IN CONVERSATION: CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIR

ALEXANDRA BUCKLEY VORIS ’96

Alex Buckley Voris ’96 is one of four co-chairs of the Emerge Transformed campaign and chairs the Admission & Financial Aid Committee of the Board of Trustees. She has served as a Lawrenceville trustee since 2012 and is also a current member of the Academic & Faculty Affairs, Trustees, and Executive committees. Here she shares her insights on Lawrenceville and the Campaign.

Its core tenets are bold and far-reaching, and they’re also incredibly simple, having been drawn from the values that always have defined what we stand for and who we are. Like Lawrenceville itself, Emerge Transformed calls on all of us to come together and on each of us to play a role.

The revised mission statement that underlies the strategic plan is, to me, a nearly perfect encapsulation of what Emerge Transformed is all about:

Through House and Harkness, Lawrenceville challenges a diverse community of promising young people to lead lives of learning, integrity, and high purpose. Our mission is to inspire the best in each to seek the best for all.

ET: This is the most ambitious Campaign in Lawrenceville history, and the largest undertaken to date by an independent school. Why so ambitious, and why now?

ABV: I’m right back to the mission statement, but the idea of inspiring the best in each to seek the best for all is so resonant with respect to this question. This Campaign represents the largest collective act undertaken by the Lawrenceville community. It honors our mission, fortifies our vision, and it breaks new ground. It’s a campaign that’s about the next generation of leaders and investments in growth, and its impact both within the gates of Lawrenceville and beyond them will be profound.

ET: How do the Emerge Transformed campaign priorities support the main tenets of the strategic plan adopted by the Board of Trustees in 2016?

ABV: It’s been my experience that strategic plans often exist mostly on paper, but Lawrenceville 20/20 is different. It’s a cleareyed assessment of our strengths and vulnerabilities, both grounded in reality and soaring in its ambition. Its wellspring is Lawrenceville’s tradition and history of pioneering ideas, reinforced and translated for the 21st century, and its priorities form the basis of the Campaign’s four pillars.*

If Campaigns can have a mindset, then Emerge Transformed is both profoundly optimistic and unreservedly pragmatic.

The steadfast belief in community and its unique expression at Lawrenceville, created and reinforced through House and Harkness, is at the core of our identity as an institution. Rooted in our history and central to our vision for the future, this fundamental, generation-spanning tenet of the Lawrenceville experience is vital not just to our identity today but also to our ability to sustain what sets us apart, and it runs through every Campaign priority. Enter as many; emerge as one.

(*The four pillars of the Emerge Transformed campaign: Scholarship Aid, Faculty & Academic Support, Our Campus, Financial Sustainability)

The sense of urgency is real. Sustaining excellence takes courage, creativity, and vision, and it takes resources to bring to life. Last spring, I spent an hour in the Gruss Center for Art and Design, a 15,000-square-foot creative design center and makerspace that’s at the intersection of science, technology, mathematics, engineering, and art, and at the center of a revolution in experiential learning at Lawrenceville. As an entrepreneur and company founder, I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about non-linear problem solving, innovation, and how to build a plan for scalable growth. And I was not prepared for these kids! But even beyond their technical expertise, which was remarkable, it was their commitment, passion, imagination, and sense of purpose that stopped me in my tracks. Together, they’d identified real-life problems and had set about working to solve them; they’d used their hands, hearts, and heads to pursue solutions that would have an impact beyond themselves.

Less electrifying, although equally essential, the emphasis on endowment growth and commitment to financial sustainability can’t be overstated, and I’m proud of our steadfast focus on this critical priority. For some time, Lawrenceville’s endowment has lagged behind that of our peer schools, and while initially that may not produce a discernable result, it creates cracks in the foundation that threaten the integrity of the structure over time. For Lawrenceville, those cracks were most visible in load-bearing pillars like tuition growth, which have a very real impact on our ability to recruit and compete successfully for the most outstanding kids. A larger endowment will allow us not just to mitigate increases in tuition, but also to direct essential resources toward the imperatives that matter most: prioritizing the School’s ability to attract and retain a world-class faculty, becoming the firstchoice school for the most promising kids, supporting a physical plant that’s second to none, and leading the charge when it comes to innovation in teaching and learning. By ensuring that our foundation is secure, we’re able not only to meet the challenge of today, but also to safeguard and strengthen Lawrenceville for the future, ensuring that generations of students will continue to be transformed by an education that encourages them to seek, make mistakes, tangle with the world around them, and play an active role in making it a better place.

