13 minute read
NEW FACES
NARGES ANVAR
MS/US SCHOOL VISUAL ARTS
JACKSON BISTRONG
2ND GRADE
Favorite place to visit:
The lakes in Maine
Favorites:
Food: French Fries Movie: The Sandlot Book: The Fire Next Time Place to visit: Rome
ANNA GENOESE
DEVELOPMENT
Favorite book:
Leaving Marks by Candas Jane Dorsey. Good to read while eating pizza and drinking massive amounts of coffee!
DARCEY BLAKE GLASSER
LS STEM
Favorite food:
Super-duper sour pickles!
WELCOME
TO OUR NEW FACULTY AND STAFF
INEZ GONZALEZ
LS ADMISSION
RACHEL HERMAN
LS ADMISSION
CHRISTI IRELAND
MS/US LIBRARY
Favorite place to visit:
The beach, watching and listening to the waves.
Favorite book:
Where’d you go, Bernadette?
Favorite book:
Where the Crawdads Sing, but that answer changes all the time
AYAKO ITO
US LANGUAGE (JAPANESE)
Favorite food:
Sushi
SARAH KELLY
LS ART
ALISON LEVOSKY
MS/US MUSIC
HUGO MAHABIR
US ENGLISH
CHLOË MAY
COMMUNICATIONS
Favorite book:
The Harry Potter series
Favorite food:
Thai food
Favorite food:
Doubles
Favorite food:
Coffee Ice Cream
CARLA MOOPENN
MS/US SCIENCE
BIANCA NUNES
5TH GRADE
Favorite food:
Spinach
Favorite food:
I love rice and beans! It reminds me of home and I could eat it anywhere, anytime!
MIN ZHANG
1ST GRADE
Favorite place:
Guangzhou, China
DAVID REID
MS/US HISTORY
Favorite food:
Mexican! As a historian of Mexico, I made sure my research trips included as much eating as possible.
MIGUEL WINDT SÁNCHEZ
MS/US LANGUAGE (SPANISH)
Favorites:
Food: BBQ Book: Orwell’s 1984 Place to vist: Madrid
Faculty and Staff continued
WELCOME TO ALL OUR NEW FACULTY AND STAFF
Hassanain Abdul-Karim LS Teacher Akriti Ahuja MS Teacher Narges Anvar MS/US Teacher Toni Barbour MS/US Teacher Frances Bernstein MS/US Teacher April Berry LS Administrator Jackson Bistrong LS Teacher Riley Brennan LS Teacher Ajanna Brockenbaugh US Administrator Lucia Cardone LS Teacher Kristie Corniel LS Teacher Bolivar Dutan LS Staff Leigh Evron ’11 US Teacher Jo-Jo Feng US Teacher Kaitlin Frohman LS Teacher Charles Garcia MS/US Teacher Frances Garcia LS Staff Anna Genoese Development Darcey Blake Glasser LS Teacher Inez Gonzalez LS Admission Rachel Herman LS Admission Ramon Hernandez US Staff Christine Ireland MS/US Library Ayako Ito US Teacher Sarah Kelly LS Teacher Bryce Kennedy LS Teacher Alison Levosky MS/US Teacher Hugo Mahabir US Teacher Katina Manko US Teacher Chloë May Communications Peter Mihalcik MS/US Teacher Lauren Modic-Doyle MS Teacher Carla Moopenn MS/US Teacher Bianca Nunes LS Teacher Juan Diego Pérez MS/US Teacher David Reid MS/US Teacher Michael Ruane US Staff Miguel Windt Sánchez MS/US Teacher Gabriel Torres LS Staff Adania Veras LS Teacher Christian Viven LS Teacher Charles Weld LS Teacher Whitney Yu LS Teacher Min Zhang LS Teacher
TIFFANY ELLIS BUTTS P’24,’27
is an arts management consultant specializing in marketing with a focus on audience development and engagement. Over the past 30 years, her work with various cultural institutions and Broadway productions have centered around outreach efforts to communities of color. Tiffany is an active member of the Riverdale community, where she has tapped into her career experience by contributing high-energy and creative elements to the school and parent partnership—a perfect bridge of her most personal and professional passions. At Riverdale, she has served in a variety of leadership positions, including as co-chair of the Parents of Color (POC) Committee and Grade Representative, and is honored to currently serve as the first Black president of the Parents Association. A native of Pittsburgh, she holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in theater management from the Yale School of Drama. Tiffany resides in Harlem with her husband Calvin IV and is the proud mother of their two extraordinary sons, Calvin V ’24 and Reed ’27.
