Plus: Exeter’s first Red-Gray Weekend Connections: Catching up with our alumni

The Exeter Bond

By Morgan W. Dudley ’77 Director of Institutional Advancement

Thank you to everyone who has reached out to express support for our Exeter community during this extraordinary year. Your encouragement and continued faith in Exeter’s people, mission and values have been welcome and appreciated as we work together to keep our community strong.

The COVID-19 pandemic has required us to postpone, cancel or reinvent many of Exeter’s time-honored traditions over the past year. In true Exeter fashion, you have risen to the occasion and embraced the opportunity to connect, refect, learn from and honor our shared experiences in new and creative ways. From late-night (or early morning) class Zoom calls and industry-focused panel discussions, to webinars honoring coeducation and virtual conversations with alumni authors, artists, activists and more, we have found meaningful ways to come together, even as we remain apart.

To put it in numbers, more than 3,700 Exonians representing nine decades and 48 countries have participated in 135 virtual events over the last 11 months. These numbers are not only impressive but also refective of the strength of the Exeter bond and our spirit of non sibi.

We know these next few months undoubtedly will be full of change, challenges and sacrifce. Yet, I know we will continue to derive comfort and hope in our shared commitment to learn and grow together as we support one another in every way possible.

For those who were looking forward to joining us on campus this spring for reunions and celebrations, please know we are poised, eager and committed to providing special opportunities for you to reunite with classmates, engage with faculty and connect with current students through a special virtual reunions event in May. We invite all alumni to join us in June for a one-of-a-kind online celebration of Exeter’s 50th anniversary of coeducation. More details will be forthcoming on these opportunities and other alumni virtual programming.

As we embrace the year 2021, together, we will fnd ways to strengthen existing connections and forge new ones within our Exeter community.

We hope you are safe and healthy during this challenging time. E

www.exeter.edu/alumni

C A T C H I N G U P W I T H A Y O U N G A L U M 3 QUESTIONS WITH ...

Lena Papadakis ’17

By Sarah Zobel

Today and as babies (L-R): Alexandra, Lena, Joanna What was the origin of Preemie to Pre-Med?

I got the idea for Preemie to Pre-Med in March while shadowing a doctor in the hospital. I realized how difcult it would be to explain to a child why only one parent could be there and why the playroom was of-limits. I also got involved in COVID-19 advocacy and learned pediatric hospitals and programs were losing money and suspending volunteer programs. I knew I needed to do something. … We launched in October and raised $3,300 for the John Hancock Child Life and Wellness Program at Mass General Hospital in the frst month!

Lena Papadakis ’17 is no stranger to hospitals. She and her sisters, Joanna ’17 and Alexandra ’17, were born two months prematurely. By age 10, she had undergone some 40 medical procedures — one of which left her in a monthlong, medically induced coma. Doctors determined the triplet had tracheoesophageal fstula, an abnormal opening between her esophagus and her trachea. Over time, they built her a new GI tract from her stomach up.

Given her past, Papadakis could be forgiven for never voluntarily entering a hospital again. Yet the Boston University senior has found inspiration in her childhood experiences. She’s prepping for medical school and working remotely as a clinical research intern in Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s maternal-fetal health department while running the nonproft she founded, Preemie to Pre-Med.

We spoke with Papadakis while she was temporarily quarantining at her parents’ home in North Hampton, New Hampshire.

What are child life and wellness programs?

They encourage learning and exploration through play while a child is in the hospital — they let kids be kids. That’s something I attribute my non-fear of hospitals to. I don’t remember a lot because I was so young, but the parts I do are good, like going to events such as Queen for a Day or being invited to ride in a helicopter to normalize it because I’d been medevacked once. … Hospitals are amazing institutions — all I’ve ever wanted is to work in one, and I think a large portion of that was encouraged by child life programs. The hospital was never terrifying. I never felt alone.

I understand your nonprofit had its beginnings at Exeter.

In our upper year, Joanna and I created an ESSO club called Just Keep Smiling to donate blankets and stufed animals to child life programs at Boston Children’s Hospital and Mass General. That evolved into Preemie to Pre-Med, and some of the frst people I reached out to in starting this were Exeter friends. It was important for me to come full circle and have these individuals help create this. We now have eight Exonians and 20 other college students working to bring our organization’s mission to life. E

P R O F I L E JULIO PETERSON ’86

Building Inclusion

By Sandra Guzmán

When Julio Peterson ’86 was a teenager, he worked as a delivery boy for a highend pharmacy and was awed by the universe of worlds that existed outside his neighborhood. “I walked everywhere and was intrigued by the multidimensional space of the city — the architecture, layout of the streets, the movement and energy, the people, cultures, races, the grit, and the wealth gap between the rich and poor,” he says.

