Friday, February 2

Naki Franklin '17

Naki Franklin '17 is a Los Angeles-based comedy writer and television writing fellow at Hillman Grad, a production company founded by Emmy award-winning writer, producer, and actor Lena Waithe. She is also a YouTube Channel Operations Coordinator for Nickelodeon, where she works on the Paramount Studio Lot and publishes content on Nick Jr.'s YouTube channels.

Previously, Naki climbed from the mailroom to the scripted television department at Creative Artists Agency, a top talent agency in the entertainment industry, and freelanced at HartBeat, comedian Kevin Hart's production company. As an undergraduate student at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, she interned at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (featured in Potomac's Llama Notes), Comedy Central, and more while writing and directing sketch comedy for her campus's student-led variety show, Aggie Night Live.

At the beginning of her college career, Naki majored in computer science because she had coded throughout high school and knew it'd be a stable career path. However, after her first semester, she reconnected with her passion for writing, changed her major to English, and transferred schools.

Jack Moore '11

Jack Moore ‘11 is a producer at Bethesda Game Studios, the video game developer behind Skyrim and Fallout. Jack was the producer responsible for the Level and Quest Design teams for Starfield, which launched in the fall of 2023 and has reached more than 12 million players. As a producer, Jack plans schedules, prioritizes issues, and coordinates between different groups within the game development process to make sure the highest quality product can be delivered on schedule.

Jack developed his first small video game as his senior project while at Potomac. He majored in English at Princeton University, but he was always interested in combining his passion for writing with his love of games. For his senior thesis, he analyzed stories in video games from a literary perspective. Jack also continued to develop small games on his own and worked as a game tester during the summer.

After an internship in game production, Jack moved to Los Angeles to join a small mobile game studio. Now having spent almost nine years in the video game industry, Jack has worked on a wide range of games with teams of all sizes. His previous employers include Niantic, Activision, and Treyarch, where he worked on a variety of IP including Call of Duty, Pokemon Go, Magic: The Gathering, and Blade Runner.

His favorite video game is Shadow of the Colossus and his Super Smash Bros main is Sora. 

Bria Peace '16

Bria Peace '16, is a New York City based Assistant Vice President at Bank of America working in wealth management on the Hedge Fund Origination team. Bria’s duties include sourcing, structuring, and onboarding equity hedge fund products to offer on Bank of America’s wealth platform and the ongoing product management associated with clients’ investments in those products. Bria works with hedge fund managers to curate a menu of best in class hedge fund offerings for ultra-high net worth client portfolios at the Bank.  

Bria studied Finance and Art History at Emory University and ventured to the city for an internship at Bank of America after her junior year in college stayed to take on the full time employment opportunity. Bria loves the relationship management and marketing aspects of her job but appreciates the chance to use her finance degree daily in her work when analyzing equity hedge strategies.

She recently joined the board of En Garde Arts (engardearts.org), an artist-centered non-profit theater production company, that supports playwrights, directors, composers and designers creating site-specific work through New York City. This has given her the opportunity to use her more creative skills and further fuel her appreciation for the arts. As a board member, Bria assists En Garde with fundraising, business strategy, event planning, and increasing viewership.

Monday, November 20

Erik Schluntz '11

Erik Schluntz '11 is the Co-Founder and CTO of Cobalt Robotics, a 160 person company that's raised over $90M to build safety and security robots. Cobalt Robotics does business around the world after just six years of operations, with clients on five continents using its physical-security robots. Valued by its investors at more than $300 million, Cobalt’s success is generating considerable buzz.

Before Cobalt, Erik dropped out of Harvard University and teamed up with a classmate to co-found Posmetrics, a data analytics company that immediately interested investors and would ultimately be acquired by a larger firm. He went on to graduate from Harvard with a degree in Electrical Engineering in 2015.

Along the way, Erik has formed connections with some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. He interned at Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Cobalt’s lead investors include Sequoia Capital and Coatue, and Forbes Magazine included him on its highly prized 30 under 30 list in 2018.

Erik discovered his love for robotics as one of the founding members of the Potomac Robotics Team. He credits Potomac with helping him catch the entrepreneurial fever. The inspiration came in large part from an alumnus, Drew Durbin ’04, who returned to speak at the Upper School while Erik was there.

Erik reflects, “At the beginning of high school, I was most interested in mechanical engineering and building things with my hands. I thought I might want to be an architect or a civil engineer.” And when he heard Drew speak about his business building low-cost tools for African farmers, Erik thought, “I can use engineering to help people all over the world.”

To learn more about Erik, read the feature article about him in Potomac's spring Term magazine.