Welcome
NEW TRUSTEES
RENATA GARCIA P’25
is director, president, and chairman of The Garcia Family Foundation, which was established in 2015 as a private philanthropic foundation in order to promote and enhance cultural, educational, and artistic appreciation of the world. She holds a law degree from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; LLM in Corporate Law from the Universidade Candido Mendes, Brazil; LLM in Banking from IBMEC, Sao Paulo; LLM in International Law from the Catholic University of Leuven; and Certification of Global Philanthropy from NYU. Renata is also a member of the Harvard Global Advisory Council. She and her husband, Claudio, live in New York City with their two children, Cecilia and Francisco ’25.
JOSEPH GOLDSCHMID ’04
is managing director at Oak Hill Advisors (OHA) where his primary focus is on stressed, distressed, and special situations investments. Prior to joining OHA, Joe worked as a director in the Distressed & Special Situations Group at Angelo Gordon. During his career, he has overseen a number of restructurings and led numerous in- and out-of-court recapitalizations. Before joining Angelo Gordon, Joe worked in the Restructuring and Special Situations Group at The Blackstone Group and PJT Partners. He began his career as an analyst at Morgan Stanley. Joe holds a B.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar. Joe currently sits on the Board of Directors for Valaris Limited (NYSE: VAL) and serves as President of the Riverdale Alumni Association Executive Committee.
JOHN A. GRIFFIN P’23,’25
is the founder and president of investment partnership Blue Ridge Capital, which started in 1996 and converted to a family office in 2018. Prior to Blue Ridge, he served in various positions at Tiger Management for nine years, becoming president in 1993. Previously, he was a financial analyst in the Morgan Stanley Merchant Banking group from 1985 to 1987. John is the founder and board chair of iMentor.org, a nonprofit online mentoring organization, started in 1999. He also founded the Blue Ridge Foundation, an incubator of start-up nonprofits, which became Blue Ridge Labs at Robin Hood. He currently serves as the board chair of the Robin Hood Foundation of which he has been a trustee since 2011. Additionally, John is chairman of the Board of Trustees at the University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce Foundation. He has a B.S. in finance from the University of Virginia (1985) and an M.B.A. from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (1990). He is also a visiting professor at the University of Virginia, where he has taught a semester-long investment seminar each year from 1999 to 2019. He and his wife live in New York with their four children, two of whom are Riverdale students.
Farewell to Ron Murison
By Emma Haidar ’22 Mr. Ron Murison started working at Riverdale in 1989, as a member of the English department. When asked “Why Riverdale?” he responded with his signature humor: “Well, I needed a job.” However, in the 33 years since first walking onto campus as a new hire, it’s hard to imagine Riverdale without him.
“I’m very grateful for my Riverdale career,” he added. “It’s been a wonderful place to teach for two reasons in particular: the strength of the student body and the friendships I’ve made with my former students, and particularly for the colleagues I’ve worked with. Working with them, living with them in a sense, has been of great importance to me.”
As any colleague or former student could tell you, Mr. Murison’s wealth of knowledge and passion for learning runs much deeper than the standard curriculum. It’s not out of character for him to quote offhand, in the middle of class, stanzas of poetry or philosophy in Italian, German, French — the list goes on.
“He’s one of those guys who seemingly knows everything,” said Mr. Kent Kildahl, Upper School English teacher, who has known Mr. Murison since the beginning of Kent’s time at Riverdale. “If there’s a question, particularly about the humanities, that you have, or about language, Ron’s one of those people who almost invariably is going to have the answer. He’s probably the best-read person I’ve ever known.”
“He’s someone who can spell out anything, give you the root of it,” said Dr. Abbe Karmen, Upper School History teacher, Mr. Murison’s 2022 Constructing America teaching partner. “Great sense of humor, very dry. Someone who you would enjoy discussing almost anything to which you could apply analysis, and ever-positive. He has a depth of care for students that you don’t always see in all teachers.”
