The Outgoing Jock and the Bookish Introvert
It was Valentine’s Day 2002. Married for just over a year, Andy Hasselwander ’97 and Mary Carpenter ’97 were celebrating at San Marco, a cozy Italian restaurant near their home in Washington, D.C.
Moments into their meal, the newlyweds noticed a familiar couple at a nearby table: Colgate faculty members Anthony Olcott and Martha Brill Olcott. Mary and Andy had studied under both professors, but Anthony’s class, a first-year seminar called The Many Russias, in fall 1993, was especially memorable: It was where Mary and Andy first met.
It’s an anecdote they’ve loved to share over the years — though, as Mary is quick to point out, their romance didn’t exactly begin in Anthony’s class.
For the first half of their Colgate years, “I only knew Andy as the smart kid from freshman sem who did all the reading,” she says. They didn’t reconnect again until junior year as neighbors in Cushman House.
That winter, Mary, an ice hockey player, was planning to attend her team’s formal with a mutual friend, Ken Robbins ’96. But, says Andy, “Ken owed me a favor.”
At Andy’s request, Ken bailed on Mary — at the exact moment Andy “popped out of nowhere and offered to take me,” she recalls, laughing.
To Andy, Mary was that rare popular person who masterfully avoided cliques, maintained a “fierce independence,” and didn’t seem to care what others thought. “She’s always done her own thing, and I admired that,” says Andy. “I just wanted to be around her.”
The hockey formal was a success, and the two quickly became a couple, finding that their contrasting personalities clicked: Mary, an outgoing jock; Andy, a bookish introvert (and self- confessed “terrible athlete”).
After graduation, they moved to D.C., where Andy worked in consulting and Mary in academic publishing. A clunky rooftop proposal after a night of revelry with friends in Adams Morgan was followed by a November 2000 wedding near Mary’s hometown in Lawrenceville, N.J. With plenty of Colgate friends and hockey teammates in attendance, the favors were personalized hockey pucks, hand decorated with sparkly metallic pens. (“This was pre-Pinterest!” says Mary.)
They soon bought their first home in D.C., a fixer-upper that they took pleasure in renovating while Mary earned a master’s in history at American University and Andy grew his career at MarketBridge, a data science and analytics firm based in Bethesda, Md. By 2008, he had advanced from analyst to the company’s senior vice president, and the couple relocated to yet another fixer-upper in suburban Bethesda — this time to accommodate their growing family. Daughter Anna arrived in 2006; son Henry in 2010.
Today, Andy remains at MarketBridge, and Mary works part time, coaching high school women’s hockey and volunteering with Open Door Sports, an adaptive sports program for athletes with special needs.
They return to Colgate often, now with kids in tow, for reunions and sporting events. The family especially enjoys taking in women’s ice hockey games, where Mary never fails to marvel at the sport’s growing popularity on campus, as evidenced by the size of the Colgate women’s cheering section.
“At most of my games,” she remembers, smiling, “Andy was the only one in the stands.”
Fourteen Colgate alumni currently work at MarketBridge, where Andy is CEO. Since joining the company in 1999, Andy has spearheaded the effort to bring Colgate people on board, partnering with Career Services. He estimates they’ve hired more than 60 alumni throughout the years. “Colgate graduates have an analytical approach to solving problems and display a hunger for knowledge across domains,” says Andy. “They tend to have servant-leader personalities and fit in extremely well in our collegial environment.”