At CA, a day doesn’t get off to a good start without a chat with Jackie Decareau. That widely shared sentiment has reflected Decareau’s approach to her role as assistant to the Student Life Office. Given her deep respect for students and families, her unwavering attention to detail, and the warmth and compassion she brings to every interaction, it’s no surprise that many students have thanked her in their senior chapels. Decareau has also left a lasting impression on her colleagues, who wish her well in retirement after 23 years at CA.

Annie Bailey P’25 ’27, director of residential life, calls her a “beacon of light.” To Renee Coburn, chief of staff, she’s been “the heartbeat of this school.” And Student Life Office Manager Georgia Cassidy says she “communicates with so much grace, kindness, and patience; she has truly inspired me and brought so much joy to our team.”

With a background in human resources, Decareau has always been focused on people. Before coming to CA in 2003, she administered benefits at a marketing company; previously, she was an employment counselor for a regional bank. She initially joined CA part time to track student attendance, and over the years she extended her hours as her duties expanded to include coordinating everything from bulletin boards and class rings to laundry services for boarding students and commuter-rail passes for day students traveling from the city.

Decareau says that when she first arrived, she didn’t feel like she was dealing with high school students: “They were so mature, they felt more like coworkers.” That hasn’t changed, she says. The check-in systems she initiated have adapted over the decades, thanks to her diligence in ensuring students were safe and their whereabouts known. 

“She made sure that every student knows someone cares where they are—that literally every student at CA is seen, every day,” says Grant Hightower, assistant head for student life.

Decareau says she couldn’t have asked for a better job: “The kids kept me feeling younger. And getting to be here every day with wonderful, smart, educated individuals who are always learning—for me, that hasn’t felt like work.”

While she looks forward to a slower routine with more time for walks with friends, book group chats, and volunteering at her local food pantry, her quiet influence at CA can’t be replaced. And it won’t be forgotten.

“Jackie is a beautiful person, a beautiful soul,” Hightower says. “She is selflessly devoted to service and has been one of the most significant binding agents when it comes to the spirit of our institution. I’ll miss her dearly.”

Sue Johnson P’20

After more than a decade at CA and 40 years dedicated to sport and education, Athletics Director Sue Johnson P’20 has hung up her jersey. “Her impact on the CA community and the field at large has been significant,” says Head of School Henry D. Fairfax. “Sue was disciplined about making sure every decision was made through an equity lens. Not only did she support student-athletes of all genders at CA, but she was instrumental in ensuring that same equity in the Eastern Independent League (EIL). This is legacy work that will live on for many generations to come.”

Johnson evolved many facets of CA’s athletics program after arriving in 2015. She expanded the physical education, intramural, and subvarsity offerings and created a supervised, well-equipped fitness center. During her tenure, CA saw marked improvement in competitive success within EIL play and in New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) postseason tournaments. While serving on the NEPSAC executive board, Johnson also helped draft its original gender identity inclusion statement, and in her first year at CA, she guided the EIL’s transition of wrestling to an all-gender sport. 

Under Johnson’s watch, the school amassed a fleet of banners and trophies, but she remained focused on raising the caliber of the athletics program in alignment with CA’s mission. Throughout her tenure, she prioritized the life skills and values learned through athletics and centered the transformative experience of team sport.

“Sue fostered a positive and supportive environment that made staff, coaches, and students feel valued,” says Laurie Baker, former assistant athletics director. “Her leadership will truly be missed.”

Nancy Boutilier and Christa Champion

Nancy Boutilier joined CA’s English Department in 2016 following a career teaching and coaching in independent schools on both coasts of the U.S., as well as at Oberlin College. Before long, she became integral to CA athletics and residential life as well. A poet, activist, and fierce competitor, Boutilier encouraged authentic engagement and expression, inspiring students and colleagues alike to approach the world with a sense of wonder. She helped establish CA’s Writing Center, laying a foundation for peer mentorship and writing feedback. And her famous “sophomore letters” have been a treasured delivery to senior students as they near graduation. 

“Coaching is teaching, and teaching is coaching with Nancy,” says Sarah Yeh P’24 ’27, associate head for teaching, learning, and faculty. “In the classroom, everything she does is in the spirit of helping a student find their place, their confidence, and their voice. On the basketball court, she models what it means to be an athlete, a teammate, and a community member at every step of a practice or game.”

The CA community will also greatly miss Boutilier’s partner and fellow house faculty member, Christa Champion, whose boundless energy and zest for track and field infused her coaching of throwing and pole vaulting. Former track and field coach Jon Waldron says Champion’s expansive vision of sport and ability to integrate her experiences as an athlete, engineer, poet, and teacher made her a transformative coach and mentor at CA.

