Moments of: The Blog
The View From Here: Service
by Janet Durgin, Head of School
My mentor and former head of school Jacqueline Smethurst taught me never to forget that “the head of school serves at the pleasure of the board.” What I took from her admonition was to know that the school was never about me; that the school would go on long after my time. I have tried to lead in that way, eschewing the limelight for the most part, choosing to put our students and amazing staffulty front and center, other than during the inevitably public opening and closing ceremonies of the school year and, of course, during board meetings!
Yesterday was the last board meeting of the year and I presented my final report. Twenty years and 210 board meetings; I counted. During this time I have served six board chairs and learned so much from each; I am happy to say that I count them all as good friends. I have had the privilege to work with almost 70 trustees over the years, all of whom loved the school and gave their all.
One of the things I have loved the most about my relationship with the board is experiencing the cyclical nature of the school embodied by the rotating membership of the board. Over twenty years, we have seen engaged parents deepen their engagement by joining, we have seen community members with no familial relationship to the school join and help us broaden our connections in the North Bay, and in the past number of years, we have begun to see alumni returning to give back to the school through service on the board. At yesterday’s meeting we celebrated the service of two long-serving members and welcomed four outstanding new trustees, including two alumni from our founding years.
Thank You!
Susie Hagemeister (Luke Martin ‘13 and Shane Martin‘16) has been an extraordinarily engaged parent, and ultimately trustee, getting involved during her son Luke’s freshman year. She served as freshman and sophomore class representative and eventually SAPA President. She chaired the BNO Buy-In Party committee and purchased spots, attending dozens of those events, and she and her husband Mark hosted many class socials and prospective parents events. Susie cultivated both funds and soil for the school as chair of the Annual Fund, and founder of the SAPA garden committee respectively. As if that weren’t enough, Susie joined the board in 2014 where she has been a member of the Buildings and Grounds, Advancement, Capital Campaign, and COT (trustee nominating) committees. Perhaps Susie’s most lasting legacy are the Sonoma Academy Sustainability Guidelines which she and fellow trustee Rick Theis created to shape policy and decisions. The impact of Susie’s work will be felt for generations: it will show up as runners and as volunteers, seeds carried and dropped throughout our campus, to bloom in the health and wellbeing of our students now and in the future.
Rick Theis
Rick joined the board in 2008 and served on the Advancement, COT, Campaign, Compensation, and Executive committees. He served as Chair of the Buildings and Grounds Committee—helping to write the SA Sustainability Guidelines. He was also a member of the Construction Management Team, which shepherded the building of the Janet Durgin Guild and Commons. Thanks to Rick’s dogged determination, the G&C has won over a dozen awards for design and sustainability, and earned Leed Platinum status. Rick has touched our campus in so many ways, helping to research and then build Ziemer Field, one of the greenest fields on the west coast, and installing the watering station on the east side of the gym which burbles forth with filtered water on demand for our thirsty athletes, akin to Rick’s unslacking generosity, kindness, and passion for making a difference. Rick has been a steward of the very ground our school stands upon, as well as a steward of our students, whom, I am certain have been inspired by Rick’s example to do the same.
Welcome!
Nick Folly ’04
Nick says that the experience of being one of our founding students, a member of our very first graduating class of 2004, shaped who he is today. “We were encouraged, if not obligated to dream big about the school we wanted to create and we helped build a lasting culture of learning, leadership, and creativity.” My husband John remembers that in those early years, if our basketball team scored 50 points, 48 of them would have been Nick’s!
Nick says that he took that entrepreneurial spirit with him when he went to Columbia University and subsequently Columbia Law School, where he was an editor on the Columbia Journal of Race and Law and captain of the basketball team. After passing New York’s bar exam, Nick spent two years working for a leading law firm in New York City where he worked on challenging and cutting-edge cases. He is currently an Assistant United States Attorney, of the Southern District of New York, where he has worked on cases including the JP Morgan London Whale scandal and a six-week criminal trial that was one of the largest fraud cases in New York City history.
Diego Canales ’10
Diego bridged both eras of school founding, starting at the LBC and graduating from our new campus in 2010. Like Nick, he was a founder at heart, helping to launch our Speech and Debate program and our inaugural track and field team. He was also a founding member of the Schools for Kabul student club, raising funds to build a school in Afghanistan,.
Diego earned a BS and MSE from Stanford. In an entrepreneurship class there, he and two classmates developed a concept that turned into ClearMetal, a start-up based in the financial district in San Francisco (Diego is also Head of Engineering), partially funded by Tom Steyer’s TomKate Center for Sustainable Energy. ClearMetal takes the “best of what humans do and the best of AI” to address complex operational problems in global supply chains and shipping.
Diego already had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life when he gave his senior speech. “I want to help make the world into a better place that improves upon the mistakes we have made. I want to be remembered as a person who made a difference.”
Rebecca Fuette (Luke ’21, Zach ‘24, and Jonas, aged 13)
Rebecca is currently the Vice President of SAPA and has chaired the BNO Buy-In Party committee for the last two years. Rebecca works as a Bilingual Instructional Assistant at McKinley School in Petaluma and has been the owner of a boutique clothing store catering to expecting mothers in Albuquerque, NM. Rebecca graduated from the University of New Mexico. On the “Why I Give” page of our website, Rebecca says that, “We still get goosebumps when we walk up the SA steps and sometimes we just can't believe our son gets to go to school here! We are so incredibly blessed to be part of the Sonoma Academy community, and we find it a privilege to be able to give back.”
John Lee (Archie ’22)
John brings both marketing and financial expertise, having served as a marketing professional in the technology industry and now as the managing partner and financial advisor at Vantage Wealth Management in San Mateo. Though John and his wife, Karen Murphy, live in Santa Rosa, John is originally from Iowa (and proud of it), having come to California to be a student at Stanford. John served on the Board of Trustees at St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Oakland when his son Archie was a student there. John is a founding member of the SA Dens Club and an ardent fan of college basketball, stopping just short, he says, of wearing funny wigs and painting his chest.
It has been my great honor to serve this board and this school for what has been the adventure of my lifetime.
Sonoma Academy Is...
...the only private, independent, college preparatory high school in Sonoma County. On our beautiful campus nestled at the base of Taylor Mountain in Southeastern Santa Rosa, our students are able to explore their interests and passions in a rigorous and inspiring environment that develops a lifelong love of learning and prepares them for college and beyond.
Sonoma Academy admits students of any race, color, religion, ethnicity or national origin, citizenship, gender or gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, or disability, to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. The school does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity or national origin, citizenship, gender or gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, or disability in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and tuition assistance programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.