ET: As a Campaign Co-chair, you’ve made a significant personal commitment to Scholarship Aid. What makes this priority compelling for you?

ABV: Lawrenceville’s community is its greatest asset—certainly the most important ingredient when it comes to the School’s long-term success and viability— and building a first-rate community means enrolling more great kids, whether their need for scholarship aid is large or relatively small. But the reality is that for the vast majority of families, Lawrenceville is out of reach.

At the same time, and particularly over the last few years, we’ve had significant increases in applications to Lawrenceville— and what’s clear in that growth is that a far larger percentage of qualified candidates meet the requirements for scholarship aid. This is a great thing, because it means that the applicant pool is expanding and improving; it also means time is of the essence, and we’ve got to meet this challenge now.

Diversity in its many forms is a hallmark of a great institution—one that’s evolving, dynamic, and able to meet the shifting needs of a changing population. In order to deliver on our mission, we’ve got to ensure that we’re able to admit and educate students based on their strengths and potential and not on their ability to pay. And while there are a significant number of families who are eligible for full or nearly full scholarships, there are an equal number in the middle who qualify for partial aid. Overall, there is a very wide range of incomes when it comes to families who need support. By working to ensure that the core dollars of our financial aid budget are guaranteed by the endowment, we’re solidifying our commitment to recruiting and enrolling the most promising young people we can find, to changing kids’ lives, and to improving the Lawrenceville experience for all students.

One thing I’ve learned over the course of this Campaign is that most schools struggle to raise dollars to support scholarship aid. To me, those dollars should be the easiest to raise. If we could be the school that changes this equation, and maybe even serve as an example to others of what’s possible, then I believe we will have affirmed Lawrenceville’s leadership both as an institution and as a set of values, and we will have created a legacy that endures.

“By ensuring that our foundation is secure, we’re able not only to meet the challenge of today, but also to safeguard and strengthen Lawrenceville for the future, ensuring that generations of students will continue to be transformed by an education that encourages them to seek, make mistakes, tangle with the world around them, and play an active role in making it a better place.”

ET: What are your aspirations for Lawrenceville? What are you most excited to see students benefit from?

ABV: Whenever I drive through the gates of Lawrenceville—and lately, I’ve been fortunate to do that quite a bit—I feel for a moment just like I did as a student. The heartbeat of possibility and promise never wavers, and at the same time, it always feels like coming home.

That feeling of homecoming is fueled in part by the fact that despite having graduated 25 years ago, so many of the faculty who shaped my experience at Lawrenceville, and went on to shape my life, remain part of the fabric of the School—a legacy that speaks so powerfully to the unique and enduring nature of this place.

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Just last spring, I stood in the rotunda of the Hutchins Galleries and listened as Brian Daniell, who’d struggled mightily to teach me to draw, discussed what it meant for his students to have access to this remarkable space, filled with both permanent and ever-changing collections that include the work of students and alumni alongside artists who have influenced the world. I popped into Regan Kerney’s Economics class, which I took in 1996, and found that while I still can’t read a graph, his classroom hadn’t changed in that it remained exactly where I want to be. Holly Becker, Sam Washington, Kris Schulte, Emilie Kosoff and so many, many others who invested wholeheartedly in my classmates and me continue to make educating generations of Lawrentians their life’s work.