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Featured utopias included Zoar, the Shakers, Oneida, Fruitlands, Modern Times, New Harmony, Brook Farm, and early Mormonism. Expo booths distributed themed giveaways, served food that their community members would have eaten, and engaged guests in conversations about each group’s philosophy to recruit new members. Posters around campus declared that “humanity is perfectable” and invited visitors to “come find your slice of paradise.”

Guests selected from a variety of 19th-century personas at the entrance and remained in character as they explored the expo. These personas represented people from different social and economic backgrounds, including skilled and unskilled laborers, men and women, and both free and enslaved people. Students then attempted to recruit them to their utopian communities. 

Frederick said she developed the project to give students a more hands-on understanding of the historical movements they were studying: “I wanted students to dig into the reasons that people would have been motivated to step away from regular society to try these experimental communities.” 

The eight interactive exhibits at the expo made the event engaging and participatory. For example, at the Shaker table, students dressed in simple linen gowns and white caps and promoted communal living, pacifism, and gender and racial equity. They distributed clothespins and Shaker lemon pie created from whole lemons, inspired by the community’s innovations and “waste not” philosophy. 

Frederick first launched the Utopias Expo project in 2019, and this year marked the third installment. She says each iteration has become more spirited, with students investing more effort into costumes, props, and presentations. 

The course begins with an exploration of the American Revolution and asks students to revisit the founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of 1787, and the Federalist Papers. Students are pushed to consider the motives and intentions of the framers and then asked to look at the society of the early Republic and how the Revolution changed government, the economy, and society. By turning to the question of why Americans in the 1830s and 1840s joined utopian communities, students can bring another critical lens to the question of what the Revolution accomplished. 

The course asks students to analyze how these antebellum communities challenged mainstream society and how the American republican experiment both supported and limited their goals. While students practice analytical writing and are taught how to marshal evidence, construct arguments, and write persuasively, Frederick says the expo often leaves the strongest impression on members of her class. 

“The thing that they will remember is the expo, because they were the authors of themselves as their historical characters and brought their understanding to how people thought about important things in the past—governance, the economy, social relationships. The past is a foreign country, and the expo is a way to try to visit it for an afternoon.”

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91�Թ���’s Commencement Exercises for the class of 2026 unfolded beautifully in the Academy Garden on May 29. The morning was bright and breezy as 101 seniors processed in to the strains of a Bach concerto played by student chamber musicians. On the Senior Steps, they sang their class song, the Beatles’ “In My Life,” before taking their seats in front of families, faculty, staff, and friends who had gathered to celebrate them as individuals as well as the spirit of community they had cultivated as a class.

Beginning the speaking program, Jennifer Pline P’13 ’15, co-president of the Board of Trustees, recalled this year’s “deeply reflective, introspective, and self-aware senior chapels” that demonstrated “a level of maturity that feels beyond your years.” She said her favorite way she’s heard this class characterized was as “graceful disruptors,” adding, “I can’t think of a better phrase to describe CA grads.” She urged them to return home to CA and never lose their commitment to making the world a better place.

Head of School Henry D. Fairfax shared a unique aspect of CA’s Commencement, a tradition dating back more than 70 years, of bestowing no awards, prizes, or diplomas with distinction, in recognition of the love of learning the entire student body shares. He advised the seniors, “Run, don’t hurry. This means: Engage in everything you do with a sense of purpose, and have integrity in your effort. Explore and take calculated risks, but don’t rush into anything.” Fairfax also acknowledged the shadow cast this year by the loss of their classmate Louis Montagut ‘26, whose “magnetic spirit revealed a deep sense of community, honor, and love at CA.”

Learning through loss was the theme of the remarks by May Zheng ’26, student head of school, who spoke next. From the countless small items lost and returned—pens, water bottles, hoodies—that reflect care for fellow students to irreparable, larger losses, she said, “somehow, for everything I’ve lost, it seems that experiencing it with my class has made it bearable and meaningful.”

Preparing to leave CA, she addressed the fear of leaving behind “the person we’ve had the space, privilege, and community to become here … that we have grown into, and used to, and proud of.” Yet she imagined recognizing in others some “undeniable, unapologetic” characteristics her classmates embody today. In this way, “losing is learning,” she said, “To lose this place, this home, is to see it appear again a million times in a million different places. … To ‘commence’ now, we are really saying, ‘I will see you again, because I have known you now.’ That within every absence we experience, there is a celebration of what was once there, what we have lived.”

