Elliot Zaret '91 MC may be your worst networking opportunity if you’re focused on career over life. Elliot got his master's in journalism from University of California at Berkeley (MJ 96) and covered local politics and crime at various newspapers (including being the first reporter on the scene at the JonBenet Ramsey murder in Boulder, Colorado) until moving to DC to cover Congress for newspapers in California and Colorado. Elliot was hired to cover the Microsoft Antitrust Trial for the San Jose Mercury News. Then covered the business of the then-nascent internet for MSNBC.com. Elliot left journalism full time in 2002 (though he continued to freelance for places such as CNN and Washington Lawyer Magazine) in order to pursue a career in art. Elliot was an award-winning artist who showed in many galleries in the Washington DC area in the early 2000s and taught art at both adult education and community college levels. Somewhere in there, Elliot learned to build 17th-19th century reproduction furniture, which he also does on the side. As his focus turned to being an at-home-Dad for his three children, born in 2005, 2006 and 2009, Elliot focused his “me time” on being a volunteer EMT and later an EMT instructor. Elliot was awarded Fairfax County (VA) Volunteer EMT of the Year in 2012 and Vienna (VA) Volunteer Fire Department Volunteer EMT of the Year in 2018. Elliot, a townie as well as a gownie, moved back to his hometown of neighboring Woodbridge, CT in 2023, where he is still raising his (now) high school and college aged children, two overachieving labradoodles, managing his wife’s career as a traveling OB-Gyn and studying guitar at Berklee College Online.