When Kevin Benjamin ’91 arrived at CA from Queens, N.Y., the academic rigor and dorm setting were new to him, but the basketball court was familiar. Having honed his skills as a kid in New York City, he was the only 9th grader to make the varsity basketball team. “Some great players took me under their wing,” he remembers. “Corwin Allston ’88 was like a big brother to me.” 

His parents and aunt, Karen McAlmon ’75, had encouraged him to apply to CA through the A Better Chance program, recognizing that his academic potential exceeded the opportunities he was likely to have if he stayed in Queens. At CA, he found the intellectual stimulation he was seeking. Just as important were the social relationships that led to personal growth. 

Outside of basketball, he connected with peers through Harambe, an affinity group for students of color. With them, he felt immediate kinship. “We were able to relate to one another and to build some semblance of home away from home,” he says. He also made new friends whose backgrounds were unlike his. “One of my freshman roommates was from Indonesia, and the other was Korean-American,” he says. “We all came from very different walks of life. But we became a close-knit group, sharing our cultures and experiences.”

Benjamin captained the varsity basketball team for the next three years, and he upheld the team culture created by those older players who had helped him through his first year. League championships followed, but it was always more about the fellowship than the score, Benjamin says.

Then came a pivotal game. CA was playing Lexington Christian Academy, whose roster included a young superstar the college scouts were watching. Benjamin scored 44 points, helping CA pull off a narrow victory. The scouts’ eyes turned to him. He was soon drawn to Pomona College in California, where he could continue playing basketball while pursuing an excellent education.

“I knew I was never going to be in the NBA, so I set my sights on a strong academic institution where I could continue my basketball career,” Benjamin says. He played varsity basketball for two years at Pomona, then completed his degree at California State University, Northridge, where he majored in cinema and TV. 

After 15 years in film production and screenwriting, ultimately in the role of senior manager for distribution operations with Disney Entertainment, in 2025 he started his own company, Razzle Dazzle Entertainment. Currently he is working on a documentary honoring his younger brother, Casey Benjamin, a Grammy Award-winning musician, songwriter, and producer who passed away suddenly in 2024.

Basketball still plays a major role in his life, now through Venice Hoops, a community partnership he co-founded with other weekend warriors that offers drills, tournaments, skills camps, and scrimmage opportunities for basketball enthusiasts of all ages on Venice Beach, near his Los Angeles home.

“Sports have always been a big part of my life,” Benjamin says. “Venice Hoops is a chance to promote the fellowship and mentorship that has meant so much to me as an athlete. Whether in New York City, in Concord, at Pomona, or on Venice Beach, basketball has helped me learn how to communicate, how to demonstrate dedication and hard work, how to deal with pressure and make good decisions under stress. Those are skills that help in business, in family, in all segments of life.”

The post A Basketball Star at CA, Kevin Benjamin ’91 is Paying It Forward as a Mentor appeared first on 91�Թ���.

Throughout her school days, she found much that fascinated her. Long stretches at the pottery wheel offered “beautiful oblivion,” she remembers. Outside the studio, she played hockey, basketball, and lacrosse. Music—piano, guitar, and singing—accompanied it all. She was equally immersed in academic exploration. In her junior and senior years, she joined an economics tutorial built around conversation and sustained interrogation of ideas.

“You could imagine you were Joan Baez with the guitar, and then an economist,” she says. “Without pressure to measure yourself against others, you got to try on a lot of hats.”

The freedom was real, but so was the expectation that each experiment be taken seriously. “You couldn’t fake it,” she says.

Bucknell went on to Princeton, studied English literature at Oxford, then earned her doctorate in English and comparative literature from Columbia University. She built her life in England as a literary scholar and novelist. Her experience in Europe reshaped her perspective. “America is so insular,” she says. “Living in a foreign country is both humbling and expanding. That bit of abrasion as you gain a broader understanding is healthy.”

For many years, CA receded into the background of Bucknell’s life, but that changed at her 50th reunion last year. She found herself connecting with classmates she had not known well. Listening to their stories, she says, she was struck by how they had “lived their lives unafraid and authentic, not flinching from getting older and wiser.”

Having seen how her peers had held to their values, Bucknell grew interested in reengaging with the school. In conversations with Head of School Henry D. Fairfax, she found that CA’s mission still resonates with her. “I recognized it,” she says.

As a way to bolster that mission, she established the Katherine Bucknell Maguire ’75 Study Abroad Fund, which helps students take part in weeklong travel programs or attend school for a semester or year outside of the United States. She especially intends this endowment to support students who might otherwise be unable to afford to study abroad. 

Bucknell hopes they’ll benefit from a balance of freedom and challenge, just as she did—and that they’ll be open to seeing where experiencing a different culture might lead them.

The post Beyond the Familiar: Katherine Bucknell ’75 Supports Study Abroad appeared first on 91�Թ���.

When did your passion for movies start?

I’d always enjoyed movies, but I had never thought about them in an academic context until I started taking classes with Justin Bull P’25 ’28 and fell in love with film at CA. Justin had all of these Film Comment magazines, and I just loved reading the film criticism in those. My best friend, Dani Girdwood ’11, and I did an independent study to make an unscripted hybrid documentary-narrative short film. We were going to grow up and be directors (she just directed her first feature, by the way). My skill set was more in writing, but I applied to college as a film major because of Justin’s classes. It’s so rare to have a full film program in high school. When I tell people about it now, their jaws drop. 

How did you break into this field?

When I took a film criticism class in college, I remembered, oh, that’s something a person can do. I had figured I’d end up in academia or work in the film industry in some capacity, but film criticism was the dream. I went back to school and earned a master’s through a cultural reporting and criticism program at NYU. Then I got my first big entertainment writing job at the Daily Beast.

What’s it like to be a film critic?

It’s lots of fun. I go to screenings and some film festivals and cover for various outlets, not just the Times, though I’ve had a weekly assignment for seven years. I watch a lot of documentaries, but it’s a total hodgepodge. The more you watch, the more well-versed you are in the current film landscape and in film history, so it’s been kind of a project: to watch everything I can. There’s a robust film scene in New York. I see myself in the world of film enthusiasts—thinking about films, analyzing how one piece works in the larger cultural landscape. 

