Month: November 2022

Frederick Host Given was born in Minneapolis, MN in May of 1955 and was raised in Simsbury, CT.  At Simsbury High, Fred was active in football, softball, wrestling and ran track.  He graduated from the University of Connecticut at Storrs in May of 1977.  At UCONN he achieved degrees in Mathematics and Statistics with a minor in Finance. Fred continued his education at Rensselaer Polytechnic University and obtained an MS in Computer Science.  Fred met and married his sweetheart from UCONN, Lorry.  Lorry has been a well-loved middle school teacher at Roton Middle school in Norwalk for 42 years and retired in 2020.  

Fred started his engineering career at Pratt and Whitney Aircraft (UTC) in East Hartford.  P&WA recognized Fred’s ambition and offered Fred an early software position during his Junior year at UCONN.  In July of 1977 Fred started in depth training of jet engines and soon realized that he wanted to design and develop sub-systems involving hardware and software for leading edge projects using new technologies.  In 1980, he transferred to Norden Systems in Norwalk which was involved with government programs and proposals.  At Norden, Fred worked primarily on air to ground radars.  Most notably Fred developed the Built in Test Subsystem for the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) for the United States Air Force and used first in the Iraq/Kuwait war 1991 and is still used today near Ukraine.  Fred is a problem solver and as such he led teams to resolve various technical development challenges.   Fred left the company in 2012 when Northrop Grumman bought Norden Systems from UTC and moved product development to Baltimore.  Sikorsky then offered Fred a position to work on the Presidential Helicopter.  Fred retired in 2018.

Fred loves the outdoors, and in retirement he has taken every opportunity to enjoy it.  He is an avid gardener of vegetables and specimen foliage and enjoys working in the yard.  He is a fisherman and birder whenever possible.  He gets exercise staying fit, especially in the gym and enjoys ocean sports, hiking, walking and skiing.  In his spare time he enjoys solving puzzles including sudoku and crosswords.

Michael Liu was born in 1966 in Beijing, China. He attended his early primary schooling in Hong Kong before immigrating to the United States with his family at the age of 10.  Michael graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia in 1985 and subsequently received a BS in Economics from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania in 1989.  After working a few years on Wall Street, he obtained an MBA in finance from Columbia University in 1996.

Michael began his early career as vice president on the foreign exchange sales and trading desk at JP Morgan.  Michael and his wife, Lin Shaw, moved to Darien from their 900 square foot apartment in Brooklyn after their twins, Nicholas and Sydney, were born in 2003.  Michael started that same year at Discovery Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund, located in South Norwalk.  He traded the Asian and European markets in the early years and subsequently retired as Head Trader from Discovery after working there for almost 20 years.

Michael enjoys traveling and spending quality time with his family.  He also enjoys reading, hiking, biking, and kayaking.