magazine2 0 1 1spring

We are proud of our forty alumni children currently enrolled at HRS. Can you connect them to their alumni parents on the back?a new generation of jayhawks

New Head of School Rob Lake and Director of Alumni Relations Betsy Ringrose ’85 are looking forward to seeing alumni in the Boston and New York City areas. Please make plans to join us. Visit the Alumni Events section of the HRS web site for details.

For more information about Alumni Reunion Weekend, to contact your class reunion chair, or to RSVP for one or all of the weekend’s events, look for details at www.headroyce.org/alumni.

You may also contact Betsy Ringrose ’85, Director of Alumni Relations, at alumni@headroyce.org, 510.531.1300, x2191.

Alumni: Hear what is happening at your school and come catch up with friends and classmates at these upcoming events.

Community & Connections

CXXIIIA l u m n i R E u n i O n W E E k E n dHead-Royce School

···123···Alumni dAy

FrIday, aprIl 29, 2011 11:00 AM

Welcome Back to School in the Community Room

11:30 AM Student & Alumni Panel

Noon Lunch with the Faculty

12:35 PM Upper School Choral Concert

12:45 PM Roundtable discussion

with Head of School Rob Lake

1:15 PM Classroom visits

and tour of the campus

2:00 PM Maypole & Spring Dances

in the Pavilion

Alumni REuniOn lunCHEOnSaturday, aprIl 30, 2011at the Claremont Hotel

Honoring Classes Ending in 1 or 6 and the Class of 2011

11:00 AM Reception in the Horizon & Lanai Rooms

11:45 AM Class Reunion Photos

12:15 PM Class of 2011 Alumni Recognition Celebration

12:30 PM Luncheon & Awards Presentationd I S t I n g u I S h e d a l u m n I awa r d Jocelyn Larkin ’76

F o u n d e r S awa r d Shand Lathrop Green ’66

h o n o r I n g o u r 2 0 1 1 Fa C u lt y r e t I r e m e n t S : David Clark, Fine Arts, 22 Years Judy Jonas, World Languages, 29 Years

at Head-Royce School Sunday, may 1, 2011 · 11 AM to 2 PM Lunch begins at 11:30 AMJoin alumni, alumni parents, and their families for swimming, feasting, and fun in the sun,

by the pool, on the terrace, in the garden, on the playground.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A l u m n i FA m i ly B A r B e Q u e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

boston &new york city05.13 – 05.15.2011

Regional Alumni Events

Reunion Weekend

magazinespringReaching Out, Reconnecting .......................................................................................... 3 Robert A. Lake, Head of School

Math, Music, and More: A Coversation with Will Glaser ’83 ........................................................................ 4 Blakely Atherton, Parent of ’19, ’21, ’23

Adventures in Space: Stephanie Gregg Geoffrion ’92 .................................................................................... 8 Andrei Ferrera, Director of Publications

Persistence and Determination from a Green Beret: Tom Searle ’78 .................................................................................................................................. 11 Blakely Atherton, Parent of ’19, ’21, ’23

Clear Thinking and Effective Leadership: A Conversation with Mark Searle ’80 ............................................................. 1 3 Blakely Atherton, Parent of ’19, ’21, ’23

Caring for Her Community: Joyce Boykin ’68 .................................... 1 4

Web TKO: Kai Hasson ’02 and Nate Houghteling ’02............................................... 16 Andrei Ferrera, Director of Publications

Sports Fix: Ty Ahmad-Taylor ’86............................................................................ 19

The Sporting Life: David Sternberg ’86 ...................................................... 2 0

Keeping Your Eyes Open: Q & A with Corinne Dixon ’99 ................................................................................. 2 2

Teacher by Day, Artist by Night: Q & A with Nicole Dixon ’98 ...................................................................................... 2 3

Family Practice: Q & A with Tsion Ketema ’98 .................................................................................... 2 4

The Return of Kaleidoscope ....................................................................................... 2 5

The Second Golden Age of the Inventor: Q & A with Corwin Booth ’84 .................................................................................... 2 6

A Life of Learning: Q & A with Quyen Vo ’03 ................................................................................................ 2 8

Art as a Way of Thinking: Mari Lyons ’53................................................ 3 0

Alumni Abroad: Julia Harte ’05 .............................................................................. 31

Alumni Around the United States ...................................................................... 3 2

Alumni Around the Globe............................................................................................. 3 3

Coming Home ............................................................................................................................... 3 4

Our Legacy Families ............................................................................................................. 3 6

Making the Alumni Circuit ......................................................................................... 3 8

HRS By the Numbers ........................................................................................................... 4 0

Athletics: Winter Highlights ..................................................................................... 4 2

Around Campus .......................................................................................................................... 4 4

About the cover: We are proud that so many of our alumni have chosen to send their children to Head-Royce for their education. On the front are yearbook portraits of our forty alumni students. And on the back, the senior portraits of their parents (and two alumni grandparents). Can you guess which students belong to which parents? See page 36 for a full who’s who.

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The mission of Head‑Royce School is to inspire in our students a lifelong love of learning and pursuit of academic excellence, to promote understanding of and respect for diversity that makes our society strong, and to encourage active and responsible global citizenship.

Founded in 1887, Head‑Royce is an independent, non‑denominational, coeducational, college‑preparatory, K–12 school, which offers a challenging educational program to educate the whole child. The School nurtures the development of each individual student through a program that seeks:

· to develop intellectual abilities such as scholarship and disciplined, critical thinking;

· to foster in each student respect, integrity, ethical behavior, compassion and a sense of humor;

· to promote responsibility and leadership, an appreciation of individual and cultural differences, and a respect for the opinions of others;

· to nurture aesthetic abilities such as creativity, imagination, musical and visual talent; and

· to encourage joyful, healthy living, a love of nature, and physical fitness.

All members of the Head‑Royce community strive to create an educational environment that reflects the School’s core values of academic excellence, diversity and citizenship, one in which each student can thrive. We believe that a program based on these core values will prepare our students to be effective global citizens as they face and embrace the challenges and the opportunities of the future.

One of the most important goals for my first year as Head of School was to reach out to a broad swath of the Anna Head and Head-Royce alumni body. Why? Our strength today is due in large part to the people who have come before us. There are countless moments in my first year that have brought me great joy: reading to the kindergarten class, welcoming students on Lincoln Avenue, marveling at our talented actors, and cheering for our athletes. Among these, I have also been inspired by my time spent with alums. As a new head, I have spent much of my time learning, listening, and honoring the culture of Head-Royce through meeting alums.

I am passionate about history. I believe in learning from past experiences, and especially learning from those who have come before me. Since my first day on July 1, 2010, I have had the honor of meeting hundreds of alums from classes ranging from 1935 to the class of 2010. The reason is simple: before I can shape a vision and future, I need to become deeply knowledgeable about our past.

Since August, we have had receptions, dinners, lunches, and parties in Oakland, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, Charleston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. We still aren’t finished. We have spring alumni events scheduled for New York and Boston. Throughout the year, I have been moved by the deep sense of pride and loyalty in the alumni body.

This spring edition of the HRS magazine is an opportunity to share some of what I have learned by highlighting just a few alums who exemplify the excellence and diver-sity that is Head-Royce School. There are countless numbers of you who we would have been honored to interview. This is an ongoing process of learning and discovery and we expect to do this regularly. So, don’t be surprised if we reach out to you in the future!

One true measure of a school’s strength, in my opinion, is the ability to answer an emphatic yes to the following questions: “Are our alums thought leaders and game changers in a wide range of industries and fields?” “Do our alums positively impact society in a way that is in keeping with the school’s mission?” I am so proud to report that the answer to both questions is indeed, an emphatic ‘yes.’

We have chosen to highlight alums from a range of years and fields. Among this group, we have an internet innovator and inventor, a PhD Green Beret, a rocket scientist, the CEO of a software company, a pair of new media pioneers, a developer of patents, a pro-fessional painter, a freelance international journalist, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs, and a ground breaking doctor in internal medicine. This impressive array of people illustrates that Head-Royce helps to shape critical thinkers and problem solvers. It is a place that helps you learn how to think rather than what to think. I hope that you enjoy reading about some of your fellow alums as much as we did reconnecting with them.

