Alumni Voices - Beaver Country Day School

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2006 and had a great experience. Beaver was a fantastic community where I had a lot of mentors and quality friendships. For example, Mr. Clippinger, who recently retired, had a profound impact on me. Also, to this day, I am still extremely close with my high school friends. We frequently text each other and always spent time together pre-Covid. Looking back, I think the science department had the biggest impact on my path post-graduation. I loved having the chance to do individual projects in the science curriculum. I ultimately went into medicine, so having Beaver’s wonderful science department was very important to me.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Emory and majoring in neuroscience, I went to Tufts Medical School. Now, I am a general surgery resident at Saint Elizabeth’s Medical Center. However, I am currently taking 2 years off to do cardiothoracic research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. My research is mainly about cardiothoracic surgery, a path I hope to get into later on. In my spare time and on weekends I also help out around different hospitals, especially with the pandemic.

“One of the best things about the school is that you really don’t get forgotten. With big public schools, many kids slip through the cracks and you can go unnoticed. At Beaver, however, you get a lot of great mentorship and people who look out for you.”
– Aaron Dezube ’06

Advice to Beaver students:
When you get to school, keep a good head on your shoulders. There is so much opportunity within the school and if you really want something, no door is closed yet.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2009 after four years at the high school and I had a terrific time. I had a lot of great friends there, many of which came from connections I made on the sports teams I played on: ultimate frisbee, wrestling, and even dodgeball club. Looking back, one of the aspects of Beaver that really stands out to me is how much the teachers care about you. If I was slipping behind in classes, they would come up to me and ask if I wanted to swing by during lunch or open time to complete extra practice problems or ask questions. It was tremendous for me to have teachers and staff that really put the students first. You can have schools with small classes but teachers that do not care as much. At Beaver, the teachers will make sure you have the tools and knowledge to succeed. For example, I remember having Mr. Christy, who taught math, who was not only knowledgeable about the material but was really invested in my growth as a student and person.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I attended Muhlenberg College and majored in communications. At Muhlenberg, I also played ultimate frisbee for the team there. The next two years I worked at a market research firm, which was a great experience but felt empty and was not truly meaningful for me. I took a moment to realize how much I loved my coaching experiences and working with kids and decided to pursue something that was purposeful to me. I decided to make a career change where I could combine my passion for working with kids with my love of sports. I worked at Arlington High School for three years as a paraprofessional before going back to school for my master’s in social work, which I obtained in May 2020. While doing this, I coached high school football for the past six years. I am currently the assistant head and defensive backs coach at Medford High School. Today, I am working at St. Ann’s Home & School as a residential therapist. St. Ann’s is a therapeutic residential placement and school for kids who have disrupted from their home, meaning they have destructive and dysregulated behavior as a result of traumatic experiences and/or they have been removed by social services because their living situation has been deemed unfit. I work with boys aged 6-13.

“This past year, with the pandemic, privilege has been so magnified. The divide from the haves and have-nots has become noticeably enormous and Covid has only made it bigger. So no matter where you are, it is important to be thankful and appreciative for what you have. The past year has shown everyone that things can change on the drop of a dime, so be grateful and use your means to help others less fortunate.”
– Adam Offit ’09

Advice to Beaver students:
At Beaver, you are so blessed to have such an amazing support system in the faculty and staff while receiving a fabulous education. If someone tells you that you can not make a difference or change the world, they are lying to you. You will be the one that can make big changes.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2012 and had such an amazing experience. I was very young when I started at Beaver, maybe 11 or 12 years old. I was from Marlborough and had gone to Catholic school prior to Beaver. So, going from a small Catholic school to Beaver was a big change but I always tell people that Beaver really changed my life and opened my eyes to so many opportunities. It really showed me how big the world is and how many chances there are to experiment and learn. Beaver was truly the place where I believe I started pursuing my dreams. I still have some close friends that I stay in contact with from Beaver, which is so nice. Looking back, the staff and faculty were amazing and really encouraged me to step outside my comfort zone and really go for things. One of my favorite teachers was Ms. Bernard, an African-American history teacher. As a young black woman it was amazing to connect on that level. Up to that point I had never had a teacher that looked like me and I could share experiences with. Ms. Baker of the admissions department was like my mom on campus and one of my favorite people. During my time at Beaver, I was not as into athletics as I was academics but I still found my niche in volleyball and played for 2 years of high school before I became the student manager my junior year.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. After Smith, I started my master’s program at Brandeis University and completed that in two years. I relocated to Maryland during the pandemic which was a journey in itself. I have been working in the healthcare field. I had a stint at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and was a program coordinator at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Currently I work for MedStar Health where I process patient data and urgent care visits while confirming eligibility for various patients in the system. I would love to go back to school in the near future but I am trying to figure that out as I go.

“There are so many opportunities that we try to pursue over time and sometimes at the start we think that they are going to be perfect. However, not everything that glitters is gold. I have learned that it is so important to pursue greatness and that gold but you have to do your research and connect with people before jumping right into it. Seek the things that glitter not only externally but also internally”
– Alexys Butler ’12

Advice to Beaver students:
“Try anything and everything but to a point where you are not working yourself to exhaustion. Something about changing it up and trying something new is just refreshing and an amazing experience. Another piece of advice is when it comes to work and school never take no for an answer. Continue to ask questions and see what is available to you. Something great about Beaver is that there are so many resources available and I found about a bunch of them through asking questions”

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated in 2011 and I was a lifer. I came from a big charter school so it was a really big adjustment to be in much smaller classes. I was very lucky during my time at Beaver because in middle school I had a black female teacher every year, Sharon Mathieu. She doesn’t know it but the impact that she had on all of us was amazing. She would tell it like it was to black students and white students and she always kept it real. Every day was like an adventure with her. I was lucky enough to have her for 7th and 8th grade and she shaped a lot of who I am. Also, Mrs.Tucker was the head of the middle school when I was there. I always say I want to be just like her when I grow up. She’s also a family friend. One thing that I liked particularly about my grade was that you could be a history scholar and also be a star on the soccer field. Or could do soccer and also be in plays and be really good at them. We had a lot of kids who were multi-talented and that was accepted. You could be more than just one thing.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I went to Emory University in Atlanta and graduated with a degree in psychology. I moved back home to Boston for some time and was doing temp work while I figured out a move to New York City. Once I got there I was working at restaurants as a hostess and got to meet a lot of cool people like Pharrell, Whoopi Goldberg, and a bunch of other actors and actresses. I’ve had some pretty cool jobs here in New York City. I worked for Mary Kate and Ashley for some time, as a receptionist at their fashion firm. Initially, it was really exciting because of the childhood nostalgia, but after I saw them for the first time, they just became Mary-Kate and Ashley. While I was working temp jobs in New York, I was also looking to find a job in school admissions and in 2017 I finally got my big break. I was part of opening up the Winchendon satellite school in New York. The Winchendon was initially a boarding school in Western Massachusetts and they decided to have another campus in New York, so I started working as an admissions assistant and it was a really cool opportunity and experience to be a part of starting a school. I’ve now been working there for four years and am the Assistant Director of Admissions. Having a graduation on Zoom this past year was probably one of the weirdest things I’ll ever have to do.

“This year has really taught me to slow down and take inventory of myself, whether that is health-wise, job-wise, community, or partnership with people.”

– Amirah Mahdi ’11

Advice to current Beaver Students:
Take advantage of all that comes your way because Beaver has so many opportunities and resources to do amazing things. My other piece of advice is if you need help, please reach out.

Beaver Reflections:
I was class of 1982. I came in 7th grade and went all the way through. It’s been, what, 30, oh my, next year is going to be 40 years. I like getting old but, man, that’s a little much. I had a great experience. There’s a long list of really formative people. In middle school, Jane Baker and Ann Grayson were really important, teaching us how to read critically. Miss Thompson was kind of like finishing school when it came to writing. Larry Gladwin for six years of Latin really made me understand language. Doug “Major” Cohen was the photo teacher and he really supported my growing love of photography when I was 12. Since I was 14, I wanted to be a professional photographer and he really supported me in that. Ellen Driscoll is someone who I’ve stayed in touch with a little bit because I’ve admired her work. She did a big mosaic project in the subway in New York and I got in touch with her about that. She was very young when she taught so our age difference now that we’re both older is not so great.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I was 17 when I graduated. I’m 56 now. I went to NYU and I ended up getting a double major in classical civilization and photography. Then I just started working in the field, started working as an interiors and architectural photographer. And that’s what I have done, I’m a photographer. I have a video production company now, too. I started training in aikido, which is a martial art. I’ve been doing that for 30 years. I also play drums. While I was in NYU I started playing in this band. Eventually we put out two albums, one in 1981 and 1989. We just recently put out our third album after a thirty year hiatus. We did a tour last summer with seventeen dates across the country. So it’s always been photography, music, and martial arts. And art — in ‘98 I started collaborating with a guy named Adam Ames and he and I work under the name Type A. Last but not least, I got married in 1991 and I have two kids, one of whom is 18 and the other’s 21. We live in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. I went to NYU and I never left, and I married a girl from Long Island.

“The pandemic is the great revealer. I feel like many people are emerging with a better understanding of the concentric circles of their life. A better understanding of themselves, a better understanding of their immediate family, a better understanding of their community and the nation.”

– Andrew Bordwin ’82

Advice to current Beaver Students:
There’s so much that this generation is facing that I don’t think they want to hear from an old guy like me. Show up on time; I think that’s really important. I think it’s really important to do what you love. Nothing replaces hard work. Luck favors the prepared. Beaver is a deeply privileged place to be, so you’re starting out from an advantage; don’t mess it up. That’s all I can tell you.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2007 and loved my time there. I started in 6th grade and am still close with many of my friends from there. As a matter of fact, I just attended the wedding of one of my close friends I made there and will see more of my friends throughout the summer. During my time at Beaver, sports played a major role in building leadership skills and making friends. I played softball, lacrosse, and field hockey. It was amazing to get to know not only my teammates but also the coaches, many of whom were teachers. Looking back, all of the teachers had such a positive impact on me. Ms. Verkouille introduced me to Shakespeare and is probably the only person who could make me fall in love with Shakespeare. Mr. Adjout was also a great teacher and mentor for me at Beaver. I loved his French class and I still remember an amazing memory-filled trip to France that he came along for.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After I graduated from Beaver, I went to Syracuse University and completed the 5-year architecture program there. After that, I went to work for my mother, who is also an architect, for three-plus years. Following this, I did a short stint with an architectural firm in downtown Boston. Around this time, I realized that if I continued on this path I would most likely live in New England for the rest of my life. So, I packed my stuff and moved to Jackson, Wyoming, and spent two years there. Those 2 years were amazing but I decided to move again. Today, I am in Martha’s Vineyard working for an architecture firm called Hutker Architects. I have been working here for the past 3 years and love it.

“When a college counselor or advisor comes to you and asks what you want to do, I have realized the importance of getting lots of input from friends and family-members as they know you very well. For me, it seemed like the path to an architect was already laid out as my parents were architects and I went to an architecture camp back in 11th grade. However, talking it out and not always going down that clear-cut path can be beneficial.”
– Audrey Snare ’07

Advice to Beaver students:
“A quote I often reference is ‘Comparison is the thief of joy.’ Talk to friends about interests but try not to compare yourself to others. Be who you are and put yourself out there and make an effort to learn and discover new things for yourself, not for others.”

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1962 and had a wonderful experience although very varied. I remember that no matter the year, I always had amazing teachers. Learning crucial life lessons at Beaver taught me how to work with a variety of people in life. This ultimately enabled me to be able to work in countries all over the world and feel at ease while doing so. Looking back, my classroom experience was always stimulating. My favorite subjects were history and geometry which still impact my life to this day. My work has allowed me to enjoy my passions. I have lectured from Japan to Europe and across the U.S. on the sociology and history of early New England quilts and textiles. Everything I do is historical. Geometry and quilts definitely tie in together!

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver and obtaining a four-year degree I taught English in the Westwood school system. I was married and started a family early in life. After my kids were born, my teaching career ended. I lived in Colorado for ten years where I started Rocky Mountain Quilts, my antique quilt company, and textile restoration business. This is when Beaver came into play because I knew the techniques that came with the restoration side of my business. I have now amassed the largest collection of vintage fabric from 1780-1950. I am the only person in the country and possibly the world, who restores antique quilts only using original same-day fabric. This is one of the reasons why I have not retired. There is no one else to do this type of restoration and I still find this work so emotionally rewarding. I used to travel all around the world selling at shows and lecturing, but nowadays I try to stay local. Currently, I am working on the biggest project I have ever done. Right now I’m living in Portsmouth on a boat; we bought a great big boat you can literally live on instead of a condo.

“People keep saying to me, ‘You can’t retire. Who’s going to restore our quilts?’ And I keep getting family heirlooms with incredible stories.”
– Betsey Goodwin ‘62

Advice to Beaver students:
Appreciate your education and live in the moment. You should realize the opportunity to have this amazing education and be grateful for it. Your education is not just about learning but also about developing emotionally and having faith in yourself.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated in 1989, so I started around 1982. Back then there was a 5th and 6th grade. I was one of the last students to be a lifer that started in the 5th grade. Beaver was much simpler and yet the core of what they were trying to do there has remained the same, which is to create interesting humans. They really made sure to make everyone feel singular. Many, many teachers had a lasting impact. My 5th grade teacher, Ms.Schuester, was a great teacher and the other 5th grade teacher was a guy named Mr. Denny Brown, and he was a great teacher. All these really really spectacular people who really cared about kids and educating them. They were kind enough to be patient with me, a little schmucky kid who probably thought he knew much more than he knew and they were patient enough to give me the chance to learn stuff from them. The talent level of the kids that were doing theater at Beaver was very high and I would never even dare to get involved with that stuff because I was intimidated by how good they all were.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
Graduation was, what, over 30 years ago? Oh my goodness. It’s like a different lifetime. I went to college at Hobart College and then I went to film school at the American Film Institute. I got married a couple times and had some kids. I was very focused on a two-track approach to life which was working hard on building a career and building a life for myself that involved art, creating, being paid to make art, and also working really hard on myself as a person. I know lots of people who only focus on the work part and even with all the success they don’t feel happy. They don’t feel fulfilled or they don’t feel like they’ve earned it. So I really try to do both at the same time, never letting one compromise the other. It wasn’t until college that I started to experiment a little bit, and was like, “I’m going to write a play. I’m going to write a movie.” My success, the reaction people gave me, and the amount of joy that came from actually doing the work really changed me. I said, “I could sit and do this all day long. This is something I should be focused on.” Now I’m at a very fortunate place in that my work continued even during the pandemic, but we couldn’t shoot anything for months and months, which is very unusual. Not having anything to shoot was challenging because you want to get something on the air, but it was also a great relief because I don’t think I’ve not been in production for a decade. It was nice to have time to just write and develop new things.

“The thing about Beaver, whether it be when I went there in the 80s or now, is that there is a spirit, a particular energy. We all get it, but no one else gets it. I think the Beaver community is different because we have the ability to facilitate real change in the world and we work together.”

– Brad Falchuck ’89

Advice to current Beaver Students:
Everyone at Beaver is already at such a privileged place and such an advantage by being there. You have access to some of the best people, you have access to the best teachers, and you are learning how to learn in a way that most kids are not given the opportunity. Don’t waste that or throw it away doing what your parents want you to do or what you think is right or what you think is going to get you a lot of attention or make you a lot of money. Don’t waste that. You were given too much of a gift, so don’t waste it on a thing that doesn’t make you feel incredibly satisfied with your life. Relax, don’t rush, take your time. Never stop working hard but really listen for your calling, which is different than finding a job.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2001 and loved it. My experience there was very empowering. I had constant support from the faculty, administration, and my peers, which made my time at Beaver so amazing. Through the culture present there, I was really able to develop into the young man I left Beaver as. Looking back, one of the most profound experiences was with Jen Yolles. I really spent the first couple years at Beaver in my shell because I had a significant stutter. Obviously, the students around me were not phased by this and didn’t really care. However, I felt as if everyone was just noticing that. The one experience that helped me with this was doing theater improv with Jen Yolles. She saw me doing some skit at one point during orientation and recommended that I try out for the play. I was very hesitant because as someone who had a stutter, it seemed to be a recipe for disaster. However, with her support, coaching, and compassion, I auditioned and did not stutter. I think that was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. From that moment on, I did the improv plays, the musicals, fall plays, etc.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Connecticut College where I studied psychology and sociology. I played squash there which was an amazing experience that was also influenced by Beaver because I played during my high school years. Immediately after college, I worked for a soccer organization. I helped run camps, tournaments, and events. Soon after, I realized that I needed some form of direction in my life so I went back to school and received my doctorate in psychology. Now, I am a psychologist and run the psychology side of clinics with medical patients at Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital in Maryland. I work with kids that have chronic medical issues and side-by-side with the medical physician to help adjust to having that condition. As a matter of fact, I use the story about Jen Yolles with my patients to really show that with the right support anything can be possible. With Covid, I have definitely become more busy in the most positive way because I get to help these kids through a pandemic. Since the start of Covid, I have really focused more on advocacy. I am on a work group with people from other hospitals to try to get insurance to approve telehealth. Overall, it is amazing that for my job, I get to help others. I would not trade it for anything!

“Beaver personally helped me find my own voice which was something I was struggling with before I enrolled there.”
– Bradley Schwimmer ’01

Advice to Beaver students:
Take the opportunity to get out of your comfort zone. It takes courage, strength, and heart but the result is more powerful than anyone could ever imagine.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1987 and started there in 7th grade. I was a bit unique going to Beaver because I was essentially on a work-study program. It was very novel that Beaver offered something like that so long ago, but I am grateful that they did. During my time there, I worked for them over breaks such as summertime, winter break, and even sometimes weekends. I worked there for all the time I was there, along through college and even for parts after graduating college. I remember I was in 7th grade and my first job was to cut all of the lower field with the hand mower. It was great and very representative of my experience there having such a cross-sectional and diverse school. I was involved with the baseball team. I remember Coach Papas was an amazing coach. In 7th grade I was playing varsity so I got to work with him all of my time there. Looking back, Ms. Thompson had an amazing influence on me. Ms. Newbury was also a great teacher. You could go take the AP calculus exam and there would be no way that you do not do well because of how well prepared you would be for it.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Wesleyan where I studied economics. After college, I settled back in the Boston area and worked for a medical device company called Haemonetics for 25 years. While I was there, I also went back to school and got my MBA from Babson. Eventually, I settled out in the Leominster area. Since then, I have really been involved with philanthropic endeavors, which I can credit to my time at Beaver, and helping give back to the school that taught me so much. I have gotten involved with the Alumni Board and actually started a charity golf event in honor of my father, which has been ongoing for 30 years. The proceeds from that golf tournament actually go to our kids’ high schools and help improve the education there. Another fundraiser I am involved with in my mother’s memory is to repurpose assets that a school like Beaver may have that other schools or churches would benefit from. I created this exchange that started with Beaver from the connections I had with the buildings and grounds crew, where whiteboards, chairs, desks, etc would be able to be received from schools or locations such as Beaver. Working with Chris Doyle on this project has been amazing. Along with these philanthropic projects, I have been working for a startup called SplitFit. There, I am responsible for fundraising and all commercial operations. Overall, I have been pretty busy, more so with philanthropic endeavors but still keeping busy with my work with SplitFit.

“I am so grateful to Beaver for giving me the education I received and the opportunity to attend through the work-study program. Therefore, I am always willing to give back and help in any way possible. I enjoy the opportunity to continue my relationship with Beaver through my philanthropic events. It may not be publicized as much, but Beaver has really helped schools, churches, etc. in my area so I am forever grateful to them.”
– Brian Gardiner ’87

Advice to Beaver students:
It is so important to value productive, healthy relationships. Through all the challenges and hardships you face in your life, to have such strong relationships and connections plays such a huge role in bouncing back and coming back even stronger. Also, something so critical to understand is the importance and power of humility. Being a good citizen is so important in today’s society but you first need to realize who you are as a person and what your collective responsibilities are. These are all things that Beaver can ingrain into your mind and it is important to take those lessons with you throughout your life.

Beaver Reflections:
I came to Beaver from a public school in 7th grade. When I enrolled, Beaver immediately made a positive impact on me. One of my favorite things was the community; it often felt like a larger family. I loved how Beaver really emphasized branching out and taking risks for classes and after-school activities. A teacher I fondly remember is Rob Connor. His presence during my time at Beaver influenced me to be the person I am today. I think the way he taught, motivated, encouraged, and pulled out the best in students really shows the true spirit of Beaver’s teachers and faculty.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Harvard and studied biological anthropology. I got really interested in the relationship between culture and health and social determinants of health. After college, I decided to pursue my dream of playing professional soccer. While playing in Brazil, I definitely got involved with the activism surrounding the game. My teammates and I started a collective around gender and justice and looking at women’s rights in soccer in Brazil. I traveled to Sweden to play soccer and also back in the United States for a few years. During my time traveling I also got my master’s from the London School of Economics in Gender Studies. The team I was playing on unfortunately folded due to the league rationing out funds in an unequal way. This led to more activism on gender justice. I stayed in Brazil for around 4 more years and also got a Fulbright scholarship to continue this work looking at embodied experiences in gender on women’s soccer. This work led me to Berlin, where there is a group of “football feminists” where we all worked on activism projects for the 2014 World Cup. I have been staying in Berlin and continuing this activism work.

“It has been tough in Berlin with the Covid-19 pandemic, as it has forced us to abide by the stay-at-home orders. This whole pandemic, losing close friends, and dealing with the loss of in-person activities has further showed me how important gratitude and showing appreciation are on an everyday basis.”

– Caitlin Fisher ’00

Advice to Beaver students:
One of the biggest things I would say is to really try and listen to where your passions are and what interests you. This can be difficult when there are a lot of pressures and social norms.I would, however, encourage students to listen to where their heart is and follow their passion even if it doesn’t match up to normal social expectations and is not clear where it may lead.

On her time at Beaver …
It certainly is a place and a time in my life that is very influential for me. It definitely has impacted the work that I do now and, really, my whole life. I was lucky enough to have amazing teachers, including Mr. McCarthy, who just passed away recently, as well as Bea Kleppner who is a bit of an icon. She taught a class when I was there which was an anthropology class. As a student in 1976 or 1975, that was pretty unusual, pretty progressive. I ended up majoring in anthropology at Stanford and it was kind of as a result of her. I ended up living overseas and teaching English to doctors and nurses for two years and also worked for OxFam when I was a student at Stanford.