Following a CA Chorus performance of Adele’s “When We Were Young,” Veerawit Sirikantraporn ’26, senior class president, introduced the commencement speaker, Amy Rosenfeld ’84. As the senior vice president of Olympics and Paralympics production at NBC Sports, she led efforts to expand visibility and accessibility at the 2024 and 2026 Games, after overseeing ESPN’s World Cup coverage. In addition to her extensive experience in sports broadcasting and production leadership, Veerawit said, it’s her reputation “as someone who leads with integrity, care, and unity” that embodies characteristics reflected in the CA community.

Rosenfeld shared, with a zingy delivery and a knack for comic timing (she said she once wanted to be a late-night television writer) how honored, humbled, “and quite frankly, a bit shocked” she was to have been selected as this year’s commencement speaker. “Let’s just say I was not the model 91�Թ��� student,” she said. To much laughter, she read a few illustrative comments she had saved from CA teachers concerned about her ability to succeed. Despite those “scathing reviews,” she added, she always had the sense that the faculty was rooting for her, “that they believed that I had something that would resonate and have an impact.”

As a career sports television producer, she has a special place in her heart for global sporting events that can, for just a few weeks at a time, unite the world. She suggested she’d been asked to address this class in alignment with this year’s community life theme, “Building the We,” because community, and one’s ability to contribute to it, “can be one of the most rewarding aspects of life.”

Rosenfeld advised the class of 2026 that the relationships they formed at CA will likely play important roles in any future endeavors—precisely how she landed her first sports broadcasting internship. She said she still wears her CA ring every day; it reminds her of where she learned “how to have confidence, how to deal with success and, certainly, failure, how to work together as a collective group to get across any finish line … and to have the strength of my own convictions.”

Among other qualities instilled in her at CA, Rosenfeld said, was a sense that “I could just be me, that I didn’t have to follow any particular group to fit in,” and that she could take her own path.

“Embracing individuality is what makes a true and honest community—that is what you have here at CA,” Rosenfeld said. 

She’s often asked what it’s like to be a woman in sports television. “My answer is always the same,” she said. “‘If you believe you belong, you belong.’ It never occurred to me that I shouldn’t be doing precisely what I was doing. CA taught me that.”

Rosenfeld told about a time she “failed miserably” in a very public way. Producing a U.S. women’s soccer game, she was too focused on replays, and she missed showing a goal. Afraid her broadcast career was over, she talked herself down out in the parking lot. “I fiddled with my CA ring and remembered all the mistakes I had made back then, and despite it all, how that community still believed in me,” she said. She didn’t get fired. She produced enough important soccer matches in the years that followed to be inducted into the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame.

It’s in adversity that we recognize the value of community, Rosenfeld went on to say. As the members of the class of 2026 go their separate ways and begin new adventures, she advised them to continue leaning on one another and not to worry if they don’t have all the answers—or even if they don’t know what the questions are. While she certainly didn’t always know what decision to make, she says, because of CA, she knew who she was and the value she could offer the next community she encountered: “Because of CA, I promise you are ready for what’s next.”

In the final portion of the ceremony, diplomas were awarded in random order—a CA tradition that both honors every individual and keeps the audience engaged. The final student to be called took home the coveted “commencement sock,” a tube sock filled with cash donations from the class, with a little extra thrown in by alums. 

Afterward, the new graduates made their way through a receiving line, sharing parting hugs and handshakes with faculty and staff, before joining their families for a reception behind the Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel. The ceremony concluded the 2025–26 school year on a note of gratitude for the space to cultivate individual expression and, above all, the enduring bonds of community.

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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. 

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Will Tucker, Science Department head and senior project coordinator, said the initiative encourages students to “pursue love of learning in a whole new venture and direction.” This year’s 32 senior projects required technical analysis and artistic exploration, with many projects combining multiple disciplines.  

Aleksandra Zdraveski ’26 explored the neuroscience of visual art. Inspired by her longtime interest in painting, drawing, and ceramics, she researched how creative practices can support emotional healing. Aleksandra studied how the brain perceives color and art, and the neurological effects of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. 

The project culminated in an independently conducted on-campus case study examining the effects of art therapy on stress levels. Twenty CA student participants were divided into an art therapy group and a control group, with stress measured through heart and breath rates and self-reported anxiety scales over three weeks.

The art therapy group showed statistically significant decreases across all three measures, supporting Aleksandra’s hypothesis that creative activities can reduce stress responses. She also created an interactive ceramic sculpture of a human head containing removable brain structures, allowing viewers to engage directly with the concepts behind the research. 