How do you approach reviewing?

I don’t think about being a tastemaker. It’s just my take. I’ve studied film and bring some expert knowledge, but I also bring my own sensibility and biases. I’m making something when I’m writing, just like the filmmaker is making something. For the Times, I usually have only 250 to 300 words, sometimes longer for a big movie. I had to train myself to write that short. Now it’s become a precision exercise to pick the most salient things to say. One of the guiding rules of criticism is to take a movie on its own terms. My voice will start to echo the tone of the film. If it’s a comedy, I can be more playful. If it’s a serious drama, I’ll take it more straight. The only movies I really go hard on are huge studio releases. I would never be cruel to a first film or an indie.

What’s the best writing advice you ever got?

When I was in graduate school, a lot of people were saying there are no writing jobs, there’s no money. Someone told me, “There are never any jobs, there’s never any money, but there is always a dearth of good writing. So if you have a strong voice, your writing will be read.” That really helped me refocus on improving my writing rather than positioning myself for a job, which was a lot healthier for me. Just focus on the work and what you love doing.

Describe an ideal trip to the cinema.

I’d watch an Ernst Lubitsch movie, To Be or Not to Be. It’s an audacious, hilarious World War II comedy. I’d bring all my friends. From the concession stand, I’d get Sno-Caps, Junior Mints, and a large Diet Coke. You know, this movie is so underseen. It would make a good CA class, about how Lubitsch approaches comedy: The Lubitsch Touch. I’m going to pitch this to Justin Bull.

The post Working Knowledge: Natalia Winkelman ’11 Has Her Dream Job appeared first on 91�Թ���.

“In my career, my successes have come from making things that should have existed,” says writer and director Adam Goldman ’04. 

An avid theater student at CA, once called “iconoclastic and contrary,” he realized he was better at creating works than reading parts in plays. Goldman graduated from Bard College with a BFA in theater and has created a web series, a scripted podcast, and, in 2025, a foundation to support the next generation of queer filmmakers.

His first major project, The Outs, appeared on Vimeo for two seasons beginning in 2012. He describes it as a simple story about an emotionally wrenching breakup between two men. More challenging at the time than writing a series featuring gay characters was selling the public on the idea of a streaming series. “It was a moment when people were saying to me, ‘No one wants to watch TV on their laptops,’” Goldman says. But he and co-creator Sasha Winters disagreed, and they “made a bet that if you make something good, people will want to watch it.”

Netflix launched House of Cards, considered the first major success by a streaming network, a little less than a year after The Outs debuted, and Goldman had his proof. Not only did people watch his show, they also responded to it on a profound level. Goldman’s early fan mail included a note from a Mormon teen in Utah. “He said that watching The Outs showed him a version of life that allowed him to imagine a possible future for himself,” Goldman says.

He soon learned that The Outs had at least one very high-profile fan after stage and film icon Alan Cumming tweeted about it. “I freaked out,” Goldman says. “Once I calmed down, I tweeted back to Alan, and we made plans to get together for coffee.” Cumming asked to be written into a scene, and the two have been friends ever since. When Cumming co-hosted the Tony Awards with Kristin Chenoweth in 2015, Goldman was a scriptwriter for the broadcast.

Goldman’s next major project was Hot White Heist, a scripted podcast series picked up by Audible in early 2020. “Right after we shook hands on it, the pandemic lockdown began,” Goldman recalls. “Suddenly, all of these major actors were trapped at home with time to do smaller projects. We put together an incredible cast that included Bowen Yang, Cynthia Nixon, Margaret Cho, Tony Kushner, and Sir Ian McKellen. It started out as a very silly and jokey premise, but underneath it was a serious question about what queerness means and how it is evolving.”

Despite the high visibility of stars like Yang and Nixon, as well as the popularity of series that center on gay relationships, from Schitt’s Creek to the recent breakout hit Heated Rivalry, a tide of repression has been sweeping through the media and the arts, Goldman says. Major studios including Disney, Amazon MGM Studios, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery are publicly dialing back their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and even critically acclaimed shows from queer creators haven’t been renewed. GLAAD’s 2025 Studio Responsibility Index reports that the top 10 major film and TV distributors released 250 films in 2024, of which 23.6% include at least one LGBTQ+ character—a decrease of nearly 4% from the previous year. 

Timing is critical. That decrease in investment in queer film and TV now will impact the next several years of media production. “Queer media is in crisis,” Goldman says. “It isn’t enough just to write roles for queer characters. We need to make it possible for young, early-career queer filmmakers to break into an industry that is increasingly hostile toward them.”

This realization led him to embark on his most recent endeavor, the Necessary Foundation, which provides funding and mentorship to emerging filmmakers in the LGBTQ+ space. “I was in a state of utter despair after the second election of Trump,” Goldman says. “And then I came up with the idea of starting a foundation.” Cumming signed on as a co-founder, as did Yang and actor, writer, and producer Lena Waithe. 

The Necessary Foundation aims to help creators reflect the full spectrum of experiences for the queer community. It will provide financial support for young filmmakers to tell the stories they want to tell, without worrying about appealing to the mainstream. Grant recipients will also gain on-set production experience. “We will help them to get into film festivals and generate publicity,” Goldman says. 

The foundation’s focus is still on fundraising, but the founders’ vision is that the community will rapidly grow into one that can sustain itself, with past recipients helping future ones. Goldman says, “We will help these artists grow into industry-leading talents.”

The post A Critical Time for Queer Media: Adam Goldman ’04 Has Started a Foundation to Support LGBTQ+ Creators appeared first on 91�Թ���.

His interests converge in the intersection of music and artificial intelligence. At NYU, Kundu founded the GenAudio & AI club, an interdisciplinary group that studies the intersection of AI and music technology. GenAudio established partnerships with commercial music tools to encourage creative use of generative AI technologies at the school.

