HONOR ROLL

New Trier Township High School names eight alumni as 2024 Alumni Achievement Award recipients.

Eight distinguished New Trier Township High School alumni will receive the school’s Alumni Achievement Award in March 2024, joining 70 of their peers in the Alumni Hall of Honor. The honorees are:

• Tara Purohit Abrahams, Class of 1994. Tara Abrahams is a passionate global advocate for girls and women. She is currently Head of Impact at The Meteor, a media company that uses the power of storytelling to advance one of the greatest causes of our time: the freedom and dignity of all women. Tara also serves as board chair of She’s The First, a global girls’ rights organization that reaches 150,000 girls around the world every year; and of International Center for Research on Women, a global research institute working to accelerate global progress towards gender equity.

• Sam Barsh, Class of 1999. With a Grammy-winning and multi-platinum discography of over 300 records to thousands of live performances across the globe, producer, songwriter, and keyboardist Sam Barsh is a true musical triple-threat. Barsh has written and/or produced over 300 commercially released songs, with 17 Gold and Platinum certifications and 4 #1 albums on the Billboard 200. Heavily steeped in the jazz world as well as music production and songwriting, Barsh toured with the iconic bassist and composer Avishai Cohen’s trio for 3 years, recording 3 albums and a live DVD at New York’s famed Blue Note jazz club.

• Robert Bryant, Class of 1980. NASA chemist Robert Bryant was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in October 2023. He currently holds 33 U.S. patents, over a dozen foreign patents and over two dozen commercial licenses to NASA. In addition to his induction into NIHF, Bryant was inducted into the Space Foundation’s Space Technology Hall of Fame and the NASA Inventors Hall of Fame. His numerous awards include NASA’s Exceptional Achievement Medal, NASA Langley’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Valparaiso University’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and a Doctor of Science Honoris Causa, and three R&D 100 Awards, including an Editor’s Choice.

• Jerry Fiddler, Class of 1969. Jerry Fiddler, Chairman and Co-founder of Wind River Systems in Alameda, California, has made a major contribution to the field of computer science, and his work has affected society and improved our everyday lives. Wind River software can be found inside many of our commonly used consumer products, from desktop printers to cars. Countless major firms in peripherals, office automation, industrial, aerospace, and multimedia industries rely on Wind River Systems embedded system tools, real-time operating systems, development environments, and networking projects to run critical to several space missions, including Mars Pathfinder and Stardust.

• Donald Katz, Class of 1970. Don Katz is the founder of Audible Inc., the leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment. Prior to founding Audible, Don was a journalist and author for 20 years; his work won a National Magazine Award, an Overseas Press Club Award, the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, and he was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, among other prizes. Recognized as one of America’s Top 25 Disruptive Leaders by Living Cities for his work on behalf of urban transformation in Newark, Don was named New Jersey’s most influential tech leader by ROI-NJ in 2021 and was also celebrated as the Business Visionary Honoree at the 2022 PEN America Literary Gala for his vision and leadership at Audible.

• Liesel Pritzker Simmons, Class of 2002. Liesel Pritzker Simmons is CoFounder and Principal of Blue Haven Initiative, where she oversees a portfolio focused on holdings that generate competitive financial returns and address social and environmental challenges. In addition to working closely with entrepreneurs, nonprofits and co-investors on companies and initiatives that create social, environmental and financial value, she develops strategic partnerships with organizations that support and advance more informed investing. Pritzker Simmons is also Co-Founder of IDP Foundation, a private Chicago-based foundation focused on achieving universal primary education. There, she helped create the IDP Rising Schools Program, which leverages microfinance networks to empower nearly 450 low-cost private schools—established and managed by local entrepreneurs—in some of the least-developed regions of the world.

• Richard Sherman, Class of 1973. Dr. Richard Sherman is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon who specializes in treating disorders of the knee, hip, and shoulder, including sports injuries, trauma and the various forms of arthritis. He offers patients the latest techniques in joint replacement, as well as arthroscopic knee and shoulder surgery, which reduces pain and speeds recovery times. His father was a pediatrician, and seeing the difference he made in children’s lives and the satisfaction he took from it inspired Dr. Sherman to become a doctor himself. He has been the team physician at New Trier High School for 28 years and at Deerfield High School for 15 years. Dr. Sherman also is a clinical assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Loyola University Medical Center, training orthopedic surgery residents.

• Ellen Spertus, Class of 1986. Ellen Spertus is a Teaching Professor at Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. Prior to that, she was a professor of computer science at Mills College and a senior research scientist at Google. She received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in computer science from MIT, where she first developed an interest in gender and computer science that has infused her career.  She has done research in compilers, computer architecture, artificial intelligence, online communities, and computer science education, helping create App Inventor for Android and the code. org “Hour of Code” tutorial with the goal of increasing the number and diversity of students exposed to computer science.

The Alumni Hall of Honor Class of 2024 will receive their Alumni Achievement Awards at a Gala hosted by the New Trier Educational Foundation beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday, March 8, 2024, at the Renaissance Chicago North Shore Hotel in Northbrook.

All proceeds from the gala will benefit the Foundation, which provides philanthropic funding for exceptional educational opportunities for New Trier students. Tickets and sponsorships will be available for purchase soon on the Educational Foundation’s website at newtrierconnect.org.

Since New Trier’s Alumni Achievement Awards began in 2011, 70 recipients have joined the Alumni Hall of Honor for exemplifying the school’s motto: “To commit minds to inquiry, hearts to compassion, and lives to the service of humanity.” Most of the honorees have also returned to New Trier to share their experiences in discussions with current students during the week of the awards dinner.

A Selection Committee made of alumni, New Trier staff, and representatives of the New Trier Educational Foundation met several times this fall to choose the 2024 honorees from a large field of nominations.