The other thing that I talk about a lot to people is that Beaver had just gone co-ed a few years beforehand, so it was still mostly women. At the time, Beaver was like 75% Jewish and 25% African-American and then just a few of us who were not one of those two categories, so for somebody like me, it was pretty unusual. Of course, I didn’t know anything, so I thought most of the world was like that. When I got to Stanford I was like, “Wait, where are all the people who are different than I am?” Again, influencing my anthropology. I continued to explore that, going overseas and working with different cultures.

On founding All Five …
The program that I started, All Five, comes from being in early childhood education for most of my adult life and seeing that children, when we know that their brains develop at a faster rate than at any other point in a person’s life, were being treated really differently just because of their socioeconomic background, even more so than because of their race, in our community. I worked for Head Start and some other low-income programs and I saw experienced teaching that was very didactic and directed, very much telling children what to do, not asking them questions. And we know from research that asking even young children questions is the way to get them to start thinking, for their cognitive skills to develop, and for their speech and language skills to develop.

If you’re telling children what to do, you’re not providing them with the opportunity to actually talk. That’s something that we see a lot these days is low-income children who don’t have the speech skills. There’s lots of reasons for that but one of them is because they’re being told what to do rather than being asked an open-ended question that provides them with an opportunity to give an answer.

“If you’re telling children what to do, you’re not providing them with the opportunity to actually talk.”

– Carol Thomsen ’77

On equity in education…
Children in high-income communities were being treated to the latest research. These were the children of the young faculty members at Stanford who were studying for their PhDs at Stanford, so these were families that were already well-situated to have their children be successful. I just thought that it was really unfair that children who needed it the most were not given what they mostly needed at the most crucial time in their lives and children who really would be fine in any case were being given the Cadillac of education.

I started the All Five program to address that, and the way that I decided to do it was that 50% of the children and families who go to All Five come from low-income backgrounds and that’s based on a requirement by the state. We have a state reimbursement contract with those families, so they have to qualify according to the reimbursement matrix. These are all working families, but they’re all low-income families. And then 25% come from middle-income families, and these are families that in California are making just over $100k a yea. While that may seem like a lot, for a family of four [in the Bay Area] it certainly isn’t wealthy and it really is that middle income pack. These are teachers and people like that who are just not able to pay the full cost of full-time year-round care, but also deserve that for their children, just as everybody else does. And then 25% of the families pay the full cost of our program. We have those people and don’t give all of our slots to low- or middle-income families because the high-income families are really our accountability. The belief is that if our program isn’t good enough for some people who pay and can actually afford to do that, if they don’t want to come here, then our program isn’t good enough for anybody. So we really try hard, and have been successful so far, in having a waiting list of those high-income families as well as a waiting list of the middle- and low-income families. That’s how our program sort of shows that it is of the highest quality. The cost of early care and education is extremely high because ratios have to be high. It’s a very people-intensive business model, so the cost of our program is currently $2,200 per month for full-time, year-round care. We’re open 10 hours a day, 50 weeks per year. We’ve been open for four years.

On Beaver’s influence on her educational philosophy…
Beaver was and continues to be a very progressive program, and my overall education philosophy tends to be very progressive. I think that one of the things I know from Beaver is that even though I wasn’t a traditional learner, Beaver’s teachers helped me figure out my strengths and how to use those to work in the areas where maybe I wasn’t as strong. For instance, I don’t have a very strong memory, but they helped me to find ways to overcome that and highlight other areas. I feel like that is a crucial piece of how to help very young children develop and discover who they are. Not to focus on their weaknesses or challenges, but a strength-based approach. I think that Beaver gave that to me and I carry that with me in my approach to children.

As you can imagine, many of the children and families that we serve come from challenging backgrounds because of their socio-economic status, often also because of their immigration status. It’s easy for some people to label children with challenging behavior who come from situations like that. One of the things we strive to do here is to focus on the children’s strengths, these families’ strengths, and how we can harness that to bring them to the next level. I was privileged to experience that in my own life at Beaver.

On her current focus as a school leader…
In early childhood education, one of the most progressive ways to practice with young children, whether it’s in a year-round program or a full-day program or part-day program, is using a model called emergent curriculum. It’s actually an organically-grown model, but it’s somewhat based on more trendy terms such as Reggio, an approach that was founded in Italy based on children’s interests and what children want to do. We call ourselves an emergent curriculum model because we want to find out what are the children’s interests and what is it that’s going to ignite their interests. What’s going to bring them together to find and use those interests to teach them and guide them to recognize and honor their own curiosity? Even if they have a challenging circumstance, even if they’re not talking and they’re already four years old, there’s a way to get in and find what that child is interested in and then use that to expand and learn more.

On an old Beaver friend…
I was just recently thinking about one of my closest friends from Beaver, Reggie Brothers, who has worked for the Department of State for a long time. He and I were the Master and Mistress of Ceremonies at Beaver because there were not enough girls and boys together to have a junior/senior prom so we had a junior/senior banquet and he and I were Master and Mistress of Ceremonies. We couldn’t figure out what kind of hook to use for our program or schtick, so at the very last minute, we decided to switch clothes. He wore my long dress and I wore his suit. I still have a picture of that that I’ve been meaning to send him. He’s gone on to do some pretty extraordinary things and we’re still in touch.

Beaver Reflections:
My mother went to Beaver and I graduated in 1957. We were the Heinz 57. It was a time when Beaver was just girls, and I started in 7th grade. My experience was positive. It was helpful for me later on because it gave me the experience of living in a supportive environment where I had good academic training and the opportunity to expand some of my interests, developing my international experiences. As a senior, they had an exchange student from AFS, the American Friends Society. We had this girl from Berlin living in our house for a year. It was about 52-53 when we were doing this so it was new to have a German living in your house after the Second World War. I had a mathematics teacher—I think her name was Mrs. Sayward—who was very special to me because she taught me advanced geometry. It’s big for girls to have a class like that. When we got to senior year I ran for President of the student government but I wasn’t elected and she said to me, “The students know best. They know what you can do. Let them be happy with their choice.” That really helped me and I then was chosen to be head of the social action committee. That suited me much better. That led me to the Red Cross and then, most recently, to have worked as a representative to the United Nations for my women’s association, the American Association of University Women.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After Beaver, I looked for something that was different. I left my hometown in the Boston area to go to New York and to attend Vassar where I majored in German and French. From my time at Vassar, I also received a social action award they honored me with around 10 years ago. Following my time at Vassar, I did a year abroad in Germany where I studied German literature in Mainz, Germany. Later on, I worked in an early computer lab using punch cards to perform health research data analysis related to optimizing the set-up of health clinics for miners. After 4 years there, I volunteered at the Field Museum in Chicago helping organize, catalog, and maintain the museum’s sample collections. After that, in 1985, I completed a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction from Virginia Tech, student taught in Roanoke, Virginia, and worked at Virginia Tech. During my time in Virginia, I became very active in The American Association of University Women (AAUW). And until recently, I was actively involved in NY AAUW which included leadership roles as the NGO liaison to the UN, where I would often commute to the UN in Manhattan.

“One of the happiest days of my life was when one of my friends’ girls called me up and told me that she was taking a job working at the United Nations. I had brought her to the United Nations and helped her get interested in this. Girls working with girls. It’s been a very pleasant way to continue my life’s work.”
– Carolyn Donovan ’57

Advice to Beaver students:
I think people should be flexible. It’s very simple. There’s a lot of ways that you can enjoy life.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated in 1965. We were pre-Vietnam and we weren’t really too affected by it. It was that pretty traditional part of the 60s. We loved team sports and everybody cheered for everybody. The only time that I can remember when we decided to revolt was at the end of my senior year. Mr. Nickerson was the headmaster. He was very young but we didn’t know that. And he decided that we were not going to march in our little white dresses with “Pomp and Circumstance,” which every other class had always done. And so we were going to revolt and we were not going to show up. Well, in no uncertain terms we were told to just get over it. And what happens? Someone in our class had a connection to the head trumpeter of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and he played “Trumpet Voluntary” when we marched in. It was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard, ever. None of us will ever forget. Soon after graduating, I joined the Alumni Board. We did reunions, we helped support the development office. Then I became a trustee and did that for quite a long time. Once I got involved, I never really skipped out because I was always working with my class if I wasn’t doing anything else. My husband became a trustee, too.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I worked for a few years after going to college and Katie Gibbs, which is no longer in business. It was what we call the Harvard Business School of Secretarial Schools. I could get a job anywhere and I worked for Kevin White, the Mayor of Boston in the 70s. Once I was married, we really started putting down roots and raising my two stepkids, who are now in their 50s. And I’ve been president of different organizations like our garden club in Milton, and a nonprofit in Boston called the Vincent Club, which raises money for the Mass General Ob/Gyn department. As a volunteer president, I probably did 90 hour weeks for two years. I haven’t taken home a paycheck in a very long time and we’re fortunate to have Bill retired from the financial business so we’re free to occupy our time in the way we like. Now we live on a farm here in South Carolina with horses and donkeys and chickens. I tend to seek out little mini-leadership roles, things like running the pickleball group or putting on an event.

“The annual fund makes me so proud. We’ve got a lot of very generous parents and we have alums that are really stepping up now.”

– Ceelie Beacham ’65

Advice to Beaver students:
Enjoy every minute of every day. Beaver is a wonderful place to be.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1979 and started in 7th grade. There were only 49 kids in my class, it was very, very small. It was very intimate. I had a full scholarship for all six years that I was there. The first couple years were really hard, because in 5th and 6th grade, I went to the Boston Public Schools and all my friends that I had been with for two years went to another school, and I went to Beaver. But I remember, everybody being really friendly, and it wasn’t like very long at all, that I really felt like a part of the community. It was great. I remember doing a lot of photography with my old photography teacher, Major Cohen. It taught me that if there’s something that I have passion about, then I should just go for it and pursue that dream, and I will be able to get there. And not every school does that. I think a lot of schools try to put you into their mold. They put out kids that they know will be successful, but those kids aren’t necessarily following their own passions. I’ll always look back at Beaver and be very grateful for that.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I graduated in ‘79 and went to Cornell. After two years at Cornell, I, well, let me back up a little. I always knew that I wanted to be a doctor, from I can’t even remember how long. I left Beaver, went to Cornell, and was going to be pre-med all the way. After my sophomore year at Cornell I actually pulled out because my grades were so bad. I think that I was depressed in some ways; I had a lot of family stuff going on. The school sent me a letter saying you need to get your life together and we’ll see you in a year. I went back home to Boston, took some courses at BU just to prove to myself I was still smart. After two years I went back to Cornell and finished. The pre-med counselor said, “I give you a 51% chance of getting into med school somewhere.” Beaver taught me that a 51% chance still means you can be successful. I moved to California, became a California state resident because the med schools were the least expensive med schools in the country, and applied and then got into UC Irvine. Today, as a cancer surgeon, my work hasn’t slowed down since it is essential work. And now I am homeschooling my children. This added another level of complexity on top of what has already been a pretty busy schedule. I had to administer the AP exams for both of my children, which was very stressful due to internet issues.

“Beaver’s the place that I learned that as long as I try I’ve got a really good chance of succeeding.”

– Cheryl Saenz ’79

Advice to the current Beaver students:
“This pandemic has been a testament to how strong and capable you all are. Do not let any sort of adversity stand in your way. If plan A does not work, go to Plan B. And if Plan B does not work, go to Plan C. Don’t ever think that you have exhausted every option for something you really want. You will get there because of your resilience.”

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1965 and although I was only at Beaver for two years, I loved every second of my time there. I had been going to Catholic school so going to Beaver was an amazing experience and a welcome switch from my previous school. The teachers were great, the students were so friendly and inclusive, and the classes were challenging enough where it forced you to use your critical thinking skills. I remember how flexible and accommodating Beaver was when it came to my passion for dance. Instead of being forced to dance at Beaver, they allowed me to go into Boston after classes were done and practice there. I also have very fond memories of my classes and teachers. I enjoyed my history classes taught by Dr. Heider, who was such an intelligent man and amazing teacher. I ended up majoring in American history in college, and that was due in part to Dr. Heider. Overall, I loved all my teachers and they all had such an impact on my life. I was also involved with student government and was elected head of my homeroom junior year, which was so exciting considering that was my first year at Beaver.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver I went to Barnard College and majored in American history. It was a great place because I loved the theater and art scene in New York City. I then received my master’s in English, which I really enjoyed. After college and my master’s degree, I went to Alaska for 10 years and started off traveling but it led to working for the state and completing revenue, health, and social service work. I did a research report on the longevity bonus which enables elderly Alaskans to have the financial means and support to stay in the state. After my time in Alaska, I had a brief stint teaching kids in Boston who had a hard time in the public school system. Although I liked it, the high school kids I taught were not in the age range that I wanted to teach. Following that, I got a job at Berwick Academy, another private school. I loved teaching the kids there because I had a chance to teach them through music, dancing, and other fun techniques. Since I have retired, more recently, my class from Beaver has had a big reunion and had the chance to really bond again. We all have been getting together informally and formally since that reunion which has been amazing because I get the chance to catch up with many of my classmates who I did not see as often after graduation. In one of the more recent Zoom meetings, we all shared our experiences of the pandemic. This was so eye-opening and poignant; everyone had such different perspectives and experiences that we decided to write them down and create a collection of essays.

“There is so much stress and negativity in the world, the last thing you want to do is compare yourself to others around you. Trust your family, friends, and teachers and understand that you are your own person! I believe that I am a lifelong learner but I credit Beaver with setting me up and putting me on my own personalized path.”
– Christine Quinn-Thibodeau ’65

Advice to Beaver students:
“Don’t feel like you are not smart enough. As a child and student I would have many doubts about what I could do and how smart I was. However, over the years, I have learned to go for it! Just do it! Do the best you can, try your hardest, and the rest will come”

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2012 and came to Beaver as a rising sophomore. My mom worked for Beaver when I went there so she was really the gateway into the school for me. I chose Beaver for the smaller environment and more individualized attention from the faculty. Beyond that, I think Beaver had a variety of strong programs such as arts and athletics that not many other schools could offer. Something I loved about Beaver was how it promoted creativity and pushed students to be the best version of themselves. They do a great job of encouraging students to follow what they are passionate about, and this was the case for me. Looking back, Mr. McKinney was an amazing teacher. I remember that his science class was the first class I ever took at Beaver, and I really admired and appreciated his passion for teaching. Another teacher who I remember was Mr. Lippman. He had a profound impact on me from the writing perspective and gave me the encouragement to go outside the traditional box of what it means to write an essay and become more creative. I also played baseball and golf at Beaver and loved the team energy from both sports.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Lewis and Clark College where I got my degree in rhetoric and media studies. I was actually recruited to play baseball in college but at the last second decided to walk on to the golf team. This was a great decision as I made great friends on the team and had so many amazing memories. After graduating from Lewis and Clark, I decided to go into the field of public relations. I worked at a couple of agencies in Portland, Oregon, doing the usual, run-of-the-mill public relations work. However, I told myself that if you could do this work, make it sound good, and represent it well, then you can do anything. In December 2019, I took a job as a PR specialist at Vacasa, a rental management company. As one can imagine, rentals are not the most Covid-friendly industry, so, unfortunately, myself along with a thousand-plus employees were laid off. I was stuck with a big decision whether to find another job immediately or try something new and out of the box. I decided to take the latter path because I was not enjoying the constant PR work. Something that kept percolating in my head was golf. I grew up caddying at a club in Newton and I obviously loved golf as I played it during Beaver and college. When I was caddying, you were exposed to so many different people at the club and fellow caddies. So as I was thinking about what to do, golf kept coming back to me. So soon after I got laid off, I started The Bag Bandit, a website dedicated to preserving and telling stories from a caddy’s perspective. At one end, golf knowledge comes into play, but I also have to tap into my PR roots when I act as a PR consultant for brands in the golf industry.

“I remember the trope of a child always asking ‘why, why, why?’ and that, in our culture, is something we find hilarious and make fun of. However, I find it very beautiful because the little kid is curious about why something is happening. We need more curiosity and wanting to learn more in our society.”
– Connor Laubenstein ’12

Advice to Beaver students:
When I was coming up from school, I had a questioning mindset already but was conditioned to accept things at face value and accept what I am being taught. It is important for young people to ask more questions about the institutions that are giving you information, not from a combative point of view but rather a curious and wondering perspective.

Beaver Reflections:
I started at Beaver in 7th grade and had a wonderful experience. Beaver really gave me the opportunity to explore who I was and develop my interests. I made lifelong friends there and found teachers who encouraged me in my academic pursuits. Many of the teachers were some of the best educators that I’ve had in my life, including through college and graduate school. Mr. Gow not only encouraged my interest in history but also helped me to develop writing skills and research skills so that I could explore history in a way that is more than just reading a book, it is actually doing the research itself. He and I did an independent study together on a less well-known colony that was established around the time as Plymouth, and I wrote a 30-page paper on my research. It was an incredible experience that influenced my passion for history.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I went to George Washington for college and majored in history. After that, I worked for a couple of years in investment research but also worked for a defense consultant in DC. Then I went to Boston University to get my Master’s in international relations. Since then I’ve been in Washington. I’ve worked for two think tanks that focus on US foreign policy and National Security – the Council on Foreign Relations and Center for Strategic and International Studies. Now I run an organization called the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN). We try to make foreign assistance more effective. We advocate on the Hill, in Congress and with the Administration about how the US spends its foreign aid dollars. I still live in Washington with my wife and my two daughters, and I’m fairly active in foreign policy circles.

“Stay in touch with the people you’re friends with because they’re people that may be friends for life and there’s no calculating how valuable that is for you over the course of your lifetime.”

– Conor Savoy ’01

Advice to Beaver students:
Take advantage of your time at Beaver. It’s a wonderful time in your life and although it doesn’t always look like that when you’re 15 or 16 years old, cherish the time that you have.. . I would just urge current Beaver students to do something they wouldn’t have thought they wanted to do, like stage managing a play. I would never have thought that I would try stage managing, and it was a wonderful experience!

Beaver Reflections:
When I started in 7th grade, we were an all-girls school and that gave us a sisterhood of empowerment. I love that campus. I loved that time in my life. I wasn’t the cool kid. I was the one who loved the whole class. I can actually remember every name of every student in my class. I can quite literally remember their faces. To this day I have a giant 6’x6’ painting I did my senior year at Beaver in my home in Boston. My son was named, in part, after my 9th grade history teacher, Ann Grayson. I have gone back for every single five-year reunion since I graduated in 1975. I have flown in from London, Los Angeles, and film locations up in Canada. I’ve even flown in from my home in Mexico. Who does that to go to a one-day reunion? This year was very sad for me because Covid hit and we had to cancel. I’m hoping that we fudge it somehow because I don’t want to wait until I’m much older to come to the next one. The one time I tried to fudge it at Beaver — I hadn’t had a chance to read one of the Shakespeare plays and I read the CliffsNote — I remember tap dancing brilliantly in the class, thinking I was just incredible. The teacher, Miss EYELETS? said, “So, were those CliffsNotes good? You tap dance well. Now go read the book.” The best teacher I ever had was Miss Baker. I had her in 7th grade. She held us to a standard that competed with Exeter, Andover, and any other school you could name. I’ve had many failures in life and, luckily enough, a whole lot more successes. When I think back and realize who I became, I learned how to do it at Beaver.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I knew from a very early age where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do, and I feel like I’m still just beginning. I’ll probably feel like I’m still just beginning at 80. I went to Harvard and majored in constitutional law and government. My plan was to go to law school and become an agent. I was the one who was going to make things happen. I went out to LA and, even with the Harvard diploma, I was being offered a position on a desk as a secretary. When I say that out loud, “I think, geez it’s the 1930s and 1940.” But this is the 1980s. This isn’t that long ago. But it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t eventually break through. I got my first job at 20th Century Fox as Director of Television, Movies, and Miniseries. I was at Fox for a while then I got a tremendous opportunity to be vice president of Motown at age 25, and I helped create and launch Motown Productions. We did the huge, award-winning mini-series Lonesome Dove, and a movie called Happy Endings, and several others. I ended up creating the Boston Film Group. I’ve worked for every one of the big studios. I created My Two Dads. There were years where I wasn’t successful and I kept doing one-hour dramas and one- and two-hour movies. The biggest one was G.I. Jane. I continued writing and producing and my husband took over a big company in Europe and I agreed to go to London. Silver Lake, the number one private equity firm in the world for technology, allowed me to have offices to develop a brand new streaming service. We’re about to launch that so that’s incredibly cool — we’ll either be billionaires or we’re going to fall flat on our faces. I’ve spent 15 years as one of the highest paid script doctors in Hollywood. I’m still reaching out for the next goal, the next creative explosion.

My philanthropic life is just as active. For the last several years I’ve been the Prime Minister’s ambassador for the film, television, and global digital industries in London. I traveled with Prince William to China to speak on behalf of the UK. I’ve lectured all over the world about disruptive television and social media and the future of culture. I worked for 12 years with the Governor’s Council on homeless youth in California. In London I was on the board for Centrepoint, Prince William’s prime charity for homeless youth. I’m on the board of AMFAR, the American Federation for AIDS Research. I chair the NXP Foundation which provides fellowships for women in STEM. We’ve just launched the Danielle Alexandra Center for Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at Texas University.

I have my son and the gift of this child has made my whole life. My son holds my heart every minute of every day.

“I truly believe that talent wins out in the end, if you get the door open. Getting the door open is the secret, not the talent.”