Music technology is also his research area. For his capstone project in NYU’s Music Technology program, he conducted a pilot blind-listener survey to compare perceptions of human-made and AI-generated music, using songs from one of his advisors, Grammy winner Mr. Sonic, in the genres of Latin trap, reggaeton, cumbia nortena, and garage pop. He also presented the methodologies at Sony’s technology conference in March. While this research is still ongoing, Kundu found that in certain genres, some listeners may prefer AI-generated music “because it feels more unique,” but that many still nonetheless favor a touch of humanity. Regardless, he adds, “what we’re seeing is that people do have ideas about what AI-generated music is going to sound like.”

Will AI overtake artistry? “You have to approach that question with nuance,” Kundu says. “There are legitimate concerns, particularly around data scraping and copyright. It’s a very complicated issue, but there are also creative benefits.”

As a digital music producer, he points to the creative assistance that AI offers, for example, for creating a melody or drum pattern. More important to him is assistive production technology, which extends to mastering and mixing tracks. “If you’re an artist who knows how to compose a song but not how to make it label-ready, let’s say you use a mastering algorithm that’s tailored to you, trained on reference tracks you select,” he says. “Suddenly, you have a near-record-ready release that you can then send out to people who can help your career.” 

Kundu began producing digital music in his 9th grade year at CA, where, in addition to programming and engineering clubs, he was active in the Producers Club. He had been playing piano for years and sang in a cappella groups, but he says creating digital music became an ideal creative outlet as he adjusted to his new school and tried to find his place.

Early on, Kundu assumed he’d go into computer science or become a mechanical engineer. His trajectory shifted midway through that first year at CA, when he released his first song. “My friends would play my song in the Pit, and I’d get embarrassed, but it was nice. There weren’t that many people who released music, so I became someone who was known for that.” 

He remembers an influential film scoring class he took with Nate Tucker as well as a class on digital storytelling with Kirsten Hoyte P’22 ’24, where he explored how sound interacted with other media. “I wasn’t sure what I was transitioning into, but I had a lot of support from my friends and the faculty,” he says.

“I’ve always been on the train that music tech is the way to go,” he says. “If it weren’t for getting introduced to Ableton through the Producers Club, I wouldn’t have developed this skill set.”

He advises students interested in music technology to follow their curiosity. “Try to take as many classes as you can, but also don’t be afraid to explore on your own and show what you’re doing to other people,” he says. “And post publicly about the work that you’re doing. This helped me a lot in cultivating recognition of GenAudio and the other initiatives I’ve been part of.”

The post Serving on the International Sound Awards jury, Rithik Kundu ’22 Traces His Love for Emerging Music Technology Back to CA appeared first on 91�Թ���.

As corporation counsel, Firestone leads the City of Boston Law Department to provide legal services to Mayor Michelle Wu, the city council, and city departments. In that role, he advocates for and defends the city in all legal situations, from everyday issues impacting the city to litigation that involves the United States Supreme Court. 

His office handles legal issues including housing and land use, procurement and contracting, labor and employment, and regulatory compliance—while promoting accountability and fair delivery of city services. Firestone explains that the office deals with “core representational issues every day, whether it’s city maintenance or our obligations to provide an excellent education in the public schools.”

As a current junior at CA who commutes from Boston, I interviewed Firestone to learn more about his involvement with the city I am fortunate to call home. Throughout our conversation, we spoke about the CA experiences that led him to become involved with local government, the inspiration he draws from his current role in the City of Boston, and our interests in Boston broadly and in our shared neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. 

At the heart of Firestone’s introduction to political organizing was the mentorship of a teacher who brought the community to the classroom. He credits former history teacher Bill Bailey, who taught a course on American politics and government. He says Bailey “wanted us to all get active in politics” and introduced him to the importance of participation in local and national elections. 

Firestone remembers clearly when he and fellow CA students volunteered for the New Hampshire presidential primary in 2000, which he defines as “a really major moment for people of my generation.” That election revealed the importance of civic action, and he recalls learning how critical it was for him and fellow students to be involved in local campaigns: “That was my first experience as a high school student being involved in politics, and I’ve been active ever since.”

Firestone’s first official role in city hall was as an intern on the Boston City Council for a CA senior project, where he worked in a councilor’s office serving the Allston-Brighton neighborhood. His early career experiences included federal legislative work and leadership roles in labor and academic policy organizations. He then held key positions in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, rising from assistant attorney general to chief of staff. He also managed major political campaigns and voter protection efforts at the national level, prior to serving in senior leadership for the City of Boston.

Firestone’s commitment to the city is longstanding and authentic. Living in Boston himself, he explains how valuable the city’s assets are to residents: “We have incredible cultural resources here, co-located in Boston because for generations in this community, individually and collectively, we have invested in building and sustaining institutions. Whether it is museums, universities, or hospitals, they have a tremendous impact on the economy of the entire region, and in fact, really shape the economic and cultural life of the entire Northeast.” 

As local institutions face increasing federal funding and policy pressures, Firestone points to ways the City of Boston can support them. “Boston has a really critical role to play at this moment,” he says. “We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with [organizations] and recognize the collective value that we provide for the residents of Boston and for the entire region, and for the world, frankly.”

Firestone is proud of his commitment to the city. As a teen, however, envisioning making a political impact or becoming a catalyst for change can feel distant or intimidating. I asked Firestone how students should approach advocacy and politics, as this involvement can oftentimes seem confined to more experienced political leaders. 

“At a time when politics globally and nationally can seem so fraught, divided, and far away, there is tremendous opportunity for engaged young people to see their passion and their work and their beliefs reflected in their local communities,” he says. “Whether that is supporting a candidate for local office or attending a community meeting about an issue affecting your own neighborhood, these are great ways to experience the reality of the political process and ones that are available to students in high school.”

The experience Firestone had with volunteering at CA is still available to students today. CA continues to provide opportunities that develop our passion for making change in our communities. From 91�Թ��� Students in Action (CASA) to the more recent Positivity and Light Society (PALS), CA supports students who strive to be, as Firestone describes, “connected to the world around them.” 

