Alumnae Awards
The Frances Riker Davis 1915 Award
The family and friends of Frances Riker Davis ’15 established this award in 1967 to honor the tradition of public service which Mrs. Davis embodied. The annual award recognizes Brearley alumnae for ongoing, dedicated service to the public good, as demonstrated professionally and/or through volunteerism. The award is given to alumnae who identify a need, create a solution and effect change, and whose unique efforts have made a significant impact on the lives of others over time. Each year’s honoree speaks at a Middle and Upper School assembly in the fall. Recent recipients include Margaret Kohn ’65, a lawyer who advocates for children with disabilities; Susan Popkin Wadsworth ’54, founder of Young Concert Artists; and Nina Schwalbe ’84, director of policy for the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development.
The Frances Riker Davis Committee considers candidates who have been nominated by their classmates and fellow alumnae. The committee then presents a short list of nominees to a selection committee comprising past honorees.
Recent Recipients
Amanda Eaken
2023 Recipient | Class of 1995
As the director of transportation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Amanda Eaken manages a team driving ambitious climate action in 25 US cities to create transportation choices such as walking, biking and public transit. Her work focuses on “decarbonizing” transportation, and over the last three years, Amanda’s work has become twofold: advancing policies that not only tackle climate change but also facilitate an equitable, socially just recovery from the global pandemic. The Climate Challenge teams prioritized actions for lasting fair and sustainable change; they shifted influential systems to become more deliberate about inclusivity of all communities and helped promote the perspectives of underserved and underinvested populations through advocacy and equitable policy making.
Molly Rauch
2023 Recipient | Class of 1990
Starting in 2010, Molly Rauch ‘90 was involved with Moms Clean Air Force (MCAF), serving until 2022 as public health policy director. MCAF is a grassroots advocacy group affiliated with the Environmental Defense Fund, with local chapters in 15 states and over one million members. MCAF works in collaboration with other climate change and clean air groups to inform the public about the health impacts of pollution and how to fight for clean air. During her 12 years with MCAF, Molly helped shape the growth of the program, building relationships, alliances and partnerships with public health organizations to develop and implement strategies to influence regulatory and policy decisions.
Marguerite Cullman
2022 Recipient | Class of 1954
For over 40 years, Maggy Cullman’s dedication to those in need of help—women prisoners, new immigrants, community college students, the elderly, and people of many faith communities—has been steady, generous, passionate and unassuming. Maggy has been called “a priceless gift to the community.”
Maggy received her BA from Manhattanville College and an MA in English from the University of Iowa. She is consistently engaged in multiple volunteer activities, using her expertise in education and administration to serve the needs of prisoners, immigrants, the elderly and interfaith communities. Maggy also devoted decades to the many social justice activities of the Episcopal Church and the Interfaith Alliance, and served as the bishop’s deputy for public policy in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, where she represented the interfaith community in reviewing the policies of the Maryland state legislature, and often spoke at the State House before assembly and senate committees.
Martine Singer
2022 Recipient | Class of 1978
After a successful career at the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, Martine Singer left the business world to devote herself to improving the lives of children and families affected by violence and adversity. As president and CEO of Children’s Institute she oversees one of Los Angeles’s largest social impact organizations, with an annual budget of $100 million and more than one thousand employees; her most recent accomplishment is the opening of a new, Frank Gehry–designed headquarters in Watts. She has become a major influence in the city, helping to shape policy and bring about systemic change for communities affected by decades of racism and underinvestment.
Krysia Bereday Burnham
2021 Recipient | Class of 1978
Krysia is a hospice chaplain. After an 11-year stint living overseas, Krysia and her family settled in Newton, Massachusetts, where she was inspired to take courses at the Andover Newton Theological Seminary, and soon enrolled in a full-time program in the field. A member of the First Church in Cambridge Congregational, UCC since 2006, where she was ordained in 2016, Krysia serves as one of the parish’s community ministers. Krysia is a chaplain at the Visiting Nurse Association of Boston, where she created a virtual grief support group targeting the complex losses sustained in the community during Covid-19.
Nancy Krieger
2021 Recipient | Class of 1976
Nancy is a world-renowned epidemiologist whose work has frequently been motivated and defined by the glaring fact that inequities in risk of health-harming exposures, in rates of illness and death, and in lack of access to appropriate care are driven by social injustice, including structural racism, and that social justice is vital to advance health equity. Based in the Boston area, Nancy is known as the People’s Epidemiologist. Since 1995, she has been a professor of social epidemiology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she also serves as the director of the school’s interdisciplinary concentration on women, gender and health. Nancy’s counsel and opinions are often sought by a range of professionals, including the media, and especially so amid the pandemic.
