Alumni Profiles & Trailblazers
Alumni Profiles
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Lucy Horton '97
How do you train for a global pandemic? It’s a nightmarish scenario–a relentless cycle of seriously ill patients create an unmatched sense of urgency. As an Infectious Disease Specialist at UC San Diego, Lucy’s deep knowledge of virology and its impact on human life launched her to the frontlines of a global health crisis. And, in many ways, Lucy has spent her entire career preparing for this moment.Read More
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Stefan Karpinski '92
Read MoreCreating a New LanguageLuke Morris - Class of 2019Editor-in-Chief of the Grace Gazette
Stefan Karpinsky is a co-creator of the Julia programming language; Chief Open Source Officer at Julia Computing, and a research engineer for Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment at NYU. He and his wife, Katherine Keane, live in the East Village.
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Alex Ambrose '94
Curating the sound of a new generationRead MoreJiwon Simpkins - Class of 2019Culture Editor of the Grace Gazette
In the age of high-speed internet streaming, popular music is determined by the choices the listeners make. Songs and artists can become instantly popular across the globe, which allows us, the consumer, to shape our own mainstream.
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Rebecca Naomi Jones '95
Read MoreActress, singer, performer
Paper magazine said that Rebecca Naomi Jones was "the girl to call when there's a cooler-than-thou musical in town." Looking at her appearances in some of the hottest rock musicals around, including "Murder Ballad," "Passing Strange," Green Day's "American Idiot," and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” the fact seems hard to deny.
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Claude Kelly '95
Read MoreThree-time Grammy NomineeClaude Kelly ’95 has three Grammy nominations under his belt and has written hits for a host of pop stars including Miley Cyrus, Bruno Mars, Britney Spears, Jessie J, Kelly Clarkson and Adam Lambert. Music legends Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson have recorded his songs.
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Valerie Paley '75
Read MoreHistorian
Valerie Paley ’75, makes history with her work at the New York Historical Society, which reopened in November. GCS caught up with Valerie to discuss her journey from ballet dancer to graphic designer to a doctorate in history, and her work on these new exhibitions.
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Emi Knafo '96
Read MoreZoological Veterinarian
Surgery on a goldfish (it needed bladder repair). Mending the wing of a great blue heron (humeral osteotomy). Dental exams and pregnancy checks on endangered zebras. Sterilizing Galapagos tortoises to help restore a delicate ecosystem on Pinta Island. Monitoring the health of Cape buffalo and wildebeests in South Africa. Any of these are all in a day’s work for Emi Knafo ’96.
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Nkem Oghedo ’04
Nkem has always loved cooking and has enjoyed watching cooking shows on the Food Network since she was a child. She noticed that there was a clear lack of representation for people of color and women on these shows. As a woman of Nigerian descent and a daughter of immigrants, Nkem has appreciated the food of fellow people of color with cuisines engaged in rich flavor and spice.Read More
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Lloyd Wesley Perkins '43
Read MoreA View from Bikini Atoll, 1946Jason McDonald, HistoryAt the beginning of the atomic age, the United States Navy was anxious to show that naval warfare still had relevance. Desperate to prove that their ships could survive atomic attack, the U.S. armed forces gathered a fleet that included obsolete battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, surrendered German and Japanese warships and numerous auxiliary and amphibious vessels, to use as targets for nuclear explosions at Bikini Atoll, 2,500 miles south-southwest of Pearl Harbor, in July 1946.
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Andy Bragen '85 and Charles Linehan '85
Read MoreClass of '85 Double FeatureOld friends Andy Bragen and Charlie Linehan, whose lives have gone in very different directions since they were classmates at Grace, remain lifelong friends. The two men, a playwright and an attorney, sat down to interview each other for GCS News.
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Eva Chen '93
by Caitlin Leffel '94Read More
Creative Director, BeachMint's Lucky Group
Eva Chen has been called the first editor-in-chief of her generation. In 2013, Anna Wintour, Condé Nast's artistic director and the editor-in-chief of Vogue, tapped her to take over as editor-in-chief of Lucky, the publisher's fourteen-year-old shopping magazine.
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Abigail Kamen Holland ‘81
Reinventing a School LibraryRead More
A guide to using the Internet that was published in 1997…a book on how to drive, written for a British audience…a spelling primer from the 1920s. What do these books have in common? Not much, except they were all found on the dusty shelves of the library at Park East High School, where I spent last year as an intern as part of my training to become a school librarian.
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Kit Rachlis '65
Editor in Chief, Los Angeles MagazineRead More
As adults, we think back to our school years and remember teachers who made a difference; a course of study that made a significant impact on what we decided to do with our lives. When Kit Rachlis, editor-in-chief of Los Angeles Magazine, looks back, it was a GCS teacher who nurtured his talent for writing and daily chancery services that fueled it.
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Tyler Maroney '87
Read MoreTyler Maroney’s path from journalist to private investigator was unexpected. And as the story of that journey unfolds, you begin to see that through twists and turns, a series of contrarians quietly led him through it, shedding light and nudging his direction along the way.
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Sarah Telson '01
Read MoreSenior Staff Attorney, Immigrants' Rights & Advocacy Project
Brooklyn Legal Services
Ellen Jorgensen '19It’s a complex time to be an immigration lawyer in New York City. The work is abundant, urgent and heartbreaking. For Sarah Telson, it is a dream come true.
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Alex Boghosian '03
From Grace to Antarctica: The Journey of a Female ScientistRead MoreKatie Hoffman - Class of 2017Editor-in-Chief of the Grace Gazette
You never know where you will end up when you start at Grace. The possibilities are endless. Take for example, Alexandra Boghosian. From a young age, Alex’s mind was filled with intellectual questions, yet she never imagined becoming a female scientist.
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Katie Orlinsky '97
Photojournalist/CinematographerRead MoreAt 32, Katie Orlinsky has found her stride: she regularly works for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera America, La Monde, and a variety of international magazines and non-profit organizations such as Too Young to Wed, an organization and campaign to end child marriage around the world.
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Hale Bradt '45
Read MoreProfessor Emeritus, M.I.T.I attended Grace Church School for two years in the middle of World War II. My mother, my sister, and I were in NYC because of the war. I was born in Washington State where my Dad was a Professor of chemistry.
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Charles Best '90
In 1999, Charles Best ’90 was a history and English teacher at Wings Academy, a public high school in the Bronx. Frustrated that simple learning materials were often missing from classrooms, and thinking that people would be probably be willing to give small amounts directly to particular classroom projects if they knew about them, Charles set out to find a way to make that connection.Read More
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Vivian Rosenthal ’90
Tech EntrepenuerRead MoreVivian Rosenthal is a marketing whiz with a master’s degree in architecture. She founded Tronic Studio with a classmate from Columbia and spent 10 years creating edgy, large-scale interactive installations, CGI (computer generated imagery) and live action short films, web virals and animated ads for a host of clients including Yahoo, Target, Sharp and HP.
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Grace Church School is a co-educational independent school in downtown Manhattan, New York City providing instruction for nearly 800 students in Junior Kindergarten through Grade 12.