William Frabizio ’26 developed and taught a course to CA peers about robotics and autonomous systems, designed to introduce students to engineering through hands-on lessons. Driven by his own experience learning robotics independently through clubs, internships, and personal projects, William wanted to create a classroom environment where students could build technical skills. 

The course began with lessons on robotic quadrupeds using the Unitree Go2 Pro AI robot dog.
Students learned about LiDAR mapping, obstacle avoidance, mobility systems, and the use of robotics as a social outreach tool.

The class later expanded to aerodynamics and remote control aircraft engineering. Students designed and tested paper airplanes using the principles of lift, drag, thrust, and gravity before progressing to using flight simulators and constructing a laser-cut foam remote-controlled airplane. Through the process, William gained experience in curriculum design and classroom instruction.

Eliya Ganot ’26 used fashion as a form of literary interpretation to deepen her understanding of William Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.” Inspired by a CA course on British Romanticism, she expanded her exploration through independent research into the literary movement, which emphasized emotion, individualism, and reverence for nature.

Written during the Industrial Revolution, Wordsworth’s poem reflects on his personal development over five years, presenting the Wye Valley, between England and Wales, as a site of reflection and respite from urban life. Reflecting on the poem’s themes, Eliya created two garments representing Wordsworth’s youth and adulthood. She constructed the pieces by weaving together burlap and fabric to represent the narrator’s integration of past and present selves.

One garment features the quote “Flying from something that he dreads,” while the other includes the phrase “Who sought the thing he loved,” emphasizing the author’s transformation over time. 

Rodolfo Wang ’26 researched how commercial aviation systems could be adapted for smaller aircraft such as drones. He designed a custom flight computer around an ESP32 microcontroller. Rodolfo integrated motion sensors, wireless communications systems, and advanced motor controls into the computer to create a more reliable system. 

Rodolfo initially aimed to implement collision avoidance and stall protection. After encountering technical setbacks, including hardware incompatibility, he shifted his focus toward making the system more fault-tolerant—ensuring the aircraft could continue operating even if one component failed.

Inspired by the backup systems used in commercial airplanes, his final design employed three separate microcontrollers and sensor groups operating simultaneously. Each system verified the others’ data, allowing the remaining two to override incorrect readings if one failed, helping maintain flight stability. 

Reflecting on the iterative problem-solving that shaped his project, he offered this advice to students looking ahead to crafting their final semester of self-directed study at CA. “Don’t be afraid to fail,” he said. “Senior projects are really based on how much work you put in and what you learn, versus whether you accomplish the goals you originally set out to.” 

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Directed by Patrick John O’Neill, Kinetic Echoes ran May 15–16, 2026, featuring choreography by O’Neill and members of the CA Dance Project: Bella Li ’27, Eva Peregudov ’28, Jenny Wang ’27, Foster Woodberry ’27, and Sophia Zhou ’26. 

The piece explored how the mind holds onto the past, inspired by O’Neill’s personal experiences. “I was moved by watching the impact of my grandmother’s memory loss on my family,” he said. “I found myself asking two questions: ‘What happens to me when I forget?’ and ‘What happens to me if I can’t forget?’ Life is a constant balance of the things we want to cherish forever and the moments we wish we could let go of.”

O’Neill invited the dancers to contribute directly to the choreography. To encourage experimentation, O’Neill created a judgment-free environment, reminding students that there are no bad ideas. He then asked them to translate a cherished memory into dance, guiding the process through questions and feedback. “As we weaved different dancers’ phrases together, they were forced to physically ‘remember’ complex transitions and sequences in real-time,” he said. 

Although each student choreographed an individual section, recurring motifs created a strong sense of unity throughout the contemporary dance piece. Gestures such as lifts or reclining spirals reappeared with slight variations, echoing the fluid nature of recollection.

That sense of repetition also extended to the production’s visual staging. Scenic designer Jessica Cloutier-Plasse and technical director James Williston P’28 created the draped environment inspired by the set from �����·��·���ǰ�·����·������, the first CA Dance Project show O’Neill choreographed at CA in November of 2024. 

The score featured haunting ambient music, including original tracks by digital music production teacher Nate Tucker. Eytan Ko ’26 also contributed an original improvised composition created entirely through memory and musical intuition. Lighting by Elmer Martinez transformed the dance studio into a hazy landscape of shadows and warmth, alternately obscuring and sharply revealing movement. Together, these technical elements evoked the fragmented atmosphere of memory. 