For Firestone, public service is most meaningful when it remains closely connected to everyday life in the community. “One of the great things about working in local government in a city where you live and where you have kids in the schools is you have a real, immediate connection to the residents and to the work that you’re doing,” he says. “It’s such a fulfilling way to practice public service. I feel very lucky.” 

The post A Commitment to Public Service, Born in the Classroom appeared first on 91�Թ���.

This November, Rhee and Hettinger helped organize Reimagining Elite Higher Education, a three-day conference in New Haven, Conn., that brought together around 300 students, alums, and faculty members from 68 colleges and organizations. The event examined how universities could rebuild public trust while addressing inequality. At CA, the discussion connected directly to themes explored in Dasgupta’s class, including governance and political theory. Rhee, a chemistry major, said he felt disillusioned with the culture of corporate recruiting at college. He expressed a desire for more students to prioritize community impact over maximizing the return on their investment in their degrees. 

After taking a gap year to organize for the 2024 election in rural Pennsylvania, he began thinking more critically about the relationship between elite universities and civic leadership. While canvassing far from his college campus, he realized how few residents had been contacted or engaged at all. 

“It was really interesting to realize that people graduating from a lot of these Ivy League schools have a disproportionate amount of impact on this country, despite their limited interaction with their immediate communities,” he said. For Rhee, leading the conference became a way to push back against that dynamic and help reshape campus culture. 

He collaborated with co-chair Hettinger, a senior from California studying psychology and education. As the first student from her public high school to attend Yale, she said perceptions of being an Ivy League student often felt polarized. Through co-leading the conference, she hoped to create space for more balanced discussion. 

“It didn’t feel like there was this nuance to be critical of the universities and understand their role and responsibility in building a lot of distrust in higher education while also recognizing the value of these institutions as places of learning,” Hettinger said.

Throughout the conference, participants revised a draft document titled “An Academic Social Contract for Our Time,” proposing reforms such as ending legacy admissions, providing need-blind acceptance, encouraging investment in local communities, and preventing career funneling—where students are encouraged to be oriented towards certain types of careers from their first year of college.

Students in Dasgupta’s classroom raised questions about whether elite education increasingly determines social status in the United States. One student asked what happens to democratic life when educational prestige replaces other forms of status and belonging. 

Dasgupta connected the conversation to Marx’s critiques of institutions that reinforce class inequality. Students and speakers debated whether universities today continue to function as engines of social mobility or instead reproduce existing social hierarchies. 

The visit challenged students to think beyond higher education as a pathway to individual success and instead consider its broader role in shaping citizenship. Rhee and Hettinger represent a growing movement of student scholars advocating for greater societal accountability within collegiate learning environments. 

The post CA Philosophy Students Discuss Higher Education Reform with Alum Advocate appeared first on 91�Թ���.

We couldn’t have asked for more beautiful weather for 91�Թ���’s reunion on May 16 and 17, 2026. Around 250 alums returned to campus, most from the classes ending in 1 and 6, which were being celebrated, though alums from all years were welcome to attend. Since this reunion was held during the academic year, alums enjoyed several opportunities to engage with students as well as one another.

Saturday’s events began with student-led campus tours and a historical walking tour of Concord, Mass. Alums had the option to attend a class with a current faculty member. Science Department Head Will Tucker shared a lesson about critical moments of scientific discovery in the 20th century and their impact on global events, from his course on chemistry and the Cold War. Several generations of alums came to his CA Labs classroom, in a building new since many of them last returned to campus. Tucker shared that for their final projects in his course, students create a podcast that traces an issue from modern times to its origins in an event they learned about during the semester. Mathematics teacher Shawn Bartok offered a similar sample of a course he teaches about math and politics. In his interactive session, he invited alums to weigh in on a seemingly simple topic: “Which is best: french toast, pancakes, or waffles?” Giving them chances to experience many ways voting data can be collected and interpreted, he demonstrated plurality, ranked choice, and weighted voting systems based on the class’s responses. His students puzzled out weighted voter values to reach particular coalition requirements and simulated the prisoner’s dilemma, which highlighted the impact of game theory on voting and the conflict between individual self-interest and collective benefit. Alums left with a new understanding of what math reveals about cooperation and how political power can be measured.

The music recital hall in the Centennial Arts Center (C.A.C.) filled for the Alum Association Assembly. In addition to appointing the new 2026–27 Alum Association officers and a vote on revised bylaws, alums heard an update from Head of School Henry D. Fairfax. He recognized retiring faculty and staff members Jackie Decareau, Sue Johnson P’20, Nancy Boutilier, and Christa Champion, and he shared enthusiasm about CA’s enrollment for next year, which includes students from many U.S. states and from Egypt, Japan, Singapore, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, and China.

Fairfax also shared about the ongoing work driven by CA’s strategic plan. Just two weeks prior, the Board of Trustees had approved a campus master plan, which considers every inch of CA’s campus and provides a flexible framework for future leaders to make decisions nimbly and in alignment with protecting the character of the campus learning environment. He added that he has tried to attend at least one class each week: “I’m constantly astonished by our superstar faculty and the incredible students we have here.”

During the assembly, alums also had a chance to talk with current students. Betsy Green ’91, who was celebrating her 35th reunion and facilitated the program, said, “I challenge you not to be a little jealous after hearing about their amazing experiences and the amazing facilities and opportunities that they have.” In a panel discussion moderated by Assistant Head for Student Life Grant Hightower, three current students spoke about the importance of senior chapels and other CA traditions, courses such as the Sitcom Project that they had enjoyed taking this year, and the independence they have in shaping their learning journeys. Alums began reminiscing at the mention of certain favorite local haunts, and they had a chance to offer advice to their younger counterparts. One tip: Always wear your CA ring—you never know when you’ll run into someone connected to CA.

