This weekend marks one of my favorites of the school year – Alumni Weekend. I always enjoy meeting and speaking with alums – hearing their fond memories of their time at PT and learning about their deep and meaningful connections with classmates and faculty.

I am particularly looking forward to Friday evening when we will honor the Park Tudor Distinguished Alumni and Young Alumni Impact Award recipients. This is always such a special night. It is not only impressive to hear about the many accomplishments of the award recipients but also truly heartwarming to listen to the tributes from family, friends, and former teachers. In short, this evening reaffirms the meaningful work we do each day at Park Tudor, reminding us that our efforts have a lasting, positive impact for years to come. 

This year’s honorees are Distinguished Alumni Erik Ochsner ‘89 and Kate Lehman Trumbull ‘00, and Young Alumni Impact Award recipient Pavani Peri ‘16. Erik has enjoyed an exceptional career as an orchestra conductor, earning accolades for his performances around the world – particularly leading film orchestras. Kate Trumbull has excelled in marketing and advertising; she is currently Global Chief Marketing Officer for Domino’s Pizza. And despite her young age, Pavani is already making her mark as co-founder of a rapidly growing tech start-up that she began working on as a student at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. While all three of these honorees have pursued very different paths, they all speak about their time at Park Tudor as instrumental in shaping their future success. I am also pleased to report that Upper School students will hear from Pavani during Friday morning’s Cum Laude Assembly, and from Kate during a “lunch and learn” session (featuring Domino’s Pizza, of course!)

We continue to look for opportunities to connect our students with our many exceptional alumni. To that end, we have created an online gallery of notable alumni to feature recipients of the Distinguished Alumni and Young Alumni Impact Awards, as well as many of the alums that have been featured through the years in the Phoenix alumni magazine. We are unveiling the gallery to alums at Saturday afternoon’s reception, but I invite you to take a sneak peek; it’s an impressive group!

I hope to see many of you at this weekend’s events!

My best,

Chris Front