For O’Neill, the power of dance lies in creating a shared experience that lingers in the mind and body long after the movement itself disappears. “I wanted the audience to feel the tangible weight of memories that are usually purely internal,” he shares. “I hope they saw fragments of their own journeys in the dancers. No matter their personal history, I want them to leave feeling just a little bit closer to themselves than they were before the performance began.”

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On April 22, five workshops took place across campus. In recognition of Earth Day, Environmental Representatives Xander Grossman ’26, Lauren Ong ’26, and Pearl Yu ’26, and Elyn Tao ’27, hosted “Environmental Displacement and Injustice: How Climate, Resources, and our Changing World Shape Communities.” 

The student leaders shared local examples, including the 1930’s displacement of four towns to create the Quabbin Reservoir and the end of East Boston’s decade-long fight against an electrical substation project in 2024. Participants then considered a hypothetical scenario—an energy substation proposed in the small town of Concordia—and discussed how they would respond. Students considered cultural norms, emerging technologies, population growth, environmental justice, and connections to home. 

Students Lila Abruzzi ’26 and Sam Mehl ’26 hosted “Trans Athletes in Sports: Rights and Inclusion,” a roundtable discussion about trans athletes of all ages, from elementary school recreation leagues to college and professional competition. The student leaders shared case studies of individual athletes and examples of legislation on the subject before inviting participants to share their perspectives.

Advocacy for Women’s Autonomy hosted the panel “Reproductive Healthcare Access is Autonomy,” with two guest speakers: a breast cancer oncologist and a Planned Parenthood representative. Students Lily Kim ’27 and Ellie Adams ’27 moderated the conversation. Participants gained insight into how public policy shapes women’s healthcare decisions and engaged speakers with thoughtful questions about their professional experiences.

Leaders from the South Asian Student Society and the Multi Ethnic Student Organization Anisa Brown ’26, Ronan Dutt ’27, Caroline Espinosa ’26, and Daniel Ng ’26, co-hosted “Chai: Colonialism and Culture,” while Eliya Ganot ’26 and Jacob Robbins ’26 of the Jewish Student Organization hosted “Let My People Dough: The History of Jewish Bread.” Both workshops explored how food and tradition can deepen our cultural understanding through culinary tastings. 

This year’s Strive workshops covered topics ranging from intersectional feminism to cultural traditions. Together, these distinct sessions reflected the community’s commitment to learning through dialogue. By engaging with complex issues, students and faculty continued to build a more connected school community.

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“Are you feeling hopeless about the state of the world?” she asked CA students. “And about your ability to do anything about it? Are you overwhelmed by how much needs to be done in order to make the American dream a reality for more people?”

Trainor paused after each question. As she did, a chorus of yeses swelled from the audience, each time a little louder.

She nodded. “Then I have a job for you,” she said.

Trainor was visiting to receive the school’s only prize, the Joan Shaw Herman Award for Distinguished Service. CA presents the award annually to an alum in recognition of a lifetime of service to others. 

Introducing the award, Tara Djordjevic ’26, a student representative on the nomination committee, discussed its namesake, Joan Shaw Herman ’46, who devoted herself to improving conditions for others with disabilities after she contracted polio as a young woman. Then Betsy Green ’91, who chaired the committee, shared highlights of Trainor’s contributions through public defense, mental health advocacy, and church leadership. 

After building a career in the legal profession as an assistant federal public defender, Trainor became a fellow at the United States Supreme Court. She founded the Virginia Institutionalized Persons Project to secure humane health care for incarcerated women and investigate civil rights abuses in mental hospitals. She also created the Florida Mental Health Advocacy Coalition, bringing multiple mental health organizations together to pursue policy changes to improve the lives of people with behavioral health conditions. As an ordained Episcopal deacon, Trainor has bridged spiritual care and social justice, managing a range of programs, including securing kindergarten education guarantees and supporting women transitioning from homelessness. She’s the author of multiple books and articles on appellate practice and prisoner litigation, as well as the 2025 book Why Millennials Don’t Go to Church.

After Head of School Henry D. Fairfax presented Trainor with the award, she discussed her “efforts toward systemic change: not just changes around the edges of things, but changes to the very systems that form our social fabric,” calling for change to “any system that condones the inhumane treatment of human beings or that perpetuates unequal access to basic human needs.”

She asked students, “So how do you go about making a difference in the systems that control so much of our lives, many of which are increasingly failing to achieve the standards of basic morality?”

Trainor proposed that it takes incremental reform to transform systems that perpetuate inequality into systems that support life and dignity for all. “Sometimes you have wonderful people like Martin Luther King Jr., Bryan Stevenson, and others who are very charismatic and come forward and grab the public imagination with a larger issue, but for the rest of us, we take on the smaller issues around the edges, and we keep at it,” she said. 