– Danielle Alexandra ’75

Advice to current Beaver Students:
If you can remember one thing, remember to tell a story. Leave them raptured with your story

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2016 after transferring there for my sophomore year. I feel like Beaver is progressive and unique in their teaching styles, which is something I embraced and wanted in college. I also really enjoyed NuVu and I’m so glad Beaver has a partnership with them — It was a defining part for me. I really enjoyed the project-based style at both NuVu and Beaver. I always liked design so it was really cool for me to get to do that. I worked on a project that was really exciting. We went to Mexico to field test it, we won a design competition for it. That kind of pointed me in the direction that I ended up in my career

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I go to NYU but I’m in Gallatin, which is a school of individual study. I’ve been creating my own major. I went in interested in design, interested in tech. Over the years I shifted it to be about language and tech. I did natural
language processing. I was working at a startup that was a conversational bot and I created this specific focus on the power of conversation. I hosted a speed learning series at NYU where people would teach each other things that they learned in class in a story you had to tell a bunch of different people. The point was to learn a bunch of different things from new people and also learn how to cut down your story and actually understand what you’re learning. I was involved with women in computing and I ran mentorships for girls. I interned at startups and, this is funny, I did a thing called Rough Draft Ventures the past couple years. I’m a student venture capitalist. I invest in student founders and this is out of a venture capital firm called General Catalyst. The founding partner of General Catalyst is Joel Cutler, who is on the Board of Beaver. Recently, because of Covid, my offer was rescinded at a company I really liked. I’ve been interning there for a while and they laid off 20 of their team and just couldn’t bring me on. I found another team I really like and I started two weeks ago. I’m a planner and I think a lot of plans out in my head and the one that i was really envisioning was swept out from under me and I realized that there are moments that your life just does a pivot and it’s still going to be okay. You can’t necessarily really have that 10-year plan.

“You do not figure out what you want to do because you know. You figure it out because you find what you do not like. Finding things that do not pique your interest helps narrow down the focus to find your true passion.”

– Devin Lewtan ’16

Advice to Beaver students:
Be curious. When you lean into your curiosity in any form, you will be smarter and will get more answers because you will ask questions. Whenever something interests you, really dive into it and ask questions because you will be able to continue broadening your horizons.

Beaver Reflections:
I went to Beaver from 6th grade to my senior year, so I had some middle school, junior high, and high school. I graduated in 1997. It was a great, intimate educational experience. One thing that stood out was it was an encouraging environment. They encourage you to do as many sports as possible regardless of your ability. They encourage the arts as well. And, obviously, academics, but to me academics is a given as a high schooler. Also, I didn’t realize it at the time, but there was a big safety net. I remember trying certain art programs or trying to start a club and if it didn’t work, I didn’t feel any sort of pressure or embarrassment. Not everything has to be the best. It creates a good environment to let people explore. Everyone was approachable on the faculty, too. Mr. McCarthy, who taught biology, was this old school Bostonian conservative guy with really progressive and future-looking perspectives. He taught us to think outside the box. He would say outlandish things and then support it with evidence, and he’d say it with this thick Boston accent.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I went to film school. For a year after that I lived in New York City learning filmmaking and teaching filmmaking classes. Then I moved to LA where I taught film and interned at production companies. Eventually, I got signed with some representation and turned that into a career making music videos and TV commercials. That occupied about 10 years of my life. Over the last two or three years I’ve been trying to segue into long form, specifically feature films. I just finished a script during the pandemic. It’s a sort of dark comedy and I’m working on getting that made. We’re on the precipice of getting that put into production. I hope to direct it. In the last two years I got married and I just had a baby six months ago. During the whole pandemic my wife has been pregnant or with a newborn, so our safety precautions have been exaggerated. It’s given us a lot of perspective. We feel very blessed and know people have had it way harder. Whenever I think of the insurmountable tasks ahead of us, I try to think of the things we can control. That might be as simple as controlling what I do for dinner, or putting effort and thought into my baby’s schedule to make sure he eats on time and sleeps on time, and that will get us better sleep, and that means I can get more creative during the day. Anything you can focus on, anything that’s within your control, helps you.

“I’ve been very humbled by the pandemic and I’m learning a lot. There has been this understanding that permanence is not a given.”

– Dori Oskowitz ’97

Advice to current Beaver Students:
Things are changing at a rate that makes us all kind of newcomers, so I think I’d rather stay humble at this point and say that there’s a lot to be learned. We’re all adapting, we’re all learning.

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.”

On her Beaver experience…
When I was at Beaver, the standard colleges were all liberal arts, especially within New England. I was one of the few Beaver folks looking outside of New England for my university career. So I was a little different in that regard.

Beaver definitely had a strong science and math program, so when I got to college that helped to make it easier for me to select one of my majors. My career path is a lot different than a lot of people (in my field) in that I did get a Bachelor of Arts degree and I was a double major in math and economics, and then I switched into an engineering field. But when I was at Beaver, while math and science were very strong there wasn’t a push, as I remember, or a focus towards engineering schools.

It was a different time, there was no Internet, we all had a book to read about universities and you had to do a lot more homework yourself to get information on universities and programs. Beaver certainly influenced my undergraduate decision to focus on math and continue with that. Beaver overall was pretty open in terms of giving students a very rigorous and broad education background so you didn’t have to make a decision that narrowly focused your career path.

On starting a new team at Beaver…
I don’t think there’s still a cross-country ski team at Beaver but a few of my fellow graduates and I wanted to have a ski team. We discussed with some of the Beaver teachers how we could get it going and we had a meeting to show student interest. The school was very willing to help fund that. I think we started that in ‘85 or ‘86. It was the first year that Beaver had a ski team and I think it lasted for a while. That just stood out, that if you have a good idea and you can show that there’s interest, it’s not that difficult sometimes to make change happen.

On her career path…
I went to Vanderbilt University and there was, like, one other person I knew there from New England, another Beaver Alum who was a couple of years ahead of me. That’s in Nashville, Tennessee, so very different from New England, especially back in that day. My career started in Washington, DC, working for the U.S. Department of Labor. I was there for a year and then I fled to sunny Southern California for economical higher education opportunities. I went to UCLA for my master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering. From there, I knew I was going to make California my home so I worked for a couple of different places before I ended up at Tetra Tech, my current company.

On her role at Tetra Tech…
Tetra Tech is a global engineering and environmental consulting company. We work on the most important engineering and environmental projects throughout the world. My focus is predominantly on Southern California projects and on regulatory compliance as well as what I call remediation projects, cleaning up the legacy sites in Southern California.

On what a project looks like…
in consulting there really is no typical project for the most part. Some of my projects are design projects where we prepare the documents for contractors to follow, called plans and specifications. Those are usually about six-month projects. Then we’ll work with our client during actual implementation to make sure that the contractor is following all the requirements. Those are more of my shorter duration projects.

A lot of my other projects last a very long time because when you work on environmental projects there’s a long-term process starting with an investigation assessment and identifying what the problems are. Then working through a complete assessment to make sure that you have all the information to identify how you’re going to clean up the site. Then you wait until you get funding to actually clean up the site. Usually, I have a lot of regulatory agencies involved, so there’s a lot of review, a lot of back and forth. Some of my cleanup projects cost over 20 million dollars, so it’s a big gulp for some of my clients. I tend to work on a lot of very complicated projects. I work on projects that are right at the coast, so there are a lot more complications due to tidal influences than some of the other peers in my field. If you talk to people in the Midwest, they don’t have to worry about this issue.

On the greatest challenges of her job…
Time. Time to do everything I need to get done in my day. Our clients are very sophisticated so it can be really challenging to meet their demands and their expectations. Time is probably my biggest challenge. The other thing I would say would be getting funding all at once to complete a project. That can be a really big challenge.

On misconceptions of her profession…
People would be surprised how long it takes to actually complete some of the projects. Sometimes it’s surprising to me how long it takes as well. Sometimes I think we spend more time on paper than we do on actual implementation. It’s just kind of the nature of the beast. A lot of times we have regulatory changes or redevelopment changes to change what we’re doing and we’ll have to go back to the beginning.

I think there’s a misconception that environmental engineering is environmentalism. People say, “Oh you’re an environmental engineer. You’re out with the environmental groups like NRDC.” That’s not the case. We’re not like Greenpeace. And, especially as a consulting company, we are a business. We exist because we have clients and because we’re able to make a profit; we’re not a non-profit. I think that’s the biggest misconception that a lot of young people will have when they come into this field—understanding that at the end of the day it is a business.

On collaboration…
A lot of collaboration is really with our clients—with what we call stakeholders. So working with our clients so that they understand the process if they’re not familiar with it and making sure that at the end of the day they have something that they need that’s useful to them. Within my company, we have 20,000 associates across the globe. So I’ve recently worked with folks from Australia and I work with a lot of folks throughout the U.S. who specialize in some of the fields that I specialize in. Internally we’re very collaborative and externally we’re also very collaborative.

On a skill that Beaver-aged Heather might not believe that she does now…
I wouldn’t have expected to have to have as much financial understanding as I do. What Beaver did provide for me is a writing skill, which is really necessary for any field but especially in engineering. The better writer you are the more successful you will be because a lot of engineering schools don’t emphasize writing and you can see it. It’s night and day.

On advice for a current Beaver student…
My advice for anyone choosing a field similar to mine would be to choose the more technical classes. The softer sciences, a lot of them are environmental science programs and really don’t provide the skill set needed, unfortunately. You really need to have the engineering fundamentals to be really successful in a consulting environment. And to be honest, those are the jobs that are more fun. If you stick to the environmental science jobs, it’s a lot more limited in your career path. The engineer can do what the scientists do but scientists can’t always do what the engineers can do.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1987 and I loved it there. I came in the 8th grade from a public school and making that switch was one of the best decisions of my life. When I stepped into Beaver, I immediately felt at home. One of my first memories I have from Beaver was in my social studies class taught by Mr. Gow. He would always tell me that Hope, Arkansas, was the watermelon capital of the world. He said it so often that I got curious about it, so I wrote to the Hope Chamber of Commerce and they sent me an entire package and pamphlet on the watermelon festival! One of my other favorite memories was when Mrs. Moulding, my 10th grade English teacher, brought in a Dire Straits album and played the song “Romeo and Juliet” while we were reading the play. It made the play so much more accessible and made me a Dire Straits fan at the same time. Moments like that broke the logjam I found myself in during my time in the public school system. At Beaver, I was also a part of the drama club and chorus, which was nice to be able to bond with classmates outside of class.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Skidmore College where I majored in English. I then went to Tufts and received my master’s in education, believing that I was going to become an English teacher. However, I realized that teaching wasn’t for me. Later, I went to the Vermont College of Fine Arts and received my MFA in creative writing. Now, I write short stories and every once in a while someone will publish one! Most of my work has been in marketing and fundraising communications for higher education and nonprofits. For the past couple of years I’ve done that as a freelancer, which allows me to take on a wider variety of work from different sources with a much more flexible schedule.

“Being at Beaver allowed me to question things I was not allowed to question in previous
schools and learn subjects I would never have imagined I would learn about. They
taught me to understand and appreciate the critical thinking learning that was not
necessarily in my life before Beaver.”
– Hope Coppinger ’87

Advice to Beaver students:
There’s a myth out there that you need to get on a path and stick to that trajectory. Some people can do that, and some others may not find happiness that way. I am definitely in the latter group. Beaver allowed me to explore a lot of different interests and that enabled me to understand that I could create and shape my own path.

On his time at Beaver…
I actually started at Beaver in 10th grade, so I was only there for three years, but I would say it was really transformative for me. I really hated school throughout elementary and middle school. I was never a particularly great student. I really thrived at Beaver, I sort of came into my own and learned to love learning. I had wonderful teachers, and I think the sense of community really allowed me to get involved in a lot of different things. I worked for the student newspaper, I played sports, I was in student government. There were just lots of opportunities to get involved in student life that I think I probably would not have been able to do at a larger school. It also meant I was able to develop really close relationships with other students and get to know the faculty and develop close relationships with teachers. That was helpful and important for me, the sense of community.

“I really thrived at Beaver, I sort of came into my own and learned to love learning.”

– Jacob Mnookin ’97

On his path to a career in education…
After graduating from Beaver I went to Middlebury up in Vermont which is a small liberal arts college. I majored in English and political science and didn’t really know what I wanted to do upon graduating. Around the time I was getting ready to graduate, I heard a 30-second elevator pitch from a representative for Teach For America. I had never heard of Teach for America before but it seemed like sort of a good opportunity to do something productive for a few years while I figured out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, so I applied and got in. I never set out thinking I would become a teacher or a life-long educator, but was placed in Newark, NJ, teaching high school English. That experience definitely had a big impact on me for two reasons. One, I really fell in love with teaching and working with kids in a way that I wasn’t necessarily anticipating. There’s something for me very magical about being around kids when they have that lightbulb moment where they learn something for the first time or realize something or engage in a conversation that they feel passionate about. I just loved being around that and being a part of that. And then two, I was able to see firsthand the educational inequities that plague many parts of the country. As an upper middle class white Jewish kid from Newton, I think I was relatively sheltered from what public education is like in a lot of inner cities across the country and probably rural areas, too. I think an education like that would not have been acceptable to better-off families in other parts of the country. That just struck me as profoundly unfair in a way that I had been unaware of before. Woefully ignorant, I guess. So those two things had a big impact on me: I loved working with kids, and seeing this educational inequity. Both compelled me to make this my career.

On founding Coney Island Prep…
Coney Island Prep opened in 2009. Something that has always been important to me is creating a strong sense of community; that we are of this community, for this community, that the staff knows all the students, the students know all the staff, families feel like they are not only always welcome to come to the school but that it is their school, too. Starting anything is really hard, it takes a lot of time, effort, and energy, but I always knew that the only way that I’d be able to put in the time needed to do it was if I really loved the people I was working with and the work that I was doing. Creating that strong sense of community is a big part of it. Knowing that the people who you’re working with are in it for the right reasons, believe in the mission of the organization and the school, care about the kids and the community and families, and want to be there. That’s always been really important to me from the first day. That is something that Beaver certainly did really well when I was there that I wanted to carry through.

On his current focus as a school leader…
We have certainly placed a big emphasis in the past four years on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and thinking about what it means to work with a population that isn’t always included or treated as equal, and what sort of responsibilities we have, what biases we bring to the job. Sort of related is understanding that our students are people that we need to respect and acknowledge as such, in a way that maybe wasn’t so obvious. Let me try to explain what I mean by that. Some of the structures that we had in place around discipline, etc., we have been trying to reimagine them over the past couple of years taking into account who each individual kid is and seeing them as an individual person to figure out what are the strengths that they bring to the school. How can we meet them where they are and help them get to where they need to get, rather than trying to create structures and systems that treat every kid as the same? Trying to view kids more as individuals and trying to help our staff realize that students have strengths that they can bring to school every day.

On how his Beaver experience has informed his practice as a school leader…
The sense of agency. I feel like I had a lot of say in what my high school experience was and what the future held for me. I felt like I had a lot of control over that. So wanting to create an environment where our students feel the same way. They feel that they have agency over both the work that they’re doing now and, also, what their future holds for them. It’s really important to me that kids, when they graduate from Coney Island Prep, feel that they can go off and do or be whoever they want to be. They could get whatever job they want. If they want to be a lawyer, they feel like they have the education they need to get to the college that will allow them to be a lawyer. If they want to be a doctor, if they want to join the army—whatever it is that they want to do, that they feel like Coney Island Prep has opened doors for them. That idea of choice, giving kids choice to make decisions that they feel will allow them to live their happiest, most complete life, that’s always been really important.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1958 and my experience was wonderful. Beaver was the perfect school for me. My classmates and I were very lucky to have had a cohort of teachers who were very experienced, personable, and cared about the topic they were teaching. I can not begin to even name all the teachers who had a positive impact on me because I was at Beaver for so many years, and I have such fond memories of all of them. While at Beaver, I was also on the tennis, field hockey, basketball, and softball teams. I really enjoyed the team atmosphere that came from all those sports. Also, I was senior editor of the Beaver Log, which was a literary magazine that was composed of essays, short stories, and poems.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Harvard University where I studied American history. After that, I lived overseas with my then-husband for two years in the Dominican Republic and then three years in Lima, Peru. This gave me a wonderful opening for a career that looked at international economic development issues. Personally, I would not say I had a single career, but, rather, a combination of fascinating and individual jobs. The majority of them involved being a hired pen, where I would do a lot of writing in the service of small, non-profit or public interest organizations that would focus on the environment, human rights, etc. My business partner and I completed around 10 years of international development assignments that took us to various locations such as Latin America, Africa, India, and Pakistan. For the past 5 years, I have been working pro bono for an organization called Tzedek DC. Our focus is giving legal help to people in debt, specifically in the DC area, while advocating for systemic change and reform. I work part time, but when I am there I am the Senior Advisor, complete lots of writing, and am the designated Spanish speaker.

“I never went to any other school before Beaver! I went to Beaver from the time I was 3 all the way up until I graduated. This was such a terrific experience for me because I had the chance to grow as a person and learner at the same school for all those years!”
– Janet Lowenthal ’58

Advice to Beaver students:
Do not assume that you can plan your life out step by step and have some grand vision for how the years will unfold. As much as we want it to, it does not usually work that way. Life changes, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. Always be ready to seize new opportunities while getting to know different people.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1987 and I had a tremendous time there. It was a very tight-knit community and I loved the eclectic vibes that ran throughout the school.As far as I remember, everyone got along well with each other and it was such a warm and welcoming environment. I am fortunate to say that once I got to college, I believe I was ahead of the curve because of how well Beaver prepared me for the next level of education. I had amazing teachers that helped me develop my skills while also having fun inside the classroom. I remember my English teachers, Ms. Zucker and Ms. Moulding, because of the way they taught us how to think analytically while diving into the deeper meanings of texts. My brother had passed away earlier and it was in English class where I had the chance to process that loss and put it into writing. They were such amazing teachers and helped me progress as a writer.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver I went to Clark University and studied psychology. After that, I worked briefly in the field of human services. I was working at an in-patient psychiatric hospital for adolescents and decided that I really needed to go back to school to get my master’s. I went to Simmons and graduated in 1996 with my master’s in social work. After I received my MSW, I decided to leave Massachusetts and move to Dallas, Texas, because I had family there. There I was introduced to the WARM Place, which stands for What About Remembering Me, which is a children’s grief center for children who experienced the death of someone close. This was important to me, especially as someone who lost someone very close to them. The director of the WARM Place actually trained me and I came back to Massachusetts and was doing a lot of educational courses on the topic of grief and loss. With a network of people, we developed FRIENDS Way, which stands for Families Reaching Into Each New Day, in Rhode Island, with a similar structure and ideologies found in the WARM Place. I was the director there for a number of years but travel became too much with family so I stepped back from my role there. After that, I founded Jeff’s Place (https://www.jeffsplace.org/), a children’s grievance center. We provide educational training and workshops for schools, crisis prevention, and some individual counseling.

“Beaver is a school that does very well in helping kids with their mental health and putting the students first, before a test or exam. When I was there the support system through the faculty and staff was excellent and I can only imagine how great it is now.”
– Jen Kaplan ’87

Advice to Beaver students:
In today’s society there is a lot of pressure surrounding academics and how much stress kids can put on themselves. It is important to prioritize yourself whether that is your physical or mental health. Although it is good to do well in school, a letter grade will not define you.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2008 and had an amazing time. I rediscovered my love of learning and started figuring out what I was passionate about. I had amazing teachers, advisors, and friends while there so I look back very fondly on my Beaver days. I played soccer and loved the team aspect where I had the chance to bond with many of my teammates. I remember my advisor, Mr. Butler, who was a great and caring person. I also remember Mr. Whitten, who was my English teacher and the chaperone for the trip I went on to China after my senior year. Another teacher I loved was Mr. Adjout, who taught me French and also coached the soccer team. To this day, I still have a close group of friends from my graduating class.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I originally went to Trinity University with the goal of studying biology and life sciences, two subjects I loved at Beaver. However, I realized it was not the path I wanted to take so I took a year off and took night classes at the Harvard Extension School. After this, I ended up transferring to the University of Vermont where I majored in psychology and business while helping write for the newspaper. Post college, I originally wanted to give sports media a go, so I started working at a small television station down in Connecticut where I covered games ranging from high school level to professional. I did that for around three years and then covered the Boston Celtics for around four seasons. I ultimately wanted a full-time gig so I transitioned into a role as a project manager at a solar development firm called Omni Navitas and then became the Director of Policy and Strategy. There, I do the planning and entry for our company into various markets.

“After the past year, I have realized the value of in-person interactions and how crucial it is to never take anything for granted. You never know when we may all be forced to work from home again as a nation or when something could strike again, so I have learned to be grateful for everything, even the small things we may have glossed over two years ago.”
– Jeremy Karpf ’08

Advice to Beaver students:
Give everything a try. There are no bad avenues and you never know what could spark your interest and passion if you don’t go for it. Go into things with an open mind and sometimes the world will surprise you!

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1984. My time there was marked with personal growth and incredible learning opportunities throughout the various subjects. I remember the encouragement I received from teachers that pushed me to be my best. I was also a runner and did cross country throughout my years at Beaver. One of my favorite funny memories involves what is now the student art gallery but used to be a student lounge. During my freshman and sophomore years, students were allowed to smoke cigarettes in that room. It always stands out to me because it shows not only how times were back then but how much Beaver has changed since my time. Finally, looking back, I remember being the first white member of the Black Student Union. At the time it was a fun experience, as I was friends with many of the members. However, looking back I realize that I probably should have not been a member as that was a safe space for them to be in an inclusive environment with like-minded people.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I feel like I have had three different lives since graduating from Beaver. I went to Boston University and enjoyed my time there. Following my college graduation, I moved to New York and made my way through the Macy’s Executive Program and had a whole retail career. This then led me into a marketing career at Bose Speakers where I was the marketing director. I am now in my third and hopefully final career because during the pandemic, I started a small batch gourmet cookie company called Jim’s Munchy Madness (https://jimsmunchymadness.com/).

“The encouragement and motivation that the students receive from the teachers and faculty at Beaver are unmatched. Ms. Thompson, a past head of the English department once told me, ‘Life is filled with leaders and followers. You are a leader and you have to act like a leader. Be a leader.’ And this quote changed the course of my life.”
– Jim Blankstein ’83

Advice to Beaver students:
“Although it may feel like the most important thing in your life at the time, I promise you that your popularity will not define you later in life. Your opportunity to grow a social network after high school and even college will skyrocket. Do not fear or be saddened by how you view yourself currently in the social scene at Beaver. Another piece of advice is to take one class every year that not only fulfills your credits but also is something you are interested in. Learning about your interests keeps your desire to grow and learn more active than just taking classes that are required.”