In 1970s New York, he recalls there were a lot of vacant lots and abandoned buildings. “My mother and a group of other poor families took over an abandoned building and fxed it up,” says the 54-year-old, who is one of six children born in northern Manhattan to parents from the Dominican Republic. “We were poor, but we had agency. We were squatters fghting for housing and human rights.”

Going to protests with his mother as a child and learning about housing rights, development and urban politics cemented Peterson’s passion for building and uplifting distressed communities. He went to Cornell to study city and regional planning with hopes of becoming mayor of New York City. After eight years of work in community development, he was awarded the John L. Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where his studies focused on real estate development and fnance.

His frst job in 1990 was with the New York City Public Development Corporation, which was in charge of development of commercial, city-owned properties under David Dinkins, the city’s frst Black mayor. Neighborhoods like Harlem, El Barrio and Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, needed signifcant public and private investment after years of neglect. “I saw how hard it was to be a Black mayor and the many compromises made,” Peterson says. He decided that he didn’t have the diplomatic skills or patience to be mayor. The experience of helping to save from demolition the Audubon Ballroom, the site where Malcolm X was assassinated, inspired the Afro Latino urban planner to remain in real estate and development.

“I was born across the street from the Audubon Ballroom, and when I was 13 reading Malcolm X’s autobiography changed my life,” he says. “It made me pursue learning at a higher level and one reason that motivated me to attend Phillips Exeter.”

Since then, Peterson has managed the development of a throng of commercial and cultural projects, including East Harlem’s Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Arts Center, Harlem’s frst major supermarket and Columbia University’s Biomedical Research Building. “What motivates me is that I can walk around the city and say I was involved in this building and that project,” he says.

Today he is vice president of real estate for the Shubert Organization, the largest theater owner on Broadway. Peterson manages Shubert’s substantial corporate real estate, including the Boch Center Shubert Theater in Boston, Times Square outdoor signage, ofce and retail leasing, and development. He also acts as the organization’s liaison with elected ofcials and other stakeholders. Serving on the board of organizations like The Public Theatre, the Association for a Better New York and the City Parks Foundation, among others, allows Peterson to give back to a city that has nurtured him.

As one of the few BIPOC executives in theater, Peterson is also using his voice to bring attention to the whiteness of the industry and calling for changes. “The industry needs to be more inclusive, and that means not just Black and Brown people tap dancing and singing on stage,” he says. “We need to fnd a pathway to jobs for Black and Brown people in all spaces, jobs that are locked up in the institutional white vacuum.”

Last year, he took on what he says was one of the most exciting projects of his career, working with Malcolm X’s daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, as co-chair of Harlem’s Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center at the site of the Audubon Ballroom. “Malcolm is one of my heroes. It feels great to return to a place after having helped save it and help create a worldclass center for the community and the world.” E

G I V I N G B A C K ROBERT N. SHAPIRO ’68

A Shared Experience

By Sarah Pruitt ’95

Shapiro

Growing up in Houston, Texas, Helen Xiu ’20 remembers being a “really talkative kid,” which wasn’t always a welcome characteristic in a traditional classroom. “I had been taught that speaking too much in class was a bad thing,” she remembers.

When she arrived at Exeter as a prep in the fall of 2016, Xiu had to acclimate to a new kind of classroom experience. “I was [accustomed] to not being noticed by the teacher that much,” she says. “I had to learn Harkness etiquette, and how to present yourself at the table.” One year later, Xiu roomed with a new lower in Wheelwright Hall. As she watched her roommate go through a similar adjustment, Xiu appreciated how far she had come on her own journey, and how fully she had embraced the Harkness method. It was a meaningful revelation, one that she had the chance to share with former trustee Robert N. Shapiro ’68 when he was on campus for his 50th class reunion that May. Shapiro had established the Robert N. Shapiro, Class of 1968, Financial Aid Fund in 2012 to provide greater access and opportunity to deserving students. Xiu was the fund’s frst benefciary, and when she wrote a letter of thanks to Shapiro via the school’s Financial Xiu Aid Ofce, he replied to her, suggesting that they connect in person at his reunion so that he could hear frsthand about Xiu’s Exeter experience. They met in Elm Street Dining Hall and have kept in touch by email since then.

