The Magazine of Cary Academy WINTER 2019
C(MS) change: open doors unlock possibilities Page 2
Core strength: equity, connection, and community Page 4
Starting-up before finishing school Page 22
AN ALUM’S JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY COMES FULL CIRCLE Page 14
FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL
Cary Academy alumni are a remarkable bunch. Twice this school year, in completely different contexts, I have heard this: In a discussion about feeling overwhelmed when first tackling a challenging high-level science course, one member of the Class of 2016 told me that it would be OK because Cary Academy taught her to be comfortable when she was uncomfortable. In an assembly with the Upper School, a member of the Class of 2003 was asked a question about career pathways, entrepreneurship, and taking risks. She told our students not to be scared when it gets scary. There are so many wonderful messages that could be unpacked from these comments. One obvious fact is that there will be challenges ahead — for everybody. The next natural question is: what to do about this uncomfortable fact of life? One of my favorite phrases, which I’ve heard articulated by many child development experts, is that we must prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. Oh, and lest we forget, the road is anything but straight. In this issue of The Magazine of Cary Academy, we have several stories about preparing our students for their road(s) ahead. As part of our current strategic plan, the school is creating learning opportunities that are personalized, flexible, and relevant. Our new Center for Community Engagement was developed from the idea that our students will find purpose and meaning when connecting and collaborating outside the traditional academic bubble. Entrepreneurship, a sub-strand within
the center, provides students with real-world challenges that are hard to replicate in a classroom setting. Stories from our alumni reinforce the importance of our mission and our current strategic vision. In this issue’s alumni spotlight, Holly May talks about the transformative impact Cary Academy had on her life’s path and why she and her husband have decided to fund opportunities for future CA students. In the end, I believe most parents want their kids to become successful, well-adjusted, and happy adults — even if the individual definitions of success may vary. Happily, in the alumni survey that we completed this fall, only 7% of alumni out of college reported being unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with their current profession. More impressively, only 4% reported being dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their quality of life. We remain committed to providing experiences for the current and next generation of CA students that sets them on a path to find their own happiness.
Mike Ehrhardt, Head of School
The Magazine of Cary Academy WINTER 2019
In this issue
COMMUNICATIONS TEAM Mandy Dailey Kathleen Mason Dean Sauls Dan Smith PHOTOGRAPHY Kathleen Mason Dan Smith The CA community Cover art courtesy of Robin Follet HEAD OF SCHOOL Michael Ehrhardt DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS Heather Clarkson Upper School students present closing remarks at the TRIANGLE DIVERSITY ALLIANCE CONFERENCE.
DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS Mandy Dailey HEAD OF UPPER SCHOOL Robin Follet DIRECTOR OF FACILITIES Jess Garcia DEAN OF FACULTY Martina Greene HEAD OF MIDDLE SCHOOL Marti Jenkins DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION Karen McKenzie DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT Ali Page CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Deborah Reichel
is published three times a year by Cary Academy.
CARY ACADEMY 1500 N. Harrison Avenue Cary, North Carolina 27513 (919) 677-3873
4 Equity matters
As we reimagine the role of our founding principles of equity, inclusivity, and diversity, we reflect on their impact on the CA community and explore what the future holds.
14 Embracing zig zags and left turns Holly May’s CA experience set her on an unexpected path to an innovative role in Silicon Valley. Now, she and her fellow-CA alum husband, Travis May, are laying the groundwork to launch the next generation of CA students on their own journeys of discovery.
22 Entrepreneurialism at CA
CA encourages students to take risks, experiment, and follow where their ideas lead them. For some students, that path leads to starting up businesses before they finish school. How will CA incorporate extracurricular endeavors into the classroom?
Campus News 2
Snapshots 20
Alumni News 31
The Big Question 32
www.caryacademy.org
This issue’s cover is courtesy of none other than our very own talented Head of Upper School Robin Follet. Robin, or Mr. Follet as he is known to CA students, has scribbled and doodled and drawn cartoons for most of his life. Through weekly emails to the Upper School, he shares his love of cartoony-ness in spot illustrations. In addition, he has illustrated a graphic novella, posted his own webcomic, and completed illustrations for a number of Duke TIP online classes.
Campus News
Opening doors, unlocking possibilities The end of T2 brought a much-anticipated milestone: the completion of the Center for Math and Science. Opening the doors of the 22,000+ square foot building — which includes a new makerspace, greenhouse, state-of-the-art lab facilities, and ample flexible, collaborative learning spaces — concludes a significant phase of CA’s 2015 master facility plan.
CA WELCOMES TRIANGLE DIVERSITY ALLIANCE
This winter, CA hosted 200 students from five Triangle-area independent schools for the Triangle Diversity Alliance Conference. The Triangle Diversity Alliance is a coalition of students and faculty interested in advancing diversity and inclusion work. Together, participants — including 80 CA students, 40 of whom presented and/or led sessions — tackled issues such as structural racism, gender identity and sexuality, intersectional feminism, and more. For a video on the TDA Conference, visit bit.ly/TDAConf.
SWIMMING TO VICTORY
Finishing out their seasons strong, both the girls’ and boys’ Varsity swim teams punctuated their spectacular seasons with State Championships. In a truly astounding display of Charger swimming, 32 boys and girls made it to the Finals and scored.
Up next? The next phase of facilities planning, including • an update to the Upper School to add more student study and collaborative spaces, create a suite for our wellness and learning support services, and to make room for our new Center for Community Engagement;
This marks the third consecutive State Championship title for the girls’ team.
CAREER CURIOUS?
In February, Upper School students had the opportunity to explore potential career paths during the biannual Career Connections program. Over 47 guest speakers — including 22 CA alums — were selected based on a preliminary survey of student interests. Representing fields as varied as arts management, applied science, technology, entrepreneurship, government and public policy, public health, and more, they shared their career experiences, personal insights, and fielded student questions.
CA ETHICS BOWL TEAM SHINES
In January, seven Upper School students participated in the annual UNC High School Ethics Bowl competition. In a 5-on-5 format, the CA team — a branch of the Philosophy Club — analyzed and discussed more than
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• design changes in the library to create open, quiet conference spaces for individual and small-group student work and the addition of a café and student store as part of our new entrepreneurship efforts; • and, finally, an expansion and upgrade of the current weight room in the Fitness Center.
a dozen ethical dilemmas ranging from partisan gerrymandering to the use of love-inducing drugs. The team presented on a different topic each round, formulating philosophical arguments and answering questions from professors and other experts. In its first year of competition, the newlyformed team reached the semifinal match, placing fourth out of 26 teams from around North Carolina.