On Saturday afternoon in the Ransome Room, Chris Labosier, science teacher and CA’s sustainability lead, opened a discussion about sustainability at CA and beyond by sharing the organizational structure for overseeing this work at CA, which involves students, faculty, staff, and trustees, and he announced the recent publication of the school’s first annual sustainability report. Then Labosier and Elyn Tao ’27, one of CA’s student environmental representatives, moderated a panel discussion about driving sustainable change, which centered around the sustainable finance industry and the many uses of public lands.

After beginning her career in commercial banking, Melissa Moye ’76 spent over two decades at the World Wildlife Fund, where she led the nonprofit’s efforts to create sustainable sources of financing for conservation in developing countries. She discussed how climate change is creating uncertainty around investing and the differing regulatory contexts in the U.S. and other regions of the world. “Even though I didn’t start out interested in science, I always was interested in going to wild places,” she said, and she reflected on the transcendentalist legacy of spiritual engagement with nature she absorbed in Concord, Mass. Also an impact investor, Moye highlighted a project she supported, a seaweed farm in the Faroe Islands, developed as cattle feed to reduce methane emissions.

Like Moye, Nina Callahan ’16 is an investor in a seaweed business, though the business she supports is using it as a substitute for plastic. She traces her “sustainability bug” back to CA, when Sonia Lo ’84 visited as the Hall Fellow to speak about hydroponic farming in 2015. A few years later, while Callahan was studying at Middlebury, she interned at Lo’s farm as a plant scientist. But more than the science itself, what interested her was how Lo runs her business. She ended up studying environmental economics, then working at Barclays as an investment banking analyst, before joining Paine Schwartz Partners, a private equity firm that specializes in sustainable food chain investing. Callahan, who also became a vegan while a student at CA, highlighted the importance of agriculture in addressing the climate crisis. She said working within the firm’s “farm-to-fork” purview is  “a nice intersection of creativity, environmental protection, and a tangible impact.” 

Haninah Levine ’01 shared that he’s a lawyer with the National Park Service, adding, “I think it’s the coolest job you can possibly have with the word lawyer in the title.” Levine has worked for the Bureau of Land Management and the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and he has been with the Department of the Interior for around 11 years. He said he appreciates that his job involves so many disciplines and intersecting interests, from preservation for wildlife habitat and backcountry recreation to historical and culture conservation. “CA cultivated in me a passion for always finding more about different things, and I’ve been lucky enough to find a career where I get to humor that impulse,” he said. He added that he hoped to see more people trying to get out of their comfort zones and talking with, and listening to, others who don’t share their assumptions and goals. 

Later that afternoon, alums filled the dance studio for a special performance of the spring dance concert, Kinetic Echoes. Choreographed by John Patrick O’Neill and the members of the CA Dance Project, the performance explored memory through movement. Then Linda Coyne Lloyd Performing Arts Department Chair Michael Bennett gave a tour of the C.A.C., highlighting several of its adaptable features, including the adjustable seating in the Hammett Ory Theater, the customizable acoustics of the music recital hall, and the flexible Spencer and Colton Process, Presentation, and Performance (P3) Lab, which can be configured for exhibitions, performances, and multidisciplinary learning experiences.

The schedule also allowed plenty of free time for reunioning alums to chat on the quad, enjoy a lemonade and popcorn bar in the C.A.C., and get out paddling on the Sudbury River. An animal presentation engaged families who had come with children, as well as some CA students. And a memorial service honored the memories of alums and former faculty and staff whose deaths the school had learned about within the previous year.

Late Saturday afternoon, alums gathered by classes for photos by the Senior Steps. The sun was shining bright over cocktail hour, when alums mixed and mingled in front of the C.A.C. Over dinner in the theater, alums enjoyed music by CA piano teacher Jonathan Fagan ’11, former CA music teacher Ross Adams, and Grace Blewer ’11. At the reception, Fairfax congratulated the reunioning classes, highlighted how special it was for alums to have the opportunity to interact with current students this year, and welcomed two alums to share some remarks. 

“CA does many things well, and one of them is teaching students to ask good questions,” said Jamie Klickstein ’86, P’15 ’18, who was celebrating his 40th reunion and reflected on his time on the Board of Trustees and the “instant kinship” he feels when meeting a member of the CA community. 

Former Alum Association President Laura McConaghy ’01, celebrating her 20th reunion, remarked on the “amazing community that CA has fostered” and her ongoing connection to CA through her relationships with fellow alums rooted, like she is, in common trust, love of learning, and care for each other and the world. She concluded with a toast to “the many twists and turns that are still ahead.”

The festivities wrapped up on Sunday morning with a leisurely farewell brunch. This was the final reunion before the first Alum Weekend will take place, according to a new schedule, in spring 2028. In this updated multiclass reunion model, alums from neighboring classes will be invited together, encouraging the deepening of connections across the CA community.

The post CA Alums Reconnect at an Energizing 2026 Reunion appeared first on 91�Թ���.

“Cancer itself doesn’t discriminate, but the rest of the world does,” she said. “Living with the same disease, two hosts battle the tumor with wildly different circumstances, and their chances for survival can be vastly different. These differences are human-made, and they can be human-fixed.”

Her idealism is grounded in 22 years of experience in treating breast cancer patients. As the section chief of breast medical oncology at NYU Langone Health, a role she began this year, Ko runs a translational research lab that investigates tumor biology and the social determinants of health. Previously, she taught and practiced for 14 years at Boston University and its affiliate hospital, Boston Medical Center. This “safety-net hospital” for the uninsured sits just 2 miles—but a world away—from the renowned Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, she said: “We serve wildly different patient populations, and the cancer experiences are as different as if we were in two different countries.”

Ko showed a map depicting the 1930s redlining that codified discriminatory mortgage lending with lasting effects on Boston communities. In largely affluent, white Back Bay, she said, only 15% of residents are enrolled in MassHealth, the Massachusetts state plan that provides free or low-cost insurance to low-income residents. In contrast, more than half to three-quarters of residents use Mass Health in Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester, where two-thirds of Boston’s Black population is concentrated. Deep structural inequities correlate with a staggering 20- to 30-year difference in life expectancy between the two areas.

