Jennifer Ellick, BBA ’97, a dynamo able to multitask at a high level, coordinates marketing for a Miami, Fla., commercial law firm with 120 attorneys in three offices.

At Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson, P.A., Jennifer deftly handles a long list of responsibilities. These include “working with attorneys and practice groups developing business development plans, maintaining a marketing database, publishing newsletters, handling all public and media relations, coordinating community involvement and charitable donations, and maintaining the firm’s Web site, including the attorney bios,” she said.

She also finds time to set up activities for Miami-based GW alumni in the South Florida Alumni Chapter of the GW Alumni Association, which covers an area with about 3,000 graduates.

Jennifer, now 31, grew up in Bucks County, in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Her decision to attend GW was easy: “I wanted an urban school, in somewhat close proximity to home with a good business school.

“It was an incredible experience being 17 years old and thrown into city living three blocks from the White House,” she reminisced. “I remember skipping class once to watch Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shake hands in front of then President Bill Clinton,” she said. “None of my friends from high school had that type of experience.”

As a sophomore, Jennifer interned in the press office of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., working with the senator’s press secretary. “I definitely took advantage of speakers on campus and cultural and social experiences on and off campus,” said Jennifer, who graduated with a bachelor’s of business administration degree, with a major in marketing and a minor in political science.

After graduation, Jennifer moved home to Pennsylvania and worked her way up to production manager for a Bucks County publishing company. Inspired by a Study Abroad semester in London, next she worked for a year in Moldova, a republic of the former Soviet Union in a Jewish agency’s volunteer program. Jennifer then spent three years in Los Angeles working as a marketing manager for a jewelry company.

When her parents decided to build a house in West Palm Beach, Fla., Jennifer concluded she was tired of living 3,000 miles away. “In the summer of 2005, I drove cross-country again,” Jennifer recalled, “and began working for a large commercial law firm in the fall.” She found it important to get involved in her new community through volunteer work and reads the Miami Herald on-air for the visually impaired through the Radio Reading Service of the local NPR station, and tutors a 20-year-old who reads on a fourth grade level. Jennifer also enjoys playing with the children staying at the local Ronald McDonald House as well as participating in other projects through the volunteer organization, Hands on Miami.

South Florida alumni can expect to hear from Jennifer about lunches, happy hours, and volunteer opportunities. “This year will be great,” she said, with more Miami-area events to complement the chapter’s existing activities to the north in Broward County.

Ken Seifert, MA ’05, has published a novel, The Rising Storm, about two individuals who are brought together by fate and forced to confront their differences. The book explores nuances of the human spirit and moral questions. Seifert will attend a book signing on May 10, 2007 from 7 – 10 p.m. at Lambda Rising Bookstore in Washington, D.C. For more information about the book signing, please click here.

Claudia N. Wernick, Esq, BA ’85, has been named of Counsel by Franklin Gringer & Cohen, P.C., with offices in Garden City, Long Island, and Manhattan. She will continue her general corporate law and civil litigation practice, and also advise life science companies on legal and strategic business initiatives. Formerly, Wernick was associate general counsel and assistant secretary of Antigenics Inc., and was an associate attorney with Schlesinger & Sussman.