HOLIDAY SHOPPE SUCCESS
It’s one for the record books! Featuring over 90+ vendors, Holiday Shoppe 2018 was our most successful to date, netting over $80,000 to support CA’s communitybuilding programs and student clubs and activities. Special thanks to everyone in the community — including the 400 volunteers — that helped to make this event a success. Mark your calendars for next year when the Holiday Shoppe returns from November 5–9, 2019.
Toasting our community In late January, the PTAA hosted their annual “Taste and Toast” as the inaugural event in the Center for Math and Science, offering guests a highly sought-after sneak peek of the new building. Now in its second year, the Taste and Toast is an opportunity to come together, share a meal, and celebrate what makes CA special: our fantastic community. This year’s toast was raised in celebration of CA athletes who were honored in an unveiling of a special PTAA gift: new athletic banners that will hang in the Fitness Center.
Equity Matters Equity, inclusivity, and diversity have been core commitments at CA since the school’s founding. These commitments are resonant not only the school’s diversity mission statement and statement of community values, but are reflected through the work of our strategic plan, our approach to programming, and, of course, by our diverse community itself.
This July, the CA community will welcome its first Director of Equity and Community Engagement. Housed within the Center for Community Engagement, the role encompasses and expands the responsibilities of the former Director of Diversity and Inclusion. The shift in title from “diversity” to “equity and community engagement” is purposeful. It reflects the shifting landscape of equity and inclusivity work and a more nuanced recognition that diversity alone is not enough; a diverse community is not necessarily an equitable one. The change signals CA’s ongoing commitment to creating a truly equitable, inclusive, and diverse community where everyone has an opportunity to have a voice, be heard, and thrive. As we look to the future and the work ahead, some faculty and students had the opportunity to sit down and reflect on some of the key moments and ways that CA’s commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusivity has been manifested for them this year.
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STUDENT PERSPECTIVES Cary Academy counts diversity and inclusion as one of the key tenets in building its programs, but how does that shape the experience of students, in and out of the classroom?
For Kaela Curtis (‘20), Om Naphade (‘20), and Clay Thornton (‘21), participation in CA’s affinity groups has been transformative, shaping their sense of self and community, providing crucial support networks that help them navigate their world, and even shifting their ambitions and long-term plans. “Affinity groups are an opportunity to connect and socialize with other students who look like you and get it,” explains Curtis, who serves as secretary for the African American Affinity Group. “When I transitioned to CA, there was a major culture shock. Having peers who understood my experience and identity was extremely helpful.” “At school, I had never been able to really talk about this part of who I am, until last year when I was able to join the Gender and Sexuality Alliance,” notes Clay Thornton, vice-president of the GSA. “I’m thankful that we have such an
“It’s interesting to learn new things about other people’s experiences and passions... it creates, not only a deeper appreciation of your own cultural group, but an understanding where others come from... it helps you understand how you can connect.”
–OM NAPHADE For many students, participation in affinity groups — organizations that bring students together around a shared identity, be it race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or ethnicity — is one of the ways that equity and inclusivity work manifests on campus.
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open and diverse LGBTQ community on campus. Some schools don’t have a GSA, or aren’t allowed to have a GSA, whereas we have 30 or more students who show up at every meeting.” The size and diverse makeup of CA’s student body allows our affinity groups to be as varied and inclusive as the communities and identities that they encompass. Thornton expressed relief to find such diversity within the LGBTQ community at CA, noting that “a shared identity doesn’t mean we’ve all had the same experience or interests.” Naphade, the event coordinator for the Indian Subcontinent Affinity Group (ISAG), echoes that sentiment. He underscores that affinity groups are anything but monolithic; the cultural diversity within ISAG has led to a better understanding of himself: “It’s interesting to learn new things about other people’s experiences and passions... it creates, not only a deeper appreciation of your own cultural group, but an understanding where others come from... it helps you understand how you can connect.” In CA’s affinity groups, allies — students who do not share the same core identity as the affinity group, but respect, celebrate, and support their identity and equality of rights — are welcome. Allies often bring different perspectives, insights, and backgrounds and can play a critical role in deepening dialog, building further connection for member students. Curtis notes that inclusion of allies can spark discourse — around topics like conflict and microaggressions—that might not otherwise occur. “Sometimes, people will say something about you to an ally [who looks like them] that they wouldn’t say to your face. That’s led to some tough conversations and
realizations that wouldn’t otherwise have happened,” she offers. Recounting his experience at the Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC), Naphade recalls being surprised to learn that some students of color at other schools had encountered obstacles in building affinity groups at their own schools: “I met students at other schools where they might be the only member of their identity group at their school. That made me realize how thankful I am for CA’s diverse community and for our allies. I ended-up mentoring students from other schools about my experience at CA.”
“UNDERSTANDING HOW LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS AFFECT OUR DAILY LIVES — IT’S HARD TO TURN IT OFF. ONCE YOU KNOW, YOU FEEL COMPELLED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.”
— KAELA CURTIS
Curtis, Naphade, and Thornton all lamented that sometimes equity and diversity work is perceived as “something you do, like a club.” “People don’t always understand that it’s bigger than that, that it is about being better people, making all of our lives better. That’s why we’re thankful for COEXIST; it does a lot of that work,” offers Thornton. COEXIST, an intersectional student organization that advocates for diversity, inclusivity, and equity for the entire Upper School student body, is comprised of the leadership of all of Cary Academy’s affinity groups. Curtis explains that COEXIST serves as “bridge across different identities.”
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It is a link that Thornton credits with strengthening campus-wide equity efforts, ensuring that students who don’t identify with an affinity group still have a voice in the conversation about diversity at CA. “If we are all only active in our own affinity groups, not knowing what else is happening on campus, or other groups’ perspectives, we might not be able to have a uniform push for issues of diversity and equity,” he explains. COEXIST has supported the student body in times of crisis, working with affinity groups to foster campus-wide conversations about contemporary needs and concerns. Most recently, COEXIST is partnering with the Muslim and Jewish Students Associations to give students the opportunity to process the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand. “It was really wonderful to see so many students from across campus at the talk,” beamed Curtis. “It felt great to be able to talk about white supremacy and have people understand how I felt.” For Curtis and Thornton, the experience of being part of an affinity group has altered their course. “In Middle School, I was very much interested in STEM subjects, but being involved in all of this diversity work has me thinking much more about [working in] government and politics. I’ve been enjoying my history and English classes more,” says Thornton. Curtis agrees, “I definitely want to be involved in issues of political science and public policy as a result of these experiences. Understanding how laws and institutions affect our daily lives — it’s hard to turn it off. Once you know, you feel compelled to do something about it.”