“We privilege the privileged,” Ko said. “If you have wealth, you will get great care, and the denial to get care based on poverty, lack of insurance, and racism is the legacy and reality of our current health system.” She showed a graph from the New England Journal of Medicine, charting the survival gap between Black and white women over time. Black women, she explained, have a 40% higher risk of dying of breast cancer.

The factors of these disparities are complex and interrelated, and they commonly contribute to a pattern of patient denial, Ko explained. For women living in poverty, financial instability, language barriers, and the significant challenges of taking time off work or family care to receive medical attention can lead to delayed diagnosis and treatment. Even once patients start getting care, being treated for cancer can become a “watershed moment” leading to financial collapse, she said, sharing the story of one of her patients who could not work during chemotherapy and, no longer able to pay rent, lost her housing. For insured patients whose income barely disqualifies them for assistance programs, high co-pays can also be ruinous.

Ko detailed the systems that health care teams at hospitals such as Boston Medical Center have developed to mitigate these inequities: BMC contains a food pantry and provides robust interpreter, health care navigation, and social work services. “These types of services get really strong because they have to,” she said.

Although well-intentioned individuals keep trying to fill such gaps, she acknowledged, “it’s a much bigger problem to fix than these one-offs,” requiring the development of more equitable systems. In the meantime, she suggested, how we talk about patients’ experiences matters.

Through her clinical practice, Ko understands how difficult it can be for underserved patients to keep appointments and follow medication schedules. While patients can often be labeled “difficult” or “noncompliant” in their medical records, “I see something different,” Ko said. “I see a patient who lacks trust.” She said medical care providers have the responsibility to earn that trust, give their underserved patients extra time, help them schedule appointments and scans, and affirm their lived experiences.

Ko explained that many academic studies of health care disparities are hindered by the quality of available data and subject to selection bias; their authors don’t have a practical understanding of the intersection of societal conditions and treatment outcomes because they don’t practice in hospitals that serve these patients. “The granular experience of navigating the medical system for the underserved is not adequately captured in the literature,” she said. 

Shedding light on this disconnection is Ko’s current project as she completes a fellowship year at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. At Radcliffe, she’s working on a book, Seeing the Unseen, to bring public attention to health care inequities through the stories of some of her patients, humanizing the experiences of women diagnosed with breast cancer for whom she has provided care.

Speaking at 91�Թ���, Ko tied the power of personal stories to her own experience—as a child of Chinese immigrants, as a CA student for whom belonging had sometimes been a struggle, and now as a medical professional motivated to help shape a more just health care system. “I always felt that this CA tradition of the chapel was an antidote to that feeling of not having a place to belong,” she said. “Because here at CA, I think our community’s opportunity to connect with each person’s authentic self every few days as a ritual in a chapel helped me see people as individuals with multitudes.”

The post Through Her Patients’ Stories, Oncologist Naomi Ko ’91, P’21 ’26 Makes Health Care Inequities Personal appeared first on 91�Թ���.

Community work has never been easy. Now, against the backdrop of a hyperpartisan public sphere, listening to learn and engaging in dialogue rather than debate seem like rare skills indeed. What can the people who practice them teach us?

We spoke with three CA alums who offer their distinct perspectives on communication, ones based on research, community-building leadership, and their own lived experiences. Their common thread is a commitment to creating more equitable and inclusive systems—and a focus on how we talk to one another to do so. Here’s what they’ve learned.

Katrina Pugh ’83

Kate Pugh ’83 has been studying dialogue for 30 years. She’s seen that facilitated discussions don’t often change people’s mental models, which reinforce assumptions and perpetuate othering. So as she was researching what kinds of speech deepen understanding and coordinate meaningful action, she wanted to develop a conversational framework people could internalize and self-facilitate.

“I don’t think you can have a mindset of ‘we’ if people haven’t stood back and said, totally neutrally, ‘Let’s look at what we just said,” says Pugh, a lecturer in the Information and Knowledge Strategy program at Columbia University. Even if people are willing to do that, she adds, they can benefit from a rubric that’s “practically defined and quantitatively justified.”

With a Columbia colleague, Nara Altmann, Pugh published a framework called “Conversation for Civility, Collaboration, and Creativity” in 2024. Based on Pugh’s doctoral research, this presents five “discussion disciplines,” or conversational features associated with rhetorical intent: courtesy (demonstrating goodwill and respect), inclusion (recognizing another participant or drawing them out), integrity (making informative or declarative statements), integrity-Q (inquiring or seeking clarification), and translation (summarizing or synthesizing what’s been said). 

Using the framework, Pugh demonstrated that even a small shift in emphasis can dramatically influence conversational outcomes. In her doctoral research, she trained the first large language model, Google’s BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), to detect the five discussion disciplines and their impacts. Her research team had trained the model on data from public town halls about proposed aquaculture projects that had been hand-coded with the five discussion disciplines. Using the trained model, the team analyzed around 600 dialogues and evaluated the relationship between the shares of the discussion disciplines and the conversation outcomes.

“Sure enough, we found some really interesting relationships,” Pugh says. For example, when the share of inclusion increases by 10 percentage points, the likelihood of intent-to-act rises by 45%. Just as in “helping conversations,” greater acknowledgement and visibility make people more likely to take their roles seriously and commit to action. Similarly, with another dataset the team saw qualitative evidence that increasing proportions of questions and translation results in greater innovation.

These findings led Pugh to her mission to build a movement based on those five discussion disciplines. Even in in-person or online discussions dominated by indirection, disdain, or cynicism, they suggested, a group can move from transactional or defensive interactions to more curious, risk-taking, and forgiving dialogue.

In 2024, Pugh and Altmann co-founded the network, along with Columbia colleagues Eve Porter-Zuckerman and Steve Townsend. Its first meeting drew around 100 individuals committed to overcoming polarization through conversation. “People were genuinely ripe for attending to the features in conversation and how we can influence them,” Pugh says. Now she’s developing services and workshops for companies, nonprofits, and schools, as well as virtual trainings. Pugh says the framework is particularly applicable to organizations in transition; people in helping professions, such as teachers or hotline staffers; and nonhierarchical networks. But it’s broadly accessible too. 

