Beaver Reflections:
I started at Beaver in the 7th grade and graduated in 2006. When I first started the head of middle school was Ingrid Tucker and she was my advisor. She was the one that told me I could be a leader. I was the vice president and the liaison to the parent association, which I carried on into the upper school. I took her advice as gold and really pushed and I think that helped me cement my place at Beaver. Moving up to upper school I had a great teacher, Mr.Sun, who was my advisor, and he was really awesome too. He’d give 15- 20 page papers on The Matrix, and how that has to do with religion and stuff like that. He was just so great at making things relevant to what was going on in the world. He would cater his curriculum to make us think and make us responsible citizens. I remember him teaching me how to write a persuasive essay and now as an actor and a writer, when I look at my plays, I try not to bang everyone over the head with political topics but instead interweave them into the plot, and it’s all thanks to him. He taught me there are clever ways to disguise the vehicle, while also making it entertaining and exciting to read. Looking back, the older I get the more appreciative I am of Beaver. My year we didn’t have a lot of people of color and I think I did have a list of things that maybe would’ve made the experience better, but I had the best middle and high school experience for me.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After Beaver, I went to Brown and triple majored in Poli Sci, Theater, and Africana Studies and graduated in 2010. I started writing plays and invested in my acting at Brown. I was in two shows in downtown Providence and during my senior year, I spent half of my time in Boston doing professional theater. I would sleep over at my mom’s house and take the train to get back for my classes. After graduation, I moved to New York and I started acting and it was going well so I thought an MFA wouldn’t hurt. I went to NYU’s graduate acting program and graduated in 2016 and have been acting and writing ever since. I’ve had some really great playwriting residencies and fellowships and now I am recurring in FBI: Most Wanted and I’m in a couple of episodes of City on a Hill and Equalizer with Queen Latifah. Recently, there’s a lot of screenplays that I’m shopping around and pilots so I have my hand in both arenas which is what I’ve wanted to do. Strangely, I think the pandemic affected me less than the protests and Black Lives Matter, which really hit home for me. During that time, I wrote a couple of shorts, two plays, and edited a screenplay that I had written previously. I just felt that those things needed to be documented, and in that moment. Film and TV bounced back pretty quickly in New Jersey, so I did a film and a bunch of TV. I’ve been working pretty non-stop since August, which is weird because a lot of my colleagues can’t get any acting jobs.

“The outside world isn’t as caring or just as Beaver is. I would encourage Beaver students to figure out what is going on in the world and see what they can do about it.”

– Fedna Jacquet ’06

Advice to current Beaver Students:
“Always try something new. Beaver is the school where you really aren’t judged for having different interests so dabble in everything you can get your hands on because if you don’t like it you can always stop. It’s a lot harder when you get older to try new things.”