KAELA CURTIS (‘20)
CLAY THORNTON (‘21)
OM NAPHADE (‘20)
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Last November, Upper School Dean of Students Donna Eason and Experiential Learning Director Michael McElreath were part of a CA team that attended the National Association of Independent School’s People of Color Conference (POCC) in Nashville, Tennessee; the group also took five students with them to the simultaneous Student Diversity Leadership Conference. Recently, they had an opportunity to sit down and reflect on their experience and why the POCC has become such an important professional development opportunity for CA faculty. EASON: What I liked best about
the conference was being in such a welcoming environment. While I was in the physical space, I could feel my body and emotional state relaxing. I didn’t feel like I had to be reserved or guarded; I didn’t have to “put my mask on.” There was such a sense of freedom. What was your favorite thing about the conference? MCELREATH: It was being with people who were friendly and outgoing and a little less “buttoned-up.” I felt very included and welcomed in that space as well, even though it was made clear that if you were there and not a person of color, you were welcome as an ally, but this conference was not “about you.” In most places, I feel included automatically; I am glad that you had a chance to feel that way also.
FACULTY REFLECTIONS
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EASON: I felt like my culture was being presented in this
space, which is not always something that I get a chance to experience. In fact, remember the first day when they had the Tennessee State University marching band? I enjoyed it immensely because that is such an important part of an HBCU experience. You could just look around and see that everyone was enjoying it, not just people who were already familiar with it. It was something that I don’t often get a chance to celebrate in this kind of setting, especially at an NAIS conference. Another instance that was very important to me, and I don’t know if this would be difficult for you to understand: in some situations, when it’s a particular ethnic or minority group, sometimes when you are experiencing something that’s so specific to your culture in a setting where your “group” is not the majority of the people in attendance, there is this worry that you’re going to feel embarrassed or that others will not understand it and ridicule it. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling and a very unfortunate one, but it does happen sometimes. At this conference, however, there was just a sense of comfort and acceptance among everyone. MCELREATH: That’s part of what privilege is — never having to second-guess yourself or be ashamed about aspects of your culture. EASON: Another thing that I found very interesting and could apply here at CA was a great workshop about AfricanAmerican, African, and African-Caribbean differences. It was so eye-opening. Oftentimes, there are not enough people to divide up like that; we are usually placed in the “black group.” At the POCC, we were able to dialogue with each other and truly show that there is no singular “black experience.” We are not a monolith — we have differing concerns and interests. I learned about situations and ideas that I hadn’t even considered that were high priorities for others from different countries. And although we were grouped by countries in this session, we understood that these were individuals speaking, not spokespersons for countries. This helped me because we have the African-American affinity group at CA that includes many students whose parents or the students themselves are immigrants, and we need to make sure we maintain an atmosphere that is attentive to and addresses the needs and interests of all.
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MCELREATH: Speaking of affinity groups, it was interesting to be in a space where we had the affinity group gatherings and one of the affinity groups was “White European Heritage.” There were over 1,000 white people there; still, it was something just to be labelled in a way that said, “Here’s the salient thing about you. You’re a white person — go over there!” That was a turning of the tables. EASON: I was just wondering about the experience for you — when you did have an affinity group — because a lot of times at conferences you’ll see groups based on race, but the groups in the majority are not labelled by race as “white.” Did that feel different to have an actual affinity group that had a race label? MCELREATH: Well, you know my background studying race, so, no, it didn’t weird me out. However, it was striking that in one of those sessions I was with three colleagues from schools in Alabama and Virginia. They gave a litany of reasons why they felt like they had no chance of taking back things they were learning at the conference to their schools. It made me sad for them. It gave me the impression that CA—although we have many things we still need to work on—has actually come quite a way towards making our community fully inclusive. I heard some professionals basically saying, “I feel silenced because my institution does not want to hear what I have to say.” I have never felt that here, but I’m sure there are some at CA who may feel that way. EASON: That happened to me too, when talking to other people. One thing
Some of the conversations we need to have in our community and our world require some level of discomfort to get to honesty, to get to improvement. Being uncomfortable some of the time is a necessary part of the journey. But, I do think that CA tends to feel like a safe space for me as an adult, and hopefully for most of the students as well, to do that hard work as we try to model respect, integrity, and compassion.
— MICHAEL MCELREATH that came up several times was affinity groups. I was pretty surprised at how amazed they were with what we have. I’ve always thought affinity groups are a great idea, and I do love the way we have incorporated them into our community. But to hear how other schools were in awe of how we’re able to do it — they might say, “well we might be able to get away with this, but not be able to do that” — like you, it made me sad, but also a little proud of what we’re doing. And I know we’re forever growing, but the fact that there is the opportunity to have something like affinity groups or discussions or things like that — it made me really want to join forces with other schools, to mentor schools in some areas, and be mentored in turn. MCELREATH: That’s a good point. I think there are definitely things that we may know and could share, and then there’s also a lot that we could learn as well. I’m glad that we are a part of the Triangle Diversity Alliance. We do the yearly conference with them, but we could do more, and maybe we should make it a more regular collaboration. I’m excited to have our new Director of
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Equity and Community Engagement help us figure out how to do that. EASON: And I’m excited about us really incorporating more discussions. Sometimes we shy away from certain topics, and I think with us having opportunities like the POCC & SDLC, and with both faculty and students coming back and sharing what we learned, we will start to have conversations that are difficult. But, it feels like we’re in a safe space to attempt it. MCELREATH: I agree that we have to create the space for those kinds of things to happen, and also for them to be productive. I think sometimes people confuse being safe with being comfortable. Some of the conversations we need to have in our community and our world require some level of discomfort to get to honesty, to get to improvement. Being uncomfortable some of the time is a necessary part of the journey. But, I do think that CA tends to feel like a safe space for me as an adult, and hopefully for most of the students as well, to do that hard work as we try to model respect, integrity, and compassion.