A LIFELONG LOVE OF EDUCATION

Shapiro vividly remembers his own frst class at Exeter, a second-level Latin course with David Thomas. As the only ninth-grade boy in the class, he arrived late after having to fle out of the Assembly Hall by class, and there were no chairs left at the Harkness table. “There were three chairs with armrests on the sides,” Shapiro recalls. “I sat down in one, and I never moved from that chair. For the entire year, I never sat at the table.”

He still managed to hold his own in that class, an achievement that set the tone for the rest of his Harkness career. “That was trial by fre, even though I didn’t realize it at the time,” Shapiro says. “I had a great time in the classroom at Exeter. It was just about the best experience one could imagine.”

During his senior year, he and a friend convinced one of their teachers to let them lead the discussion in some lower-year English classes. Later, while still an undergrad at Harvard, Shapiro began teaching at Noble and Greenough School, where Ted Gleason, the former minister at Exeter and his Dunbar dorm master, had become the headmaster.

After graduation, Shapiro returned to Nobles to teach English, and also taught at

Exeter Summer School, grading his students’ papers in the new Louis Kahn-designed library on campus. Shortly after he completed law school, he became secretary of the Friends of the Academy Library at the invitation of Jackie Thomas, longtime Academy librarian and wife of his former Latin teacher. Shapiro later served as chairman for many years.

Even as Shapiro spent decades practicing law, becoming a partner at the Boston frm Ropes & Gray, he never lost his connection with the world of education. In addition to serving on Exeter’s Board of Trustees from 1988 to 1998, he was a trustee at Nobles for 21 years and currently serves on the board of the Radclife Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. He is also a longtime trustee of the Peabody Essex Museum, and the new chair of the Handel and Haydn Society Board of Governors.

“Because I admired my teachers so much, I’ve always been interested in teaching,” Shapiro says of his work with educational institutions ranging from the elementary to collegiate level. “All of that wasn’t a big conscious life plan, but grew organically from those frst teaching experiences when I was an Exeter student.” “We all know the

When asked to explain why he chose to establish his namesake fund, Shapiro refers back to the school’s Deed of Gift, signed in 1781. John and Elizabeth Phillips donated their assets to lay the phrase, ‘youth foundation for the Academy, recognizing even then, “the time of youth is the important period.” “We all know the phrase, ‘youth from every quarter,’” Shapiro from every adds. “That’s a wonderful late-18th-century phrase from a wonderful late-18th-century document, but it’s as modern now as quarter.’ ... it’s as it ever has been. It’s the heart of the place.” A LASTING CONNECTION modern now as During her four years at Exeter, Xiu dove into her studies and activities. She ran the hurdles during winter and spring track; joined Asian Voices; sang with the a cappella group In Essence; it ever has been. worked as a senior layout editor for the PEAN; and became co-head of Christian Fellowship by her senior year. She enjoyed It’s the heart of her English and history classes in particular, writing her History 333 paper on the birth of hip-hop in the South Bronx. Her senior meditation, which drew on her research of child psychology the place.” during a fall-term course, focused on how our frst memories from childhood can shape how we perceive our early lives.

In December, Xiu and Shapiro were able to reconnect during a Zoom call. Now a freshman at Bryn Mawr, Xiu plans to pursue a career in educational equity, an interest she developed while participating in the Exeter Student Service Organization’s Diversity Club and the Exonian Encounter Committee. “I want to do the work to restructure the system,” she says, with an aim to provide all students with equal access to the opportunities, support and tools they need to thrive.

Shapiro is thrilled with Xiu’s plans. “[The] questions of equality and access are burning hot right now,” he says. “Schools … are at the center, but libraries, museums [and] musical organizations ... are all public trusts, and making these amazing institutions truly open and inviting and welcoming — having everybody who’s interested feel a sense of belonging to them — those are really core concepts.”

He and Xiu promised to keep in touch, and Shapiro anticipates meeting the next Exonian to beneft from his namesake fund.

“You blazed a path,” he told Xiu. “Now I can tell your successor about what you’re doing.” E