“The goal is that anybody could say, ‘We need more questions in this conversation,’ or ask, ‘Is anyone doing translation?’” she says. “These are systems-thinking skills that help us be more versatile. The disciplines create space for us to break habits of disparagement and dismissal and recognize each other as co-creators.”

Pugh grew up in Lincoln, Mass. At 91�Թ���, she competed in cross-country and tennis, played flute in the chamber orchestra, and took part in a mainstage production. “CA was a really good, introspective place for me,” she says. “I could just be whatever I was.”

She majored in economics at Williams College, where she grew interested in understanding group interactions and wrote her senior thesis on the impact of unions on profitability measurement. Later, while earning a combined master of science degree and MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Pugh was introduced to organizational learning and the lens of dialogue: “I said, ‘Oh, my goodness, this is the language I’m speaking.’”

To every professional role, she has brought her interest in dialogue—the nucleus of collaboration. Early on, she worked for major firms such as PwC, J.P. Morgan, Intel, and Fidelity before transitioning into knowledge management consulting. When the stock market crashed in 2008, she took time off to write a book, Sharing Hidden Know-How, about how to use conversation to elicit knowledge. Since 2011, she has taught the science of communities and networks at Columbia, where for six years she ran the master’s program in information and knowledge strategy. 

During the pandemic, Pugh returned to graduate school, earning a Ph.D. in ecology and environmental sciences in 2022 from the University of Maine. She now consults with corporations and organizations on change management and artificial intelligence (AI) design for sustainability. Since its founding in 2023, Pugh has also been a partner in Weaving Futures, a collective designing impact networks to create conditions for human flourishing.

What does she make of our contentious public discourse these days? “We’re in a terrible mess,” Pugh says. “First, we have a political sphere that is all about division and accusation. Second, we have a social media sphere that is all about reinforcing perspectives we already hold or amplifying them to be more edgy or negative. And third, we have AI, which can encourage us to settle for partial solutions and pull us away from social interactions.”

She offers some advice: “Remember that our conversations really do have an impact—from those conversations with a 2-year-old to those conversations with your bus driver. You could be the best thing that happened to them today.”

Even in our fragmented digital environment, she adds, “Pay attention to the composite of your interactions. You may also find an opportunity to use a new conversation muscle. Because no interaction is too small, you can be the one to sow new forms of civility.”

Turahn Dorsey ’89

Over his decades of leadership and coalition-building to bring about civic change, Rahn Dorsey ’89 has been motivated by curiosity. What new solutions can collaborative approaches to community development yield? How can we better communicate across differences?

As the president and chief executive officer of the Eastern Bank Foundation, Dorsey is driving its vision of building a thriving regional economy and more equitable and just communities in southern New England. With a mission focused on economic inclusion and mobility, the foundation works to improve early childhood education systems; integrate untapped talent in the workforce by lowering barriers to employment for immigrants, parents, and workers with disabilities; support small-business owners, particularly people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community; and increase the supply of affordable housing. 

“If all those things take a generation to do, what should we be doing that cuts that time in half?” Dorsey asks. “Where can we accelerate and achieve what some of my colleagues and I have started to call ‘escape velocity’? What can create enough propulsion to help households break free from the gravitational pull of the conditions that entrench poverty?”

Dorsey is particularly interested in ideas that accelerate economic mobility. But as much urgency as he feels, he acknowledges that conversation is as indispensable as financial, political, and institutional capital—and that it only moves at the speed of trust.

“I’m very thankful that I was born in the Midwest,” says Dorsey, a proud native Detroiter. “For Michiganders, it’s not foreign to have long-standing relationships with people you don’t agree with ideologically, so you’re used to negotiating on a more human basis.” He says the agency, identity, and sense of belonging he developed thanks to his native city’s Black Power ethic and blue-collar culture have helped him negotiate boundaries of racial and class identity throughout his life. 

As a teen, Dorsey came to CA through A Better Chance and Midwest Talent Search, organizations that place high-performing students of color in independent schools. He says growing up in Black-majority Detroit gave him a unique perspective. “I actually didn’t have deep experience with the effects of political and economic segregation, because Detroit was, and is, an innovative place,” he says. “I came to Concord with agency, so it didn’t overwhelm me. I loved being able to reach out across difference, and I loved the challenge. I loved the opportunity to go searching for who I wanted to be.”

At CA, he leaned into music, formed lifelong friendships, and got a crash course in time management. “I was notorious for never sleeping and wore myself down every year, but it taught me a life lesson,” he says.

Long before he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Michigan, an apprenticeship began shaping Dorsey’s career. At 16, he started working for a suburban Detroit firm owned by a family friend, who taught him to be a professional researcher and consultant. By 19, he was managing projects for the state of Michigan and the City of Detroit. In 1995, Dorsey moved to Boston to work at Abt Associates, a global strategy, consulting, and research firm founded by Clark Abt P’90 ’93, where for 13 years he conducted public policy research, covering 42 states and, he says, “learning a whole lot about community-based influence and what that has to do with systems change and public policy change.”

Dorsey went to work for the Barr Foundation in 2009 before joining the Boston mayoral campaign of his friend John Barros. When Barros entered the Marty Walsh administration in 2014, Dorsey did too. For four years, he served as Boston’s chief of education, leading, among other initiatives, the design of the city’s universal prekindergarten system. 

After joining the Eastern Bank Foundation as a Foundation Fellow in 2019, he became its president this summer. He says he believes the foundation has a critical role to play in helping to spur “a broader conversation about the civic purpose of wealth and to negotiate for the social contract we need to promote economic justice.”

Dorsey doesn’t make light of the obstacles to building consensus in these polarized times. “There’s almost a rapid spiral to the basest version of society right now,” he says. “This is not a moment for sitting on the sidelines. This moment needs every institution to think about its purpose, its relevance, and what it wants to contribute to a different world.”