COMMUNITY CONVERSATION WELCOME, DANIELLE JOHNSON-WEBB Danielle Johnson-Webb joins the Cary Academy community from the Montessori School of Raleigh, where she served as the Director of Enrollment Management. There she worked to create equitable recruiting policy and procedures to increase diversity within the MSR community. In service of that goal, she leveraged her equity and inclusivity training — including her participation in programs like Deconstructing White Privilege, (Un)Privileged: The Cost of Being Poor at an Elite Institution, and From Diversity to Plurality — to develop and implement training, curriculum, and programs in the areas of equity, inclusion, and justice for all employees. In addition to her experience with MSR, Danielle has a long history of working within independent schools — including Duke School and Davidson Day School — in various roles, ranging from faculty member to senior administrator. In addition to equity and inclusivity work, her varied experience includes teaching, enrollment management, development, and communications. Altogether, her experience affords her a unique and holistic understanding of independent schools that will undoubtedly inform and benefit her work at CA. Outside of her independent school experience, Danielle returned to her alma mater, North Carolina Central University, as a commentator for the NCCU Sports Network and Time Warner Cable. In college, she was a member of the North Carolina Central University championship women’s volleyball program and the women’s basketball program. You’ll likely find her on the court and cheering from the sidelines next year as she gets to know our community.
In anticipation of her arrival, Chief Student Diversity Officer Lily Levin (’19) sat down with Johnson-Webb to discuss her perspective and vision for her new role. WHAT IS YOUR MAIN PRIORITY WHEN WORKING WITH STUDENTS?
I want to know every student. I’d love to be able to walk down hallways and, even if we don’t have a daily exchange, know who you are. I want to get to know the school not just [in terms of] academics, but the socialemotional piece as well. My first year I like to go to everything. I’m in the concerts, the sporting events, the clubs, the robotics competitions. That’s important to me, to be part of a community. It builds trust when students see that you’re not just there from 8am to 3pm, just for the job, but that you want to be part of their community. One thing that’s also going to be important when working with students is grace. I think we’re in a time where students are so far
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WHAT UNIQUE AND PERSONAL ASPECTS OR EXPERIENCES DO YOU BRING TO THIS ROLE?
ahead of adults that sometimes there’s not a lot of grace given to us. And, I think that that’s going to be one of my big topics... really working with students to say, ‘Give us a little grace, we’re learning, we’re not as advanced as you all, we’re not in it as deep as you all.’
I started out in independent schools as a teacher. I was the only AfricanAmerican teacher on staff; the other African-American adults on campus were janitorial staff. I remember thinking ‘Who do the black girls have to look to? Who’s in leadership?’ It’s always been my goal to be one of those people — someone that, not only African-American girls can look up to, but others as well — to say we have people of color in leadership in independent schools. I’ve seen independent schools as a teacher and I’ve seen them as a mid-level and senior administrator. I’ve been in many different roles — my focus hasn’t just been diversity or equity or justice. I can see the school as whole. I think that perspective is a good one and it really helps when you’re doing equity work because it can be messy.
HOW WILL YOU ENGAGE INDIVIDUALLY WITH OUR VARIOUS AFFINITY GROUPS WHILE EMPHASIZING BOTH INTERSECTIONALITY AND FUSION?
Intersectionality is such an important thing. We often look at people onedimensionally and we have to look at all aspects of an individual. Because each aspect can bring a different experience and we have to honor that. I think it is important for you to have a group that you identify with and to have time with them, especially when you’re in a place where you may be the minority. But, I also want to have those bigger conversations of ‘let’s all come together, sit together, and talk and see how we can progress forward.’
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HOW WOULD YOU STRUCTURE THOSE IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS ABOUT WHAT LEADERSHIP LOOKS LIKE AND YOUR ROLE WITHIN LEADERSHIP?
[independent schools], so focusing on making sure people feel good when they’re here. From the students I’ve talked to, they do. We need to continue that work. WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO APPLY FOR THIS POSITION?
For me, when you have to have really hard, tough conversations, you have to build trust first. You can’t just come in full force — I wouldn’t want anyone to do that to me. It’s about learning about the community. What is Cary Academy? How does it work? I can’t just come in and say it should work this way — I need to observe . . . when you show interest in what others are doing and what they’ve done in the past, I think you build that trust. And then you can start having those conversations: What does leadership look like? Who should be involved? Are we doing enough? Are we represented enough?
Cary Academy is a school of choice. It is a school and community that people want to be a part of. I love that aspect. I’ve always admired the fact that Cary Academy is not afraid to be bold and I really want to be part of a community where you can have these conversations and do this kind of work. I mean, [during the interview process] when I sat down with a group of students, I was blown away... I’m still thinking about it. I can remember every conversation that I had around that table. ANYTHING YOU’RE MOST EXCITED ABOUT?
Intersectionality is such an important thing. We often look at people onedimensionally and we have to look at all aspects of an individual. Because each aspect can bring a different experience and we have to honor that.
I’m excited about joining a new community and meeting new people. I’m really excited about the equity piece, what that will mean for students, and for those partnerships. And, I think that being part of an independent school and being able to engage the community and having the resources to do so is really big. I’m also excited for the seniors that I interviewed with to come back and see me because you were all so impressive. I’m happy to be a part of this school that has amazing alumni and that we can see how you all do as we move forward. That’s most gratifying to me — when students come back and they’re just amazing beings.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH IN FIVE YEARS?
Looking five years out, I’m really excited about the community engagement piece. Cary Academy has done a ton of work in the community; it’s impressive. How can we continue that work? How can we expand it? Also, the [student body] diversity numbers are higher here than most
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Alumni Spotlight
EMBRACING ZIG ZAGS AND LEFT TURNS Cary Academy’s transformative impact inspires alums to pay it forward with generous gift
Holly May (‘05, née Metter) is a people person. From her vantage point at San Francisco start-up Datavant, she is at the forefront of an important trend to shift the function known as “HR” from a back-office shared service, to one of the key strategic functions of a company — a goal she embraced during graduate school. Datavant is tackling one of the most pressing issues facing healthcare: the fragmentation of patient data across platforms and institutions. The stakes are high, with patient outcomes and advances in healthcare hanging in the balance. The company was founded 18 months ago by Holly’s husband and fellow CA alum Travis May (‘05). Travis previously built and led LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP) for eight years. He took everything he learned about building and growing a business and applied those ideas to an even bigger and more meaningful industry: health data.