Reaching Out, Reconnecting

Robert A. Lake Head of School

All the very best,

P.S. Please keep your letters and stories coming. To date, I have received many emails and letters about your personal school experiences. These too help to illuminate the school’s past in meaningful ways for me. I hope to see many of you at Reunion Weekend!

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Will Glaser ’83 likes to use both sides of his brain. He has been recognized as an innovative business leader in Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and is a creative, conceptual thinker who is equally comfortable working on complex mathematical problems as well communicating a product’s value proposition or running a management meeting. Named by Microtimes as one of the 100 Most Influential People in High Technology, Will has been the driving force behind a number of successful startup companies, where he has focused his attention on the integration and deployment of sophisticated new technologies.

Math,Music,More

anda conversation with will glaser ’83blakely atherton, parent of ’19, ’21, ’23

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Will, who earned a triple major in computer science, mathematics, and physics at Cornell University, has two daughters, Caroline ’21 and Julia ’23, in the Lower School at Head-Royce. And, in his free time, Will writes music and plays guitar in an amateur rock band in San Francisco called Third Date.

Will says that he has really had two careers over the course of his life: one working as a founder and principal of startup companies, and the other as a technology consultant, which is where he is focusing his energy now. In 1999, Will founded Pandora Media, the best known of his companies, and ran its operations and product development as COO and CTO. Pandora is the leading provider of online radio, with over 80 million registered users. Its website and smart phone apps offer FM-style radio that is customized to the individual taste of each listener. Will currently operates a consulting practice specializing in business startups, new product architectures, and high technology turn-arounds. He is frequently brought in to perform early design work for companies wishing to begin development of a new line of prod-ucts, or to restore structure to existing projects that have fallen behind schedule or gone over budget.

When asked about the biggest accomplishment in his career thus far, Will immediately answers that his daughters are at the top of the list, “My interaction with my kids is the most important part of my life.” As for his professional accomplishments, he says that his work at Pandora has been among the most rewarding. “I’m very proud of what we built at Pandora and the success that it’s having. It’s really great to see how well it’s doing in the market, and it’s so fun to overhear strangers talk about it in passing and to know how much they are enjoying it.”

Will has a rare combination of being an accomplished and capable sci-entist and also an effective communicator and business leader. He says,

“Even if I had never gone to Head-Royce I was still going to be a geek.

I was good at math and science, so that’s really the direction I would have taken no matter what. Head-Royce really broadened me in a way that I didn’t get at the time.” He notes that he had teachers who taught him how to write and think and express himself, which were “all things that I probably wasn’t destined to know given my propensity for math and science.” He believes firmly that he wouldn’t have had the com-munication skills that he now has without that training from HRS: “A huge component of what I do now hinges on effective communication, especially writing, which I learned in my English classes. In my line of work, math and technical knowledge are the most important skills to have, communication is second, and third is an ability to understand where you are, and to figure out where you want to go from there.” The combination of all of these skills has allowed him to be effective in creating products as well as managing teams.

Will has worked diligently throughout his career to perfect the art of making a plan to get from point A to point B. Early in his career, he received some sage advice from the well-known entrepreneur and investor Guy Kawasaki. Will was trying to raise money from venture capitalists in the early days of Pandora, and they asked him who had developed the sophisticated mathematics that made the product work. Will answered that he had created it, and they asked, “Well who are you then?” It was a humbling question. “The venture capitalists weren’t really impressed by me,” Will notes, “and [they] wondered if I’d got-ten it right.” Guy Kawasaki suggested to Will after that meeting that he should think about what he wanted that answer to be, and then to ensure that he had indeed gotten it right. Will admits, “I wanted the answer to be ‘Hawkins and Einstein,’ which I knew was impossible, so instead I did some research and found the most cited (peer reviewed) mathematician of the time, a professor at Stanford named Dave Donoho. I reached out to Professor Donoho, and I offered him shares in the company if he would help refine the math we used in

A Conversation with Will Glaser ’83Will at home with daughters Caroline and Julia

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Math, Music, and More

the product.” Professor Donoho reviewed their work, and loved Will’s math. He didn’t suggest changing anything and even offered Will one of his graduate students to work with him if he needed extra help. Will remembers, “The next time I got the question about who developed our math, I answered that Dave Donoho, the most cited mathematician of our time, had reviewed it and blessed it. That time, the story worked!”

When I asked Will if there’s anything in his career that he would have done differently, he said, “I have had so much fun, so it’s hard to think of anything that I would have changed.” He noted that he had once made a bad financial decision in one of his past ventures, and realizes now that he should have been a bit more patient with his decision to sell the company, which would have led to greater success in two or three more years. He says, “I had a bit of a ‘mid-life crisis’ after that and went on a 7-month motorcycle trip. I was only 28 years old at the time and had been carrying a lot of responsibility for a young man.”

The technology industry is one of constant change and innovation. I asked Will what he thought would change in the industry in the next 10–15 years. “I can make guesses,” he said, “but I can also guarantee that I’ll be wrong.” He remembers predicting in the ’80s that email would never catch on because it was too hard to use, so he’s reluctant to make too many more predictions. However, in looking back over the last four decades of technology innovation, Will notes that there was a big revolution in hardware in the ’70s, and then the ’80s were more about software productivity tools such as Lotus 123 word processors. Then, in the ’90s, the internet revolution started, which shifted every-thing online. He believes that the leading edge of innovation is moving away from electronics and into quality of service, and that the next

wave will be about usability. Will says, “I think the warning shot was the iPod. Before Apple introduced it, there were dozens of mp3 play-ers, but regular people didn’t really use them because they were too technical and funky. Apple revolutionized the space by making them approachable and easy to use. Then they did it again with the iPhone.” He believes that personal computers are still way too hard to use, and that you need to know a lot just to keep them running. He draws an analogy to the early days of automobile technology, “when each driver had to know things like when to open the choke on the carburetor.” Will believes that “everything is getting more usable, less serious, and less technical.” Pandora is a great example of that. “There is a lot of mu-sicological complexity and fancy arithmetic in Pandora, but it still has to be super simple on the screen and really smooth for the end user.” He maintains that companies are learning to make their products serve the user, by thinking better about the computer-human interface, and he believes that trend will continue.

As our conversation shifted to education, I asked Will who his favorite teacher was at HRS. “We had a lot of great teachers,” he reflected, “so I really can’t pick one favorite.” He did, however, note his English teach-ers David Enelow and Mary Frederick, who he says taught him how to write, and he praised his fantastic math teachers Lew Douglas and Vera Kerekes and his great Spanish teacher Doctor Albert Suarez. When I asked Will what his favorite non-academic activity at HRS had been, he told me about a club he started with some friends to make sure that they would appear to have well-rounded transcripts. Will used his creativity and entrepreneurism not only to join as many existing clubs as he could, but also by creating a new one, becoming president of the

“So many people do what is easy because it’s natural, but you need to look at what you’re doing now in the context of what you want in order to achieve your goals.”

will glaser ’83

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club, and then creating awards for all of the club members. Perhaps there was a bit of padding of the résumé, but he clearly loved the ability to create something out of nothing, and he’s convinced that this experi-ence helped him get accepted to Cornell. Will feels fortunate to have had so many excellent teachers at Head-Royce, and he now supports HRS on an annual basis because he’s “grateful for the education that they gave me.”

Will says that as a consultant, he gives specific situational advice all the time. If he were in a position to give advice in a broader sense to young people entering the technology field today, he would simply say “work hard and maintain perspective.” He also suggests that “students—or people at any stage in their career really—need to make sure that what they’re doing right now moves them toward their objectives.” He believes strongly that we all need to make daily steps that are informed by a long-term plan, and that our short-term actions need to flow from there. “So many people do what is easy because it’s natural,” Will main-tains, “but you need to look at what you’re doing now in the context of what you want in order to achieve your goals.” Will is a great example of the kind of innovation that can be achieved with that mix of hard work, focus, and perspective.