In New Hampshire, Dorsey is part of a 10-member, Black-owned farm called Movement Family Farm. In their first year growing garlic, they bought seed from an older white farmer who seemed suspicious of them until he realized they needed to learn from him. When Dorsey’s wife mentioned to the farmer that she’s a pastor, they bonded over an unexpected connection: The farmer’s mother had also been a clergy member, at a time when very few women were. “It’s fascinating,” Dorsey says. “His background confuses the whole picture, because now if you want to put him in a box based on his political views, you can’t.” 

Dorsey says that encounters such as these—conversations with individuals with whom, on paper, he might not have a lot in common—give him hope for accelerating “heart-to-heart work.”

He often reflects on the process of navigating impasses and finding points of agreement: “You aren’t going to discover the commonalities without having the conversation, so you’ve got to make some level of commitment. I have the great fortune—and I actually think about it as a source of wealth—that these conversations happen pretty regularly in my life. Now I have a deep curiosity that drives me to pursue them more actively.”

Eric Nguyen ’00

“It’s easy to affirm your values in the abstract, but hard to see that you’re not actually showing up the way you want to,” says Eric Nguyen ’00. As senior director of consulting and training at the nonprofit YW Boston, he works with corporations, organizations, and government agencies to help leaders and their teams understand their cultures and remove barriers to equity and belonging. 

Nguyen and his colleagues conduct organizational assessments, make customized recommendations, and offer trainings on identity and bias, dialogue across differences, and giving and receiving feedback. They also model a highly participatory process of creating more inclusive decision-making structures. “The challenge is bringing together a diverse set of stakeholders, who each have their own needs and priorities, to clarify their values and define a shared vision,” he says. “We’re able to help people see things more clearly and communicate with each other in ways that are candid and honest, but also compassionate.”

Clients eager for solutions might request a two-hour workshop on microaggressions, for example. “We can’t really get to that until we do deep identity work,” Nguyen says. “The better we understand our own identities, which is where bias comes from, the better able we are to engage in dialogue, which—unlike debating—requires vulnerability, grace, and patience for hearing others’ perspectives. If we’re just thinking about being right, we’re only deepening divisions.”

He’s concerned that cancel culture has left little room for repair and restoration. “When people are operating out of fear, not wanting to say the wrong thing, you never get to what you need to talk about,” he says. “If instead you value a growth mindset, if you say, ‘We’re a learning organization,’ then you can think about putting practices in place to support that kind of culture. Helping people develop new schemas for communication is super exciting—it’s radically reimagining what the workplace, educational settings, and our relationships can be.”

Born in Boston to parents who had emigrated from Vietnam, Nguyen grew up in Lowell, Mass., and he watched his parents struggle to assimilate into American culture. He spoke Vietnamese fluently until he was 6, when they began encouraging him to speak only English at home and at school. “It came from their own experience of discrimination, of having their intelligence questioned because of their accents,” he says. “They didn’t want that for me or for my brothers.” 

He regrets losing his first language and that deep connection to his cultural heritage, and he says it took a long time to unlearn the sense of superiority that accompanied his fluency in English.

When Nguyen transitioned from a racially diverse, working-class public school to CA, he experienced culture shock. He did well academically and athletically, but socially, he was on the fringes. Though he says CA was “ahead of its time” in having affinity groups, none existed for children of immigrants; being steered toward a group for Asian international students shaped his convictions about asking, not assuming, what community members need.

Still, with his advisor, Howie Bloom P’08 ’09 ’14, he found a second family. “Being seen, having adults I could go to, was powerful at such a vulnerable, pivotal time of life,” he says. “That relational piece of CA is something I bring along, and even those moments where I felt like I didn’t belong have been really helpful for me.”

One Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Nguyen recalls, students wrote down identities that were important to them and wore them on lanyards to start conversations. “That was a moment when I got to define for others who I was,” he says. “And I got to see how other people defined themselves in less visible ways.”

After earning a degree in psychology from Amherst College, Nguyen taught at several New England independent schools. Over time, he began enjoying helping colleagues implement more equitable teaching practices. While teaching and working in admissions at Noble and Greenough School, he helped start Achieve, a program focused on closing the educational opportunity gap for students in Boston’s public schools through summer enrichment and academic-year tutoring.

In 2018, Nguyen began managing a scholarship program at Northeastern University. He was struck by how many students from underrepresented groups faced structural barriers to belonging, which he worked to address. “With some of our most vulnerable students, if they couldn’t get housing, that was it—they couldn’t continue to be students,” he says. “It opened my eyes to the impact we can have if we operate at the systems level.”

After serving as the director for the Center for Inclusive Excellence at Framingham State University, he joined YW Boston in 2023. He recently worked with a nonprofit grappling with community tensions that hadn’t consciously considered its values in decades, and his assessment of a government agency uncovered rifts between leadership and staff regarding psychological safety, communication, and decision-making. To address such sensitive topics, Nguyen often uses a facilitated conversational framework, LARA (Listen, Affirm, Respond, and Add). “There are times it feels kind of forced, but it requires all the parties to agree to using shared language,” he says. “Why not remind ourselves that we want to listen to each other and affirm when we find moments of connection before we respond?”

But Nguyen stresses that there’s no single way to engage with others. In addition to social identities, he asks his workshop participants to explore various change-agent identities. “Some people are vocal about articulating needs,” he says. “But we also need people who can create coalitions and people who think about solutions. Too often, it’s the same person trying to wear all three hats, so you see a lot of burnout. That’s part of building community too—recognizing you have something to contribute and you don’t have to do it alone.”

Since 2022, he has served on the board of the Natick Organic Farm, in his community in Natick, Mass., where he helped staff establish a shared vision for inclusivity. The farm recently installed multilingual signs in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, hiring native speakers to translate the text. This fall, it purchased an all-terrain wheelchair for members of visiting school and corporate groups to use.

Nguyen says the conversations the board and staff had were as important as those visible changes: “We’re all stronger when we’re able to think more broadly about who our community is and how we can help people feel part of it.”

The post Can We Mend Our Civic Fabric? appeared first on 91�Թ���.