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At Datavant, Holly is responsible for creating the team, culture, values, and expectations that will allow employees to thrive. She describes her charter as “building a TGI-Monday environment, not a TGI-Friday place.” Her mandate — to hire high-performing, growth-oriented individuals and to “get out of their way and trust them to excel” — requires her to leverage her considerable emotional intelligence. She invests in each new hire, diving deep to understand what makes them tick and what they need to succeed — a process that starts during the interview process, before they are even hired. It is an innovative approach to the traditional field of human resources — Holly prefers the term “People function” to “HR” — and reflects her goal of moving the field beyond an antiquated industrial revolution concept of people as interchangeable contributors of labor, cogs in the proverbial machine. “I want to see greater recognition of the importance of hiring the right individual employees, and acknowledging that their needs, aspirations, and eccentricities play a role in creating a workplace, a culture, a product, and a service,” explains Holly. “I want to elevate the People field as an indispensable function of a growing enterprise. Culture, values, feedback, learning and growth, mechanisms to show appreciation, and hiring philosophy are all critical to building a successful company, especially when your most valuable asset — your employees — walk away every evening.” Holly credits the origin of her vision for a more nuanced and individuallytailored workplace to her experience at Cary Academy. “As a student, I thrived within CA’s strong positive culture — its established norms, its encouragement
of excellence, the highly motivated and supportive teachers whose investment in me extended outside of the classroom. It made a big impact. Perhaps it is not surprising that I now find myself as a steward trying to create that culture in the corporate world.” The company prioritizes three characteristics of all potential Datavanters: smart, nice, able to get things done. In some ways, it is very similar to the Cary Academy values of discovery, innovation, collaboration, and excellence.
olly credits the origin of her H vision for a more nuanced and individually-tailored workplace to her experience at Cary Academy. “As a student, I thrived within CA’s strong positive culture.” Holly’s remarkable journey — one that has taken her from Cary Academy to an undergraduate degree at Harvard to an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business to a rewarding career in Silicon Valley — is far from the future she might first have envisioned for herself as a sixth-grader joining the Cary Academy community from one of the more socioeconomically disadvantaged public school systems in North Carolina. She credits her time at Cary Academy for setting her on a trajectory that would transform her life, both personally and professionally. “Without CA, I never would have thought about — not to mention made it to and thrived at — Harvard. The platform I have and the contributions that I can make to the world as a result are vastly more impactful,” offers Holly.
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Far from a linear path, Holly’s journey is characterized by a willingness to, as she calls it, “embrace the left turns,” to depart from an expected path, to take zigs and zags. In her case, those “left turns” included • an unexpected admission to Harvard (she was planning to attend a small liberal arts college and applied to Harvard on a whim and a fee waiver); • a semester break from college to recover from depression; • a last minute, off-the-wait-list admission to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business; and • an unconventional “build your own job description” approach to a job search.
role at Datavant). She identified a few companies she wanted to work for based on the culture, mentoring style of the CEO, and the specific skills of the leader she would get to follow. She then wrote her own job description, based on crossfunctional leadership and building teams, and pitched it to the CEOs of those companies. She got the job she wanted. Throughout, Holly’s story is punctuated with similar bold moves, often conducted in the face of possible failure. Together, they represent her willingness to think big and take risks in service of her passions, dreams, and “to live 15% outside of my comfort zone — where the growth happens.”
Holly’s story is the very embodiment of CA’s mission and a clear example of how the benefits of “owning your learning” can extend far beyond a student’s time at CA. Consider, for example, the surprising path she took to land her first job out of business school. Emerging from Stanford with a passion for personal growth and leadership, Holly took an unconventional approach to find her next role (the role prior to her current
Of course, Holly’s connection with CA stretches beyond the professional and educational. In addition to providing her with the tools to navigate her post-CA life, Cary Academy gave Holly something pretty unique as well: a wedding venue outdoors on the CA quad in 2012! It seems only fitting, as Holly and Travis were best friends throughout CA, starting their relationship at the end of junior-year.
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The Magazine of Cary Academy
Seventeen
GIVING BACK THE METTER MAY SCHOLARSHIP This year, Holly and Travis recognized the crucial role that Cary Academy has played in their lives with a generous $500,000 gift to create the new Metter May Scholarship. The scholarship will provide full tuition for worthy students whose families would not otherwise have the financial means to pay for private school. Travis and Holly anticipate that this gift can provide full tuition for the entirety of a student’s journey at Cary Academy, sponsoring one new student each year, for the next 5-7 years. “When we look back and consider what institutions have really shaped our lives to date, Cary Academy stands out as having a tremendous, transformative impact on both of us,” explains Travis. “We’re hopeful that our gift opens up the possibility for others who would not otherwise have the opportunity to be similarly transformed.” Holly hopes the scholarship will broaden the recipients’ horizons by providing access to experiences and paths that might otherwise have seemed closed-off impossibilities and offer the
freedom, flexibility, and confidence for them to dream big, embrace those “left turns,” and chart their own paths. “I’d love for our gift to be a catalyst that helps young students see that there are a lot of big, bold opportunities that are available to them.” For Holly — who herself attended Cary Academy on a full scholarship — the gift is very personal, as was the decision to offer full tuition to a handful of students, rather than offering more incremental aid to the broader community. “An education at Cary Academy can be a true inflection point for talented, high-achieving students whose families don’t have the financial means to pay for private school. We don’t want to make an incremental impact, we want to help shape a student’s life in a truly stepwise way, just as Cary Academy did for me,” explains Holly. She vividly remembers what it felt like as a young middle schooler entering a community of privilege with which she had no personal experience or frame of reference. “I didn’t grow up in a family
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that traveled on airplanes for vacations or that gifted cars to kids when they turned sixteen,” explains Holly. “At CA, I entered a community where wealth and means were common, but they weren’t common to me. I questioned whether I belonged and how I should interact with my new peers.” Holly credits those challenges in her transitional years to helping her develop grit and perseverance, strengths from which she has drawn throughout her academic and professional life. She learned to navigate the community and new peer interactions by fully immersing herself in the educational environment and student experience. She forged strong relationships with her teachers, participated fully in numerous clubs, served as vice president of the student government and president of the National Honor Society, played soccer throughout middle and upper school, and helped to found CA’s first field hockey team. The latter she fondly remembers as a “hilarious debacle” in its initial years, with players celebrating success, not in wins and losses, but by
whether they lost by more or less than five points and whether they had any shots on goal. Regardless, they had fun; the five years of playing field hockey and building the team and its unique, quirky culture were highlights for Holly. Holly credits the depth of her CA experience for the transformative impact it has had on her life. “It’s why the outlook of my life now looks so different than it did as a sixth-grader coming from a low-performing public school in NC,” explains Holly. “I didn’t just show up at 8am and leave at 3pm. I took every opportunity to fill the day, to take full advantage of the student experience. I got the most out of Cary Academy because I poured myself into it.” Travis and Holly chose the name “Metter May Scholarship” to acknowledge each of their families’ support. They want recipients of the scholarship to be able to similarly avail themselves fully of student culture and everything the CA experience can offer. As such, in addition to tuition, the scholarship will also include a stipend to help defray the various expenses associated with being a student, both in and out of the classroom. “That might include the cost of traveling to a debate tournament or purchasing necessary
athletics gear or even a prom dress,” offers Holly, who hopes the stipend alleviates some of the initial pains of integrating into a new community. “We don’t want to just get students to campus, we want to help them blend in and feel that they belong.”