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2018. Two of my siblings also attended Beaver and we all started in the 6th grade. While at Beaver I worked very closely with the Hiatt Center, played volleyball, and helped lead the Del Sol club, a multicultural club, throughout high school. All through my years at Beaver, I was always very interested in social justice work and helped with affinity groups and students of color conferences. Beaver will always have a special place in my heart, and this past year I had the chance to go back and work with the Hiatt Center again. Looking back, I had so many amazing teachers. I loved my 6th grade advisor, Mr. Greenberg, who not only was a great advisor but also a wonderful teacher who helped develop my writing skills early on. Another teacher I really enjoyed was Ms. González. I remember that her first year at Beaver was also my first year so it was nice getting adjusted together. She has always helped me so much with not only school work but also topics outside the classroom.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Stanford University and am an anthropology major with a concentration in medical anthropology and a minor in human biology. I am very involved on campus and have been co-presidents of some clubs and am also a part of the African Student Association and Black Student Union. Apart from that, I have also traveled with my school and did a couple of projects abroad in Australia and the Galapagos. Last summer I was supposed to be in Thailand for my internship. However, due to Covid I did the remote internship where we worked on community empowerment projects and chronic disease control within smaller communities in Thailand. I worked with the Thai Health Fund. Currently, before I go back to school, I am conducting research on cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine with a grassroots organization called Global Oncology, based in Nigeria. I am excited I get to help do this work because I am interested in it and my family is also from Nigeria. Along with that, I am also continuing my school work. I am looking at graduate school and pursuing a master’s in public health.

“This past year it was critical to be able to hold myself accountable and take breaks when necessary from schoolwork and from hours of staring at my computer. It is so important in not only college but in life to understand when your social battery needs to be recharged and when it is time to prioritize yourself.”
– Joddy Nwankwo ‘18

Advice to Beaver students:
I have always stood by the quote quality over quantity. And at Beaver that is still true, especially with friends. I believe that finding a quality group of close friends that raise you up and don’t bring you down is so helpful in general. Also, try to get the most out Beaver. This does not only mean academically but also expands to building meaningful connections with teachers where later in life you can come back to them and they will still be there to support you.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated in 1975 and Beaver was like a saving grace for me. Everyone at Beaver was lovely, and the school made everyone feel welcome. I didn’t have a single bad teacher. Tracey Powers, my first French teacher, was amazing. I was at a conference of about one hundred people where I had a translator from Canada. They were not doing a good job of translating, so I tried translating it myself. I found that I am now fluent in French and can say almost everything except for some of the more complex vocabulary used in my work. Ann Grayson, my 8th-grade history teacher, inspired me so much both in and out of the classroom. We formed a great connection and I learned so much from her.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I went from Beaver to Yale — Beaver’s math department was way better than Yale’s — then got my master’s at Oxford. I then went to law school at the University of Virginia and practiced law for 35 years. About 27 years ago I had two children with my husband through surrogacy. After my second son was born almost 26 years ago I started a surrogate parenting agency called Circle Surrogacy which has become the largest surrogate parenting agency in the world. I sold about eighty percent of it three years ago. It was the right thing at the right time for the right set of people. I had clients from 74 different countries, there are now close to 100 employees, and we’ve had 2,500 babies, and I’ve changed the world. I’ve been all over the world helping people that couldn’t have children otherwise: straight people, gay people, singles, couples. I absolutely loved it and I miss it terribly. I officially retired about four months ago. I skied 90 days this year and have been waiting to do my one-man show about Truman Capote for two years. Keeping the 41 single-space pages in my head for the one-hour and 25-minute show for two years because of Covid, because we couldn’t perform. We will probably put that on sometime in August or September of this year.

“I used to go to France where I thought I was going to get thrown into jail for both helping gay people have children and doing surrogacy, which they consider baby selling, and I managed to at least keep myself out of that. What I’m doing is right.”
– John Weltman ’75

Advice to Beaver students:
It’s really hard having a job that doesn’t excite you. If you do something you love, you are so much more likely to do well at it and pursue your passion.

On his path to teaching …
I graduated from Beaver in 1984, went off to Colby College, majored in religion, got a job right out of Colby sweeping floors in a warehouse, and then started to do some teaching in rural Maine. The minute I walked into a classroom I sort of recognized that was where I needed to be. I worked for five years at Oxford Hills High School in South Paris, Maine, and then determined that I might as well go get a master’s degree. I left Oxford Hills and did a master’s program at the experienced teachers program at Harvard for a year.

I finished that up, got married, and my wife and I picked up stakes and moved to Mexico. I taught a year in a village in the middle of Central Mexico for a year and taught English and history. Then we moved back to Maine and I taught for three years at a school just to the west of Portland, at Gorham High School. It was at Gorham that I was really able to dig in and begin to do some innovative and interdisciplinary stuff. I team-taught most of my schedule. There was an English teacher by the name of Derek Pierce and he’s gone on to do some cool stuff, but we sort of developed an American studies curriculum, and then I sort of took a three-year leave from education.

On momentarily leaving education …
I had become discouraged that public education wasn’t going to be able to make some fundamental changes. I also have a hundred-ton captain’s license, so I actually was working on the water for a few years. I started a local franchise of a nationwide company called Seatow that sort of does AAA for boats—marine towing and salvage. I really loved that work. I was also involved in starting Duck Boat tours here in Portland. I got hired to be a General Manager of that operation.

… and then returning …
And then 9/11 happened. The place I wanted to be most in all of that confusion and all of that post-9/11 soul-searching was back in the classroom. I felt like that was where I could use my passion for trying to understand the world to help other people and teach them how to understand the world.

So I went back into the classroom in 2002 at Falmouth High School just north of Portland. I taught there for ten years before I became assistant principal, and this is my eighth year as assistant principal. I was a social studies teacher, I served on the Portland school committee for six years, I was chairman of the Portland School Committee for two of those, finance chair, policy chair. One of the things we were able to do when I was on the board, was we established a third high school in the city of Portland called Casco Bay High School, which is an expeditionary learning school.

On helping to establish Casco Bay High School …
Conveniently, it was my former team-teaching partner Derek Pierce that ended up being the Principal of that school, the founding principal. Portland is an interesting town; it’s got a large immigrant population. For a town of 63,000, it’s actually far more diverse than you might expect. Casco Bay has done a really good job of taking whoever wants through the door and moving them through their expeditionary model. That was an interesting opportunity and I’m glad I was in the place to make that happen for kids.

On Sailing Ships Maine …
My latest project outside of school is I’m on the board of Sailing Ships Maine. Our goal is to bring 250 Maine high school students on board traditionally rigged sailing vessels every year, and have it so that money is not an object. I’ve had some great opportunities to organize programming and figure out ways to get kids academic credit for the time that they’re on board, and I, myself, have had the opportunity to lead a number of expeditions, including two of them from Bermuda back to Maine. That’s been a blast.

On working to find alternatives to youth incarceration …
Currently, I’m working with Sailing Ships Portland as well as Falmouth High School as well as the Maine Department of Corrections to see if we can find some alternatives to youth incarceration and young offender incarceration. The Commissioner of Corrections here is very keen on looking at anyone who is incarcerated under the age of 24 and trying to figure out if there is something else we can do for them so that they don’t become institutionalized in a mindset, and, while they’re still developing brains, to give them skills to be successful outside. Inside of school stuff I’m still very much wrapped up in being an assistant principal—being around and doing all of those things that assistant principals and teachers do.

On his time at Beaver …
I came to Beaver from Shore Country Day School up in Beverly, which, at that time, was an incredibly traditional, buttoned-down, and kind of intense school. It saw itself as a feeder to the Andovers and Exeters and the St. Paul’s and the Miltons of the world, and on to the Ivy League. In 7th and 8th grade I kind of gave them the finger, I just wasn’t going to play that game. The headmaster at the time was friends with the head of Beaver at that time, a guy named Philip McCurdy. So he said, “I think, Jon, you might want to take a look at Beaver.” I did look at Beaver and I came to Beaver in 10th grade because Shore went through the 9th grade. At the time, Beaver was a pretty standard high school curriculum, but a philosophy of allowing kids to follow their passion. I remember very clearly being told by the headmaster,”I’ve never known a kid to do better because you didn’t let them do the thing that they loved.” That’s been a fundamental piece of my educational philosophy ever since.

On Beaver helping to shape an educational philosophy …
All students are passionate about something. Our job as teachers is to help them figure out what that is if it’s not obvious to them, and then support them. One of the key things about Beaver that was great for me is that I was a theater and music guy. That was my thing and I was allowed to do as much of that as I wanted to. And it was within a structure that made it safe to take risks and that’s sort of where I found my tribe and sense of belonging. I also had some outstanding teachers. It’s funny because when my parents moved, they sent me a box of my old essays that for some reason got saved from my time at Beaver. When I sit down to grade student papers every year I look back at a couple of mine because we have this impression that we’ve always been solid writers and then you have this realization that, at one point, you were a 10th grader, too, and if somebody hadn’t pointed that out to you, you wouldn’t have gotten better. I continue to read the comments that Ms. Thomsen wrote on my English essays in 11th grade and she was right.

Really, I think the thing that was special was the relationships you could build. You knew your teachers and your teachers knew you, and there was that sense of community that allowed you to feel safe to take risks. I think that for me really the challenge as an educator, or teacher, or assistant principal, is to find out what the kid is passionate about, find out ways to have them do as much of that as they can. One of my favorite things to do is look at a kid who is at risk for not graduating and say, “What do you really love to do and how can we make that what you do to get the credits that you need?”

I had a young person last year who was in a rough spot. What he really loved to do was work on engines and he got himself a job working as a mechanic and assisting in a garage. I figured out a way to make it so that he could at least earn some of his graduation credits by doing that work. We’ve got other kids who really like to do creative stuff or service-oriented stuff. I really see my job now as an administrator is to say, “How can we do this? How can we take this passion of yours and allow you to explore it and embrace it and have us value it?” My sense when I was at Beaver was that I was valued for my uniqueness. So that’s something that I’ve always tried to carry with me. When I look back, Beaver had a huge influence on my personal approach to education and what we should be doing for students.

“My sense when I was at Beaver was that I was valued for my uniqueness.”

– Jon Radtke ’84

On some of the challenges …
When I was at Beaver in the early to mid 1980’s, it was not the school it is today. It was not as well resourced, for lots of reasons. But it was small classes. I’ve been lucky to spend my professional life in the state of Maine where I’ve never had a class, in over 30 years in the classroom, over 25. So that’s a big number, or can feel like a big number, but it’s not the 30, 35, 40 that routinely occurs in other places. The other thing I’ve found is that the biggest challenge in the world of public education is not financial, but attitude. Like all bureaucracies, it gets bogged down in its own minutiae as opposed to remembering that the institution exists for kids and our job should be how do we empower kids to do what they’re passionate about, which may or may not cost money.

And also, for example, up at Oxford Hills High School, which is rural Maine, it’s got a lot of multi-generational poverty, I was still able to work with an English teacher doing team teaching, I was still able to help kids put together musical groups and do lots of things that don’t actually cost money, but it had to take a willingness on the part of somebody to engage in a mentoring way with kids as opposed to, “I’m the teacher here. Go do this thing and then go away”

On allowing students to pursue their passions …
One of my favorite colleagues is the head of IT and his thing is, “Why can’t school be more like camp?” And I agree. Do we even give kids the opportunity to become engrossed in things anymore? To do deep thinking and problem-solving. If you go through the building, the great irony is that what kids are actually passionate about is rarely what’s happening in the classroom. It’s what they’re doing outside of the classroom, with a teacher, with an adult mentor, focused around their interests. That’s what enlivens them. You see it most obviously in athletics, where kids will spend endless hours practicing. I also see it in the theater, I see it in robotics, I see it around music. And that all usually is considered ‘extra’. And my thing is, “How can we make that not extra? But, instead, you need to spend a good chunk of your day doing what you love to do, whether it’s computer programming whether you’re in the theater, whether it’s in a ceramics studio, wherever it is.” That sort of notion is something I think I do carry over from my years at Beaver.

On technology at Beaver …
I don’t consider myself a computer guy, but we had this course that everybody had to do at Beaver when I was there in 1981/82. It was a quarter-credit course, it met like once a week or something, and it was to learn BASIC computer programming. Nobody does BASIC anymore, but that was the language we were learning and it was done on an old RadioShack TRS80 computer where the cassette tape was the memory drive. I remember my final exam was to write a program where your name gets written across the screen ten times and stops. That in and of itself was not terribly important except it taught me a fundamental thing about how computers think and the logical systems that underlie them. I use that all the time to teach to a basic problem-solving set, whether you’re trying to diagnose a diesel engine that’s not behaving correctly out at sea or you’re trying to figure out why your spreadsheets aren’t giving you the results you anticipated or why this database isn’t functioning. People said, “We teach you this because you don’t know what you’ll need to know.” They were right. At the time it was a thing we all tried to get out of. But it’s one of those things that has been very helpful in life, and strange as it seems now, it was not a very common thing in 1981 to require every student in the building to do a little computer programming.

On rethinking teaching and learning …
I think the things that I’ve worked hardest at bringing about are building off student passion and then trying to tailor education to the individual level in terms of what kids are passionate about, and creating flexibility. I guess as an administrator, my goal is to create flexibility in an inherently rigid system so that we can truly look at kids as individual human beings who have their own passions. Maybe you need to know a little algebra, too, in life, but let’s not force it on people, but really allow them to do deep learning and deep experimentation and deep design. In my perfect universe, every student’s path through secondary school should be unique. The reality is when you’ve got 170 kids in a class, you can’t necessarily do that, but I bet you can get pretty close on a lot of kids. And so for me, that’s the challenge right now. How do we have a path through high school, essentially use the design process, to make it work for kids as individuals?

At the end of the day, I absolutely find teenagers to be some of the most interesting people in the world to hang out with. It’s a gift to be standing there when they begin to truly see the world through adult eyes, and it’s a gift to me when a student sees something in the world as an injustice and they come at me with that intense teenage sense of fairness, and they’re right. There are things that are broken, now how can you be part of the solution?

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2017 and had a great experience all around. I dabbled in a little bit of everything and was an active member of the Beaver community. I was on the basketball and baseball teams, had a role on student council, and attended many plays and musicals. I also took part in Senior Studio where I worked on various art projects throughout the year and got an opportunity to present my work at the end of the year. I was a part of the Del Sol club, which was a great experience hearing and learning about various cultures and having an open space for students to speak freely. Looking back, I loved Mr. Lippman and his teaching style. Everyday was a unique experience and class with him made learning so much more interesting and enjoyable. I learned a lot about creative writing that has helped me since I graduated from Beaver. I also have great memories with Ms. Colognesi. She was like my second mom and helped me navigate the college process.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to the College of the Holy Cross, where I majored in sociology and minored in digital media. I just graduated this past year! Although I was virtual this past year for parts of college, it really gave me the chance to slow down and take my time with preparation for internships and work. The pandemic gave me time to look over my resume and review my portfolio. I believe that extra time I had is one of the reasons why I am working this summer. I have been working at NFL films in New Jersey where, up until recently, I was a creative production intern. Since then, I have become a full time production assistant at NFL Films.

“Beaver is a school where one can get a full experience. Everything is there for the taking if you want to take advantage of it. It really is a transformative place and if you can utilize those opportunities available to you, you can get a lot out of the school. I believe that it truly is a life-changing experience.”
– Jordan Alloway ’17

Advice to Beaver students:
I would break my advice into two. If you are a younger student, try everything. There are so many things you may not even know about or think you are good at. However, if you don’t put yourself out there, you will never know what aspect of life you can really flourish at. For the older students, when you get to college or wherever you end up post-Beaver, try to make as many connections and friendships as possible. It is fun to meet different types of people and it helps you develop as a person as well.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1992 and had a fantastic experience while there. The academics were rigorous enough, the athletic department was great, and socially I made many great friends. I played basketball, soccer, tennis and lacrosse. I was also a photo editor for the yearbook during high school. Looking back, one of the people who had the biggest impact on my time there was Tom Manning. He was both my English teacher and my varsity basketball coach. More than anything, I think that Tom Manning was just an incredible person, mentor, advisory, motivator. He was not just a motivator on the basketball court but also inside the classroom. I remember a lot of the lessons and anecdotes he told me.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After Beaver, I went to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. After that, I came back to Boston and worked for a law firm called McDermott Will & Emery, as a research associate. However, I did only research and never any “lawyering.” I decided to move to California and got a job at a massive executive search firm called Heidrick & Struggles. I did not have much background in that industry when I first started but ended up working there for around two years. After that I went to a couple of startups and suddenly I had developed a career as a head of recruiting for startups. I then moved to Santa Barbara because Sonos had reached out to me asking to be their head of executive recruiting. I joined Sonos when it was only about 300 people and left ten years later as VP of Global Talent. During the past year, I ended up taking a job at Google working in a special projects group which includes longer-term succession planning. It has been a pretty once-in-a-lifetime experience and I have loved it.

“I think that people don’t necessarily remember that the friends you make in high school can be the friends you keep for a lifetime. It is important to stop and think about the people you meet and the impact they could have on you.”
– Josh Narva ’92

Advice to Beaver students:
Your professional network begins in high school. All of those relationships you foster matter and that is how the world works. Getting in touch with people and building relationships can help you find happiness along with others, but it is also about who you know and how you can manage relationships—things that Beaver instills in you.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1969 and was there for six years. There was a Beaver tradition in the paternal side of my family, as I had many relatives who attended Beaver. Looking back, I chose Beaver because two of my closest friends were enrolling but also for Beaver’s fantastic teaching style. Another aspect of Beaver that I appreciated was the diversity of the student body and the introduction of culture and class. Also, in the classroom, I felt welcomed and the curriculum was academically challenging. Looking back, the English and French departments were excellent. Two of my favorite teachers were Ms. Baker and Ms. Strasburger in the English department. Ms. Baker took me under her wing to learn the processes of English and the minor tweaks to make in my writing. Ms. Strasburger helped expand my minimalist writing style and become more descriptive with all my assignments. Overall, Beaver played such a critical role in my college life as I ended up majoring in English. Outside of the classroom, I played field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse during my time at Beaver.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
Following Beaver, I went to Yale University, which was the first year Yale was coed. I finished up college in 3 years instead of 4 because I wanted a taste of the working world. After college, I ended up going to the Lesley Graduate School of Education. There, they had a teacher training program where I had the opportunity to apprentice and teach with other teacher trainees while also receiving my master’s. Following that stint, I moved to Marshfield with my husband and needed a job. Fortunately, my mother is in the educational world and relayed that Milton Academy was looking for an interim college counselor. Looking back, this was ironic because I had to decide between Beaver and Milton Academy for my high school. I got the job as a college counselor and an English teacher for girls. Overall, I was at Milton for three years before I left for maternity leave. After Milton, I went to Nobles to work as a college counselor, teacher, and sports coach. Today, although I no longer work at Nobles, I do college counseling independently. I will do some college counseling work pro bono for students in the area.

“I recently had a college counseling session with a family who was talking about their child ‘falling to pieces’ and struggling with academics, etc. I said, let him fall to pieces but be there to help him. If he needs days off from school, let him take days off from school. At the end of the day, mental health and physical health are more important than any AP or test. Family and strong connections are crucial in life.”
– Kate Coon ’69

Advice to Beaver students:
During your working years post-high school and post-college, there will be bumps in the road. However, there will be lots of time to figure out your career, and although there may be some hiccups along the way, your career will stay afloat. Another piece of advice is to cherish the time with your loved ones and create lasting memories that neither one of you will forget.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1984 and my experience was one of real community and connection. I grew up in Maine and moved to Chestnut Hill when I was going into high school. I didn’t know anyone but on the very first day of school, the class president approached me and she is a good friend of mine to this day. At Beaver, I felt embraced, welcomed, and had the experience to learn and find myself as a student and person. Looking back, one of my favorite classroom activities at Beaver was when we had to read essays written by our peers. My essay was chosen and at first, I was embarrassed to have mine being read. However, to have my essay being chosen as a positive was an amazing experience. This made me think about how I may be a good writer later in life.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Barnard College and then to Fordham University to get my MBA. I have spent many years working in classical music. Currently, I am in Florida and the Vice President of Public Relations and Communications for a training orchestra. For many years I have been in public relations and marketing for music and arts organizations. I started two non-profits: one in the 1990’s called High 5 Tickets For the Arts and in 2013 I founded the WQXR Instrument Drive in New York. High 5 Tickets For the Arts makes $5 tickets for people to have more affordable access to arts events. For the instrument drive, we collected instruments that were no longer being used and refurbished them, and gave them out to public schools in New York City. We put 10,000 instruments into the public school system which is amazing. A film producer heard about this drive and actually made a film about our effort titled Joe’s Violin. As a matter of fact, it was nominated for an Academy Award!

“The thing I believe in above anything else is access to art will make our lives better. Everyone should be able to experience museums, plays, and other arts events. In our society, we have moved towards a more elitist attitude towards museums and art events and it should not be like that. Everyone should have fair access to art.”
– Kathleen Drohan ‘84

Advice to Beaver students:
Dive in. Whatever it is, follow your passion but do not worry about it too much. Follow it, but know that you can always change course and find new pathways.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1974 and started in 1971 coming from an academy in Hingham, Massachusetts. Although entering a school during sophomore year and going to a much larger school was at some points overwhelming, I found that I had great teachers, amazing friends, and interesting classes. I also played field hockey, basketball, and tennis while there. During my time at Beaver, I had a chance to really develop my French skills, something that helped me later in life. I remember my French teacher Madame Jolie, who was so caring and an incredible teacher. She was very supportive and created a program for my class where we had the chance to live with families in a town near the Alps in France. It was a great experience and it really cemented my love for French. Another experience that has stuck with me was during an art class. My friend and I decided to paint and redo a subway station near the school. It involved going into the station, painting the murals, etc. It was a lot of work, especially working underground, but the final piece was very rewarding, as teachers, family, and friends came to see the big opening.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Ithaca College where I majored in international relations. After graduating from college, I had jobs working for the World Affairs Council, the United Nations Associations, and nonprofit international groups. Following that, I went to work for Senator Kennedy and dealt with scheduling caucuses, events, etc. I was the person in the boiler room who would have to call up and dial a significant person, whether that was someone on the floor or Kennedy himself. After working for the Kennedy campaign, I became the National Finance Director for the Democratic Governors’ Association. After that, I had the opportunity to become a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. This was a great experience, having the chance to give back and teach younger students. Now, after my time with various elections, I am now the Senior Public Policy Advisor working at the Dewey Square Group.