Gradually, “if the smaller issues are just, and if they are humane, they have the power to affect the larger issues.” While reducing one person’s harsh sentence by 20 years might not seem to accomplish much in itself, “it matters enormously” in the context of the U.S. judicial system, which, she said, is “far more punitive than almost any other system in the world.” 

Trainor clarified that she still believes in the criminal justice system she was long part of. “It works amazingly well,” she said. “In fact, judges are overwhelmingly impartial and do a good job. Juries know which end is up. People who need counsel get counsel, generally speaking.”

But she’s distressed by growing public distrust of the courts. For her, the legal balance rests on the ability to present a strong defense. “The government has enormous resources, and in order to make the system work properly, you have to have some equal power on the other side,” she said.

For example, in the 11th circuit, the federal appellate jurisdiction encompassing Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, Trainor argued for less draconian sentencing measures, and through several cases, helped make the law more humane. “Working as an appellate lawyer, she said, “is one of the most thrilling things that you can possibly do, because you are actively changing the law every time you stand up to argue a case.”

Creating change incrementally is contributing to systemic change, Trainor said: “Each one of those small changes makes for larger changes over time, and you have to trust that.”

To help students take the first steps toward their own visions, she proposed a foundational orientation: the southern African philosophy of ubuntu. Popularized by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the term can be roughly translated as, “I am because we are.” Trainor contrasted this recognition that our individual humanity is inextricably entwined with the humanity of others with the “winner-take-all culture” of the West, an ideological descendent of René Descartes’ dualistic formulation, “I think, therefore I am.”

With ubuntu as a guiding principle instead, we can all become agents of systemic change, Trainor suggested. She shared an acrostic, DARE, that she’d devised for this occasion to help make her advice memorable: “Dream your passion. Address what is yours to do. Respect the stories. Embrace your power.”

Trainor admitted that the first step may well be the most difficult. “It’s hard to dream when the problems that we face seem resistant to change, generation after generation,” she says. “But I say, make your dream as big as the problem.” 

No effort to make a system more just can be sustained without a vision for how life could be otherwise, she explained. “For me, the dreams were a correctional system that did not further punish people by withholding medical care, and a medical system that did not discriminate against the mentally ill,” she said.

Addressing what is yours to do requires identifying steps you can take personally or with others. “Perhaps I could not compel a change of policy about the appropriate scope of medical care in prisons generally, but I could break the big problem into smaller pieces,” she said. For her, that meant requiring facilities to provide batteries for hearing aids and ensure that women receive regular mammograms. Because they are humane and just, such small causes, she said, “have power within themselves and are capable of changing a system from the ground up.”

Her next recommendation, respecting stories, involves listening to voices others don’t want to hear. Trainor started her project in Virginia with no staff and no funding, just a stack of letters from incarcerated people describing the mistreatment they had endured in prison. “Together, they added up to a pattern, which turned out to give us an opportunity to create a lawsuit,” she said.

Finally, she advised embracing the power we each have by becoming experts in our particular passions, then teaching others to become experts of their own stories. “This is called organizing,” she said. “But what it really means is helping people tell their own personal stories to the right people at the right time.”

She recalled a Florida mother’s testimony at a committee hearing about her daughter’s difficulties navigating the mental health system. As she spoke about what it was like to be the parent of a child dealing with mental illness, Trainor recounted, the room went silent. Then, one by one, committee members began recounting stories of their own relatives. The legislation Trainor sought that day was passed, but what happened in that room, she said, was just as important.

“Ubuntu means that we cannot do other than to see ourselves in each other’s stories, and ubuntu is calling us in the name of our common humanity to dare to confront systems that would treat us as anything less than human,” she said.

After her formal remarks, Trainor then took a seat next to Fairfax on the P.A.C. stage to answer questions from him and students, in turn. Several took shape around what it takes to overcome the inertia that keeps us from pursuing systemic change. Sharing CA’s community life theme, “Building the We,” Fairfax asked Trainor how, in her experience, people move from issues that most directly affect them to taking action for the collective good.

“I think it has to do with shared suffering,” Trainor replied. “Oddly enough, suffering brings tremendous power if it’s shared … it becomes something positive, which is quite a miracle, if  you think about it.”

She added, “Faith is always about addressing the problem of human suffering, and what draws people together and motivates people to work together is a sense that suffering is held in common.” The motivation to organize has this same underpinning, she said—ubuntu.