“An education at Cary Academy can be a true inflection point for talented, high-achieving students whose families don’t have the financial means to pay for private school. We don’t want to make an incremental impact, we want to help shape a student’s life in a truly stepwise way, just as Cary Academy did for me,” explains Holly. Holly and Travis hope that the gift improves the socio-economic diversity of the CA community and ultimately starts a broader conversation around wealth, community, and inclusivity that leads to heightened cultural literacy, and more nuanced, empathetic understandings of privilege. They also hope that their gift creates a snowball effect. “We want to demonstrate that this is important — that amazing things can happen when you support students in need, and that alums can help. We hope others will step up and help us amplify that signal.”
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The Magazine of Cary Academy
Nineteen
The MUSIC MAN wowed audiences with beautiful stage design, fantastic costumes, and remarkable performances by dozens of students from across the Middle and Upper Schools.
Snapshots The teachers eeked-out a 14-13 win in this year’s MS FACULTY VS. STUDENTS BASKETBALL GAME.
Juniors competed in grueling sports such as pool noodle fencing and blindfolded maze navigation during the annual WACKY OLYMPICS.
During POSITIVITY WEEK, both the Middle and Upper Schools were filled with words and sounds of kindness, love, self-care, and well-being.
Charger pride was on full display during November’s HOMECOMING festivities, which included an evening of basketball, wrestling, and swimming, punctuated by a celebratory Upper School party on the Quad sponsored by the PTAA.
The DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY CELEBRATION included the posthumous presentation of the Courage Award to voting rights activist Rosanell Eaton. Prison reform advocate and former inmate Johnny Perez, delivered an impassioned presentation about the school to prison pipeline.
During this year’s UBUNTU CELEBRATION, students experienced “the Rhythms of and Melodies of the African Diaspora,” “Bollywood Dance 101,” a “Chinese New Years Party,” “Rockin Waka Poetry” and more than a dozen other workshops that opened their minds to different cultural experiences. A live flamenco performance moved their hearts and the International Café filled their bellies with global treats from the CA community.
DURING COMPUTER SCIENCE WEEK students explored computational thinking through holograms, virtual reality, and brain teasing puzzles.
ENTREPRENEU Two years ago, at a collaborative workshop with 12 schools and noted San Francisco design firm IDEO, Head of School Mike Ehrhardt and CFO Debby Reichel were tasked with thinking about ways to transform school business models. In typical Cary Academy fashion, Ehrhardt and Reichel found themselves gravitating towards ways in which students could participate in the process. THE $100 DRINK CART CHALLENGE WAS BORN.
Piloted in 2017 and now in its third year, the Drink Cart Challenge provides $100 in seed money to student teams that are tasked with developing and implementing business plans for a drink cart. Students compete, pitching their drink cart concepts (and uniquely crafted artisan beverages) against each other to see who can sell the most beverages to their peers over a two-day period. Profits can’t be reinvested and students are encouraged to reflect on their failures. And, failures are a given.
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“Here, if you take $100 and your company completely flops because you made bad choices, you’re not going to lose your house over that. But, in the real world, if you take a similar chance and you flop, financially you’ve taken a huge hit, and your investors may be very disappointed with you. We’re creating an environment where students can experiment and fail in a very safe space,” explains Sheila Hall, CA’s newly appointed Entrepreneurship Director. She continues, “Failing can be powerful learning experience. Understanding the difference between business failure and personal failure; recognizing that they are not reflective of one another; learning that you might fail but can recover and grow and learn as a result — these are valuable lessons.” In that first year, 15 percent of Upper School students participated in the Drink Cart Challenge. For the next year, the Challenge was opened to eighth-graders, to gauge student interest. Ultimately, six Middle School teams competed alongside seven Upper School teams. The experiment was officially a success, reflecting a clear student interest in entrepreneurship that ran deeper than the individual challenges. “We began to notice that the students who were doing the Drink Cart Challenge were also doing little ventures around campus,” explains Hall. “We realized this wasn’t just a one-time thing, but that we had an opportunity to build a model for learning in the entrepreneurial space.”
RIALISM AT CA
TAKING INITIATIVE
As a result, next academic year, CA will officially kick-off a new entrepreneurship initiative. Housed in the Center for Community Engagement, the new initiative will provide students multiple ways to engage in entrepreneurial endeavors, both in and out of the classroom. With the Drink Cart Challenge and campus store as twin foundations, CA is developing an on-campus café and store that will offer students an opportunity to try their hand at building a business.
“As I started to develop the café, I realized that it represented a perfect learning lab. Let’s teach students about all facets of business in a real-world setting. Let’s teach them marketing and branding, financial accountability, staffing and HR,” explains Hall. Taking stock of CA’s current offerings, she notes, “We don’t currently offer business classes; we teach economics, and that’s a lot, but it’s just economics. Do students know the difference between ‘net’ and ‘gross’? How to create a profit
margin aand how to pay a staff? What we’ve learned from the Drink Cart Challenges is that most don’t.” To address that shortcoming, next fall, CA will begin offering a formal introduction to entrepreneurship each trimester. Essentially “Business 101,” the class will teach students about business and finance in a top-tobottom fashion, focusing on best-practices. The course is designed to be relevant to students at all levels of interest, whether they are nearly ready to bring a product to market, or simply want to be financially savvy in their personal lives. The third and final prong of CA’s new entrepreneurship initiative will be a student-led, student-driven course that will build a real-world business to compete in next year’s LaunchX challenge. Hosted by MIT, LaunchX is a national competition that challenges high school students to solve a problem by building and launching a real business venture that goes beyond the classroom. “We want our students to understand that [success is] not just about a great product, it’s not just about a great slogan or marketing plan, it’s about developing a thoughtful and complete business model and moving that forward. Offering students opportunities to learn through real hands-on entrepreneurial experiences, and not just out of a textbook — that’s what will give our students the knowledge and tools they need to grow and thrive, whatever might come next for them,” says Hall, guiding CA’s newest innovation as it takes shape.