“Beaver really helps push you and encourages growth inside and outside of the classroom. The trip to France really helped me gain confidence in that language and also socially as I had to speak it quite often while there.”
– Katie Whelan ’74

Advice to Beaver students:
Make sure to take advantage of all the various opportunities at Beaver. Go for it all, especially at school. Try not to be afraid of failing or not succeeding at something at first.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2010. I was there for all four years of high school and had such a positive experience. I felt very connected to my teachers, advisor, and my fellow students. I was on the field hockey and basketball teams and fostered many friendships and leadership skills while playing. One of my favorite faculty members was Ms. Roberts, my advisor. Although I was never much of an artist, she was always so caring and wanted the best for her advisory. Also, I remember how helpful the college counselors were, specifically mine, who was Ms. Colognesi. She was very helpful and informative when it came to the college process.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I went to Union College in Upstate New York where I majored in psychology and was an English minor. While there, I was involved on campus with volunteering positions, clubs, etc. After college, I moved to Washington, D.C. for three years while working in sales and marketing for the Advisory Board Company. After my time in D.C., I moved to Chicago to get my master’s degree in clinical social work at the University of Chicago. After I received my masters, I moved back to Boston to get a feel for what my hometown is like as an adult. I love it here and now work as a clinical mental health therapist at an outpatient mental health clinic right here in Boston, called Boston Child Study Center. I focus on kids and adolescents that have had to deal with trauma, anxiety, depression, etc.

“The past year plus has continued to teach me how important it is to be flexible and have the ability to adapt no matter what the situation is. Fortunately, I can credit Beaver for showing me these life lessons as well because of their varied courses and opportunities. Human beings are resilient and can accomplish anything, which is a belief I have always held and a reason why I believe in the work that I do on a daily basis.”
Kayla Masterman ’10

Advice to Beaver students:
“In my job, I work with many high school students and, from my lived experience and school experience, I understand that things can be tough and challenging. Nonetheless, trust that it will all be OK and that you will find your people at some point. If it is not now at high school, it may be in college or at work. You need to trust who you are as a person and understand that you can take time to figure this out as well.”

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated in 1958. I was at Beaver for five years. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m not a strong student, I never have been, probably being a little bit lazy, but they were very patient with me. In 8th grade, we had half a year of typing, and Mrs. Pilkrantzs was so patient with us. I can now sit down at a keyboard and know where everything is. Senior year, I also took a practical math course, and it really prepared me for the world out there. Banking, stock markets, and that kind of thing. I learned an awful lot in school and all of a sudden it seemed to fit into place after I graduated. One teacher that was a favorite of mine was a physical education teacher, Theadora Rooney, O’Conner was her married name or Pippy O’Conner as I knew her. She kept saying, “Kitty, sports aren’t going to get you through life. You gotta zero in on your studies.” That was very good for me to hear not coming from Mother and Daddy, but hearing it from someone who was a step away from the family. It gave me a lot of motivation. I didn’t get A’s or B’s, but I got the motivation, so I would have to say Pippy was my favorite teacher. She was a friend of mine until the day she died.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
What am I up to now? I got the dog sitting in my lap and I am patting her. I went to Briarcliff for two years and graduated from there and got married right away and we were fortunate that we had children while we were young, but I had a deal with my dad that if I mowed the lawn, and we had several acres of land to be mowed, I could play all the golf I wanted to, but I had to pay for my own golf balls. Golf has always been with me. But I also volunteered at least 15 hours a week at the Lion Inn, which became part of Brigham and Women’s. By the time they were merging, I went to work full-time, which I hadn’t planned to, in a tax department at a law firm in Boston. I’ve always liked numbers. Presently I am the chairman of the elder housing committee here in the town of Sherborn. We manage twenty-four apartments for anyone who is 62 or older.

“I always get chills when I come up the drive and look up and see the cupola. That to me is very special.”

– Kitty Sturgis ’58

Advice to current Beaver Students:
My advice would be the administration enables you to be exposed to many many different areas of life in studies or in different organizations. Take advantage of it. Even if it’s just a sprinkle of it. You’ll be amazed as the years go it will come back and you’ll think, “Oh I learned something about that 40 years ago.”

Beaver Reflections:
Technically I was supposed to graduate from Beaver in 1987. However, I had various circumstances that forced me to graduate in 1988 after staying back a year. I most identify with the ‘87 class but on the record, I graduated in 1988. Overall, my experience at Beaver was tremendous. One teacher I fondly remember was Mr. Gow, who was my teacher, advisor, and soccer coach. Another teacher I loved was Ms. Baker, my English teacher in middle school. She made learning so interesting and enjoyable. Finally, the last teacher that had an immeasurable impact on me was Ms. Titcomb.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver in 1988, I went to Occidental College in Los Angeles. Originally, Occidental College was a great fit because it was a small liberal arts college which was a nice transition from Beaver. I attended Occidental for a couple of years before deciding to transfer for my junior year. I ended up transferring to the University of Pennsylvania because there were more opportunities inside the classroom for me to take advantage of. Leading up to graduating, I saw a posting at the Wharton Career Center for an analyst training program. This was an amazing first opportunity that really opened my eyes to the financial world and laid the groundwork for my future career. Following a 5 year stint with a company that took me from California to New York, I decided to leave the municipal bond financial world. After that, I went to work for Harvard Private Capital Group which manages the endowment for Harvard University. I thought that this would be a valuable experience to become a generalist in real estate. I was there for a little bit less than a year and wanted to really focus on becoming an expert in one specific area. Later on, I joined a company called Benchmark Senior Living and I was there for 10 years. Following that, I got the chance to work at Wingate Healthcare as their CFO for a little more than a year. And finally, today, I work at CareOne on various financial transactions.

“The best mentor in my life was a colleague at Benchmark, where she worked as the Chief Operating Officer. She had come out of retirement to take that job, at a time when the company was struggling. There were some conflicts between the senior management team but she really worked to bring that team closer together and ease any tension there was. She taught me to take the high road and do the right thing. Usually good things will come out of it!”
– Lisa Burgess ’88

Advice to Beaver students:
From the mother in me, always keep working harder than the next person and try to make smart choices.

Beaver Reflections:
I attended Beaver for 6 years. At first, I was shy, but thanks to the
encouragement I received, I became far more confident and outgoing by
the time I graduated. I remember being painfully nervous the first time I
had to present to the whole student body, but afterwards realized that
public communication can have great rewards. Beaver taught me to be
comfortable speaking out, which served me well in the years to come.
Jane Baker was an influential teacher—an amazing educator who later
became a good friend. I was never in Camilla Titcomb’s math class or
Bea Kleppner’s anthropology class, yet Ms. Titcomb would stop me in
hallway and ask how my day was going in a genuine and caring way, and
Mrs. Kleppner can take credit for being a mentoring force in my life. The
three of us gathered regularly for years to celebrate our friendship.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After Beaver, I attended Smith College and focused on biology, art, and
education, and then received my master’s in art education and
printmaking. While a practicing artist, I ended up, almost accidentally,
back at Beaver as a teacher. It was meant to be temporary, but I enjoyed
more than ten years teaching design in the same studio where I had
previously thrown pots and crafted silver jewelry. As the mother of two
girls, I became a Girl Scout leader and was later asked to coordinate the
program in my town. This helped to revive my passion for outdoor
exploration, nature, and science and inspired a career somersault when
I had the opportunity to join the New England Aquarium. Like my
situation at Beaver, I thought it would be short-term position. After 25
years, I was still there, focusing on environmental education, exhibit
development, and interpretation of complex topics such as climate
change. In my retirement, my climate work continues as a conservation
steward and member of the Lexington Climate Action Network.

“Returning to Beaver as a teacher and as an alum and seeing the same
hallways I used to walk every day, evoked profound and happy
memories. The brilliant faculty played a dynamic role in my development.
They were my teachers during school but became my friends after I
graduated.”
– Lisbeth Bornhofft ’70

Advice to Beaver students:
Even if you have specific career goal early on, try to grab opportunities
that arise and be open to new challenges. You may be surprised where
your passion and sense of mission lead you.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2011 and am a “lifer.” My experience was fantastic and really shaped the way I think about the world. It provided me with the opportunity to hone my critical thinking skills while allowing me to question and challenge things I learn and hear in the classroom. While there, I had a chance to go abroad to the Island School in the Bahamas. It was an amazing experience and I am forever grateful to Beaver for allowing me to go. Another great part of my time at Beaver was the service trips. I worked very closely with the Hiatt Center and one of my favorite trips was going to New York City with girls from Beaver. One of the most memorable nights was when we spent one night with an all-girls Muslim School and we had a fun get-together at night and really bonded. Finally, I am still extremely close with many of my fellow Beaver peers. They are some of my favorite people.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Smith College, an all-girls school, and majored in Africana Studies. While there, I wanted to be in a space where I could feel empowered while also raising other women up. I had the chance to study abroad and went to South Africa and then South India during my junior year. I found myself very curious about race and similar topics that ended up dictating my major. Following Smith College, I went to graduate school at UMass Boston where I earned a master’s in Global Inclusion and Social Development while concentrating in human rights. I focused on inclusion in various ways such as people with disabilities or people who were not born in the United States. I have always been interested in storytelling and how we can leverage storytelling as a tool to influence social and political change. This acts as my guiding star and the goal that I am working towards. Since my master’s, I have gone on to work at 2Life Communities which provides housing, services, and community to seniors. I am involved with recruiting volunteers from all over the world. My work is focused on the intergenerational exchange and ensuring any volunteer that comes on-site can give back but also receive from our residents and assure them housing.

“Storytelling is so fundamental to us as human beings. Before we had paper and could write, we only had stories. If I know your story and you know my story, we can level and try to understand each other. Storytelling can be a bridge to help understand one another but also create empathy and this human connection with each other that is so important. It could be as simple as a 20-minute conversation or a full feature documentary.”
– Maggie Schneider ‘11

Advice to Beaver students:
Be yourself. Something wonderful about Beaver is that you can be who you want to be without fear of being judged. It is such an open and inclusive space where you can pursue any passion you want to without feeling pressured to be someone you are not.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2015. I started as a freshman and came from the Needham public school system. Going from a public school to Beaver was such a refreshing and much needed change. Having smaller classes and a progressive outlook was something I never even knew was possible before going to Beaver. While at Beaver I was heavily involved with the theater department and also played volleyball. I never imagined I would have done anything sports related, more specifically volleyball, but I ended up loving it and being part of that team was great! Ms. Yolles was a teacher that I loved. As someone who loved theater, I grew close with her and she would encourage me to go all out and be passionate about what I was doing. Another teacher I remember fondly is Mr. Rilla. I took a creative writing class and his teaching style was very critical in helping push my writing skills forward. One of my favorite classes was entrepreneurship. We had the chance to pitch company ideas and actually create these business ideas. It gave us real life experience that not many of my peers outside of Beaver got. My group got to actually sell products we created from that class during my high school years!

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I decided to go to England to work and attend college. Prior to college, I worked a job that had me doing graphic design, something I really enjoyed doing. In England, I attended the University of Leeds for 5 years. While there I studied graphic and communications design. After graduating, I came back to the United States and got a job in New York. I currently work as an art director at a pharmaceutical advertising agency called CultHealth. I love being in a city setting and have had the chance to reconnect with close friends from Beaver now that I am back in the country.

“Beaver is such a unique place because they let you decide what your passion is and let you run with it. ”
– Marla Perelmuter ’15

Advice to Beaver students:
Try everything, take risks, find what you are passionate about, and go with it! Although in the end that may not be your passion, you would not know unless you tried it out for yourself. Taking advantage of all the amazing things Beaver has to offer is critical at that time in your life. You likely won’t be getting those opportunities again in the near future.

Beaver Reflections:
My Beaver relationships were really foundational for me. And one of the things that was most formative for me was this encouragement and compulsion and way-paving for being involved in your community. I was on yearbook, I did plays, and each of those experiences was encouraged by either friends or teachers. I had an English teacher, her name was Miss Idelits, who, after I was in a couple of classes with her was like,” Is there some reason you’re not running for School President?” And I was like, “I don’t know, who cares about School President?” She said, “You need to run for School President.” And I was President my senior year. That kind of encouragement, that expectation of participation in your community, really was formative for me, especially when it combined with my parents’ own feelings about that. In a very fundamental way, it guided me to the things that I’ve done with my life, the kind of company that I started, and the kind of philanthropic work that I do now.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
When I was growing up, I had summer internships and they were all terrible experiences. Some combination of “I don’t want to work for anyone,” and “I have to make the world a better place” led me into trying to find some technological way to assist nonprofit organizations as they help people who need help. I wanted to bring new technologies to nonprofit human services and see if I could assist them in increasing their operational efficiency and effectiveness. The first couple years that we started our company, Foothold Technology, were just brutal. Then it became great. In the middle of 2018, I sold the company and moved from CEO to Chief Product Officer. It was a move I wanted to make. In addition to trying to reflect the actual lived experience of a counselor helping a person find a home, find a job, or live independently, I need to pull out the data I need to make the software elegant and easy to use. That’s a daily challenge I really enjoy.

“Beaver’s encouragement to be involved in the world around you still sticks with me to this day”

– Marlowe Greenberg ’89

Advice to Beaver students:
Every opportunity you get to break the cliques in high school, you should take, and there’s no better place to do that than Beaver because everybody is pre-screened to be interesting. You’re never going to meet people you’re not glad you met. And I would encourage current students to diversify their extracurriculars as much as possible because it’s fascinating.

Beaver Reflections:
I had a wonderful experience at Beaver. I graduated in 1996 so I guess I started in 1992. I wasn’t the best student in middle school. I didn’t take my studies very seriously and when I got to Beaver, I just really cared a lot about what I was learning for the first time probably since kindergarten. It was a big pivot for me. I felt at home. A large part of that was the school’s emphasis on the arts, the sense of community, the progressive nature of the school, and their amazing faculty. There are so many teachers that had a huge effect on me. Peter Gao, who taught history. I remember engaging in intense debates in his class and just loving the way he encouraged critical thinking and getting outside of our comfort zones. Mrs. Ruggles, my French teacher was amazing. Mr. McCarthy, my biology teacher, who I know passed away, was an amazing teacher. And, definitely, Jennifer Yolles. I feel really lucky that I got to be in plays and work with her.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
When I graduated I went to Connecticut College. I started off as a theater major but ended up majoring in philosophy and visual and studio art. I moved to New York right after graduating and worked for a couple of nonprofits. Then I went on to get my MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, which was wonderful. I joined the New York City Teaching Fellows program and got a degree in English education, teaching grades 7 through 12 for three years. There were a lot of experiences I had that I wanted to think more critically about so I got my doctorate in English education from Teachers College at Columbia. While I was doing that I was teaching poetry to K-12 students. I was also adjuncting at Parsons School of Design and at Long Island University’s graduate education program, and at Teachers College. Then I got a full-time job as an assistant professor at Moore College of Art and Design and I’ve been at Moore since 2018. I currently teach and direct their writing program. Writing poetry is crucial to me. It’s nourishing. I predominantly write poetry and I do a lot of work in mixed media. I’ve also done some public installation work. I’ve done collaborative projects where poetry has been involved. The pandemic has made me kind of step back and recognize some of the things I may have taken for granted. My partner and I were both working full-time from home and the kids were home and we realized this is all about learning to really be in the present and not stress out.

“Teaching and writing poetry and making art — it’s all connected. I think I do have Beaver to thank for the ways in which thinking and making across different disciplines was emphasized and really nurtured.”

– Maya Pindyck ’96

Advice to current Beaver Students:
Realize how lucky they are and what a real privilege it is to study at Beaver. Also, follow the impractical. Really follow your passion in the moment and trust where it leads you. High school’s such an amazing time for that.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated in 1989 and I loved high school. I mean, I met my husband at Beaver. David was also class of 1989. So I consider my time at Beaver life-changing. Softball and theater were my things. I was too self-conscious to be a good actor but I always appreciated the behind-the-scenes stuff. Steve Bogart was the drama teacher from my sophomore to senior year. He opened my eyes. He was the one that had me think about playwriting and tech design and approaching things not just in the way that they had been done before. I will always credit Miss Molding, my English teacher, for teaching me how to write. Being able to write well is an invaluable skill and it works in all walks of life. And David’s father taught at Beaver, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t also credit Mr. Weinraub for teaching me, for showing movies that I never would have watched otherwise, for getting me into Slaughterhouse Five and Kurt Vonnegut.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I went to college at Franklin and Marshall. My first job out of college was actually at Charles Schwab and I became a stock broker. While I was at Schwab, a friend from college applied to graduate school for theater management programs. It was something I had never heard of and I was like, “That’s what I want to do. That’s it!” So I moved to New York in 1996 to get my MFA in theater management. My first internship was with Margo Lyon who produced Hairspray and Angels in America. Eventually, I ended up at Lincoln Center Theater, which was a dream job. If I had not given it up when my daughter was born, I would now be general manager of Lincoln Center Theater and a Tony voter. For our family, it made more sense to have me home with the girls. While I’ve been raising the girls, I’ve clearly missed theater. I joined the board of New York City Children’s Theater. We produce quality, enriching, engaging shows for children to enjoy with their grown-ups. We also go into the schools and have a lot of arts and education programs. We go into homeless shelters and help the kids there, and we do trauma-informed workshops. I’m the board chair, which clearly has been interesting during these pandemic times.

“Beaver helped me develop the passion for theater that I took into what became my career.”

– Melanie Weinraub ’89

Advice to current Beaver Students:
Be kind. Try new things. You can do hard things. Don’t be afraid to fail. You can always make a change

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1986 and had a wonderful experience. I think this school has changed a lot since I was there, but the size of the classes really promoted individualized attention which helped me grow as a learner. I think Beaver does a wonderful job making everyone feel included whether you are an artist, athlete, or anything in between. Looking back, Mr. Gow was a wonderful English teacher who really pushed and furthered my analytical and writing skills. Mr. Cohen was another teacher who had a profound impact on me. He was the photography teacher, and, at the time, I was heavily interested in photography. He was also our faculty advisor for the yearbook committee. Along with the art side of school, I also played tennis and field hockey during my time at Beaver. I made some great friends on both teams and loved the team aspect of both.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
Since graduating from Beaver, I went to Roanoke College in Virginia. After that, I worked in DC for a little while for a lobbyist firm and then moved to New York and slowly got closer to my career and what I am doing now. I got involved with a public relations firm that does home furnishing and worked with various designers. From there, I worked with House Beautiful magazine as an interior designer editor. After my time there, I moved out to Connecticut and after taking some classes at New York School of Interior Design, started my interior design career. Since then, I have created my own interior design business and mainly cater to clients in Connecticut. In the past year with the pandemic, business has picked up exponentially with people trying to renovate their living spaces, gyms, etc. People are now extremely interested in making their home a very special place because of how much working from home has been magnified and in case we ever need to go into this pandemic lockdown situation again.

“Something I loved about Beaver was how it was very academically rigorous but was in a sense more like a low pressure cooker school compared to other schools. You could be an artist, star athlete, or musician all while receiving a wonderful education at Beaver.”
– Melissa Cutler ’86

Advice to Beaver students:
Everyone gets so focused on their career and trying to narrow it down so early on, but I would recommend branching out and taking interesting and unique classes that you may never have the chance to take again in your life. If you are at a great school like Beaver, go out of your comfort zone and just experiment with different subjects.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1983, and I felt very comfortable in the school. Looking back, many people say that high school is the worst time of their educational lives and college is great. In my opinion, Beaver was amazing and made my high school experience more enjoyable than college. I loved the flexibility that Beaver offered. For example, I had taken biology the previous year at my former school and wanted to take Introduction to Psychology, and Beaver accommodated my request. Later, Developmental Psychology had students work in the nursery on campus, which allowed us to have first-hand experience with what we were studying. That class and the anthropology classes gave me direction in college and beyond. Another fun class was drama with Mr. Valentine, taught in the little red schoolhouse; English with Miss Thompson and with Ms. Eidlitz helped my writing skills. And I definitely appreciated that when I’d finished my math requirement, Mrs. Newberry encouraged me not to take calculus the following year. Perhaps the most important interaction I had was with Ms. Castello, the college counselor. She was honest about which colleges I was not going to get into even if I really wanted to, but she said, “You could be making As.” I hadn’t realized that before. That permission really helped and I ended up graduating cum laude.

What is #happening now in your life:
Following Beaver, I went to Skidmore College where I double-majored in psychology and anthropology. I considered going straight on to grad school. I wanted to do one-on-one therapy but I needed experience so I worked at McLean Hospital, a well-known psych hospital. I was there for almost two years and at some point, before I left I sort of impulsively applied to the Simmons College School of Social Work. I went there and in the midst of it, I met my ex-husband. He was in Oregon getting a Ph.D. To some people’s surprise, I actually finished my second year of social work school where I was, and then came out to Oregon. I’ll have been here 30 years this summer, which astounds me. I got a job in the county Alcohol and Drug Department and then went to a private clinic. I wasn’t there that long. I had gotten sick in 1994 with ulcerative colitis and I couldn’t work. Every time I tried to get off medication I flared up, so I was exhausted. I had surgery for it in 1997. I was in the hospital for nearly a month which was almost unheard of before Covid. Then I started getting into more creative stuff. I started taking short story writing classes, starting working at a writing desk at Oregon State. I took a class on rhetoric, which I always thought was, you know, BS, but is actually fuller than that, and ended up getting a master’s in it. I did some teaching at the community college where I also worked as a writing desk assistant. I had gotten an idea from someone else about editing people’s theses and dissertations and did some work for various professors for journal articles and things like that. Then my sources started drying up. All I was getting was people wanting resumes which was interesting at first and then got really boring, and I wasn’t making any money. I was losing it. I closed it officially about a year and a half ago. I’ll still do stuff for people I know. I’ve started doing something—in 2011 or something—with National Novel Writing Month in November. It’s great. They call it NaNoWriMo. You write 50,000 words in 30 days. You don’t cross anything out or delete it. You just write and what you get is a [lousy] first draft, but you’ve got, essentially, a novella. I’ve done it several years in a row and want to revise two of them, at least.

“One thing I appreciated about Beaver was how flexible and adaptable they were to students’ needs. They always prioritized the students, which made the school so enjoyable.”
– Melissa Weintraub ‘83

Advice to Beaver students:
Take advantage of where you are and who you are working with. Try not to be afraid of asking for help and finding ways to take initiative. Enjoy your time at Beaver because it will help shape you as a person later in life.