- 1967
Ethel Nathalie Dana
Class of 1898
- 1968
Celestine Goddard Mott
Class of 1919
- 1969
Phyllis Goodhart Gordan
Class of 1931
- 1970
Katharine Strauss Mali
Class of 1919
- 1971
Anne Rosen Stern
Class of 1934
- 1972
Frances Hand Ferguson
Class of 1925
- 1973
Beatrice Bishop Berle, M.D.
Class of 1919
- 1974
Mary St. John Villard
Class of 1930
- 1975
Nina Moore Galston
Class of 1931
- 1976
Winifred Dodd Rouillion
Class of 1922
- 1977
Elizabeth Loeb
Class of 1955
- 1978
Ruth McAneny Loud
Class of 1918
- 1979
Denise Mangravite Scheinberg
Class of 1949
- 1980
Helen Coley Nauts
Class of 1925
- 1981
Josephine Young Case
Class of 1924
- 1982
Edith Wise Burpee
Class of 1944
- 1983
Emily Townsend Vermeule
Class of 1946
- 1984
Special Centennial Awards
Anne Lord Andrews
Class of 1927Mary S. Calderone, M.D., M.P.H.
Class of 1922Rhys Caparn
Class of 1927Rosamond Gilder
Class of 1910Virginia Grace
Class of 1918Frances Holden
Class of 1917Mabel Satterlee Ingalls
Class of 1918Dorothy Schiff
Class of 1920Janet G. Travell, M.D.
Class of 1918Mary Mattison Van Schaik
Class of 1928Bettina Warburg, M.D.
Class of 1918Barbara Lewis Zinsser
Class of 1931
- 1985
Elizabeth Man Sarcka
Class of 1911
- 1986
Lydia Davis Goodhue
Class of 1935
- 1987
Patricia Hochschild Labalme
Class of 1944
- 1988
Edith Humphreys Mas
Class of 1958
- 1989
Glenda Garvey M.D
Class of 1960 Kate Belcher Webster
Class of 1942
- 1990
Joan Ridder Challinor
Class of 1945
- 1991
Patricia Taussig Marshall
Class of 1949
- 1992
Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson
Class of 1923
- 1993
Geraldine Babcock Boone
Class of 1940
- 1994
Mary Anne Goldsmith Schwalbe
Class of 1951
- 1995
Shelah Kane Scott
Class of 1950
- 1996
Linda Borden McKean
Class of 1946
- 1997
Sheila Maynard Platt
Class of 1954
- 1998
Susan Neuberger Wilson
Class of 1947
- 1999
Yeou Cheng Ma
Class of 1969
- 2000
Constance Carden
Class of 1962
- 2001
Mary Langben Cooper
Class of 1953
- 2002
Alice Thurston
Class of 1975
- 2003
Anne Zabriskie Noble
Class of 1944
- 2004
Nina Schwalbe
Class of 1984
- 2005
Susan Popkin Wadsworth
Class of 1954
- 2006
Margaret Kohn
Class of 1965
- 2007
Alissa Rubin
Class of 1976
- 2008
Ruth Wyler Messinger
Class of 1958
- 2009
Ellen Poisson
Class of 1964
- 2010
Laura Rockefeller Chasin
Class of 1954
- 2011
Mary Margaret Gleason
Class of 1989
- 2012
Jessica Sager
Class of 1988
- 2013
Carolyn Buff
Class of 1980 Katharine Doyle
Class of 1978
- 2014
Robyn Young
Class of 1992
- 2015
Carolyn Schmidt
Class of 1968
- 2016
Tamera Stanton Luzzatto
Class of 1975
- 2017
Alice R. Thomas
Class of 1984
- 2018
Carolyn Goldmark Goodman
Class of 1957
- 2019
Jean Loeb Troubh
Class of 1956
- 2020
Alex Piper
Class of 1984 Samantha Eisenstein Waston
Class of 1996
- 2021
Krysia Bereday Burnham
Class of 1978 Nancy Krieger
Class of 1976
- 2022
Marguerite Cullman
Class of 1954 Martine Singer
Class of 1978
- 2023
Amanda Eaken
Class of 1995 Molly Rauch
Class of 1990
The Lois Kahn Wallace ’57 Writers Award
Established in 1999 by literary agent Lois Kahn Wallace ’57, this award honors and encourages an alumna at the beginning of her career as a writer. It may be awarded every two years, and carries an honorarium for the winner. The first honoree, in 2001, was Erica Wagner ’85, literary editor of the Times of London and author of Gravity, a book of short stories, and Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of Birthday Letters. In 2004 the award went to Sarah Towers ’88, short story writer, essayist and journalist; and in 2007 it was granted to Marisa Silver ’78, author of No Direction Home. Alumnae are encouraged to apply for the award on their own behalf. To apply, please submit six copies of the work of your choice to the Alumnae Office.
