Club under the guidance of Patrice Yang (YC ’97). Stay tuned for further details, and feel free to reach out if you have any ideas for books written by Yale authors that may serve as subject matter for the Club.
Continuing the Club’s efforts to bring compelling faculty speakers to South Florida, on March 30th, A.J. Wasserstein, the Eugene F. Williams, Jr. Lecturer in the Practice of Management, whose SOM courses focus on entrepreneurship, gave a talk to over 50 alumni, family, and friends at the historic Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, including a reception.
Hosting events with broad appeal is only part of the Club’s ongoing effort to bring local Yale alumni together. We are expanding our online and social media outreach with our LinkedIn community and an Instagram page (yale_club_of_south_florida) as well as our unique YCSF logo designed by our Co-Vice President, Grant Schafle (see logo at the top left of the website; can you spot the hidden reference to the Yale football fight song?!).
Monthly newsletters will continue to help us to update members on the Club’s activities. And finally, our website, as we hope you’ve noticed, has undergone an extensive redesign and update (shout out to our Co-Vice President Grant Schafle) - all in an effort to keep you, as Yale alumni, better informed about the Club and our offerings.
As always, we look to you, our members, for ideas. Please let us know about the types of events and initiatives you’d like to see the Club sponsor. Keep us on our toes!
In concluding this annual President’s Message on behalf of the YCSF, many thanks to all Yalies in our region, including family and friends, who support the Club and its mission to serve the needs of Yale Alumni and families located in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties.
Boola, Boola,
Jonathan Kim, SOM ‘00