A Conversation with Will Glaser ’83

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From the time she saw the very first Space Shuttle launch as a first grader, Stephanie Gregg wanted to be an astronaut. But along the way, her path changed course. “After the Challenger explosion in 1986, I remember my friends saying to me: ‘So, do you still want to be an astronaut?’ My answer was resoundingly YES. Later, in 9th grade, Ms. Bobbi Barnier asked us all to do interviews for an English assignment. And of course, I wanted to interview astronauts. To my disappointment, I learned that most astronauts, once selected, have to wait about ten years before they can fly. It seemed so boring to have to wait that long. So I decided to switch to the engineering side, and I was on track. I figured maybe if I’m building the space station, they’ll have to send me up there to help!”

Adventuresin Space

stephanie gregg geoffrion ’92andrei ferrera · director of publications

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Today, Stephanie is an aerospace systems engineer at SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, CA, where she works on the design of a spacecraft called

“Dragon.” The capsule is launched into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida on top of the Falcon 9 rocket. Once in orbit and released from Falcon 9, Dragon docks with the International Space Station, deliv-ers supplies to the station’s crew, stays for 30 days, then returns fully loaded back to Earth. After the Space Shuttle retires, Dragon will be the only system in the world that can bring cargo back down to Earth. “Some people call it a taxi service for space,” Stephanie says. In December of last year, Dragon made history when it became the first spacecraft ever placed in orbit and recovered by a private company. SpaceX began a private/public partnership with NASA in 2006, when the company was awarded a contract for the commercial delivery of cargo to the International Space Station.

Stephanie’s role is multi-faceted, acting as a liaison between engineers at SpaceX and NASA and the space station. On the engineering side,

she ensures that all aspects of the interface between the Dragon capsule and the space station—such as rendezvous operations, attachment mechanisms, and electrical characteristics—are under-stood, implemented, and verified before flight.

“My work is mostly engineering, but with a good deal of communicat-ing as well,” she says. “We’re trying to bridge the gap between two very different organizations: SpaceX and NASA. A lot of my day-to-day work is making sure that both sides are working together. So I’m an engineer and also part translator.”

As the Space Shuttle program winds down (there are only two missions remaining), Stephanie’s role, and that of her colleagues at SpaceX, will become even more important, as the company will focus on transport-ing people. With a big transition on the horizon, the Dragon program will carry out at least 12 scheduled cargo missions to and from the space station as they prepare to carry astronauts. “It’s all part of con-tinuing human exploration of space,” Stephanie explains, “and to keep

The Dragon mission in December 2010 marked the first time a commercial company successfully recovered a spacecraft returning from Earth orbit. It is a feat previously performed by only six nations or government agencies: the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India, and the European Space Agency.

BackgroundI have a two-year-old son, Noa Maxime Geoffrion, and we're expecting a second child in May. I've been working more than full time at SpaceX (sometimes I have to finish work after the kid goes to bed). Weekends, however, are for rowing, yoga class, and family time. My husband, Bruno, is from Montreal and is also an engineer at SpaceX.

Greatest accomplishmentDecember 8, 2010: first flight of Dragon was a complete success! Launch from Cape Canaveral separated from the Falcon 9 rocket, orbited earth twice, entered the atmosphere, deployed para-chutes, and landed gently in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. We made history by being the first ever commercial spacecraft to return safely to Earth.

Skills needed to achieve successAlways ask questions, pay attention to details, have broad technical knowledge, and figure out why people want things (this helps you get what you want, too!).

Good advice you received“Generally, you don't need a Ph.D. in aerospace en-gineering. In fact it can make it harder to find a job. Stop at the master’s degree and then start getting industry experience as soon as you can.”

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the International Space Station running, supplies and people need to be shipped back and forth. After the Space Shuttle program ends, SpaceX will be one of only five spacecrafts that can provide cargo transportation to the space station. And of those five options, SpaceX is currently the only one that can bring cargo back to Earth.

One of the great features of the Dragon capsule is that it was designed from the very beginning to carry both people and cargo into space and back again. Stephanie notes that the experience with Dragon will help as they make the transition to people. “Instead of building a brand new system, we have the benefit of perfecting Dragon as a cargo system first.” Stephanie is excited at the prospect of tackling the engineering challenges that come with flying people to space.

“There is a whole host of new disciplines to learn when you’re working on long-duration human space flight, but that’s the fun stuff!”

Stephanie attended Princeton for her undergraduate work, earning a degree in mechanical engineering. She received a master’s in aerospace engineering from Stanford University.

Her first job in the industry was at Lockheed Martin. “Once I got the opportunity to go to SpaceX, I jumped. I’ve basically followed whatever was going to get me closer to human space flight.”

Stephanie believes that students should seek out opportunities to solve problems and learn from failures (their own and those of others) so that they can learn how to see them coming. “And learn new things outside of your comfort zone.”

Adventures in Space

“I’m so grateful for Mr. Craig Barrows, who taught the AP Physics class. He set me on the right path for engineering. All of the science and math I had at HRS was great preparation not only for getting me into college and taking all those engineering courses, but also for what I’m doing now.” stephanie gregg geoffrion ’92

Advice for students at Head-RoyceTake advantage of all the great teachers you have. Try to take the most advanced classes you can. Keep challeng-ing yourself; if you make it hard for yourself now, it will give you the confidence and credentials you’ll need later. Keep up on current events in the areas that interest you.

Be passionate about your goals. Changing the aerospace industry and finding new ways to fly people in space (or changing any part of our world for that matter) takes hard work. You will never have the energy to get it all done without that initial passion for the subject.

Funny memories of her time on campusI remember once on senior prank day, either in 1990 or 1991, the students managed to park a Volkswagen bug on the Upper School patio. To this day—and I’m an engineer—I have no idea how they did that!

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Green Beret:and

from a

Lieutenant Colonel Tom Searle ’78 of the United States Armed Forces and older brother of Mark Searle ’80, graduated from Princeton University in 1982 with a BSE (Civil Engineering), and received his PhD in military history from Duke University. Tom has had an interesting and varied career so far, commanding US Army tank units in Germany and Korea, serving as a Green Beret in the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Colombia, among other areas, researching and writing for a think tank and publishing books and articles on various subjects—mainly military.

Tom never expected to be the kind of person who would “bounce around between jobs.” His father has been a professor at UC Berkeley for more than 50 years, and is in fact the longest serving professor at the University. Tom says that he sees in his father’s career a “level of stability that the rest of us can’t fathom,” but that is what he grew up around and in the back of his mind he always expected that his own career would follow a similar path. The organizations with which Tom has worked are likely thrilled that he didn’t choose to stay in one place, because they’ve all undoubtedly benefited from his expertise and involvement.

I asked Tom what he’s doing now, and he said he’s currently working on a series of classified books and articles cover-ing ongoing counter-terrorist operations by US Special Operations Forces to pass on the knowledge gained from those operations to the special ops community. He quickly added, “So there actually isn’t much that I can say about those projects.” Looking back over his career, he notes one good piece of advice that came from a movie (the Rocky Horror Picture Show), “Don’t dream it; be it.” And he says, “I think I’ve managed to follow that advice.”

On a more serious note, Tom feels that the biggest ac-complishment of his career thus far was after 9/11 when he “managed to claw [his] way back onto active duty” with the military. At the time, Tom was a research fellow at the Air Force Research Institute, a think tank, and he was on reserve duty while working on his PhD. He said that after 9/11 there wasn’t any “real legitimate reason” for him to go on active duty, as he says, “who needs a 41-year-old (now a 50-year-old) Green Beret?” but he says he “really wanted to be part of the war, and so I went back in.” Tom says that “it has always been important to me to serve our country in war time, and I was really just afraid that the nation would go to war without me. I didn’t want to be left behind.” He notes that the military really “isn’t designed to take anyone back once they have left, so it was a struggle, but it ended up being a big accomplishment for me.”

When Tom thinks about the skills and attributes that have enabled him to accomplish all that he has through-out his career, he says the most important ones are

“persistence and unwillingness to accept good advice,” adding that “it’s really all sorts of things that have been factors. I do think that in the case of getting back into the military after 9/11, it was pure dogged determination to do what I wanted to do. I don’t necessarily recom-mend that others follow that path, but it is an attribute that has worked for me throughout my life. I could have made more money and been more famous following a different path, but I did what I loved doing.”

