Columbia High School Hall of Fame Inducts Three Members

This was contributed by Judy Levy.

The Columbia High School Hall of Fame recently inducted three members of the class of 1995, a Rhodes Scholar who is now a commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission; an MIT graduate with a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics, who is currently program manager of a project that will send a manned flight to Mars; and a London School of Economics graduate who is the managing director of a non-governmental organization in South Africa that provides the most vulnerable children with everything needed for success from cradle to career. 

Appointed to the California Public Utilities Commission by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Carla Peterman has been a leader in the field of energy since 2002.  As a Public Utilities Commissioner, she has regulatory oversight of California privately- owned electric, natural gas, telecommunications, and water utilities, as well as railroad, rail transit, and other passenger transportation companies. Previously she was lead commissioner of the California Energy Commission. Ms. Peterman is the first African-American female appointed to both commissions. In March 2013, she received the Horizon Award from the California Legislative Black Caucus for her public service.

Ms. Peterman has conducted research at the University of California Energy Institute and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She also served as an environmental business analyst at Isles Inc. in Trenton, New Jersey, and an associate focused on energy financing in the investment banking division at Lehman Brothers.

A Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Howard University, she was the first female Rhodes Scholar from an historically black university. Ms. Peterman, who earned a Master of Science degree and a Master of Business Administration degree from Oxford University, will complete her doctoral studies this year in energy and resources at the University of California Berkeley.

Ms. Peterman is the daughter of South Orange residents Carl Peterman and Dr. Phylis Peterman and the sister of 1991 Columbia High School alum Chad Peterman.

Stephanie Sharo Chiesi attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she earned Bachelor of Science degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Biology, and a Master of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics. During that time, she worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as part of the optical communications team working on deep space mission integration. She also worked there as a systems engineer for concurrent engineering tools and databases. In 2001, she served as MIT’s head graduate teaching assistant for Unified Engineering and as a research assistant in the Complex Systems Research Laboratory in the same department.

Following her graduate education, Ms. Chiesi was a systems engineer at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA. She worked on a Mars Scout risk reduction program to increase the robustness of the avionics system for an airplane that would perform a regional survey of the Martian surface. She then led a program to define a military information system structure.

Currently working at Paragon Space Development Program, Ms. Chiesi is a space systems engineer in the Environmental Control and Life Support System for the Orion Program, which is developing a 2018 trip to Mars. She is the Program Manager for the Modular Air Revitalization System for manned space flight.

Ms. Chiesi is married to Michael Chiesi. She is the daughter of Maplewood residents Charles and Roseann Sharo, retired Columbia High School Latin teacher.  Ms. Chiesi’s brother, Scott, is a 1997 Columbia High School graduate.

For more than a decade, Jordan Levy has been part of the executive leadership of Ubuntu Education Fund (www.ubuntufund.org), a non-governmental organization dedicated to changing the lives of vulnerable children in the townships of Port Elizabeth, South Africa by providing everything necessary for them to succeed from pre-school to college. From 2001 until 2010, Mr. Levy was the Chief Operating Officer of Ubuntu as it redefined the theory of  “going to scale,” a process to extend community level change.  Rather than expanding geographically, the Ubuntu leadership decided to concentrate on a community of 300,000 people, in order to focus on the depth rather than the breadth of their impact.

Ubuntu’s programs form an integrated system of health, educational and social services to ensure that a child can, after several years, succeed in the world of higher education and employment. The child-centered approach highlights the difference between merely touching a child’s life and fundamentally changing it.

Mr. Levy is now the organization’s Managing Director of External Relations, overseeing Ubuntu’s offices in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa. He received Bachelor of Arts Degrees in both International Relations and Political Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and his Master of Science in Developmental Studies from the London School of Economics.

At Columbia, Mr. Levy was a writer for The Columbian and Guildscript and a pitcher on the CHS Baseball Team. He was recently inducted into the CHS Sports Hall of Fame with his baseball team, which won the Greater Newark Tournament title in 1995. 

Mr. Levy is married to Jana Zindell with whom he has two sons. He is the son of Maplewood residents Superior Court Judge Kenneth S. Levy and Judy Levy, former South Orange-Maplewood School District Communications Coordinator. He is also the brother of 1992 Columbia High School alum Adam Levy.