6 minute read
Butler Avenue Bulletin
ACCOLADES
Accolades have arrived for Anona Joshi ’23, a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist – one of only 42 Rhode Island students to be honored this year. Meanwhile, Head Tennis Coach Holly Kindl earned the Coach of the Year award from the National Federation of High Schools and the Rhode Island Interscholastic League for the 2021–22 girls’ tennis season. And did you hear? The Lincoln tennis team finished its season undefeated… after moving up a division.
EVENTS
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor Zoomed into our Rhode Island Festival of Children’s Books and Authors held on campus October 15. The first woman of color to serve on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor is an independent school graduate, earning her degree from Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx before going on to Princeton and Yale. She told students: “I am not just a Latina justice. I am me, Sonia Sotomayor, and I am a lot of things in addition to being a Latina. The point is that every one of us is not just one thing. We’re all the things that make us.”
LEADERSHIP
Lincoln landed another star leader with the hire of Ianthe Hensman Hershberger ’02 P’36 as the Lower School director. A joyful and accomplished math teacher, Providence native, and Lincoln alum, Hershberger says of her new role: “Being back at Lincoln as an administrator is a dream come true and would not have been possible without the confidence and passion for education that I gained as a student here.”
TRAVEL
Lincoln girls travel to Morocco and Puerto Rico this school year as our Global Programs return. In partnership with World Leadership School, the programs offer meticulously organized, credit-bearing classes and transformational, immersive experiences. Economics, geopolitics, and cultural studies await in cities like Marrakesh, while environmental policy will be the focus for students flying to San Juan.
Leading
Kathleen R. Scanlan ’84
A snapshot of a Lincoln alumna at the top of her game
In August of last year, Sutter Health and affiliates of the California-based hospital system agreed to a $90 million settlement in a Medicare fraud case initiated by a whistleblower. The whistleblower alleged that Sutter was massively over-billing the Medicare Advantage program, and the settlement is a major victory for the U.S. Department of Justice. It is also a victory for taxpayers. Watchdogs are uncovering large-scale fraud in the Medicare Advantage program, with insurers and health systems inserting unsupported diagnoses into the medical records of patients enrolled in the government program – false claims that bump up per-patient payments by hundreds or thousands of dollars. A recent investigation by The New York Times estimates that these additional diagnoses
resulted in $12 billion in Medicare Advantage overpayments in 2020 alone, a staggering sum of public money lost each year.
The Sutter settlement is also a huge win for Kate Scanlan, ’84, a Bristol native and 30-year resident of San Francisco. Scanlan spent seven years working on the case, which was brought by whistleblower Kathy Ormsby, a former Sutter employee who discovered the overbilling – only to have her discovery met with inaction by Sutter executives. Ormsby filed suit in 2015 and Scanlan served as her attorney, spending thousands of hours aiding the government in its investigation and fending off Sutter’s efforts to knock the case out. Lawsuits are always labor intensive, but whistleblower work is done largely in isolation. Cases are under seal by the courts – often for years – to allow the government time to evaluate the whistleblower’s complaint. During that time Scanlan cannot discuss even the existence of her cases with colleagues, family, or friends.
“It can be very challenging,” she says. “But I have built an incredibly supportive network among other lawyers, especially other women lawyers, who do this kind of work. We all know the rules about what we can disclose. We still find ways to support each other, and we are there for each other to celebrate the victories and mourn the losses. These cases don’t always have a clear path – and you don’t always win.”
Discretion, and determination, are critical to success in this type of legal work. Being a whistleblower attorney has rewards, including the satisfaction of serving the public and delivering justice for courageous people trying to do the right thing. But leading in this particular area of the law requires hard work that sometimes can take years until it reaches the light of day, let alone fruition.
Scanlan recalls one of her mom’s maxims: “With every choice there comes a consequence. But Scanlan says some consequences are good, like successful resolutions to cases that return taxpayer money. The bad kind: long hours spent researching an industry, documenting how a fraud happens, then exposing it often means less time spent with the people she loves.
Then there are consequences you don’t expect. In March 2020, on the same day that San Francisco’s COVID lockdown started, the court issued an order in Ormsby’s favor that set the case on the path to settlement. Over the next year and a half, Scanlan worked to resolve the case. But she did it mostly from Bristol while caring for her parents together with her sister Margaret (Lincoln Class of ’76) and their brothers.
“I made the choice to go back to Rhode Island knowing it was a professional risk,” she said. “But the consequence I expected never happened. Everyone I worked with was incredibly supportive. We were all juggling family issues during COVID and being open about what I was doing made both working and caregiving a little bit easier.”
When the Sutter settlement was finally announced last August, Scanlan was able to celebrate the victory with her parents – and finally tell them what she’d been working on all that time.
Meet Lincoln’s soccer team captain STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
Olivia Sniffin ’23
Sport: Soccer
Position: Midfield
Motivation:
It’s two things – being outside and the team. I love running outside in the fresh air. I also love working with so many people on the field, everyone working as one unit.
Sports and academics: Soccer lets me get to know my classmates in a different way. I get to see a new version of everyone out there playing this game. When I’m on the field, working as a team, I’ve learned the communication skills you need to work in class as a group.
Sports and social life: Soccer has definitely expanded my friend group. As a senior, you don’t normally get to spend time with freshmen or anyone outside your class, but soccer allows you to socialize with everyone.
Biggest thrill on the field: Sprinting, for sure. There’s something about beating someone to a ball or just dribbling down the field as fast as you can. It’s excitement. It’s instinct.
Loves Lincoln because: Community. Lincoln is so comfortable and welcoming and nice. I’ve never once felt uncomfortable in high school – and high school is tough. But the whole school is tight-knit. It feels like family.