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The Magazine of Cary Academy
Twenty-three
CHARGING AHEAD CA’S HIDDEN ENTREPRENEURS What would it feel like to build a successful business before graduating high school? What lessons would you learn from having your first three startups fail before reaching eighth grade? As Cary Academy begins to incorporate business enterprise into the curriculum, student entrepreneurs are leading the way in true entrepreneurial fashion, crafting their own businesses from sketches, grass clippings, and even slime. Together, these students paint a powerful picture of passion, resilience, perseverance, and a willingness to swing for the fences despite the specter of potential failure.
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The Magazine of Cary Academy
NATE ALEXANDER
INNOVATIVE INVENTOR Junior Nate Alexander is no stranger to perseverance and being sent back to the proverbial drawing board. Starting as a napkin sketch, his invention Bubbyl — a smartphone case that holds lifesaving epinephrine devices — has gone through dozens of iterations, enough to fill a box with annotated failures. For Alexander, the project is intensely personal. “I always have to have my medicine with me. When I was younger, my mom could carry it in her purse, but as I was getting older, I had to carry it myself. It was one more thing to forget when running out of the house. I knew there had to be a better way,” explains Alexander. Thanks to a commitment to continually hone his product for the marketplace, Bubbyl has won two entrepreneurship competitions to date, including Hyperspace Ventures’ NextGen prize, an on-campus competition backed by CA Alum Tyler Meyer (‘09). Alexander plans to continue refining Bubbyl. In advance of bringing the device to manufacturing, he hopes to integrate Near-Field Communication (NFC) to communicate with an app that will automatically notify emergency
contacts when the epinephrine device is dispensed. As a result of the doors opened by the NextGen competition, he has consulted with Research Triangle-based pharmaceutical experts on the process of bringing a medical device to market. Beyond Bubbyl, Alexander is open to inspiration: “I definitely see myself working to create products to solve the next problems and continue to help others.”
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The Magazine of Cary Academy
Twenty-five
OLIVIA AND NICK HALFERTY
LANDSCAPING MOGULS
For most people, the first experience in the ‘real world’ is a minimum wage summer or weekend job, hours squeezed in-between schoolwork and sleep. For senior Olivia and freshman Nick Halferty, it’s a crash course in building a business empire. “I’ve been working since I was 14, in a bakery, as a swim instructor, babysitting, and whatnot. I was working all the time and not making very much money for it,” explains Olivia. “Our parents’ philosophy is that we have to contribute to our college expenses, so we knew we had to come up with a different, smarter way to work.”
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The result? The enterprising siblings founded A+ Student Lawncare. They’ve grown their business by freecycling used lawn equipment and pounding the pavement with a hard-to-resist business proposition: “People loved the idea of hiring high schoolers and helping them out, rather than hiring landscaping companies,” explains Olivia. Their efforts paid off. Where they once had one lawnmower and a handful of neighbor-clients, they now have an employee of their own and maintain more than 50 homes across Raleigh and Cary. And, their business continues to grow. Olivia recently launched a step-by-step guide on www.studentmoguls.com packed with her secrets for successfully creating, marketing, and growing her business with the goal to light the entrepreneurial spirit in students across the country. Olivia credits her experience on Cary Academy’s debate team with instilling the confidence needed to set forth as an entrepreneur. “I used to be so shy and hesitant to talk to people I didn’t know, but then I joined the debate program. If you can convince someone to buy your side in a debate, why can’t you convince them that you can mow their lawn?” For the Halfertys, failure was an expectation, not a hindrance. “It’s okay for people to say ‘No’... you should expect failure before you become successful, but endurance pays off. It’s hard work, but it gets rewarded.” To that end, Olivia was recently awarded a $20,000 college merit scholarship from Duke Energy, in part due to her entrepreneurial drive and results.
VICKY JIN
SLIME QUEEN AND SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCER Sophomore Vicky Jin found connection and confidence as an entrepreneur-turned-accidental-slimemagnate. “It wasn’t something I thought would ever happen,” explains Jin. “People want to touch it; they want to buy it.” Fascinated by the trend in autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos—which often feature soft sounds produced by on-screen tactile experiments intended to trigger a sensation of relaxation and calm—Vicky began producing batches of homemade slime in order to create her own ASMR videos for Instagram. Within weeks, her followers—now numbering more than half a million—wanted Vicky’s creatively colorful, often sparkly, slippery slime for their own and began asking her to sell her viscous concoctions. Soon, the clamor for Vicky’s creations outstripped her capacity to produce slime
batches; she’d restock her Etsy store on Friday nights only to ship the invariably sold-out orders the following day. “I started off by myself, but once it became bigger, my mom and my family began to help me out, especially once I become busy with school.” Much to the relief of her Upper School teachers, she responsibly adds, “Schoolwork comes first.” Now, Vicky travels the country, a veritable slime celebrity, attending conferences where she meets face-toface with her fans and inspirations. Her experience has been unexpected and life-changing. “It definitely made me more confident... it’s so weird... I put this weird stuff out on the internet and people actually liked it. It totally changed me as a person, it made me more confident, made me more of a people person, and improved my interpersonal skills.”
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The Magazine of Cary Academy
Twenty-seven
CINDY LI
ENTERPRISING ARTIST
Junior Cindy Li understands the vulnerability of taking a risk to share a personal passion with the greater world. There’s no such thing as a sure bet, when it comes to starting a business venture. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of the professional artist. “Art as a job is kind of a wildcard — you don’t know if it’s going to go your way or not, so art wasn’t something I really considered doing in college,” laments Li, who was encouraged to explore her passion for art by former CA faculty member Jason Franklin. Li, a freelance artist who illustrates and animates eye-catching online advertising, realized her talent and love for digital art when she first began drawing on her CA-supplied digital tablet in sixth
grade. She recently created all the handdrawn illustrations for the Candygrams distributed throughout CA on Valentine’s Day. She also takes commissions for her art and has many happy customers throughout the CA community. Li’s passion for animation extends from her love of feature films and television cartoons, equally, yet she credits Mr. Franklin’s encouragement for her to pursue advanced art at CA with expanding her worldview and vision for her future. “I’m working with mediums that I’ve never worked with before,” offers Li. “Having complete pieces and seeing my portfolio progression has shifted my view as an artist; art is definitely something I want to pursue professionally.”