Tom has an interesting perspective on the future of the military as an historian and a military expert. He believes that most of the change that might have come in the industry in the next 10–15 years has already

occurred. He says that “The important thing about Obama’s presidency is that it gives the country a sense for which part of the global war on terrorism is bi-par-tisan and not just a product of George W. Bush and the Republicans.” He believes that “there are a lot of paral-lels” between Obama’s presidency and Eisenhower’s presidency, “which told us which part of the Cold War was bi-partisan and not just a product of Truman and the Democrats.” He explained that by the end of the Eisenhower administration, the United States had a sense for the left and right limits of American foreign policy under the Cold War. He says that “similarly, with Obama, we are finding out the limits on the left and on

Tom Searle ’78blakely atherton, parent of ’19, ’21, ’23

Mark and Tom Searle in 2009

PersistenceDetermination

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the right for the War on Terror.” He explains that both sides of the political spectrum were OK with some of the War on Terror policies under Bush, and that some of those policies continue today. But, he adds that “we’re finding out what parts were agreed upon because Bush wanted them, and what parts are common to both parties. The Patriot Act is one example. There is now consensus on it, so we know that it’s not going away.”

He also explains that while a few changes have taken place in the military in the past few years, it takes a while for the ripple effect to pass through the system.

“For example,” he notes, “we’re going to draw down in Afghanistan, but we aren’t really leaving.” He also says that he “will be surprised if we leave Iraq, but the US will likely still have 10,000 or more soldiers in the Gulf region in the future.” As an historian, Tom sees “the out-lines now of how our policies will evolve.” He believes that China is the “wild card on the world scene,” and that nuclear proliferation could make a difference in how our military evolves.

Tom attended HRS from 7th grade through 12th grade, and says that his favorite teachers were David Enelow and Vera Kerekes. He says, “They were both really great at challenging me and the other students intellectually.” And, he “mostly remembers that they worked us really hard.” For example, on the AP Calculus exam, there were 7 questions and it was graded on a scale of 1–5, so 5 out of 7 was the highest score allowed. His AP Calculus teacher, Ms. Kerekes, gave them the previous years’ tests at the end of the year to prepare for the exam, but she graded those practice tests on a scale of 1–7 instead of 1–5, so they were doing a lot of homework and she was giving them Bs and Cs on work that would get them

a maximum score on the AP exam. Tom said that at the end of his senior year, “when students know which college they are going to, and tend to not be very moti-vated, this approach seemed kind of rough.” But when they took the AP Calculus exam, most of them “had no trouble getting a 5 because we were so well prepared.” Tom remembers that “she held the stick pretty high for us to jump over,” and he values how much he was chal-lenged as a result.

I asked Tom what his favorite non-academic activity was at HRS, and he said, “I spent many years on some of the worst soccer teams in the history of kids’ soccer in the Bay Area.” While he notes that it was “definitely painful,” he says “there is also an educational value when your team is 1–11 in a season.” Tom was one of the better play-ers on his team, and says he learned that you don’t brag much about how great you are personally as a player when your team is doing terribly. He says he “definitely learned from that experience, but it wasn’t very fun.”

Tom says that he “really got a lot out of [his] time at HRS” and adds that he “needed a school like HRS” when he was young. As a child, Tom was mildly dyslexic, so he says he “read slowly and spelled badly, and really struggled in the early years of school because there was so much memorization and that was a real challenge” for him. Tom says that he “needed the nurturing and challenging environment” that HRS provided and adds that he “really hadn’t been a star academic performer until [he] got to HRS, where [he] was able to thrive.”

When Tom reflects back on his time at HRS, and thinks about advice for young people entering the military, he says that he “would advise them not to get too wrapped up in their performance early on.” As with many things,

Tom Searle ’78

he explains that you will have bad days, and “that’s understood.” He says that the “real differentiation career-wise will be made much later in your career, and will be based more on how much you learned from your earlier mistakes rather than how many mistakes you made early on.”

As for advice for students entering high school, Tom says, “Try to do more than you can. All the time.” He recommends that students “take full advantage of every opportunity and spread [themselves] thin.” He believes that so many individuals think “it’s all about GPA and taking the easiest road so that you can get the grades you’re after,” but he found immense value in stretching himself and trying new things. As an undergraduate at Princeton, Tom took courses in 17 different departments, and says that he “took huge course loads and played 3 sports and got a lot out of it.”

When I asked Tom how HRS prepared him for his professional life, he said, “I think it really encouraged a genuine love of learning and a desire to seek out intellectual challenges.” Tom has clearly sought those challenges, and through his perseverance and hard work, has had a lasting impact on our country and throughout the world.

The Royce Boys soccer team, 1977. Mark is in last row, far left. Tom is in last row, far right.

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Mark Searle ’80, the younger brother of Tom Searle ’78, is a business professional with more than 25 years of experience leading high‑growth technology organizations. Mark is currently CEO of Kinamik, a venture-backed enterprise software company that provides data integrity assur-ance. He has started and run a number of successful companies, including Log Savvy Corporation, a leading provider of hosted log data management and analysis software, where he was President, co-founder and CEO. Before Log Savvy he co-founded Addamark Technologies—now SenSage, Inc.—a pioneer in the SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) market space, which he led as CEO through its first several years. Mark holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an AB cum laude in English and Creative Writing from Princeton.

Mark was hired by Kinamik in September 2009 when the company had 10 months of working capital left, and he was essentially asked by the board to make a solid busi-ness assessment of whether or not the company would be able to succeed. Kinamik is based in Barcelona, Spain, and Mark said that the last time he took Spanish was when he was in high school at HRS. Fortunately for him, he took both the language and literature AP exams and still has enough of a solid foundation in the language to be able to communicate with his new team. In April 2010, the company made its first sale, and in December, they won the ICT prize at the 2010 Eurecan European Venture Contest, naming them as the top IT startup in all of Europe. Mark has had great success throughout his career, and one accomplishment that stands out for him was his ability to launch his former company Addamark Technologies in the wake of 9/11. In March 2002, just a

few months after the September 11th tragedy, Mark was able to raise $5 million in venture investment which enabled the company to continue its growth at a time when it was extremely challenging to find any investors interested in taking a risk. While that accomplishment was significant, Mark says that he is most proud of “the number of people with whom I have worked in the past who have said that they would work with me again.” Mark adds that you “need a team to do just about any-thing,” and at every company where he has worked, there were people who said they would do another proj-ect with him. I had the pleasure of working with Mark at a small start-up more than ten years ago, and can attest that there are dozens of talented individuals who would gladly work with him again.

Mark believes that his ability to “think clearly and ana-lytically about problems or challenges” combined with a high level of transparency in how he works with people has helped him succeed throughout his career. I asked him what he would change about his career, if he could have changed one thing, and he replied that he “didn’t think clearly around about what to do with one company when it was in trouble.” The company was on the verge of succeeding, and Mark believes that without the financial crisis of the past few years, it might have worked. He says that he “made a very emotional decision” about how to manage the company and he wishes that he hadn’t gotten outside of himself in that situation. He explained that it was challenging to keep his emotions in check when his desire for a company he founded to succeed was so strong.

The software industry is constantly evolving, and Mark believes that many things will change in the next 10–15 years, which is part of the reason that he went back to

the security market. Mark says, “If you think about it, every day more organizations are using more data to make increasingly important decisions.” He adds that when the people looking at the data don’t know whether or not the data is correct and legitimate, it could create problems. Mark believes that “as the trend of reliance on electronic data goes up, the level of concern and para-noia and action around it has to go up,” which creates a growth category for sure.