My deepest wish for students is that each of them finds in Lawrenceville a home that will stretch, support, challenge and inspire them, that they’ll be surrounded by great kids whose life-experiences are different from their own and by faculty whose genius exists equally in their subject matter and in their ability to unlock students’ potential. I hope they’ll experience a moment like the one I remember in Second Form, when I walked into Max Maxwell’s English class, bombed a quiz, learned that I had little to no understanding of what it meant to dig into text or write persuasively, then realized it was all I wanted to do. I hope they’ll encounter teachers like Joel Greenberg, Bill Tredway, Champ Atlee, and Leita Hamill—all of whom managed both to set great expectations for what students could be while also meeting them in the inevitably messy present. That’s so much of the beauty of this place, then and now— teachers who see kids not just for who they are, but for who they could be and are not yet, and who are determined to make sure their students see it, too.

Following Lawrenceville, Alex graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, went on to NYU, and spent a number of years in the nonprofit space. She is co-founder of Bitsy’s (bitsys.com), a food and beverage company with a mission to make healthy, high-quality fare accessible and affordable. “Our belief is that it’s possible to improve the well-being of families everywhere by creating healthy, delicious, budget and kidfriendly options,” she says. The company recently partnered with Walmart to grow and expand its reach.

A second-generation Lawrentian—her father, Walter W. Buckley, Jr. ’56, attended as a PG—Alex credits him with introducing her to the idea of boarding school. Her younger brother, Bobby ’99, followed her, and subsequently married Milano Graves Buckley ’98. The connection continues with niece Carter Ashforth ‘09.

“In a lot of ways, Lawrenceville literally helped to form our family,” says Alex. “Still, the fact is that for most of us, the concept of boarding school is relatively foreign. Add to that the staggering cost of tuition, and for all but the tiniest fraction of the population, it’s an experience that’s likely to feel wholly out of bounds. This is one reason why Emerge Transformed matters as much as it does—we need the resources to go out and tell Lawrenceville’s new story, to come together and bring our School’s bold future to life.”

THE FOLLOWING ENDOWED FUNDS WERE ESTABLISHED BETWEEN JUNE 1 AND DECEMBER 31, 2022.

WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

• Du Family Fund

• Holmsten Family Scholarship Fund

• Joukowsky Family Fund

• Kumar Family Scholarship Fund

• Meadow Family Scholarship Fund

• Meng Family Scholarship Fund

• Rodrigues Family Fund

• Amy Zhou ‘04 Scholarship Fund

The Emerge Transformed campaign continues to build momentum as it enters its final months.

Scan here to see all the latest fundraising results.

The Lawrenceville Fund (TLF) is on track to be the second largest gift to Emerge Transformed: The Campaign for Lawrenceville. Incorporating The Parents Fund (TLPF), TLF is also one of the most critical fundraising priorities of this Campaign, with the greatest potential for immediate impact on every aspect of School life, and the easiest way for every Lawrentian to participate in this historic philanthropic effort.

Your gift to The Lawrenceville Fund is a gift to the Campaign, and can be designated to any of the TLF initiatives listed on our giving form at giving. lawrenceville.org. With an anticipated contribution of $42 million to the Campaign total, supporting TLF allows you to be part of a significant collective impact. By making your gift of any size today, you will be joining the largest campaign ever undertaken by an independent school — and making an important statement about the value of a Lawrenceville education. Your support, this year and every year, is critical to our success.

To learn more, contact Skylar Beaver, Assistant Director of Advancement, Director of The Lawrenceville Fund and Alumni and Family Engagement, at (609) 895-2185 or sbeaver@lawrenceville.org.

OVER $40 MILLION RAISED THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2022

AS YOU CONSIDER YOUR SUPPORT OF THE LAWRENCEVILLE FUND OR THE PARENTS FUND, we encourage you to join the 708 alumni and parent donors whose gifts earned them membership in the Red & Black Leadership Society last year. With six membership giving levels ranging from $2,500 to $100,000-plus, and three more just for the youngest 15 alumni classes, ranging from $250 to $2,500-plus depending on class year, the Red & Black Leadership Society offers a widely accessible opportunity to support personal priorities at a leadership level.

TO LEARN MORE, CONTACT MAUREEN EHRET H’72 P’06 ’12, DIRECTOR OF THE RED & BLACK LEADERSHIP SOCIETY, AT (609) 895-2192 OR MEHRET@LAWRENCEVILLE.ORG.