Beaver Experience:
I graduated from Beaver in 2016. I was a lifer so I started in the fall of 2009. Walking in, I was kind of nervous but my brother walked in with me and seeing him high five all of his friends on the first day of school I realized, “This is going to be it. I’m going to have a good time,” and it was such a great experience. I remember my first class in 6th grade and I’m still friends with the person that I sat next to, Nicole Irving. I was in a bunch of different clubs and sports teams. Then, my advisor encouraged me to try something different. So junior and senior year in the spring, instead of playing a sport I decided to do the costumes for the musical. That was a totally different experience. I love Beaver. They want you to try everything. You don’t have to stay in one category. Mr. Greenberg always left his door open and always gave me words of encouragement. Also, Mr. Robinson was great. I don’t even know how he did it but he helped me become a math student, which I never thought i would be. What’s great about Beaver teachers is that they make themselves available to their students because they want them to succeed. They want to challenge you but they also want to see you do well. Marvin, one of the maintenance guys, was the nicest guy at Beaver. He was the person that let you in at 9 o’clock at night when you forgot your homework or whatever.

What is #happeningnow in your life?
After Beaver I got recruited to play field hockey at Mount Holyoke College. If it weren’t for Miss Ellman I probably would have taken a gap year. I had the best four years of my life while I was there. I did a self-designed major in American studies with a focus on race and gender. I wrote my thesis on the hurdles of being a black female athlete. Right now I’m getting my master’s in sports management at Boston College. I find myself back at Beaver coaching because I emailed Mr. Gould and Miss Collins and said, “I see that you have a head coaching spot available for the varsity field hockey team. I just graduated. I played all four years. I was a leader on my team.” We interviewed and it was just really great to have them welcome me back. I’m kind of a young to be head coach but there’s no better time to start.

“Being at Beaver, coming to the field every day to coach those kids in the fall, that helped me to get outside, stop watching the news, see these kids that are still showing up for school and field hockey and working really hard. It was just refreshing to see such positivity every day.”

– Micki Pierce ’16

Advice to Beaver students:
Don’t be ashamed to ask for help. If I was struggling or I needed help, I always tried to fly under the radar. That’s just not the best thing to do. Those teachers want to help. They’re
excited to help. That took me a while to learn.

On her time at Beaver…
I was a lifer at Beaver, so I was there from 6th grade until 12th grade. The main thing about Beaver that really was great for me was that the teachers were really encouraging and supportive of you. I was really into painting and my teachers in those classes were just incredibly encouraging. They even got me my own set of paintbrushes that only I could use, which was really nice. But, I think generally that the atmosphere at Beaver made it so that teachers would follow and encourage whatever a student is really passionate about. I pretty much focused on painting and art in middle and high school and that’s definitely something that I’ve carried throughout my career—art has always been my focus.

On her professional path…
I ended up going back to school for interior design and that’s when I went back to Turkey and was inspired to start my company. I’ve always been into different sorts of sales positions but mostly creative sales positions, I would say.

The inspiration for Artemis came from Istanbul. I was traveling over there probably eleven years ago now. I was studying abroad in college and that’s when I saw products being made out of kilim, kilim carpet material, and I just thought that was the coolest idea—handbags and that sort of thing that were repurposed from that material. I always thought that would do really well in the US market.

I went back to Turkey seven years ago and that’s when I found a small manufacturer who was willing to work on a much smaller scale. I had my first run of products made and I brought them back and I started selling them. The company has just sort of grown organically since then. We’ve never had any investors, we’ve just totally grown organically. Right now I’d say 90% of what we sell are kilim products, kilim shoes that are repurposed from antique kilim oriental carpets. That’s sort of what we’re known for. We also sell kilim handbags, we sell other kinds of shoes. We’re known for these colorful patterned, really high quality products.

On R+D in her profession…
Most of our design comes from when we’re traveling. When we’re in Turkey, that’s where we get really inspired because we’re surrounded by all the textiles and the materials and it’s so exciting. We’ll find a really incredible carpet and end up making a whole collection of travel bags out of it. It becomes really exciting when you’re with the products and with the raw materials. That’s probably the most important thing when it comes to the design process.

On artwork as a primary source…
The carpet is such an incredible material to work with because they’re all one of a kind, and even within a carpet, they’re all handmade, so we don’t even have pairs of shoes that are perfectly symmetrical. Every single piece is truly one of a kind which is so much fun because there’s just so much symbolism. People who have woven these carpets have woven stories into them. They didn’t just choose the patterns or the symbols or the colors just for the looks, it all has meaning. That’s been really fascinating to learn more about and to think about when we create our products from them. They all have a deeper meaning, which is so unusual for any kind of fashion item.

On creative habits…
I like to be in a space with other people talking about the product. We throw ideas around and it can be distracting because we’ll interrupt each other and sort of go off on tangents on some idea, but some of our best ideas can end up coming from those kinds of discussions.

On creative partnerships…
We owe most of our success to the different collaborations that we’ve done. It’s great that that’s a big focus at Beaver because, at least in my experience, you get two companies that have similar customers but two very different product offerings and you can creatively put those products together, create something new, and then you expose your company up to a huge new audience of customers. That’s the number one way that we’ve grown. We’ve done collaborations with very famous interior designers like Nate Berkus and his husband, Stephen Allen, Madewell, Anthropologie. That has really given us a much wider audience and opened a lot of doors for us.

We’re always seeking feedback from customers, too. Our design process is really collaborative, not just between me and my employees. We’re always collaborating over which designs we like, which fabrics we like, what we should make next. It’s not just me coming up with the next products, it’s a group setting. Whenever we’re traveling in Turkey doing one of our design trips, we use Instagram, we use email marketing to get feedback from customers—what materials they like, what colors they’re looking for, do they like a certain idea. That’s both really fun and really valuable for us. We’re really in business to serve our customers so we’re always looking to find out what they want.

On advice for current Beaver students…
Be curious and follow those curiosities. Never stop trying to learn and if you’re curious about it, delve into it. You never know what could be your next big thing.

Ten years ago I could never think of being in the business of selling these products, but I just kind of thought, “Let me just see if I can find a manufacturer just to get a bunch to sell to my family and friends because they would love this.” You just never know what is going to blossom into a career or passion. Remain curious and stay excited about things. Take chances and see if you can do it.

“You just never know what is going to blossom into a career or passion. Remain curious and stay excited about things. Take chances and see if you can do it.”

– Milicent Armstrong ’05

Beaver experience:
I graduated in 2006 and was a lifer. I played a lot of sports and had a great group of friends. There were challenging times for sure, but what I love about Beaver is its supportive community. I can’t say enough positive things and how influential Beaver is in my life. There are quite a few teachers who have had a lasting impact on me. I really enjoyed Tom Manning and Larry McKinney’s classes and I always felt the teachers were there to help and support the students. At Beaver, I started a club to increase spirit at sports games because I felt the school was missing spirit. Now when I walk on campus everyone is wearing their Beaver gear and cheering on their classmates. It’s been great coming back as a coach to give back to the school and to just feel like I’m home again!

What is #happeningnow in your life:
Just before I graduated from Beaver, I was reunited with my birth family in Central America. A lot of my life after Beaver was really shaped by having this other family in Central America and trying to navigate the dynamic between the two. I traveled down about twice a year throughout high school and college and then even once I got into the working world, I continue to go down a lot which leads me to what I’m doing now. I’m working on a documentary film about a one-week trip I took to El Salvador in 2011. It is about a reunion of people forcibly separated from their families during the country’s Civil War. It was an incredible experience meeting the president of El Salvador at the time and meeting other disappeared children. I am also working on an autobiographical novel that is about meeting my family and juggling between those two different worlds. We’re doing a deep dive into the history of El Salvador which is a very complicated subject. We are now weaving in the history of the U.S. involvement and what the geopolitical scene was at the time. That’s taken a long time because we want to do it justice. I’m about 75% of the way through the book and hope to have it published sometime next year.

“I just can’t say it enough, how wonderful of an experience it has been to have gone to Beaver and then to return to the school years later. It’s been such an honor, it’s hard to put into words, to come back and to coach and to be a part of the school trying to give back what the school has given me.”

– Nelson de Witt ’00

Advice to current Beaver students:
There’s one thing I’ve learned from all this is to expect the unexpected but if that is not the path you’re on that’s okay and it doesn’t mean that you’re a failure or that you’ve done something wrong

You can follow Nelson’s work through his website and get monthly updates by signing up for his monthly newsletter!

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1988 and am so grateful for the education I received. I had come from a public school that had not really served my academic needs as much as I would have liked. When I got to Beaver the teachers were so caring and supportive. One of my favorite teachers was Ms. Baker in middle school. She was amazing and got my writing skills up to speed, which was what needed to happen at public school but never did. If she had not intervened at Beaver, I am not sure what would have happened! Along with the great teachers, Beaver had so much to offer to students. I was vice president of the drama club and president of chorus. I also played lacrosse and field hockey.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Macalester College, which was an amazing experience as well. Looking back, I am not sure if I would have been accepted if it was not for Beaver and the education I received there. While at Macalester I double majored in theater and anthropology. After graduating, I went on to do some work at NPR; I worked at Minnesota Public Radio and also WBUR. Afterwards, I wanted to start teaching so I went back to Beaver and did my first year as a teaching fellow and then taught Spanish for about five years. After working at Beaver, I went out to the West Coast and Los Angeles and taught middle school at Harvard-Westlake School for around four years. Talking to middle schoolers about their day-to-day lives and issues made me realize how important counseling is for everyone. So, I went to New York to go to graduate school to be a school counselor. I am a certified Spanish bilingual school counselor and licensed mental health counselor. Recently, I have transitioned to private practice, and I specialize in trauma incident reduction, otherwise known as TIR.

“Something that I loved about Beaver was the supportive community. It felt like you were on a team working together towards a common goal. Whether it was on the lacrosse or field hockey team or inside the chorus room singing, everyone of the students is putting 100% of their effort into making it work.”
– Pamela Mazza ’88

Advice to Beaver students:
“I would tell students to try as many clubs and activities as possible because you never know what will stick and what may pique your interest. Also, if you think you know what you need and what you are about and people are discouraging you, do your best to block them out and focus on you and what your priorities are. You may have a view or vision that people do not understand.”

Beaver Experience:
I graduated in 1991 and had a fantastic experience. I love Beaver and the small community that felt like a mini college. I still keep in contact with Jane Molding, who was my English teacher. She is the reason I’m doing what I’m doing in life. Jane understood one of the only things I really loved at that time was creative writing and reading, so she created a separate little class for four of us. It was definitely the reason I was able to get into Syracuse early admission. I met my best friend in the world during my freshman year at Beaver. We were doubles tennis partners. He was number one singles and I was number two singles. Since 1988, we’ve been friends. My kids call him Uncle Danny, and to say your best friend in life came from 4 years at a school is pretty spectacular.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I have always loved teaching kids and watching a smile on their faces when they understand something. I also loved English and writing and the news came on one day while I was at Syracuse, and I watched Tom Brokaw, the main anchor for NBC at the time, and wondered how he put the show together, so I went to Syracuse’s TV station and asked if I could help them over the radio. I wrote my story and called it in over the radio. I went home later that night and it was a repeat of the TV news with the story that I wrote, and it was like someone hit me over the head with a sledgehammer. It was junior year, so it was too late to change my major. I came home to Boston because I didn’t have a resume tape at the time and worked for free at Newton cable. I worked various jobs to make money while sending out my video to a bunch of small markets. I sent the tape to a company in Idaho Falls, and although they told me there was a more qualified candidate, they gave me an opportunity. I was in Idaho for nine months and then moved to Kingston, New York, to work at RNN. I anchored with a woman who I started dating, and we moved to Miami together. We then moved back to Boston and anchored here at WHDH together for five years and were the first married couple in Boston since Chet and Natalie who were on Channel 5. We anchored together for five years and I got a job in New York at WABC and then WCVB. After that, I was the main anchor of NBC 10 Boston. Currently, I work at NBC in New York, and I’m going back and forth right now because it’s a freelance gig at NBC in New York. After all, nobody’s hiring right now due to Covid-19, so I’m working there freelance waiting for things to loosen up, and then I’ll take a full-time position somewhere in New York.

I love my job and how it allows me to travel and be excited about each day. Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of my favorite celebrities. I interviewed all the Led Zeppelin members, flew with the Canadian Air Force, and swam with sharks. I am so grateful for those experiences, but not everything has been bright and happy. I reported during Hurricane Sandy in 90 mile an hour winds. I reported the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting, which took place when my son was eight years old, the same age as all those kids, and I covered the Boston Marathon bombing, which was really tough because it’s my home. I have seen disturbing things, but it is essential for the media to provide accurate reporting to the people.

“Beaver is a much bigger part of my life than I think I’ve ever given it credit for. This interview took me down memory lane and made me appreciate all the amazing people at Beaver and the great memories I had throughout my time there.”

– Phil Lipof ’91

Advice to current Beaver students:
Beaver is an incredible opportunity that you shouldn’t take for granted. Cherish your time and work hard. You are probably going to have a friend or two that you’ll have for life.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2019 and started in 7th grade. It was an incredible 6 years; I loved it. I came into Beaver not being a strong student whatsoever, and that first year or so was a big wake-up call for me. My poor skills and habits were not going to cut it at a school like Beaver. However, it was nice to know that I wouldn’t be fighting alone because of the fantastic community around me. My peers, faculty, and staff helped propel me forward. In Upper School, one of my favorite teachers was Ms. Morillo, in the Spanish department. I remember getting into a mini-fight with her regarding some minute calendar technicality. Although we sparred a bit in class, she was not rude about it and actually sent me an email respecting the fact I spoke up. This goes to show that the teachers at Beaver do not think they are above the students and will respect the students they are teaching. It’s a beautiful, more egalitarian process. Also, one of the activities that I really enjoyed was running. I did cross country, and although there were many days I dreaded going, it instilled in me the importance of consistency. I also joined the 13.1 club, where students run a half marathon. For that club, I have Dr. Livingston to thank for pushing and supporting me. There are too many names to list here, but Beaver is filled with some of the most remarkable people I have ever encountered, and I am beyond grateful to have spent time in the community. I owe more to the school than I could ever encapsulate with words. My goal then and now has been to chase being better and continue improving every day. Beaver has helped me and allowed me to chase after my goal.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I recently finished my second year of college at Duke University. I am majoring in Environmental Sciences & Policy and have been conducting some research outside the classroom. I’ve also been dedicating a great deal of time to soul searching and finding out what I am really interested in. I decided to take the spring semester away from campus, because all my classes were online anyway, and was fortunate enough to take a road trip across the nation. I loved connecting with people from all different parts of our vast country and spending some time alone. This summer, I took some summer courses, read some books, and went on a few solo trips. It has been nice to travel again as I was home for a bit more than I would like.

“My time at Beaver was life-changing. I, with the support of the community, was able to elevate myself academically, connect with people, and learn how to work, think, and fail.”
– Philippe Izedian ’19

Advice to Beaver students:
When we encounter people from outside the community who don’t necessarily have the same mindset as you do because they haven’t been a part of a Beaver-like community, be kind to them and try to understand where they are coming from. Taking in their different perspective, upbringing, education, and set of life experiences can be a valuable iron-sharpening-iron experience. Sometimes in society, we are quick to judge or shy away from other ideas, and I caution you to take a step back and look at life from various angles. I know I have been guilty of dismissing ideas different from my own, but I have benefitted immensely from being conscious about not doing that anymore.

On her time at Beaver…
I came To Beaver as a non-traditional student. I had been at Brookline High School for three years and then I decided to redo my junior year and I came to Beaver for 2 years. I think that there were 24 kids in the senior class. You could have a ton of autonomy as a result of that, and they were surprisingly progressive in that sense. The cool thing about Beaver is that they allowed me to follow the path of what I found was interesting and continue down self-reflection and self-education.

There were lots of leadership opportunities, there was also not a lot of BS at Beaver in those days and I think that maintains itself today. I remember for my senior project, it felt like I did mine earlier than others, like I started it in December. It was amazing. I essentially got to focus solely on my senior project which took me to Nantucket and I got to be a research assistant and live there for 5 months under Beaver’s awning. It had nothing to do with food or business but it was research and independence, and so, definitely, I think that Beaver looked at me as a person and not as a kid or a student. I brought that expectation to the rest of my life. Peter Hutton and Charlie Sachs were very, very instrumental in looking at me as a person, not as just a student.

On her career path…
I graduated from college thinking that I was going to be a national ski patroller. I was a licensed Wilderness EMT and my dad said, “You must be kidding me,” and I was like, ‘What do you mean? I’m 18.” As soon as I left college I started to work for the predecessor of Wayfair, which was an internet furniture company called the Home Portfolio. In those days for the internet, you still plugged your computer into the phone line and it made that weird AOL noise. From there I was recruited to go work for Yahoo in the beginning days of Yahoo. I worked there both in Boston and in New York as a national salesperson. From Yahoo, I got back into the nonprofit sector. I became head of corporate fundraising for City Year. While I was in college, I should say, I took essentially a year off from college, although I got credit, and I worked for Ted Kennedy in education and public policy in Washington, DC. So I worked at City Year and then I went to work for Mayor Bloomberg in New York and I loved that more than anything but it was also during the hiring freeze in New York and everything was sort of crazy. From there I applied to law school, but I did not get into Harvard Law so I thought, “Well what am I going to do with my life?”

So I went to cooking school, something totally different, and I don’t know why. Cooking school just came up for an idea. I thought I would open a social cooking school because I thought that Boston needed that. I had been living in New York for five years and I went to cooking school. I ended up moving back to Boston for an internship at a restaurant that is no longer there. Actually, a current Beaver parent gave me my first shot at running restaurants. It was David Rosenberg and I will always be indebted to him as a result of that. He knew my mother very well, my mom was their pediatrician, and he said to me one day, “Your mother is just like chicken soup; she just makes everything get better.” He gave me the opportunity to run a restaurant when I had never done anything in a restaurant except for cooking. That was at the Biltmore in Newton in 2005 or 2006. I was there for close to two years and then I opened up my own restaurant in 2010. That was The Gallows, then Banyan, then five Blackbirds. That’s the sort of quick and easy career path explanation. I continue to do a lot of nonprofit stuff on the side.

On creating a concept in the restaurant industry…
The restaurant industry for me feels like the only industry that is holistic in the sense that it is both qualitative and quantitative. You have to understand finance, you have to understand the quality aspect of it, you have to understand hospitality. There are so many factors to it, it’s wild. But, that’s why it’s such an interesting business. I actually don’t do much of the creative side anymore, sadly, just because I have 250 employees and it’s become a large company at this point.

But, as an example, Blackbird opened 5 years ago. Gallows had been 4 years running and was a sustainable business and I was looking for something new to do. I didn’t really know what that was going to be. I was always looking for new restaurants, but I was also a brand new mother at that point. I had my first kid in 2012 and then my second one in 2014. I was in Chicago and I tried a doughnut at this place called the Doughnut Vault and my mind was blown. I never knew that doughnuts could taste like this one did, and I’m not really even a doughnut person. I’ve never sought them out or really cared about them, but it just rocked my world and I thought that we were missing that in Boston. So I just started looking for spaces. I self-finance everything so that part of it was not difficult and that is generally the most difficult part of the restaurant business. I reached out to people, I did lots of research, and I started a doughnut company. I didn’t really expect it to be where it is today, but that’s part of this. If you set expectations you either hit them or you fail them, so it’s a lot easier to just keep going and not worry about it.

On learning the business side of things…
I laugh about it because I remember that David Rosenberg is an extremely savvy businessman but he hadn’t been in the restaurant business at that point. I remember his comptroller and I going over the budget, which I’d never done before. One of the line items was a pool because it has been in one of his previous real estate projects. I was so proud of myself that I actually noticed that one of the line items was wrong.

But it was really just practice and nothing else than just having the tenacity and being truly accurate that got me to where I am. I’m just going to figure it out one way or another. I’m going to ask many questions and I’m just going to go for it. It’s very entrepreneurial. I’m going to learn it one way or another and I didn’t take one economics or business or math class in college. You have to learn as you go and you have to continue to learn as you go. There are a lot of resources on the internet. You also surround yourself with smarter people, so I have very smart lawyers, very smart accountants, very smart managers, and my job is to manage them but not to be better than them.

On collaboration…
Collaboration is everything. The only thing that I do by myself is that I own the business by myself. That enables me to make big, big decisions really quickly, and I think that that alleviates a lot of the stress that classic businesses have because they have to figure out budget issues, have to figure out money stuff, have to worry about locations and growth and I don’t have to worry about that. But when it comes to the day-to-day running of my business, I absolutely collaborate with all of my senior management on everything. It is not run as a monarchy by any means. It’s very collaborative and I rely on my people to make smart decisions. I have very smart people who work with me, really, really smart, but not only classically smart. I hardly look at people’s resumes. I don’t care where you went to school, I don’t care if you have a history or if you’ve done not such great things in your past. If you’re hardworking and you care then we’re good.

On famous customers…
We’ve had probably everyone walk through our door that you can think of and we don’t really talk about it. The only time we ever talk about if someone comes in our door is if they talk about it first. So, for example, Adele, John Mayer, or Bill Clinton—those people have all talked about the fact that they have relationships with us, but we don’t talk about it without them bringing it up first. We have very cool people, but the most important people are the ones who work there. It’s not the guests who walk in the door, it’s the 250 people who work for the company and their families who are the most important people to me.

On advice for a Beaver student…
Every student should work in the food business in some capacity in their life. It teaches you how to be thoughtful, empathetic, and understanding of all humans. I’ve had former Beaver students work as hosts and work as back servers. It truly sets you in life to be much more understanding of everyone because typically when you go to a private school your world is small and you don’t necessarily work in the service industry much. But, once you have an understanding of the service industry, you can do anything. As a career, it’s not an easy career, but it works well for me on many levels. I think you need to work in it in order to understand if it’s for you and you have to start dishwashing and bussing tables. Thinking that you can open up a restaurant with no experience is not a great plan.

“But, once you have an understanding of the service industry, you can do anything.”

– Rebecca Roth Gullo ’95

On his time at Beaver…
My Beaver experience was outstanding, and it was outstanding not just from an educational perspective, but from a social perspective. The supportive friends, academically, athletically—I can’t explain how much that experience molded me. While I can’t point to a particular event that led me to engineering, what I can say is the holistic experience of Beaver—the social, the athletic, the academic, the confidence-building—all of that led me to be able to just be curious, and explore different avenues where I could find success. I think the school was almost a perfect combination of encouraging effort and giving you the freedom to explore.