Mark attributes much of the foundation of his education and his success in business to his teachers at Head-Royce. When I asked him who his favorite teacher was, he said that it’s hard for him to pick just one! Not sur-prisingly, among his favorites were Doctor Suarez, Vera Kerekes, and David Enelow, three teachers also noted by Mark’s brother, Tom, as well as Will Glaser ’83. He says that “They all had a combination of very high standards with a measure of compassion and empathy.” Mark says

A Conversation with Mark Searle ’80

andEffective Leadership:

Clear Thinkingblakely atherton, parent of ’19, ’21, ’23

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Mark Searle ’80

that he became an English major in college because of Dr. Enelow. And, he adds that he wouldn’t be running an international company without the foundation of Spanish that he received at HRS. He told me that Dr. Enelow was “famous” for being “tough” (e.g. crossing out a full paragraph in a paper a student had written) and writing in the margin, “so what?” While that may sound harsh to some, Mark says that the high expectations of Dr. Enelow and his other teachers really helped all of the students to work harder and to learn the fundamentals. Mark says that “at an early age those three teach-ers demanded the kind of clear thinking that has been essential to me in my career.” While each taught their classes very differently, they all “promoted a kind of clarity and non-tolerance of obfuscation” that has been invaluable to him.

When asked what advice he would give to young people entering his field today, Mark said to “make sure you work for multiple companies with mul-tiple types of leaders.” He notes that you won’t know how to be an effective leader yourself unless you are exposed to different styles of management. He believes that working “with a few different people who have different styles is how you find your own style.” As for advice for current high school students, Mark says “pay attention to which subjects feel like work and which ones feel like fun and come easily.” He adds that “it will be true that some are easier for you and others are more work, and that’s worth noting.” Mark recommends following those subjects and projects that are exciting to you, because he believes that doing what you love will ultimately set you on a trajectory for success.

Mark enjoyed his time at Head-Royce because “in addition to the teachers and the analytical thinking I was taught, which was rare and valuable, it was a small enough place that everyone had a chance to be heard.” He says that students “don’t get out of HRS feeling like they don’t matter.” He enjoyed being able to play on sports teams and to not feel “lost in a big community.” Because “people cared what you thought,” he believes that young people who attend HRS are starting from a position of knowing that their opinions and attitude and skills are relevant. Mark says that he feels extremely lucky to have gone to all three schools he attended: Head-Royce, Princeton, and Harvard Business School. He believes that all of his schools, as well as his parents, gave him a foundation for his career and his life that have proven invaluable. He says he’s “so grateful” for all of the education to which he has been exposed, and that this “pure gratitude” manifests itself now as ongoing support for the Head-Royce Annual Fund. Mark says that he’s happy to be able to help provide a similar opportunity for today’s students.

Early on, Dr. Joyce Boykin ’68 sought a career in which she could make a difference, and one that would allow her to constantly grow intel‑lectually. She loves to help others—it’s in her DNA. For 22 years, she has been caring for her patients in the Internal Medicine Department at Kaiser Permanente in Riverside, California. Joyce sees anywhere between 18 and 23 patients a day. “My goal is to keep my patients out of the hospital,” she says. “And if they do go into the hospital, I try to maintain their care as best as I can when they are discharged from the hospital.” Joyce graduated from Anna Head School in 1968, and then attended USC for undergraduate work before going to medical school at Tufts University in Boston. She later earned a master’s in public health from UCLA.

Joyce was the first African American student to attend Anna Head for the full twelve years, up through gradu-ation (at the time, students started in first grade). When asked if she was treated differently than her fellow students, she says, “My classmates—they were cool, but some of their parents definitely were not cool. I was told once: ‘I’m sorry Joyce, I can’t invite you to my birthday, because my mother doesn’t want colored people at the house.’ Yet it was okay for their colored maid to be working in their home. But I was invited to almost all of the birthday parties.” Joyce was in third grade when the next African American girl enrolled. “I knew who all the African Americans were at the school and what grades they were in. By the time I graduated, there was at least one African American in every class.”

Thinking back to her school years, Joyce says, “One thing that impressed me about Anna Head School,” Joyce says,

Caring for Her CommunityJoyce Boykin ’68

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“was how, as students, we were exposed to languages” She tells great stories of French class with Madame Hull. “She was the bomb for teaching French! She would spend hours cutting out pictures of garments, food, furniture, or silverware; and she would paste these figures on small cards that we would pass around to each other around the classroom. She would come in and say: ‘Okay, today we’re setting the table.’ Her teaching was very interactive. Today, even if I haven’t used those words for years, I can still retrieve them.” She also took Latin for two years with Ms. Lamar and went on to earn the Summa Cum Laude and Magna Cum Laude awards for her study of Latin. After Heads, her interest in language continued to grow. By the time she was at USC, she was studying German. In the summer before her senior year, she traveled abroad to participate in an intensive language program at the Goethe Institute in Germany for two months. “That was a great experience for me, being with students from all over the world.” She later took one year of Arabic “because I was interested in learning a language with an entirely different alphabet.”

Joyce also remembers that Anna Head School helped her to develop an appreciation of classical music. “We would go into the city on Fridays to see the San Francisco Symphony. It wasn’t required for everyone, but it was an option. They would tell us that if we went to these matinee performances, we would get have ‘free dress’ and would not have to wear our uniforms, and we got to leave school early. I sure didn’t mind getting out of class early, AND we got to dress up. Of course you know what happened: I ended up growing to love classical music!” Joyce’s mother started subscribing to classical music records. “Every time they arrived in the mail, I would open them up and play them on the record player while I did my homework.”

Joyce credits her parents for paving the way for her career. “I’m so glad that my mother had the foresight to

start planning for my education early on. In 7th grade, they were already telling me that I was going to college. I wanted to go to UCLA, but my father wanted me to go to USC, because their class size was smaller than UCLA. When I look back, I realize how fortunate I am that my parents exposed me to so many things and sacrificed a lot to make sure I could graduate from Anna Head. I so appreciate it now.”

After college, Joyce worked at a community mental health center in Watts. “I gained an appreciation for the community, and the needs of the community. I went to a meeting held at Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital, which had just been built. I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is really nice. Here is a hospital for minorities in the community.’ I saw African American doctors walking around and tak-ing care of patients. And I wished that I could do that.”

At one point, Joyce thought she might pursue a master’s degree in social work. “Later, while watching television with some friends, I remember seeing a commercial that said: ‘If you are a minority and interested in pursuing a career in health, call this number.’ And I did. I was on my way.” She went back to school for two years at Cal State Los Angeles, where “I took almost nothing but lab scienc-es for two years.” She started applying to medical schools, and was accepted to UC San Francisco and schools in Minnesota and Boston. “Having lived in California all my life, I wanted to go out of state. I talked to someone who was going to Tufts University and having a good experi-ence there, so she encouraged me to apply.”

Joyce is proud of her many years caring for those in her community. In 1985, she was part of a core group of doctors who opened the Internal Medicine Department for Kaiser Permanente in Riverside. “When we started, of the four people in our group, I was the only female and the only African American in the department.” She notes that, in recent years, her practice has evolved

from internal medicine to also include geriatrics. “The patients are living longer. When I first started practic-ing, we hardly ever saw anyone in the 90s. Today, I have at least 20 patients who are in their 90s, and half of them are 95 or older! It could be due to the fact that we are able to better manage their illnesses and prolong their life and, hopefully, prolong their quality of life.”

She also spent time volunteering for a free clinic in Orange County. The experience proved to have a big impact on her. “Here were people who had no place else to go to get their medical care, and it was so rewarding to offer help and provide them with a critical need. I felt a strong sense of fulfillment when I was there.

Asked about giving advice for younger students beginning their careers, Joyce replied that “Whatever profession you pursue, it’s a good idea to have a mentor, someone who has gone down a similar path. And you should speak with people who already are working in a career that you are considering. They can tell you how to conduct yourself and the steps to take to achieve your goal. Making these kinds of connections and asking these questions will certainly pay off.”

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Kai Hasson ’02 and Nate Houghteling ’02

Even lifelong friends will occasionally fight. But in a boxing ring? Going at each other with hooks and uppercuts day after day? But that’s exactly what Head-Royce alums Nate Houghteling ’02 and Kai Hasson ’02 did for three months last fall as they trained for their latest web video adventure, a documentary series called White Collar Brawler. Over the course of more than twenty episodes, Nate and Kai trans-formed themselves from out-of-shape, white collar workers with desk jobs to amateur boxers. The series averaged 100,000 views a month on YouTube.

