Alumni Spotlight

Where are they now?

Jaehyuk You ’14

Jaehyuk (Jack You – A.B.’14, J.D.’21) is a J.D. Candidate at Harvard Law School. He was a co-principal clarinetist and financial manager of HRO. At Harvard, he was a Social Studies concentrator, studying international politics and philosophy. After graduation, he worked as a special assistant for the Army four-star general at the Korea-US joint military command, where his mission was to improve the integration of Korean and US forces through operational training and military diplomacy. He hopes to work on international trade and security policy after law school, but he is happy to see where life takes him. His fondest memories from HRO are learning to salsa dance in Havana, eating falafels at Tel Aviv, playing pranks on the French Horns in rehearsal, and of course, drinking the HRO punches in retreat :P

Lee Ann Song ’15

Lee Ann Song (A.B.’15, Neuroscience and secondary in Global Health and Health Policy) is not in medical school! Instead, she went to Argentina on a Rockefeller Fellowship to learn jazz improvisation, Latin dance, and contemporary dance; hike through the Patagonias, Brazil, and Peru; teach music to children with special needs in Peru; do Bikram yoga and Crossfit; get into Wing Tsun martial arts; and cook for loved ones. Last spring, she completed a culinary arts certificate program at BU and spent the summer teaching cooking at a summer camp in Hawaii. She’s now back in Boston and loving the hustle of working three part time jobs that challenge her while giving her the flexibility to continue learning and engaging in creative activities. In the spirit of marrying her interest in health and food, she currently works part time at the Tuft’s Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy’s Nutrition and Entrepreneurship program. She also works as a culinary assistant at BU and stages at fancy restaurants around Boston from time to time. Finally, she is an application mentor with Crimson Education, helping international students tell their stories and apply for college in the US.

Lee Ann played cello in HRO all four years of college, in a chamber music group almost every semester, and was the social chair HRO. She has so many fond memories of HRO it’s hard to pick just one: Singing and dancing (to Gangnam Style), glamping under the stars of Wadi Rum Desert in Jordan; eating twitchy octopus in Busan; playing some hacked up version of Beethoven’s 9th and “happy birthday” with Yo Yo Ma for Harvard’s 375th anniversary celebration; the amazing, luscious cello solos in Tosca; performing for Filipino street children on the beautiful island of Mindoro; finally learning how to make Fed’s kissy noises and getting invited to his pasta dinners; and realizing that playing music was one of the few things that still made sense/made her happy.

Lee Ann is co-chair of the HRO Foundation Board’s Student and Alumni Outreach Committee because she has a hard time letting HRO go, and wants to help foster a stronger relationship between the students and the Foundation.

Matt Aucoin ’12

Matthew Aucoin ’12, composer/conductor, was recently named a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. He’s currently at work on a new opera based on Sarah Ruhl’s play Eurydice, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and the Los Angeles Opera, as well as a string quartet for the Brentano Quartet and other chamber/orchestral pieces. He is the co-artistic director of the American Modern Opera Company.

Matt especially remembers conducting Wagner on an HRO retreat, back when he had absolutely no business conducting Wagner. He is eternally grateful to his HRO colleagues for putting up with him. You can follow Matt on Twitter: @aucoincomposer

Joseph Park ’15

Joseph Park (A.B.’15, Biomedical Engineering and secondary in Global Health and Health Policy) is an MD-PhD student at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Joe played violin in HRO throughout his four years in college and served as social chair and tour co-director. Currently in the PhD phase of his training, Joe is conducting research on human genomics using the Penn Medicine Biobank to investigate the pleiotropic effects of rare, predicted loss-of-function variants as well as protective gain-of-function variants in human genes. Music has followed him to UPenn, and he is concertmaster of the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra. The first recipient of many now-traditional HRO paper plate awards (!), his favorite HRO memories include concocting HRO punch, clubbing in Jerusalem and Seoul on tours, making funny faces in reaction to interesting sounds heard during rehearsals, and enjoying mother nature with cherished friends. Of note, his least favorite memory is driving to the liquor store in Allston to haul ingredients for HRO punch before each post-concert party (a job reserved for social chairs to this day)

Gabe Walker ’13

Gabe Walker (A.B.’13, M.P.P.’19) recently graduated from the Master in Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. During his four years in HRO, Gabe played viola and violin and served as Publicity Manager, General Manager, and President of the orchestra—all after stumbling into an OpComm meeting in Adams House as a hapless freshman. After concentrating in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, he moved to New York City to research Chinese environmental issues and international relations at think tanks before returning to Cambridge for another swing at school. This summer he’s back in NYC to work at the intersection of data science, economics, and international affairs. Gabe still can hear samba grooves floating through the warm summer air from Cienfuegos, Cuba, on HRO’s 2011 tour, still gets chills recalling the final bars of Tosca in 2012, and still thrills at the memory of performing Beethoven’s 9th and John Adams’s “On the Transmigration of Souls” to a sold-out Sanders crowd, surrounded by more than a hundred classmates and friends. He’s currently chair of the Alumni Committee for the HRO Foundation and is proud of the work the Foundation is doing to bring together HROers across many generations.

Scott Yoo ’93

Scott Yoo (A.B. ’93) performed in the HRO from 1989–93 as a Physics concentrator in North (Pforzheimer) House. After graduation, he started the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra with Richard Lim, a fellow HRO violinist. Today, Scott is the Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Mexico City Philharmonic, the Music Director of Festival Mozaic in California, and Conductor of the Colorado College Music Festival. He is also host and executive producer of Now Hear This on PBS, presented by Great Performances.

His favorite memories of HRO were the 1992 tour to Eastern Europe (photo from Budapest at the Liszt Academy), and an infamous after-concert party at Lowell House during his freshman year.