For example, when my daughter was in high school, she would come home with way too much homework and wasn’t able to pursue things outside of school, so she was only enriching the academic part. I found that Beaver was an enrichment of all aspects. That was one of the best educational experiences I could have had because of the holistic nature of it. I think it enabled me to have the success that I’ve had.

On his career path…
At Beaver I didn’t necessarily have an academic focus. It wasn’t like I liked math or science more than anything else. I did a lot of martial arts, I played a lot of basketball, those kinds of things. Then I went to Tufts University and I took the spirit of Beaver, which was to try to create a supportive environment. I majored in electrical engineering and computer science.

I went from there to working for Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas. While I was there I got a Master’s degree in communication theory and electromagnetic field theory at Southern Methodist University. That’s where I really learned a lot of engineering. I was a design engineer and systems engineers would give you documents from which you’re supposed to design something. I realized that lots of the systems engineers had never designed something because some of the things they were asking for weren’t physically possible. So that kind of drove me to want to understand systems engineering and become a good systems engineer. That interest led me to come back to Boston to MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.

The key of MIT Lincoln Laboratory is that I had a Master’s degree but many people there had PhDs and it was a very different environment than Texas Instruments. At Texas Instruments I was with a group of people and all doing the same thing and at Lincoln Laboratories it was more individual contributors. I was with a team but I was focused on one dedicated area. That’s what led me to believe that I really needed to get a PhD. I needed to have a different level of expertise. So I did an MIT Fellowship and I got a PhD in optical communications. Then I went back to Lincoln Laboratories and started working in high-speed satellite communication and was there for a few years. I became a group leader which was my first real leadership opportunity at that level. Then I got into laser communication, but didn’t really want to continue doing that.

A friend of mine had left Lincoln to found a startup company in 3G Wireless. We’re on 5G Wireless now, so that was a long time ago. We created a company and about 2 or 3 years later sold it to Texas Instruments of all people. I called a buddy of mine from Lincoln Laboratories who was now a CEO of Draper Laboratories. He asked me to start a Communications Group at Draper. He wanted one like Lincoln Laboratory, so I started one there.

Then one of the guys who worked for me at Lincoln became an office director at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in DC. He called me and asked me if I wanted to come to DARPA which was quite an honor. I went to DARPA from Draper and did four years there. It was excellent experience. I learned a lot about DC and the Pentagon and how the whole system works, the whole country’s science technology infrastructure. There’s a 3 billion dollar budget that DARPA has. I was there for four years.

I went from there to BAE Systems which is an international defense contractor. They asked me to try to help them understand the synergies between the different business units and create more systems as opposed to individual components. I was there for four years and I loved it, but then I got a call.

I was driving, my cell phone rang, I picked it up and they said, “Is this Dr. Brothers?”
I said, “Yes, who’s this?”
They said, “This is the White House calling.”

On getting called upon by the White House…
They said, “We’re calling to see if you’re interested in applying to be the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research.”
I said, “What is that all about?”
He said, “You will pretty much have oversight over all of the Department of Defense for Research.” Basically a 24 billion dollar budget. So I went through the whole interview and vetting process, which was painful to say the least. I got selected and did that for three years.

I was about to leave the Pentagon and go back into the private industry when the same thing happened. I was in the car, and the cell phone rings. “Hello is this doctor Brothers?”
“Yes it is”
“This is the White House calling.”
This was under the Obama Administration, and this time I knew the guy. They said, “Look, are you interested in being the Undersecretary for Science and Technology for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security?”

That’s a two-level promotion and I didn’t want to tell President Obama no, so I accepted. That was even more of a painful process because now I had to be Senate confirmed, so that was a whole other deal. I did that for three years.

On consulting and his current role at Peraton…
Then I started consulting for the former Secretary of DHS, Secretary Chernoff. He has a consulting firm called The Chernoff Group. I left after a year and now I’m the Chief Technology Officer for a defense contractor called Peraton. I do that, I do consulting, and I’m on a number of boards.

On his martial arts experience…
One of the big things I did at Beaver was karate. I went from karate to kung fu and then from kung fu to tai chi and jiu-jitsu and a bunch of other things. I did have the opportunity to compete on an international level because one of my kung fu students was actually training with the coach of the east coast wushu team, which was paving the way for the 2008 Olympics in China. In 2004 I was part of the U.S. team in China to compete in kung fu. I actually managed to win two gold medals out of that. I still train. Right now I’m about to start being a coach at F45 Fitness.

On the most challenging part of his career…
I guess the most challenging part has been the need to constantly adapt and learn new stuff in a highly technical field. I’ve always had to change and adapt to new technologies. Coming out of school, I was doing a thing called analog circuit design, and then I was doing micro-circuit design, and then I went to mimic circuit design, and then later systems design and high-speed radio frequency communications, and then laser communications and then 3G wireless communications.

Then I went to DARPA and everything changed. I had to learn about precision navigation and control systems. I had to learn about other types of communication, laser radar systems. After that I had to learn about aircraft and larger platforms. When I went to the government I had to learn how to not just look at many different technologies but how to manage a portfolio of technologies, not just being an individual contributor but leading a team to have an oversight over an entire portfolio in the Department of Defense. Leaving there I had to move to a higher level as the Under Secretary and I was still managing a portfolio, but not just that. I was leading the overall department strategy of technology for DHS. It’s been constant adaptation and it’s been enjoyable but it’s also challenging. I think that for someone to go into this kind of field you have to be curious and motivated to constantly learn. You have to constantly challenge yourself to learn because you can never fall behind or else you will get stuck.

On a skill that Beaver-aged Reggie might be surprised that he does…
I think it’s managing large groups of people. When I was at the DHS, my organization was 3500 people and right now my company is at 3500 people. Beaver-aged Reggie, well I liked math and science and was good at it, but I don’t think I would have been comfortable thinking I could run that sizable an organization. Leading is actually a better word because managing is one thing, but leading implies a vision. I don’t think I would have thought I could come up with a vision for a large organization to follow and then be able to influence people to do so. It’s selling. You’re selling your vision and I don’t think I would have been able to conceive doing that at that age.

How does collaboration play a role in your job? What does it look like?
It’s huge. Right now my job is essentially to try and grow the business through new technology services and capabilities, so that means I have to look across the three different sectors of our company and try to understand where there’s synergies that can lead to growth. Collaboration is key—both collaboration within the company with the different sector presidents, with the chief engineers of each sector, I have to work with the individual architects. But not only that, I have to be able to reach out and work with customers.

Part of what you do in this business is called “shaping.” You’re trying to shape what the government is doing for the purpose of improving our security and, of course, the purpose of making the company money. So I try think of my former life in the Pentagon and DHS—what do I think the government really needs? And then I try to see how I can help the government put this together based on capabilities I know my company has. That’s my collaboration.

So collaboration is essential, whether it’s with my peers, individuals in my organization, my subordinates, or with our customers.

On advice for current Beaver students…
I think the most important thing to learn at Beaver and in college and beyond is how to learn. It’s not what you learn. Sure, there are certain foundational things you have to learn. Math, physics, biology—those are foundational. But you’re really trying to understand how you can learn something you never knew before.

“I think the most important thing to learn at Beaver and in college and beyond is how to learn.”

– Reggie Brothers ’77

Here’s an example. A buddy of mine who has worked with me for the past 12 years and kind of comes with me wherever I go. He’s a wireless communications guy. However, when he came to the DHS I needed to have a space program. I needed to be able to put a satellite up for search and rescue operations. So I asked him to lead it. He said, “Yeah right Reggie. I don’t know anything about space.”

I said, “I know you and you can learn anything.”

He never had done any work in space or satellites or any of that stuff, but he figured out how to do it and we launched the satellite. The point is he learned how to learn. Everyone does it, and part of learning how to learn is having the confidence that you can approach anything and know how to learn it. It’s a process.

On his time at Beaver…
I was a lifer at Beaver — meaning that I was there from the 6th
through the 12th grades. I was not an easy kid, and Beaver was the
right place for me. I benefited from being in a collaborative and
dynamic learning environment where I was encouraged to think outside
of the box. But I also benefited from the support of Beaver’s faculty
and staff who led with empathy and understanding. After college, I
became a teacher myself, inspired, in part, by my experience at
Beaver. As a teacher, I tried to always assume the best in kids
because I felt that I always got the benefit of the doubt at Beaver.

On teachers who made a difference …
A number of teachers and administrators had a positive impact on me
including John Clippinger, Larry McKinney, Alex Gould, Kader Adjout,
Ingrid Tucker, and Tom Manning. However, two teachers stand out in my
memory: Jon Greenberg and Lisa Brown.

Jon Greenberg taught my humanities class in the 6th and 7th grades. He
was a true master teacher who was able to “read” his class at all
times and adjust his lesson plan to better reach his students. I
remember his once stopping mid class and saying, “I can tell you are
all bored, so let’s do something else”. He was always willing to
experiment and do whatever it took to get kids engaged and learning.

Lisa Brown was both my high school advisor and my English teacher in
the 9th and 12th grades. She was a great teacher and a lovely person.
Lisa was able to level with me and push me to do better when I was
struggling both academically and otherwise.

I continue to be inspired by the teachers at Beaver who had such a
positive impact on my life.

On Teach for America and teaching …
I was always drawn to teaching, and learned about Teach for America
when I was an undergraduate at Tufts. Back then, when you applied to
the program, you ranked the cities you were most and least interested
in. I remember a Memphis area code popping up on my phone one day in
the spring of my senior year and suddenly realizing that I was going
to be moving to Tennessee. TFA had a large program in Memphis, and I
found myself in a group of 200 new teachers, many of whom remain my
closest friends. It was one of the happiest times of my life.

I taught from 2013 to 2018. I began by teaching 7th grade social
studies in a small charter school. My first year of teaching was
really challenging. That year taught me a lot about hard work and
empathy. When I finished TFA in 2015, I felt that I had not reached my
peak effectiveness as a teacher, and decided to move to a more
established school that was aligned with my educational beliefs. I
went to KIPP Memphis in 2015 and taught 6th grade social studies there
for three years. During that time I became the grade level chair and
oversaw culture and discipline for a group of around 120 6th graders.
It was an amazing experience and I am grateful that I was able to work
at KIPP.

On going back to school …
In September 2018, I began an MBA program at the University of
California Berkeley Haas School of Business. I had always wanted to go
to graduate school and I thought an MBA would give me the flexibility
to do a number of things in education and otherwise. I loved my
experience at Haas, even as affected by COVID in the last few months.
I was also pleased to be part of the class of 2020 along with another
Beaver alum, Anna Soybel from the Beaver class of 2007.

What is #Happeningnow in your life?
After graduation, I joined the consulting firm Bain & Company in San
Francisco. I am working there now.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1999 and it was a great match for me to be at a smaller school where I developed great relationships with my teachers. A reason why I came to Beaver is the one-on-one teaching and learning style where the teachers are so supportive and help push yourself to do the best you can. Looking back, I was involved with many things at Beaver. I worked with the student council and was all-school president my senior year. I did theater all four years and played basketball and wrestled. I really enjoyed the theater program, where I participated in basically every spring and fall play. I remember Mr. Coleman was the choir director who had such a passion for what he taught and helped me further my love for the arts, musicals, and performing.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Beaver, I went to Brandeis University where I majored in sociology with a double minor in theater and Spanish. Following my college graduation, I worked at Brandeis University in the office of admissions. I also worked at Allegheny College in their office of admissions. I had always wanted to go into school counseling, especially for high school juniors and seniors and I had a private practice for a little while after receiving my master’s degree in school counseling. Since 2010, I have been working in operations and management at an electrical engineering company. There, I deal with the more business side of the job, which entails managing the office and working various schedules.

“The past year has shown me how important family is, especially when things go south. Going into work everyday during a pandemic because the government allowed us was a blessing but also very scary. I credit my wife for helping the family stay grounded and dealing with our kids every single day for schooling and other activities. I have learned that if you have family nearby or are close with your family, you can make it through anything.”
Solomon Sheena ’99

Advice to Beaver students:
“Enjoy every minute of your time at Beaver. As much as you may not think of it at the time, Beaver really helps prepare you for college and even life after college. Do not worry or stress about not having a clear cut career path or what you want to do with your life. You have ample time to figure that out so enjoy the time you have with the faculty and friends at Beaver because it goes by fast.

On her time at Beaver …
I was at Beaver from 6th through 12th. At some point very early, like in 6th or 7th grade, I was in an afterschool play and realized that I could be a stage manager or I could run sound. I could not be on stage but still be involved somewhere else. By the time I was in 7th grade, I designed costumes for the winter musical and I was able to boss around a bunch of parents and it was amazing.

It became much more serious when I got to the upper school. My advisor was Jen Yolles. I was very close with her and am still close with her. I worked on a ton of things with her. I think I was a freshman or a sophomore, I was working with the advanced drama students and we went to a theater competition. There was a costume competition as part of this larger thing and I was competing in that.

Essentially Beaver taught me that you could be a costume designer as a career. Jen Yolles was like, “This is a job. This is a thing you can do with your life.” And I’ve had that in the back of my head since I was really young.

On her professional path…
When I applied to colleges, I was not yet ready to study costume design as an undergrad. I was very academically invested. I really liked school and I wanted to keep receiving a liberal arts education so I applied to a handful of liberal arts schools. New York was my goal because I knew that I could be working in theater as I was in school.

I kind of got the lay of the land of what New York felt like—who was making stuff, what were the theaters, who were the tiny little theater companies who might hire me, who were the big directors that I want to someday meet. I sort of dipped my toe in all of that while studying art history, which, from a really deliberate research and design point of view, gave me a huge base of understanding of the history of art. I’ve been exposed to all of these visuals that I might not have found had I actually micro-focused on costume design as an undergrad because I was writing papers about things like Middle Eastern Art in the ‘70s, which then lets me see what everybody is wearing and what the culture looks like.

I still work in theater a little bit. I work with performance artists who I met years ago, and for film, it has truly been about meeting people. Some of my friends went to grad school for film and needed a costume designer for a short film. I did that and then all of their classmates made more movies and I worked on them. Then all of a sudden I have a career in film.

On R+D in her profession…
My entire process, no matter what the job is, is researching and then designing. The research changes shape based on the project itself. I get a script or a piece of music if it’s a dance piece or choreography, any base thing that my collaborators have to share, and then I dive really deep into research. It ranges from the sort of gut feeling things when I’m reading something, and then I have to find the research to back it up because I can’t present something to the team when we’re meeting if it didn’t exist, to making list upon list upon list of things that I need to research because I don’t know anything about them.

You go down all of those tunnels and gather as much as you can and then you start to shape it based on the subject of the script. “Brittany Runs a Marathon” had sixty-something changes, so we had a giant spreadsheet, essentially, that has a space for every single look that she wears in chronological order and you start to slot in ideas that you know need to live in certain places. Sometimes that’s slotting in research and reference images and the clothing itself manifests later, sometimes it’s slotting in actual fitting photos because you found clothing and you put it on her and you decided you liked it and you take pictures. And sometimes it’s just ideas or even a sketch, like you know it’s kind of like this, or it could be like this; when we know what room we’re in on the day let’s have three or four different shirts available because if the wall is this color blue then the shirt should be this color.

On creative habits…
As I go back and re-read the script, I usually make notes in a notepad that is always a grid. I write notes by character and/or by scene that are not conclusive, I’m not worried at that point if every look is annotated, it’s just things that I’m flagging as I’m reading, so I could read twenty pages of the script and people are going to be wearing clothing for all of those twenty pages and I might not write anything and then there will be one moment or one scene that ticks something off and I’ll write it down.

What worked for me is that I never left the very academic mindset of taking notes in a notebook to start to map out a project and understanding that a creative process can still happen in tandem with a rubric or a grid.

On utilizing resources …
I go to the library regularly. The Fashion Institute of Technology has a fashion library that has a lot of amazing historical references and also a pretty significant art reference section. I go to the Columbia Library, Avery, from time to time, and the New York Public Library. I go to a library when I can because I’ll have the shortlist from my notepad of terms to look up and then that will send me to a section of the library but on my walk from my computer to that section of the library, I’m going to pass a bunch of things that I didn’t even know I wanted to think of. And then I’ll reach that section and to the right and to the left of that book I need are going to be 15 other things that are actually even more useful for me.

The internet is an amazing resource for costumes because you can get to people’s personal lives on Facebook, Instagram, Flickr. The goal is always to find a primary source, so when I can find a Flickr feed of somebody who has put their first-day-of-work outfit up every day for three years, that’s like a goldmine. You get what real people wear. Obviously, as you get to more elevated design research, you get different things from it, but an editorial shoot in Vogue is going to inspire you in a very different way than what an actual waiter wears in the back of this restaurant. Which is probably not the apron that we think it is, it’s probably an old t-shirt. The Internet is great for that.

On collaboration…
I gather so much research that the next phase is usually a meeting with all of the creative department heads. In order to have a voice in that meeting, I need to have visuals ready to go that I am prepared to talk about. If I have an idea in my head and I don’t have something to show for it, it’s like the idea doesn’t exist. It’s challenging for me. But if I’m trying to communicate a visual idea using just language, I will always stumble and I will almost never succeed.

I have a film called “Chained For Life.” It is very near and dear to my heart, and I co-designed it with a friend who is also a costume designer. We worked together for a handful of iterations, she would work for me, I would work for her, she would build something for me, I would help her. Very New York theater scene—nobody has money so let’s just help each other. When this movie surfaced, I was like, “I need to do this with someone else. I need another brain to help figure out the creativeness of this, but also how to execute the creative within a really, really minuscule budget.” The whole experience was very, very fulfilling. I want to figure out more ways to do this moving forward because essentially at every turn you had another person to bounce an idea off of. What’s better than that?

You’re not in a bubble, the more inspiration you can get, the more successful your design will be. Obviously, the people that you’re collaborating with have to be in the same sort of mindset or world as you because you ultimately need to land on one answer. You can’t have six costumes for one outfit. But if you can have six ideas for every one outfit, that’s better than only having one. Often what happened in our collaboration is that in the beginning, we would each have six ideas for every one costume and by the time we got to the end, we had sort of created a visual language for the piece by bumping against each other and eventually we’d have the same idea.

On advice for current Beaver students…
The most successful people across the arts that I’ve ever worked with and ever met all have a grain of business person in them. You’re being hired because your brain is special and unique and if you can present that brain in a way that people will give you money for it, then you will have a career. If you can’t present it, you can be a genius and nobody will come knocking at your door.

“The most successful people across the arts that I’ve ever worked with and ever met all have a grain of business person in them. ”

– Stacey Berman ’05

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1956 and started in 7th grade. Choosing Beaver was probably one of the best decisions of my life. Looking back, it was the perfect place for me. At the time, I always thought of it as a rigorous academic school that required a good deal of classic education work, something I am very appreciative of. One of my favorite teachers was Ms. Pope in the English department. She was one of the best teachers I have had in my entire life. Another teacher I fondly remember is Ms. Sayward, the math teacher. At the time, she was so kind to take on five or six of us students to teach an advanced math class that was not part of the normal curriculum.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After Beaver, I went to Radcliffe, which was part of Harvard but had their own dorms. I think that the teachers I had at Beaver had more of a profound impact on me than the teachers at Harvard. After I graduated from college, I went to the University of Iowa where I got my master’s in English and American literature. After this, I was in the process of getting my PhD but realized when I was writing my thesis that I was not as interested in it as I was in magazines. So, I applied to a bunch of jobs and got my first journalism job at The New Yorker. After that, I moved out to California where I worked for Time and Life magazines and a couple other independent ones. Then, I moved on to working for the Los Angeles Times for almost two decades as a staff writer and columnist. They had a bunch of buyouts, so I took one because I had a novel brainstorming in the back of my mind. Since then, I had my first novel published and my second novel is finished but not yet ready to be published.

“You have to be daring in life. I remember the President from my college said that if you ever come home late from the library and her porch light was on, ring the bell and come inside to have tea and talk with her. There were many nights where I would pass by and the light would be on but I never dared to go in. I was just too shy. She was a phenomenal woman and I missed a terrific chance to get to know her better and talk with someone. This taught me that you have to dare in life because you never know what could come out of it.”

– Susan Diamond ’56

Advice to Beaver students:
I encourage people not to get hung up on where they go to college. You can have a wonderful college experience anywhere no matter the name. All you need to have are a couple of teachers who you connect with and are inspiring, a place you are comfortable in, and a few solid friends where you can stay up all night and talk about life.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1987 and came in 8th grade. Overall, I had a great experience academically and socially. I loved how classes were taught where it was more of a discussion rather than a teacher lecturing at the students. I think this enabled us to learn in a different way and be able to explore areas we may not be able to at other schools. For me personally, this worked very well, and I really enjoyed this type of education. It is such a small community and this way of teaching helped bring everyone closer. Obviously there are pros and cons of being part of a small school, but, overall, the friendships I made at Beaver I hold very dear and close to my heart. At Beaver, I really enjoyed photography. I had a darkroom at home which made it easier for me to work on my art. Even today, I am still big on photography and pictures. Looking back, Mr. Gao stood out to me during my time there. He was such a unique teacher but also loved the material he taught.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I left Beaver with the intention of becoming a psychology major. I loved the psychology classes I took at Beaver so I went to Clark University, a psychology-oriented school. However, I ended up changing my major to Spanish while there due to my love for foreign languages. I loved studying and learning Spanish, French, and Italian. I thought that I would not want to teach and would want to be an interpreter. Unfortunately, finding a job as an interpreter was difficult so I decided to actually take a job as an after-school teacher. After the first class, I told myself that this was my calling, and I have been teaching ever since. I was a Spanish teacher at Tenacre Country Day School for 21 years and actually started the Spanish program there. I left in June 2020 and have been teaching language remotely ever since. Along with teaching, I also have a pet sitting business called Tammy’s Pet Sitting! Since the vaccine came out, business has basically tripled and the summer has been very busy since so many people adopted pets.