Huge in AsiaNate and Kai’s first big video adventure began in an unlikely place: Southeast Asia. Shortly after finishing college, the two friends felt the urge to do something different. “After we graduated,” Kai says, “we both really wanted to do some traveling.” Armed with just a camera and a laptop, they flew to Asia. Eight months later, their project was an Internet sensation. Their travels in Asia took them to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, China, and Mongolia. As they traveled, they filmed their adventures along the way, uploading their videos twice a week at internet cafes. “We were making content in real time, posting it along the way,” recalls Nate. “After a while, it became apparent to us that we were onto something special.” Their followers wondered: Where are they go-ing to go today? What will they see? “We started getting

andrei ferrera · director of publications

Web TKO

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emails from people around the world,” Nate recalls. “peo-ple we didn’t even know, saying things like ‘I’m in my office right now, and I’m jealous of what you’re doing—you’ve inspired me to travel.’ Huge in Asia really opened our eyes to this new form that was possible.” Three years later, nearly fifty episodes of Huge in Asia are still being viewed on a regular basis. At its peak, Huge in Asia was getting about 1,000 hits a day and they sold a number of their videos to Lonely Planet.

Back home in the Bay Area, and inspired by the suc-cess of Huge in Asia, Nate and Kai started their own company, Portal A Interactive in 2008. When they’re not making their own inspired web adventures, they create videos and commercials for corporations and smaller companies. They’ve even landed some top name clients, such as Google and Fox Sports. A few of their projects, like the 2008 Wal Street parody, Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Banker, went viral with more than one million views.

White Collar BrawlerTheir latest venture, White Collar Brawler, started with a chance visit. As Kai recalls, “One day I walked into a boxing gym just by chance, and I saw these guys sparring. Looking on the faces of these boxers after their rounds, they had a look of real accomplishment,

as if they had just completed a marathon. I thought this might be a great subject for a show. They had been looking for two boxers for the project, when their own trainer approached them with a radical idea: “You know, you guys should just fight each other—that’s what ev-eryone wants to see.” They agreed, and started training full-time. From October through December, they filmed and posted two episodes each week. Along the way, they proved that they also were savvy marketers, hosting a series of events to drum up interest in the White Collar Brawler project. One such happening was a benefit tour-nament billed as “Tech Beat Up” with employees from some of the top Bay Area tech companies like Google, Apple, and Zynga throwing punches at each other with oversize gloves in a bouncy ring. Finally, when it seemed as if everyone was watching, their three-round fight took place on December 10 and was edited for the final episode, shown on December 21.

Don’t Stop BelievingMeanwhile across the Bay, something else caught their attention. As Nate and Kai were training for their big boxing match, the San Francisco Giants were making a serious run for the playoffs, and a new project was born. They enlisted the help of a fellow Bay Area native, rapper friend Ashkon, who wrote Giants-themed lyrics to the #1 Journey hit, “Don’t Stop Believing.” They shot

video outside of AT&T Park, just a few hours before Game 1 of the Giants’ first playoff series against the Atlanta Braves. A few days later, just as Game 3 ended (with the Giants now ahead in the series 2 games to 1) they released the video, posting it to YouTube and sending it to some of the bigger web sites that cover the Giants. The entire project was completed in just four days. “The beauty of internet video is that things can happen so fast, and if you’re in the right place at the right time, you can really strike gold,” Kai says. “And we did. The timing couldn’t have been any better. You need to take the video where the people are. And if it ends up on some of the hot fan sites, you get a lot of eyeballs.” Don’t Stop Believing became the most watched YouTube video in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2010.

On the VanguardNate and Kai recognize that they are on the vanguard of something big, yet unknown. As Kai says, “I think web video is in a strange place right now, because the tradi-tional gate keepers of entertainment media are tentative to embrace it, because the business model hasn’t been proven yet. It’s sort of a free for all, which gives us a lot of freedom and artistic license.” “At the same time,” Nate continues, “we’re always trying to be very innovative. We don’t want to just make videos and throw them online; we want our videos to have a purpose, to inspire people to do

“I remember a professor telling us ‘if you ignore the Internet it will come back to bite you.’ We know now that the Internet is where the coolest stories are going to be told.” kai hasson ’02

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Fostering CreativityThinking back to their time at Head-Royce, both agree that the School helped grow their creative spirit. “We had a great experience at Head-Royce,” Nate comments. “It’s a place that is welcoming of new ideas. When I was gradu-ating from college, and everyone was ready to put their head down and go on some path, I was trying to think of creative ways that I could build my own career and take non-traditional routes.” According to Kai, “There is a good mixture at Head-Royce between preparing you for the real world and teaching you to think critically, and mixing that with a high value on creativity. Head-Royce teachers always want you to try new things, and think outside the box. For me, that teacher was Jeff Key, who really turned me on to film. He was such a huge influence. He made sure we had the latest technology in the classroom. And he always wanted us to experiment. In my senior year, one of my final films was a weird animation project based on In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak. Mr. Key encour-aged me to go beyond making simple shorts.”

Last summer, just as Rob Lake was starting as the Head of School, Nate attended an alumni reception hosted by the Lakes. “I remember that Rob read his speech off an iPad, so I knew he was down for the cause and was

a forward thinker in terms of technology. We’ve since talked about the possibilities of producing some kind of digital lecture series, or experimenting with a digital classroom, posting lectures online for students around the globe.”

What’s Next?Currently, Nate and Kai’s home base is Los Angeles. “We’re ‘taking meetings,’ as they say. Because there are so many agencies searching for talent, we realize that this is where we need to be,” Kai says. A third partner in Portal A Interactive, Zach Blume, handles all pub-licity and marketing for the projects. “We’re talking with people who are familiar with our work and have expressed interest in exploring future projects with us. It’s kind of funny at these meetings; we’re not exactly the picture of fashion, and in LA, everyone is so about fashion. You can imagine how it looks when these two Northern California kids walk into the fancy LA agen-cies.” In between meetings, they are still working on the occasional client videos. That is, until the next big web video adventure comes along. Whatever that adventure turns out to be, we will be watching, along with their other 20,000+ followers all over the web.

“We’re always trying to be very innovative. We don’t want to just make videos and throw them online; we want our videos to have a purpose, to inspire people to do things. And we want people to use the tools of the internet and the web to really lift up the story and make it unique.” nate houghteling ’02

Nate and Kai met in elementary school, their friendship continued at Head-Royce, and during their senior year in college, though miles apart, they began making web projects together. Nate studied history and literature at Harvard; Kai was a film studies major at Yale. For a while, they each lived a 9-to-5 lifestyle. Nate worked for Newscorp in New York City and Kai worked for Current TV, a public affairs channel in San Francisco.

things. And we want people to use the tools of the internet and the web to really lift up the story and make it unique.” In their search for content, they admit that they are drawn to the kinds of things that might be on the periphery of pop culture; something that has a ‘this could only happen on the web’ quality to it. Kai says, “I remember a professor at Yale, telling us ‘if you ignore the Internet it will come back to bite you.’ We know now that the Internet is where the coolest stories are going to be told.”

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Ty Ahmad‑Taylor ’86 has been a game changer in technology for a long time. For starters, he holds ten patents in the fields of television and web product development. With more than 15 years of experience in designing for broadband, 14 years in interactive television, and 20 years in information design, Ty is a recognized authority in creating deeply engaging experiences for viewers across multiple screens. 

Ty’s latest endeavor is FanFeedr, a web site that allows sports fans to get real-time personalized news about their favorite sports, teams, and players. The site aggregates news, videos, blogs, and tweets so that users can custom-ize what content they see.

Whether your favorite teams are the Boston Red Sox and Celtics, or the Los Angeles Dodgers and Lakers, the FanFeedr site will take your personal profile and pull all the relevant, late-breaking news on these teams and their players. “We know that people have become accustomed to real-time consumption,” Ty says. “There’s a greater push for immediacy than ever before, not just with scores and stats, but with the whisper currency of scandal and trades. Fans want to know what’s happening up to the minute, and at any hour of the day. FanFeedr provides that. And, they’re getting the full story, as opposed to the official feeds from, say, Major League Baseball or the NBA.”