During his time here, he spearheaded the interdisciplinary initiatives Riverdale has become known for. In addition to his engagement with students in the classroom, it is Mr. Murison’s behind-the-scenes work in curricular development that has impacted the educational experience of countless Riverdale students over the last three decades. In his second year teaching English, Mr. Murison became department head. At the time, much of the English curriculum focused on British literature. In this new leadership role, he helped guide the department in creating a more robust curriculum, focusing on American literature. In 1996, he also took on the role of Integrated Liberal Studies (ILS) coordinator, and in the early 2000s, he helped create the joint English-History American Studies class, now known as Constructing America. Alongside Constructing America and ILS, he has also taught “Thinking About Thinking” with Dr. Rachel Cox, Upper School science teacher and director of science research, a course that bridges science and the humanities.
“I’ve loved pretty much every class I’ve taught here,” Mr. Murison said. “Obviously there are moments when the students just amaze you and surprise you with their insight and maturity. These are very rewarding moments. You can never predict when they’re going to happen, but they mean a great deal to me. You feel like you’re actually doing something worthwhile and touching the minds of others.”
In 2007, at the request of Head of School Dominic A.A. Randolph, he formed the Interdisciplinary Studies Group, a space for faculty thinking of creating their own cross-curricular courses. “After about three or four years working directly on curriculum, the group became more of a reading group,” he said. “It still is — we have a meeting on Tuesday. But the idea was that we would read books of an interdisciplinary nature, either just for their own sake or because they might contribute to some of the interdisciplinary work we do here.” The group has continued meeting over the years, sometimes with Riverdale alumni in attendance, even adapting to a hybrid environment during the pandemic. It was here, over a decade ago, where his academic collaboration and friendship with Dr. Cox, formed in designing the class “Thinking About Thinking.”
“I was telling a friend the other day that teaching with Mr. Murison, for me, was kind of like being in graduate school,” she said. “I didn’t have to write a final thesis but every day I got to learn things that I didn’t know about a philosopher, about a writer, about myself, and being in the classroom with a group of people who are all processing ideas together. It’s a synergistic experience of sharing ideas.”
Initially inspired by a course of the same name that her father taught at Harvard for many years, Dr. Cox brought the course to Mr. Murison as head of Interdisciplinary Studies, who was interested in adding some of his own ideas to the syllabus.
Reflecting on their many years in the classroom together, she added, “He’s a beautiful speaker — so articulate. And people, I think, really know that about him. But I’m not sure how many people really realize that he listens really hard. He can find the value and the gem in people’s ideas, even though they might not be expressing it very well. He can tease it out. I think that’s an incredible art that he is capable of.”
In 2017, when Riverdale was due for reaccreditation, Mr. Murison chaired the faculty committee tasked with evaluating and providing a guide to every aspect of school life from financing, to fire department procedures, to book purchasing, to curriculum. To take all of this information and sum it up in 300+ pages required an immense amount of dedication.
For Mr. Kildahl, this undertaking truly exemplifies who Mr. Murison is as a person. “He volunteered to do a really hard and thankless task. There’s a huge self-study that has to be done. He basically dedicated a year of his life to getting the school through that. So he’s very generous with his time. He’s selfless. There’s nobody who has served the school the way he has. And I think when Ron goes, and no longer is a name that anyone knows here, there will still be thousands of people walking around, who remember him and value him and owe him much for the good things that he taught them.”
As for his retirement plans, Mr. Murison plans to spend part of the summer visiting friend — and former Riverdale teacher — Mr. Cole Harrop in France, before reuniting with relatives in the UK, whom he has not seen in person since before the pandemic. In the future, he plans to split his time between New York and Italy, a country he fell in love with while on sabbatical from Riverdale.
Retiring, however, does not mean the end of his intellectual pursuits. Although he has spent some time in past summers working on his book, he hopes to devote more hours to writing in his newfound free time. “It’s multi-genre,” he said. “There’s travel writing, there’s philosophy, there’s all sorts of things like that — but the connecting thread is the idea of ‘home,’ which can mean belonging to a place or not, but it can also mean feeling comfortable within the framework of a set of ideas.”
I’ve been lucky enough to have Mr. Murison as a teacher for two past years, in Constructing America and ILS. I know him as someone who cares deeply about connecting with students, encouraging everyone to find their voice in the classroom and bring ideas together. He has an immense love, not only for teaching, but for learning new things about the world, and never takes himself too seriously.
As he starts the next chapter, beyond his classroom in 9/10 building, I’m excited to see what the future holds, and know he will be deeply missed.