“Having never expected to teach remotely and then be thrust into this unknown position was a jarring experience yet one that made me reflect and take a step back. It is important to come away from the whole past year with a silver lining or some good that you take out of it.”
– Tammy Katzeff ’87

Advice to Beaver students:
Really try to seize the opportunities and never be afraid to try something new. Follow the path that you are interested in. I have always found Beaver to be a very encouraging community and they will be supportive no matter what you choose to study, research, or create.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2011. I started in 7th grade and came from a Montessori school. I remember taking a media class with Mr Greenberg in 8th grade around the 2008 election that really got me fired up about being a more engaged citizen, even in 8th grade. I ran for class president in 9th grade. That came from teachers being really invested in me, pushing me to do things that were outside of my comfort zone but they could see were within my potential. NuVu started when I was there and I did it my senior year. We would go to this rented office space in Kendall Square. It was just getting started and it ended up being so ahead of my college experiences in terms of getting coding curriculum and tech into the classroom. If I had to choose a standout teacher, especially in this moment, it’s Mr. Christie’s boys of color group that I was a part of, Mr. Christie and Jesse Harmon. I think now it’s a students of color group. Once a month we would just check in on life at Beaver. We would talk about how our classes were going, if you were able to take electives, how were they going to help you? We even talked about grades. It was a space to come together and make sure that people from marginalized groups and underrepresented groups are given the resources to succeed and thrive.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
I went to Middlebury after Beaver and helped lead a group called Distinguished Men of Color that was just like Mr. Christie’s group. My experiences at Middlebury spurred me to pursue an educational studies master’s program at Tufts University, with a focus on diversity. I looked for a broad master’s program that would allow me to “build my own track” and pursue what I want, which reminds me of how Beaver gives their students the flexibility to sculpt their studies. I met some people who worked at the Africana Center at Tufts. They said, “We’ve got this men of color group and it meets every Friday,” and I was like, “I want to do that!” Now, I am working for Ab Initio Software and love it. When they reached out to me they described a working environment, this is going to sound very Beaver, where if you have a passion about some project, they’ll bend over backwards to support it. I was telling them I want to incorporate diversity and inclusion practices into recruiting while still working within Ab Initio’s culture. I’ve been there for a little over a year and we’re doing just that. I still facilitate that group at Tufts every Friday, in kind of the Mr. Christie role for college students. I’m also on the board of the Montessori School I went to. I’m the head of the alumni engagement committee and also have worked with them on diversity and inclusion

“I chose Beaver because of their reputation as a “progressive teaching” school and the innovative methods they use in the classroom. They are constantly pushing for ways to innovate how they teach.”

– Taylor Pierce ’11

Advice to Beaver students:
Beaver provides so many opportunities, so do not be afraid to try things and get involved with activities that may push you outside of your comfort zone. If you already know what you are passionate about, then use the resources that Beaver has to work towards that goal.

Beaver experience:
I graduated from Beaver in 1961 while it was an all-girls school. I was there for all of high school. I had an excellent high school experience with amazing teachers in multiple sections such as the math and language department. However, one of the turning points in Beaver that had a huge impact on my life was getting a C in French class. I would tell my students about that as, ultimately, I ended up teaching French for 37 years of my life. One of the memorable teachers was Madam Fourel. She was a great teacher and a great influence on my life. Also, I was very involved in the glee club which Ms. Jarrett led. She taught us a great repertoire of songs that I took with me through my whole life when I sang in college and even today. Along with glee club, I played badminton, tennis, hockey, and lacrosse at Beaver. I love that all those sports that I played back at Beaver, I have kept up with in recent years, coaching or watching or playing even!

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After I graduated from Beaver, I went to the University of Pennsylvania. I was very academically driven in college and ended up taking my entire junior year in France. While there, I became fluent in French, which helped me later on in life with my career. Following my year in France, I went back to the University of Pennsylvania and graduated while getting into the Ph.D. program. However, I realized that I did not want to go down that path and wanted to focus on teaching high school. I then got my master’s in French from Middlebury during the summer and then conducted volunteer work in Paris and would sing at local hospitals. Following that summer, I went to live in Italy, where I became proficient in Italian. Soon after, once I had to search for an educational job, I had to get another master’s, in ESL, English as a second language, this time from Boston University. After my years in Europe, I decided to apply for the educational jobs I had always wanted. I took a job at Beaver and taught there for eight years. I was the head of the 8th grade and then the senior class. After more educational work at various schools, I retired at 59. Today, I have been looking at issues of justice and privilege and am involved with the Village Movement.

“Obviously, receiving a C in a class is not ideal, but following that, I learned to work even harder and put even more effort into my work. This was something that not only helped me flourish in school but also later in life.”
– Tracy Powers ’61

Advice to Beaver students:
“Try to figure out who your authentic self is at your age. No matter what, always try to be kind to other people and give back to the community when you can.”

On his time at Beaver …
My Beaver experience was incredible. In the 7th grade at Beaver I loved music and was really heavily studying classical piano. I don’t remember how old I was when I shifted to working with Beaver’s Artist in Residence who ran the chamber music program. I started taking classical piano with her privately because I thought that I was going to do classical piano as a profession, but I was also very into the drama program with Jen Yolles.

Basically when I was a junior I kind of freaked out a little bit because I was doing both things and loved them equally but couldn’t really figure out how the two things could work together. With the guidance of Jen and Peter Krasinski, who was the head of the music program at that point, I figured out that I was going to try to get into musical theater. I didn’t exactly know what that meant or what it might be, but I applied to NYU and got in and that set me on that trajectory.

It was really cool and it started as early as the 7th grade with David Coleman who was the middle school music teacher, my advisor, and just a giant musical influence in my life. He didn’t water anything down for us just because we were kids. He’s a professional musician, he’s a writer, and he does gospel choir. It was so transformative and informative for me as a child to see that people are artists and can do these things professionally.

On his professional path…
While I was in college I met Andrew Lippa. When I was about to graduate he turned to me and was like, “You know you need a job because you have to make money to live in New York City.” That was very true and I wasn’t really sure what that was going to be because getting into the Broadway scene was a very, very complicated thing. He sent an email on my behalf to a music contractor, who is somebody who hires musicians for Broadway shows and things like that, and Wicked had just opened. Michael Keller was like, “Would you ever tour?” And I was like, “Sure, why not? What do I have to lose?” I got a job playing piano on the first national tour of Wicked when I was 21 or 22 years old. Everything sort of grew from that because I realized on that tour that I could play the piano and I did a lot of growing up really fast because I was thrown into a situation that was so above where I was.

I did Wicked for two and a half years and then quit to get back to the city and figure out what I wanted to do next. I did score prep for a couple of Broadway shows to pay my bills and wet my feet in the industry here in New York. Then I went back on the road conducting the national tour of Grease with Taylor Hicks. It was kind of strange and I did that for a year. Then I came back to the city to do The Addams Family on Broadway in 2010. I’ve been working here ever since which has been amazing. I left The Addams Family to do Rent which was off-Broadway and I was a music director. Then I left to do Kinky Boots, which was a giant hit. It was my first time working on a big giant hit show. I was able to work very closely with the arranger orchestrator. When I left, it was to start doing that work myself. The first show I did that on was Pretty Woman, which opened on Broadway last August and ran for a year. Now I’m doing Little Shop of Horrors off-Broadway. In January I’m going to go to California to do a show called Fly. I’m also writing my own stuff. I just put out an album. I’m constantly writing musicals and that sort of thing and creating this creative habit.

On pursuing a creative talent professionally …
I personally feel the way that you combat the lawlessness of creativity is to treat your craft as you would a job. I wake up every morning, work out, have breakfast, and then at like 10 a.m. I sit down at my desk and from 10 until 5 on a normal work day I try to be creative, whether that’s orchestrating a show or writing a song or doing any of those things. Some days I’m much more successful than others.

“I personally feel the way that you combat the lawlessness of creativity is to treat your craft as you would a job. ”

– Will Van Dyke ’02

On establishing creative habits…
I think for everybody it’s different. For me, it’s the idea of knowing that I’m going to wake up at 8 a.m. and having a routine in the morning before I sit down so that when I sit down, I know that I did the things that wake my body up and wake my mind up. I can’t sit there and know that I have to be creative and have to do something if I don’t have the structure of the time before I’m creative. If I sit down to write a song and it’s not coming, that’s okay, I’m not going to write a song that day. But I have to do something because I’m sitting at the piano, so I’ll do an arrangement or I’ll do an orchestration. Carving the time out and carving the space out is the thing that sort of forces the creativity to come. I have found that if I don’t set my day up in a way that allows me to have the time, then it just gets away from you and you can easily make excuses.

Creativity is such an interesting thing because when you get into the flow of it all, yes you’re incredibly present because you’re creating something, but time sort of ceases to exist in a weird way. If I get an idea at like 10:15, it can be 4 p.m. before I know it and I’m like, “Where did the day go/ What happened?” You lose a sense of consciousness when you get into that real creative brain. Doing the shows at night, which is something that’s a bit more of a repetitive routine, forces you back into connection and creating with other people because writing is such a singularly individual experience.

On collaboration …
There’s never a project where I don’t have a collaborator. I write musicals with a guy named Jeff Talbot who is a brilliant playwright. He and I write lyrics together. I write the music and he writes the book to the musicals that we’ve written. He and I are constantly working on things back and forth via email. We don’t spend a lot of time in a room together just because that’s not the way that he and I operate. Very often we’re writing in our own individual spaces because we’re creating better in our own spaces. But I speak to Jeff every morning before I sit down at the piano. That’s the phone call that I make to have a connection and then go and do the thing. Even if I’m working on something that Jeff has nothing to do with, he’s still a part of that process. He knows creatively what I’m doing and I know creatively what he’s doing.

With my band, we very often write via voice memo back and forth. Sometimes Chris Dawn, who’s the lead singer, he’ll come over and we’ll write together in a room and mess around on the piano, but usually we have a pretty fully formed idea before we get to that stage. So it’s all a little different but all that is to say that none of it is possible without collaborating.

Kinky Boots is a great example. Jerry Mitchell, the director of Kinky Boots and Pretty Woman, is so successful as a director and choreographer because he is constantly listening to the ideas in the room. If he has an idea, it’s more often than not the best idea, but if other people have ideas he’ll listen to every single one before he chooses one. You can’t create the thing without the other people, and if you’re not listening to the other people, you won’t create successful art.

On the R+D process in his profession …
Little Shop of Horrors was an opportunity to work on a show that I love and to work with a director that I really respected but never had worked with, and to work with Alan Menken, who is, as a composer, someone I idolized. When they hired me, it turned out that they needed new orchestrations and new arrangements and somebody to supervise the project, so I was the music supervisor, orchestrator, and arranger on the show.

The first thing for me was figuring out how the hell I was actually going to do it logistically. It’s a small off-Broadway show, so I didn’t have a team. The research element of it for me is usually figuring out, can I do this? And then, how am I going to achieve it? It’s assessing the time I have to hunker down and figuring out what it’s going to be and then, in that time, committing to it and going to my desk every day to explore what it is and how I’m going to do it.

Then talking to Alan, learning about what the show was to him and why it was created the way it was. What were the reasons why the music, stylistically, is what it is? Learning all those things from him, that’s the research element of it. I’m working on another show called Fly which is a Peter Pan story, but it has a very pop but also sort of rhythmic tribal element to it. Bill Sherman wrote the music to it. On Little Shop, musical influences are the choral groups of the 1960s. On Fly, that Bill is super-influenced by Radiohead and things like that. Understanding that these are the worlds in which this music is inspired, it’s then filtering that into how I can tell a cohesive story. That’s the design of it. How do I take all the information that I have and make a thing? For Little Shop, I knew I had four instruments to work with, so how do I design a show that tells a story musically as much as it does on stage? For me that was giving each of the four main characters an instrument and seeing what happens. It sounds different than the original because I tried to keep each character’s musical identity to each of their instruments.

On advice for current Beaver students …
It’s two-fold. One is treat your craft like a job because that’s what it is, and creativity can’t be a fleeting thing. You have to foster it. You have to do whatever you need to do to allow yourself to succeed. You will not be able to succeed at being creative if you don’t structure your life properly. I think that’s more of an adult artist concept.

The biggest piece of advice that I can give somebody back when I was in high school would be to trust your gut and ask for help and say what you want. That was a big lesson for me to learn, but once I learned it, every opportunity that I’ve been afforded in my life creatively and work-wise has come from me taking a chance. Taking a risk to ask somebody who did not know me from a hole in the wall, “Hey, can I show you what I do and can I be helpful to you?” I asked Andrew Lippa this in college. He did not know me and had never met me. I sent him an email and I told him what I wanted to do and that I thought he could be helpful to me and my learning. I asked him if he needed an intern, and he wrote back. That singular email basically started the domino effect of what my career has been. I never would have done that if I had not when I was in high school said to Jen Yolles, “I don’t know what I want to do. How do I do this?”

The hardest part for me as an artist when I was young was that I was so scared that I was different because I was creative and that terrified me. I was afraid to express that. Once I popped that cork and learned that I could say those things out loud, it changed my life.

On his time at Beaver…
I have fond memories of my high school years at Beaver. I remember when I was there, it was really highly regarded in the community. I always felt very fortunate to be there and receive such a strong education. I remember the quality of the teachers being so strong and the availability that they had outside of the classroom to talk. Some of my most memorable experiences in the building were during advisory time. I remember forming a really nice bond with my advisor and with our small group of students. I remember that being a really positive experience.

I remember the out-of-school-time experiences at Beaver being some of the more influential, the community service that I did after school at a local elementary school in their after school programs. I played basketball at Beaver and we would do clinics with students from other neighborhoods. Some of that stuff really stuck with me. I didn’t know necessarily that I wanted to be in the field of education after I graduated, but in terms of being able to give back to the community, and with all the resources that Beaver had, to be able to give back to those less fortunate has been a common thread in my career now.

On his path to education…
I went to UW-Madison after Beaver. I knew that I wanted to pursue a liberal arts education and so I ended up studying sociology and I got more and more interested in the cultural and socioeconomic divides in our country. That was kind of my area of focus in undergrad. My first year out of school I was introduced into the workforce through a service corps program. I’m of Jewish faith so there’s a program called Avodah Jewish Service Corps. You work for a nonprofit for a year helping that organization build capacity and then you also live communally with a group of other young adults working at other various anti-poverty organizations in the city. You’re also undergoing leadership training and a bunch of other training throughout the course of that year. I did that in Washington, DC, working for the largest nonprofit after-school program serving DC public school students, all low-income students. That was kind of my introduction into the world of education in terms of my career, and it kind of put me on a path to continuing to work primarily in the nonprofit fields in education.

On his role at Science & Arts Academy…
Science & Arts Academy is a private junior-kindergarten through 8th grade school in the greater Chicago area. We serve gifted students and this is my fifth year with the school as the Director of Auxiliary Programs. It’s a fairly new role in the independent school landscape over the past 10 years or so. It combines a lot of functions of the business office, the marketing office, and operations. My role is to oversee all of the programs and services provided to current students and families. It also works with the community outside of the school-day curriculum, which includes the summer program, co-curricular and extracurricular programs, and services to families like our lunch services and transportation services. I also oversee programs other than fundraising that generate additional revenue for the school, primarily through facility rentals and other partnerships like that. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past four plus years now.

On private and public schools…
I’m fortunate to have the perspective of going to a couple different Boston public schools, transitioning to a super small Jewish day school, then having my Beaver experience, and then going to a gigantic state university. In my career, it’s mostly been in inner-city public schools, so being part of a private day school again has really opened my eyes to the possibilities of what an education can be. Our goal at Science & Arts Academy is to make sure that students feel safe, students feel like they can be themselves, and students feel that they can relate to their peers both intellectually and social-emotionally so we can really set them up to be not only successful students in the future, but successful people and contributors to society. Unfortunately in my earlier professional experience being around and working in partnerships with a lot of public schools in the DC area and in Chicago, the system just isn’t really set up for students to be successful. There’s obviously a ton of variables that go into that, but at Science & Arts Academy, we’re providing another form of special education because gifted students are very underserved in our society. We’ve been able to create the unique learning environment for them to excel at their own pace, to be understood, and to have their needs met wherever they are. At the end of the day, I just realized how fortunate we are to have private institutions in our country educating students because most of our students are coming from public schools that have failed them and haven’t been able to meet their needs. We’ve been able to provide that safe space for them to feel comfortable and really make a second home. It’s been eye-opening for me to be in a professional capacity at a private school, and I know there’s a bunch of other private schools doing great work as well. At the same time it makes me kind of put everything in perspective.

On the role of technology in education…
The ed tech industry here in Chicago is pretty huge which is why I was interested in getting my feet in there. We have tons of discussions about technology in our school, but you always want to frame it as, how is technology enhancing student learning? Oftentimes, I think it can get in the way. Recently, the big discussions for us have been about how we are integrating technology within a shift as a school that we’re trying to make, and being more inclusive and accessible for low-income families. When you have different technology requirements at the school and technology requirements for students and families outside of school time, obviously that can be a barrier to entry for students for whom we are trying to open up our school who may not be able to afford that. So that’s been top of the mind for us in terms of the intersection of technology in education as more and more components of the school day become technologically-focused.

On Beaver as a window to the greater community…
I imagine that it’s a pretty big part of Beaver’s mission to prepare students to be contributing members of society and to give back and to lend their skill-set to making the world a better place. I think Beaver definitely did that to me through some of their opportunities. That has been turned into a common thread in my career. I’ve tried to work alongside and on behalf of populations that have been historically marginalized and I think Beaver does a great job of preparing students and showing them the opportunities where they can make that impact down the road.

Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 2008 and had a tremendous experience before heading off to Syracuse University. Beaver is a place that fosters, appreciates, and encourages students of all backgrounds academically and socially. During my time at Beaver, I met some of my closest friends, many of whom I am still in close contact with today. While at Beaver, I was elected Sophomore Class President, played four years of Varsity Soccer and Lacrosse, was in the Jazz Ensemble band for all four years, acted in the Senior Winter play, and was part of the Investment Club. These experiences along with the exciting classes I took, helped me foster leadership skills that I still leverage today. Looking back, many teachers had an impact on my time at BCDS. Those include Larry McKinney (my lacrosse coach, chemistry teacher, and club advisor), Dan Gould, and Rebecca Melvoin. These teachers, along with others, impacted my life in such a positive way.

What is #happeningnow in your life:
After graduating from Syracuse University where I studied Information Management and Technology, I moved to New York City for 2 years where I worked in Private Equity and Venture Capital. In 2014 I then decided to move to San Francisco, where I joined Skycatch, an Enterprise Drone Mapping, as one of the first Sales hires. I couldn’t recommend living on the West Coast more! After 5 years at Skycatch, I moved back to NYC to join a Content and Knowledge Management startup named Seva. This past July, after 2 years at Seva, I accepted an offer at Smartsheet as a Customer Development Manager and have been loving it so far. Additionally, part-time, I’m pursuing my MBA at Babson College and am in the beginning stages of developing a non-profit organization (that is 501c3 recognized) named the LN Foundation. My Co-Founder and I began the LN Foundation to assist in tackling homelessness and hunger, two issues that go hand in hand and are key to help out with, especially during the COVID era.

“Beaver will always be a safe, amazing place to experiment and try different courses and extracurriculars. I was able to partake in music, athletics, and the arts all while engaging in intellectually stimulating classes.”
– Zack Levandov ‘08

Advice to Beaver students:
Especially through tougher times, it’s important to maintain a positive attitude, to always count your blessings and to maintain perspective. Throughout my professional career, I’ve found that being a “sponge”, easily absorbing things going on around you, thus encouraging productivity is important. It’s best to try and experiment with different classes, roles, and assignments to truly understand what it is that you are passionate about. Life’s work is simply to find life’s work. If things aren’t going your way, that’s ok, we’re all works in progress and it never hurts to ask for assistance.

100 Years of Alumni

Aaron Dezube ’06

General Surgery Resident + Cardiothoracic Researcher

Adam Buchbinder ’09

Using podcasts to support students' literacy skills

Adam Offit ‘09

Coach, therapist, aspiring world changer

Alex Shigueta ’20

Tufts University freshman, Co-Creator of BVR Alumni Voices

Alexys Butler ’12

Healthcare employee seeking the glitter and the gold

Ali Cooper ’09

A career in Sales + Pottery

Aliza Glasser ’97

History educator in classrooms, museums, and more

Amanda Shane ’07

Social Worker turned Social Entrepreneur

Amirah Mahdi ’11

Admissions director at a new-ish school in New York

Amye Kurson ’91

Golf + Tennis Entrepreneur

Andrea Kelley ’71

Marketer turned landscape architect turned city official

Andrew Bordwin ’82

Photographer, Musician, and Martial Artist

Andy Pool ’77

Corporate Communications Leader + Beaver Class Connector

Anjali Lappin ’10

Building a career in mental health counseling

Anna Frader Stefanovic ’00

Immigrants' Rights Advocate + Humanitarian

Arjun Bakshi ‘14

Golfer, college entrepreneur, and financial risk manager

Audrey Snare ’07

Following a passion for architecture from MA to WY and back

Betsey Goodwin ‘62

World-renowned expert on historical quilts and textiles

Brad Falchuck ’89

TV Writer, Producer + Director

Bradley Schwimmer ’01

Found his voice at Beaver, now using it to help others

Brett Siegal ’20

Boston University freshman, Co-Creator of BVR Alumni Voices

Brian Gardiner ’87

Giving back to Beaver after a career in the medical device business

Caitlin Fisher ’00

"Football Feminist" and former professional soccer player

Carol Thomsen ’77

Early childhood educator, Founder and CEO of All Five

Carolyn Donovan ’57

Former representative to the United Nations

Catherine Wei ’15

Quantitative analyst + creative storyteller

Ceelie Beacham ’65

Former trustee and serial volunteer, now living on a farm

Charles Van Dyke ’99

From Boston to France to New York to Oakland

Cheryl Saenz ’79

A doctor, like she's always dreamed of being.

Chris Morss ’58

Member of the Class of '58 by fraud

Christine Quinn-Thibodeau ’65

Peripatetic teacher, learner, and doer, now enjoying retirement

Clay Starr ’15

Fighting for Our Oceans + Our Climate

Connor Laubenstein ’12

The Bag Bandit — telling stories about golf caddies and culture

Conor Savoy ’01

Advocate for more effective US foreign assistance

Craig Goldstein ’91

Helping businesses scale up their operations

Dan Katz ’08

Fighting the stress epidemic + getting an MBA

Dani Lubin-Levy ’09

Nonprofit professional now attending business school

Daniel Bering ‘05

From art history to nonprofits to supporting private philanthropy

Danielle Alexandra ’75

Storyteller, Entrepreneur, Force of Nature

Dave Hoffman ’00