By utilizing the two biggest social media channels, Facebook and Twitter, the site allows the user to con-nect with their friends—and fellow sports nuts—to see what news they’re following. They can feed their own customized content directly to their Facebook and Twitter accounts or to their Google and mobile applications, where they can easily comment on, rate, or share any articles they’ve read. During the NFL playoffs this past winter, site traffic went up fifty percent from December to January. And the company’s total number of Twitter fol-lowers has doubled in the last six months. Today, the site has more than one million users.

Prior to starting FanFeedr in 2008, Ty was the Senior Vice President for Strategy and Product Development at MTV Networks’ Music & Logo Group, where he oversaw the software development and strategy for MTV, VH1, CMT and Logo.

Throughout his career, Ty has worked for large media and tech firms, and he has worked for small start-ups. In 1996, he became the Creative Director of a start-up called the @Home Network, the very first broadband internet company in the world. He oversaw a staff of art directors, technical art directors, freelance designers, and the video production team. The company built the first three broad-band portals in the U.S. Those three clients were none other than Cox, AT&T Broadband, and Comcast.

During summers after college, Ty was doing design jobs when “I talked my way into a job at the New York Times. I had some basic Macintosh skills from editing The Harbinger, the School newspaper, at Head-Royce.” He worked as a graphics editor at the New York Times for five years, where he specialized in infographics, a blend of information design, reporting, database analysis, and cartography. He reported remotely on the Gulf War, and covered the riots in Los Angeles, as well as the stand-off in Waco, Texas, and was in Oklahoma City just hours after the bombing, creating schematics of the federal building and the surrounding area. “This was all before Google maps,” he says.

Even back in 1985, as a senior at Head-Royce, Ty was a mover in technology. As the editor of the student newspaper, he led the charge to switch to Macintosh computers for produc-ing the paper. “For six months we were without a teacher, with Mrs. Dawes out on maternity leave, but we pushed out the paper by ourselves. And in doing so, we got the school on the path to using Macs for desktop publishing.”

Ty is proud of his five years studying Latin at Head-Royce. “Reading The Iliad in the original tongue is still one of the highlights of my life. And I remember Mr. Barankin had

Ty Ahmad-Taylor is founder and CEO of FanFeedr. He graduated Cum Laude from Haverford College with an economics degree and earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Sports Fix

1. Interactive user interface for television,

published May 1, 2003

2. Method and system for providing an electronic

programming guide, published Oct 20, 2005

3. Method and system for providing on-demand

viewing, published Oct 20, 2005

4. Method and system of recommending television

programs, filed in 2005

5. Method of system of distributing media content

and generating playlists, filed in 2005

6. Method and system of providing user interface,

published Oct 12, 2006

7. Recommendations embedded in metadata

for an asset, filed in 2006

8. Tracking usage of a portable media device,

filed in 2006

9. Hardware, case, and packaging specification

for an advanced digital TV set-top box,

filed in 2007

10. Method and system for delivering TV ads to an

internet website for review, provisional in 2007

Ty’s Patents

us stage Dante’s Inferno in the boiler room next to the pool. Things like that are powerful—the opportunity to re-think learning and how we approach it.”

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When David Sternberg, at the age of 22, took a job in event marketing with the Oakland‑Alameda County Coliseum, little could he have imagined that one day he would be running the preeminent Olympic sports channel in the country. Today, David is the CEO of Universal Sports Network, a partnership between NBC Sports and InterMedia Partners that includes the Universal Sports Television Network and the UniversalSports.com web site. David joined the company in April 2010, succeeding the company’s founder, and David now oversees all aspects of the network’s operations, including advertising sales, distribution, programming, production, and marketing.

Prior to Universal Sports, David spent nearly 12 years at FOX Cable Networks in Los Angeles. For four years, he served as Vice President and General Manager for FOX Sports International, a division of networks in Latin American, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Then, in 2002, David was put in charge of a fast growing portfolio of domestic networks at FOX, including Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Deportes (a Spanish language service), and Fuel TV, an extreme sports channel.

“Growing up as a sports fan, I always thought that it might be a fun field to go into someday,” David says. “And right after college, I was fortunate to get my first exposure to the professional sports world working at the Coliseum. It wasn’t glamorous—it was entry level—but you can imagine how excited I was to be at the ballpark every day. And now to be doing this has been a real labor of love because it’s so easy for me to relate to the content.”

Much of David’s work right now is focused on the upcoming Olympics in London in 2012. “We’ll cover all the events that lead up to the games, such as the regional and world championships,” he explains. “We also cover some of the Olympic trials, where the U.S. teams are determined. And then during the games themselves, our network will be doing a lot of on-site news and informational coverage. Even though the games themselves will be broadcast on the NBC network, Universal Sports will have a strong presence in London throughout the 2012 games.”

Like technology, the world of cable television is also a very fast moving business. When asked about how the industry might change in the near future, David responded that “It’s very hard to predict because things are changing so rapidly. But there’s no question that we are no longer in the TV business; we are in the sports content business. We have to make sure that the content we create—whether it’s live sports events or news programs or non-event shows about athletes—are made available to consumers on whatever technological devices are available. And that’s everything from mobile phones to tablets, iPads, and even devices that have yet to be invented. We have to be aware of what all of those developments are and be able to push our content out in all of those places and in a format that makes sense. Nobody has time to watch a two-hour soccer game on a two-inch cell phone screen, but they might want to see a clip of a great goal that lasts 30 seconds. We need to be able to push that out. And maybe for someone who does have an iPad, maybe it is feasible to watch an entire soccer match. It’s all about anticipating where consumer electronics are going, and making sure we’re producing content in the right way, and also that we’re acquiring the necessary rights to do all that.”

In high school at Head-Royce, David played basketball and also was on the swim team. “I was co-captain my senior year and our coach was Barney Howard, who was such a fantastic, energetic coach. We won the league championship in swimming and our medley relay team went to the North Coast Section state championship.” After Head-Royce, David attended Princeton University, where he joined the student newspaper and ultimately, landed the job of sports editor. He graduated in 1990 with a degree in comparative literature. After working for the Oakland Coliseum for a few years, he moved to Los Angeles where, from 1994 to 1996, he attended business school at UCLA. While he was at UCLA, he had an internship with FOX, on the movie side of their business, but got to know the people at FOX Sports very well. “After business school, I went into management consulting,” he says. “Although they never bought any consulting services from my company, FOX Sports ended up hiring me.”

The Sporting Life

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We asked David how Head-Royce may have impacted his professional path. “There are a few things that really stand out in my mind that I’m sure are common for everyone who went there—above all, having the ability to think critically and write proficiently. This was a tremendous advantage going to college and beyond. Those are skills that nobody teaches better than Head-Royce. It was a lot of work at the time, but it was fantastic preparation for later. I really felt that I had a leg up on my classmates in college.”

David says that Head-Royce also awakened in him an interest to study foreign languages. “Thanks to Doctor (Albert) Suarez, I really found a calling to study languages. I took all of the AP classes and learned so much about Spanish literature. I studied more languages in college. And it has carried over into my professional life and was a big factor for me getting into the international side of this business. It was a huge benefit to conduct business in Latin America for four years speaking fluent Spanish.”

For younger people who are pursuing careers in the media today, David believes that there are more opportunities now than there have even been. “That’s because the barriers for entry into this industry have completely fallen away. Anybody with an idea and a computer can basically become part of the media, which is a phenomenal develop-ment. Thinking back to when I was trying to break into this business, it was very much a guild type mentality, with a few big players in each category: you had television, radio, and print. And that was it. That’s not the case anymore. Now there is so much more opportunity, especially in digital media.”

David is pleased to report that he is still in touch with many of his friends and classmates from his Head-Royce days. “There were only about 60 of us in our class, and we were a close-knit group. It’s always nice to see everyone at the reunions, and I’m looking forward to our big 25th reunion this spring!”