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The Magazine of Cary Academy
SYDNEY ROSS
3D PRINTING EXPERT AND PEER MENTOR
When the new café opens on campus this fall, eighth-grader Sydney Ross will be the first student entrepreneur bringing her passion — 3D printing — to market. Her first successful product, a privacy cover for laptop webcams, will be available for sale to the CA community. And, its only the beginning; Ross hopes to collaborate with other CA community members on the creation of additional 3D printed products in the future. Like Cindy Li, Ross’s business is rooted in a passion discovered at CA, in her case, under the tutelage of Leslie Williams in seventh grade classes, after school clubs, and last summer’s 3D camp. She credits her fascination with 3D printing to “the idea that something from your imagination can come true.” Persevering despite numerous failed prints that resulted in nothing more than a “big ball of filament,” and which occasionally prompted her to start over
from scratch, Ross credits her family and friends for providing research and feedback on her beta products and encouraging her to grow her expertise in 3D design to the point of being a mentor to her classmates. “A lot of my friends struggled with 3D printing, to the point where they kind of hated it. But when they found out I enjoyed it and was pretty good at it, they looked at me for advice. It’s been fun helping them figure it out.” Ross established herself as such an adept peer mentor that Leslie Williams invited her to both attend and assist her 3D camp. “I’d never really expected to be in that position, to teach other students. It was really great helping friends out and making new friends — people I'd never have met otherwise… and I got to make more than 20 new prints, all of which remind me how much fun we had.”
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The Magazine of Cary Academy
Twenty-nine
DAVIS WEBER
ENTREPRENEURIAL ALTRUIST “I have a couple of businesses, but there’s only one that’s actually made any money,” explains seventh-grader Davis Weber. “Shoveling [snowy] driveways with my neighbor — we made about $75 off that one. I had two other fun ones: finding and sharing inspirational quotes... that never really lasted. And, this year, I’ve been doing animations; we draw comics for people.” To Weber, a nascent social-entrepreneur, his small revenue stream doesn’t reflect failure. His entrepreneurial motivation isn’t driven by profit-seeking alone, but by putting smiles on people’s faces. “We started out just helping a neighbor — he was in his seventies and I wanted to be nice. We didn’t take money at first, but people kept pushing [money] on us.” Some of those benefiting from Weber’s hard work didn’t even know he’d set to the task on their snowy driveways. “I kind of realized, ‘Oh yeah, I could help people as it was snowing,’ We wouldn’t even tell people we were doing it, we just [shoveled their driveways]. Some people weren’t even home. My main aim was to brighten up someone’s day.”
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Alumni News
2018
Julia Gong was named an Adobe Women-in-Technology Scholar and was awarded a $10,000 scholarship, an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, and given the opportunity to interview for an internship this summer at Adobe Research, which she received. She will be working on research in computer vision in the Creative Cloud group.
2016
Ian O’Rourke’s North Carolina State University hockey team finished the season with a 27-0 record and ACC and regional championship titles. He will compete in the national tournament in March.
2015
Morgan Goetz was named a winner of the University of North Carolina Athletic Director’s Scholar-Athlete Awards for 2018-19. The annual award is given to one junior or senior from each of UNC’s varsity sports who has demonstrated academic excellence. Visit bit.ly/ UNCScholarAthletes for the full story.
2013
After completing her Master’s in Culture, Policy, and Management at City University in London, Nicole Ackman moved to New York City and started work as a Client Success Manager for Spektrix, a theatre software company.
2004
Capt. Chris Walsh, a Special Tactics officer with the 24th Special Operations Wing, is competing for a spot on the U.S. Olympic Bobsled team in 2022. Visit bit.ly/CWalsh_ bobsled for the full story.
Alex Yang (’16, now at Duke), Alex Udell (’15, now at UNC), Ellie Johnson (’17, now at UNC), and Taylor Timinskas (’18, now at UNC) caught up at the Tennis On Campus Southern Championship, a Club Tennis event. While UNC took the regional tournament, all four former CA Varsity athletes will be heading to Arizona to compete in the National Championship in April.
Alyson Titkemeyer started teaching TV Production and film in Arizona, she also teaches at Benedictine University in Mesa Arizona.
WASHINGTON, DC REGIONAL ALUMNI DINNER
2014
Helena Vaughan is spending the 2018-2019 year in Portland, Oregon, serving as a Jesuit Volunteer Corps/ Americorps member. She is working with a program called Baby Booster, helping connect pregnant women and young families to resources in the neighborhood.
In early March, DC-area alums reminisced about their time at CA, swapped advice, and shared mentoring and internship opportunities at a regional alumni dinner at the Founding Farmers Restaurant in Georgetown.
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The Magazine of Cary Academy
Thirty-one
The Big Question
IF YOU COULD PICK UP A SKILL INSTANTLY, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
YASEEN ALAM
Class of 2025
“Being really good at clarinet so I could get offers from colleges and be known.”
REAGAN CANADY
BRYAN FANG
JAYDEN CHAWLA
“I would like to be able to learn how to speed read.”
“I would choose being able to manage my time better so I could have more free time.”
“Teleportation.”
Class of 2021
Class of 2023
Class of 2023
PARKER PERKINS
Class of 2020
“How to learn more efficiently.”
BELLA NESBETH
Class of 2022
“I would like to know every language so that I could communicate with anyone.”
JEFF WACENSKE
Safety & Security Director
VIC QUESADA HERRERA
“To be able to play the drums like John Bonham (Drummer for Led Zeppelin).”
Upper School Spanish Teacher “I would like to be great at math. I can do the basics, but I would love to be great at it.”
KATHY RILEY
Extended Day Coordinator & Middle School Office Assistant “I would like to be able to sing like Barbara Streisand.”
NADEEN ATIEH
Class of 2019
“If I could choose one skill to pick up instantly, it would be to have a photographic memory.”
ANNIE BOYSE
Class of 2025
“If I could acquire one skill instantly, I would wish to write music."
EVELYN HALDANE
Class of 2023
“To sleep with my eyes open.”
ADI SOLOMON
Class of 2023
“I would like to be able to travel back in time because although making mistakes is part of being human, I think being able to go in the past and fixing them would be cool. I feel like seeing my or others actions again would give me more insight into the future and also how to be the best person I can be.”
CORINNE LAUREY SARAH SHAUGHNESSY
Class of 2025
“A skill I would want to be able to pick up would be having really good handwriting. Anyone who knows me might think that would be beneficial for me.”
Class of 2025
“I would choose cooking so I could learn new things and learn how to be more independent.”
1500 N. Harrison Ave. | Cary, NC 27513 caryacademy.org
UPPER SCHOOL STUDENTS PACK UP GIVING TREE DONATIONS BENEFITING THE JOHNSTON COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES PRIOR TO WINTER BREAK. In accordance with our mission and the law, Cary Academy does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, national and ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or age.