Welcome Back Cougars!

Deena Shakir is a successful business professional. She and her husband Mehdi have two children, 6-year-old Lana and 4-year-old Adam. She earned a joint BA in Social Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard, and an MA from Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, funding her education through a variety of merit scholarships and side ventures, including co-founding her first company while in college. She is currently a partner at Lux Capital, a venture capital company focusing on emerging, futuristic ideas in science and technology investments. In addition, she is a lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. 

Maxwell Love’19 is a vibrant, well-rounded learner whose resume-to-date belies his youth. As a junior at Oakwood School, he recently completed a research summer internship at UCLA into the analysis and remediation of cytotoxicity of cigarette smoke in the lungs. He will submit his resulting research report to the nationally renowned Davidson Fellow Scholarship and the Regeneron Science Talent Search. Maxwell also testified to the San Jose City Council on a high schooler’s perspective of the vaping epidemic, assisting in the successful effort to pass legislation banning flavored e-cigarettes.

Hannah Conradt ’12 graduates from the Fashion Institute of Technology with a BFA in Special Occasion Fashion Design in 2022, but has experience and accolades that would rival a professional 10 years her senior. She has sewn costumes for Twenty Pilots including the iconic red cloak in their 2018 video Jumpsuit, and for Hailey Williams of the rock band, Paramore. Hannah has worked as a wardrobe assistant for a Lifetime movie in LA, helped costume an entire two-cast NYC-based production of the opera The Barber of Seville, and completed a summer internship in the Seattle Opera's costume department.

Hunter McKown '15 attended ACDS from the four-year-old program through 7th grade but left early to pursue high-level ice hockey. His greatest accomplishment to-date was earning a spot on the US National Development Team, a two-year program in the United States Hockey League. Their team won the gold medal at the 5-Nations tournament in Sweden in 2019. He earned a full-ride scholarship to play Division 1 hockey at Colorado College.

Megan Cronan ’05 attended ACDS from the 4-year-old program through 8th grade. After attending Presentation High School, she graduated from Santa Clara University in 2013 with a degree in civil engineering.  She is a Professional Engineer (PE) and received the American Public Works Emerging Leader Award. Megan currently works as a senior civil engineer for HMH, a land development and engineering company in San Jose.  Megan was the project civil engineer on the Westfield Valley Fair mall expansion. She was recently selected as the project manager for the VTA Phase II Bart Extension, which includes, among other things, four stations and a five mile tunnel.

Markus Foote '07 graduated from ACDS in 2007 after attending from Jr. K through 8^th grade.  He then attended Archbishop Mitty High School and graduated in 2011.  Markus earned a BS in biomedical engineering from the University of Utah in 2015 and went on to complete a MS in biomedical engineering from the University of Utah in 2019. Markus is currently a PhD candidate and graduate research assistant at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the University of Utah.