“Above all, having the ability to think critically and write proficiently—this was a tremendous advantage going to college and beyond. Those are skills that nobody teaches better than Head-Royce.”david sternberg ’86

David with his family: wife Julie and children Sarah, Brian, and Nicole.

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Q. Tell us about your position at Google.I am a Contracts Manager on the legal team at Google. I negotiate licensing agreements with map data and other content providers for the data that goes into various Google products, including Google Maps and Google Earth. I’ve been working out of our U.S. headquarters for four years but I have just relocated permanently to our London office, where I recently spent six months on a temporary assignment.

At the time of my hire, I’d read somewhere that Google receives over 13,000 applications per month (I understand that number is much higher now), so I was surprised that I was selected for an interview after randomly applying online. I was living in Paris at the time so my first few rounds of interviews were by phone. It wasn’t until I moved back to the states and actually started working here that I realized what an amazing opportunity a career at Google affords you.

Q. What do you feel has been the biggest accomplishment of your career?At Google, I’ve been able to design the kind of job that is perfect for me and I’m blessed to be able to have done that even before I’ve turned 30.

Q. What are the skills and attributes that you think allowed you to accomplish all that you have accomplished?

That old adage: “leave well enough alone” could not be less true for my life. I’ve learned never to leave well enough alone—that things can always be better. I know that only I have the power to change my life and I have not been shy about insisting on pursuing that which I feel is best for me, even if it means creating a path that has not been followed by others before.

Q. What do you see changing in your industry in the next 10–15 years?I straddle two worlds: the more traditional legal industry and the cutting edge technology field. On the legal side, Google is involved in areas of law that have not really been tested in this country in the past, so I am actually able to see the law change as technology changes. On the technology side, our industry is ever-changing. The many fast-growing companies in Silicon Valley show us that the manner in which we all interact with each other and with computers and internet technology will continue to look vastly different over time. Fifteen years ago no one could have told me that I would be able to look up a photo of my house on a map online and today Google Street View lets me do just that. The possibilities for the next 15 years are endless.

Q. Who was your favorite teacher at HRS and why?That’s a hard question! I have to say, my favorite HRS teacher wasn’t actually a teacher. She was our former

college counselor, Sharon Cravanas. Her door was always open. For students of color, Head-Royce was sometimes a challenging environment; Ms. Cravanas recognized that and served as a surrogate mom to all of us during school hours. She really did her best to help us navigate a sometimes unfamiliar world with dignity and humor. Most of my teachers were wonder-ful. Madame Shirvani cultivated my love for the French language (I later minored in it in college) and turned me into a lifelong Francophile (I’ve lived in France twice so far). I was in Mr. Reinke’s first history class, and he was able to frame historical discussions about sensitive topics such as race relations and slavery in a sensitive and thoughtful way, which I have always appreciated. And Mr. Mullen, in his Ethics and Philosophy and Comparative Religions classes, challenged me to ques-tion my own beliefs and taught me how to challenge others’ beliefs in a critical yet respectful way.

Q. What is the one piece of advice you’d give to young people entering your field?To any young people who are looking to become involved in a field that allows them to express their creativity, I would say to keep your eyes open. I’ve found that there are so many ways to be creative in any field. Internet technology is one of the most exciting fields of work today. Many of the most popular Google products were created by engineers who had cool ideas for what might be a fun new Google product, and they tinkered with them during their 20% time (Google allows its employees to spend 20% of their work day work-ing on anything that interests them. I spend my 20% time working with certain Google Employee Resource Groups on initiatives such as mentoring, recruiting, and employee retention). In my role on the legal team, I draft and negotiate various licensing agreements and I find the drafting aspect to be a fulfilling way to express my creative side. In short, my advice is to be open. You never know where you will find the most fulfillment in your life.

Keeping Your Eyes Open q & a with corinne dixon ’99Sisters Corinne ’99 and Nicole Dixon ’98, and Tsion Ketema ’98 have been lifelong friends. This year, the three alumnae are re-connecting with Head-Royce. In January, they were on campus visiting new Head of School Rob Lake and meeting with student members of the Black Student Union. We recently talked with the three graduates about their professional careers, their time at Head-Royce, and their plans for Kaleidoscope, an affinity group for HRS alumni of color.

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Q. Overall, how did Head-Royce help prepare you for college and your professional life?Head-Royce was the best possible prepara-tion for every subsequent part of my life. On a personal level, it is such a small environment that it is impossible to hide in the background. I was really forced to overcome my shyness and learn to speak up for myself. My involvement with the student association groups provided a foundation for my eternal passion to explore race relations and recruiting and retention of people of color in schools and the workplace. This is work that I continue to do at Google to this day. And on an academic level, Head-Royce was incredibly challenging. When I went to col-lege, I sailed through my English classes. And so many of my high school classes were taught in the Socratic method that I already knew how to present my ideas in a clear and articulate way. Head-Royce essentially treats its students as young adults so I did not have to learn to behave like an adult when I started working. I was used to working alongside people in high positions so I had no intimidation about asserting my ideas at work. I may not have appreciated it enough while I attended, but I believe Head-Royce is the kind of place that you instantly appreciate as soon as you leave. I could not have had a better education, and I thank my mother every day for enrolling me.

q & a with nicole dixon ’98

Q. Can you tell me about your position as a supervising teacher at Nia House? I am Head Teacher at Nia House Learning Center, a Montessori School in Berkeley, a 35-year-old non-profit serving a diverse community of families and providing scholarships to families who would ordinarily not have access to Montessori education. Well into my sixth year, I am still one of the newer additions to the school. We are proud to have teachers with over 20 years of experience at Nia House. I am in my second year as head teacher, and am responsible for overseeing the implementation of the curriculum, the progress of children, communications with par-ents, and monitoring staff. In addition, I am the staff representative on the Board of Directors.

I am also a practicing visual artist, and I facilitate the monthly Family Day art workshops at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD) in San Francisco. I am participating in the ProArts East Bay Open Studios in June, and I am in an exhibition in Vallejo, CA later this month.

Q. Can you talk about the path that brought you to teaching and Nia House? Did you pursue education or a teaching credential in college?I was an artist while at Head-Royce and was a Studio Art major and Women’s Studies minor at Spelman College (2002) in Atlanta. But coming from a big family, I was also always involved in childcare and teaching on some level since I was a young girl. Even my Head-Royce senior project was interning at the preschool I attended as a child. During college, I studied abroad for over a year in Botswana and Nepal, and I was even a guest art teacher at a desert school in the Kalahari. When I moved back to California after getting married in 2004, my first instinct was to apply

for teaching positions, and I was hired as an assistant teacher at Nia House. I was also able to lead the art curriculum for the children. They paid for my educa-tion and after two years of rigorous work, I received my Montessori Teaching Credential for Preschool. So, I am a Montessori teacher by day, and an artist by night.

Q. What was your favorite non-academic activity at HRS?I loved art with Jill Erickson, and free periods with friends.

Q. What is one piece of advice you would give to young people entering your field?Be prepared to: have tiny people make you confront your most deeply hidden shortcomings on a daily basis, work harder than you ever have to grow toward your highest self, and burst at the seams with laughter, pride, awe, and gratitude as earth’s most precious be-ings inspire you, test you, and snuggle you all day long.

Q. What is one piece of advice that YOU received that you are grateful for?“This too shall pass.” All adolescent dramas are tem-porary. We grow up, wounds heal, and life goes on.

Q. Overall, how did Head-Royce help prepare you for your professional life?Not only did HRS prepare me for my current pro-fession, but it gave me the skills to excel in any profession I choose—critical thinking, problem- solving, perseverance, and resilience.

Q. Overall, how did Head-Royce help prepare you for your college and graduate studies?HRS prepared me for college so thoroughly that both my sister and I received full-ride scholarships to our #1 choice universities, and graduated with honors. I thank HRS, because I’ve never had to pay off student loans.

Teacher by Day, Artist by Night

Nicole ’98 and Corinne Dixon ’99

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Q. Please tell us about your position at Beth Israel Hospital.I am currently a fourth year medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, pursuing a residency in obstetrics and gynecology.

Q. What do you feel has been the biggest accomp