When a student asked how she kept herself from feeling numb from the scale of what so many people are struggling with today, Trainor acknowledged this physiological state as a signal: “Numbness comes from not being in touch with your own feelings. So if you feel yourself becoming numb, it means that, as we say in the ministerial profession, you’re suffering from compassion fatigue, and you need to pull back into yourself and give yourself whatever resources you need to be able to bring your passion back. It’s a process that occurs again and again throughout your life if you do lead a life in which you’re speaking for others.”

Asked about specific reforms, Trainor said her foremost wish for the criminal justice system is not to require prison time for a whole range of low-level offenses. “We can do a much better job of discerning whether a particular individual might prosper under a different set of circumstances,” she said. She hopes to see more “people who are good security risks” be released from prison, and she’d like the felony murder law—a law allowing a first-degree murder charge for someone who aided a felony without intent to kill or directly cause harm—to be overturned.

As for mental health, she said, “we simply won’t move forward unless talking about mental health becomes a normative part of discourse.”

“I’ll be gone by the time those changes occur,” she added, “but they’re in the offing.”

Trainor said, “If you approach life as a vocation, you’re being called and drawn in some direction or another. It’s your responsibility to find out where your passion lies. That passion has a power in and of itself to draw you where you’re going.” 

Having followed her calling to orient herself toward service, she reflected on her life with satisfaction. In hindsight, she said, “I can look back and see all the pieces were there. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had enough courage, I guess, to wait for all those pieces to be put into place. I do see the perfection of a plan there, and it’s brought me a tremendous amount of peace in my older age—and joy.”

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To begin his all-school assembly, he treated the campus community to an advance screening of his latest film. Warren King: King of Cardboard will premiere on American Masters on PBS on May 28. Chin’s documentary short follows an engineer-turned-artist who takes inspiration from the limitations of his medium, corrugated cardboard, to sculpt distinctive, geometrical life-size figures that reflect his Chinese American ancestry. The artwork is lovingly filmed, and Chin’s portrayal of King is intimate.

The screening provided an ideal entry point for a conversation between Chin and CA students. One asked him how he had captured such natural exposition from the artist and such a sense of closeness in filming him with his family.

“The first thing is getting people to trust you, because you know you’re asking people to open up their lives to you, right?” Chin said. “I think they just really have to feel that you have their best interests at heart.” On the other hand, he added, a director has to “keep enough distance so that you can ask those questions” that may make a subject uncomfortable—just when a friend might pull back out of courtesy, the artist has a responsibility to probe a little deeper.

Chin also spoke about the behind-the-scenes work needed to bring films to completion. Usually, independent filmmakers have to invest significant time and effort raising money for production and securing distribution, he explained. This film had an unusual origin: PBS, having aired an earlier documentary of Chin’s, , about the late photographer Corky Lee, had offered to fund a second short film about another artist of his choice. 

After the opportunity fell into his lap, Chin learned about King through a Facebook connection. He said he “instantly fell in love” with King’s artwork. And as he got to know the story of a fellow Midwesterner who had struggled to balance his responsibility to family with his own artistic ambitions, their similarities proved just as compelling. “A lot of the things that he had gone through in life were things that I had also experienced,” Chin said.

A co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Chin has written for CNN, Bon Appetit, the Detroit Free Press, and the Boston Globe, as well as for network and cable comedy shows. His social-justice-focused documentary films have been screened in more than 20 countries. To contextualize these highlights, Chin presented his career path with a well-tuned ear for good storytelling. 

As a new college graduate, he had moved to New York “to become a poet,” he said. Within three years of his first job, passing out Broadway flyers in Times Square, he won the state’s largest poetry prize. 

“Then I met a boy who was living in Los Angeles, and so I left New York to pursue him in LA,” he said. “I stopped writing poetry, because LA is not the place to write poetry, and instead I started writing screenplays, because that’s what you do in LA, right?” A few years later, he was awarded an ABC Disney Fellowship and began a several-year stretch as a writer for Disney shows. 

Then he got a phone call that changed everything. His father had died in a car accident, and his mother was severely injured. Chin was torn between taking over the family business, the Chinese restaurant his great-grandfather had established in 1940, or returning to Hollywood. “I decided to split the difference,” he said. “I would go back to LA, but I wouldn’t work for the studios anymore. Instead, I would work on these more personal projects, which fed more into my own personal identity as an Asian American, as a gay person.”

Answering questions from students interested in pursuing careers in the arts, he advised them, foremost, to be “flexible” about how they earn money. He noted, for example, how different the television-writing industry is now from when he was a kid. Then, only four networks were producing 80 shows a year, with 25 episodes each. Now, near the height of streaming-service production, around 400 shows have been going into production annually, though most with only six to eight episodes. Whereas once a show needed 25 to 30 million viewers to get renewed, now it takes only four to five million. 

A downside: Writers’ rooms have become smaller, and those jobs don’t last as long. An upside: It’s easier to get shows with more diverse perspectives on the air. “Your chances of getting that first big break are higher,” Chin said. “Your chances of at least getting your show made into a series are higher, but your chance of getting rich off of that show are lower.”

Chin encouraged CA students to understand and make the most of their personal strengths—and not to self-impose limitations. “In these creative fields, you hear the word ‘no’ all the time,” he said. “Just make sure that voice is not coming from yourself.” 

He recalled contacting 90 agents to represent his memoir—and getting 90 rejections. He reviewed the responses that expressed some appreciation for his initial pitch, structured around funny stories about his grandparents and the Chinese mafia, and he analyzed what was currently being published. With a retooled proposal to focus more on his writing on race and coming out, he went back to those agents and soon had four offers for representation. One ultimately helped secure him a good publishing deal. 

“I could have taken any of those 90 noes and just walked away from it, but I didn’t,” Chin said. He advised having “thick skin,” saying, “You’ve got to figure out whether it’s a permanent no or a maybe no, and then you learn from it.”

He described a similar approach to directing. Just as he’d never taken a memoir-writing course, Chin said he had never taken a filmmaking course, but he hadn’t allowed that to deter him. Instead, he considered himself fortunate to work with strong creative collaborators. 

“The technical stuff, like the angles, the lighting, and all that stuff—you can hire someone to do all that,” he said. “But the ability to find the story that you want to tell, and knowing that this is a person that you can connect with, and then actually being on set with them and talking to them—that is just people skills.” 

And those, he said, are important in any career.

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91�Թ��� winter teams have wrapped up a very successful season!

Varsity Squash

The CA squash programs once again traveled to Philadelphia to compete in the U.S. High School National Championships at the Arlen Specter Center this February after their inaugural trip in 2025. Both teams earned the opportunity to compete in a higher division based on the strength of their regular-season records. The boys earned the No. 2 seed in Class V and impressively went on to earn the national championship! A banner will be hung in the squash atrium to honor their efforts. The girls finished 10th in the competitive Division IV bracket. The teams went on to compete at the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) championships the following weekend. The boys moved up a level once more and finished eighth in Class C after competing in Class D in 2025. The girls finished third in Class D NEPSACs, one spot better than their 2025 showing. To cap off a strong season for the squash programs, Flora Xu ’27 earned CA’s first Eastern Independent League (EIL) Player of the Year award in well over a decade!

Varsity Wrestling

The all-gender varsity wrestling team had another strong campaign. CA finished second at the EIL tournament behind only powerhouse new official league member Eagle Hill School. Nine wrestlers earned individual medals, including Alexander Meredith ’28, who finished first in his weight class. In addition, 12 wrestlers competed at the NEPSAC championships, where the team finished 22nd, five places better than in 2025. Alexander Meredith ’28 (who placed seventh) and Laura Montoro ’26 (who placed third) each medaled in their weight class.

Boys Varsity Basketball

Building on last year’s momentum, the boys varsity basketball team posted another strong season. The team secured the No. 3 seed in the EIL tournament and traveled to cross-town rival and No.2 seed Lexington Christian Academy (LCA) for a semifinal game. The squad led the entire game, earning the upset and a berth in the EIL tournament championship game at No. 1 seed Beaver Country Day School (BCDS). While CA couldn’t overcome the hot shooting of BCDS and ultimately succumbed, the team should be proud of back-to-back EIL tournament championship berths.

Varsity Alpine Skiing 

CA’s Alpine ski team enjoyed another successful season in the Central Massachusetts Ski League (CMSL). The boys and the girls team each finished third, taking home two league trophies for their efforts. At the NEPSAC championships at Pats Peak, both teams finished 12th in the always competitive Class B division.

Girls Varsity Basketball

A young girls varsity basketball program posted some highlights and built a strong foundation for the future this season. In January, the team earned the decisive victory over LCA in the Battle, giving CA the coveted Red Drum trophy for the first time since 2019. They narrowly missed earning the program’s third consecutive EIL tournament berth with a close loss in the last game of the regular season. With only one senior graduating this year, the future looks bright.

Boys Junior Varsity Basketball 

The boys junior varsity basketball team delivered a winning campaign, including a thrilling overtime victory at the Battle that was key to CA ultimately winning back the Red Drum. Go, Green!

Post-Season Honorees  

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