Recent Recipients
Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet
Alice Robb | 2023 Recipient | Class of 2010
Congratulations to Alice Robb ‘10, the latest Lois Kahn Wallace Writer’s Award winner for Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet. Her new book has been praised as “a beautiful, difficult, and compelling memoir” (Vanity Fair); “a nuanced, intimate mash-up of memoir, reportage and cultural criticism” (the Guardian); “enlightening, perceptive” (the Wall Street Journal); and “remarkable for its nuance and insight” (Times Literary Supplement). Alice’s first book, Why We Dream, was noted as “a spirited rebuke to the idea of sleep as a mere parting from consciousness” (the New Yorker) and a “cogent defense of dreams and dream-telling” (NPR) and was translated into over a dozen foreign languages. As a journalist, she has written for such publications as Vanity Fair, Vogue, the Atlantic and the New Republic, where she began her career. Alice lives in London.
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Adrienne Brodeur | 2021 Recipient | Class of 1983
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me tells the story of the complex, push-me-pull-you relationship Brodeur had with her mother after she made her teenage daughter her confidante and enabler of an extramarital affair. Beautifully written, full of insight, and deeply engrossing, the memoir explores the twisting paths we’re willing to go down for those we love.
Here We Are
Aarti Namdev Shahani | 2021 Recipient | Class of 1997
Here We Are explores the parental bond, telling the story of an immigrant family’s move from India via Morocco to Queens. After years of struggle, Shahani’s father opens an electronics store and the family moves to the suburbs. But the “American dream” becomes a nightmare when her father is arrested for inadvertently selling to the Cali Cartel. Shahani spearheads her father’s defense and the family’s legal journey is intermingled with her coming of age in this vivid, moving memoir.
- 2001
Erica Wagner
Class of 1985 Adrienne Brodeur
Class of 1983
- 2004
Sarah Towers
Class of 1988
- 2007
Marisa Silver
Class of 1978
- 2012
Janice Pomerance Nimura
Class of 1989
- 2014
Rachel Urquhart
Class of 1981
- 2016
Anne Roston Korkeakivi
Class of 1978
- 2019
Lindsay Stern
Class of 2009
- 2021
Aarti Shahani
Class of 1997
- 2023
Alice Robb
Class of 2010
The Truth and Toil Award
The Truth and Toil Award, a recently established honor, annually recognizes a living alumna who has built a sense of connection across class years, embodies the values of Brearley and has had a significant influence on the community.
Recent Recipients
Wilhelmina Martin Eaken
2023 Recipient | Class of 1964
Mina, who is also a past parent, worked as Brearley’s Alumnae Director from 1991 to 2014. During her tenure, Mina helped establish various committees of the Alumnae Association, expanded the reunion program into a weekend of activities for the community, helped further develop alum online communications and created programs that offered networking and mentoring opportunities.
Mina is a longstanding class agent, has served as reunion co-chair three times since she retired and is a member of the Lois Kahn Wallace Award Committee. Mina’s impressive knowledge of all alums makes her an invaluable member of the Brearley community.
“Alums who make the community all the more close and strong with their time, energy, ideas and spirit, alums who inspire others in the community to do the same—these are the alums whom we seek to honor and thank every year going forward with this new award,” Megan Lui ’10, co-chair of the Truth and Toil Award Committee and Alumnae Association president, explains. “As a culture carrier, a leader who spearheaded the formation of many of our alum committees and as an alum who has been involved in the Brearley community in various capacities throughout the years, Mina is the true embodiment of the spirit of this award.”
Cecile Miller Eistrup
2022 Recipient | Class of 1958
“I am happy that my presence here means something to you, because it means a lot to me.” So said Cecile Miller Eistrup ‘58 upon accepting Brearley’s first Truth and Toil Award at a ceremony and reception held in her honor on September 28 at the school.
Entering Brearley in 1950 as a member of Class VI, Cecile was the first student of color to be admitted at the school. Years later, in honor of Cecile opening the doors for every Brearley alumna of color, Cherise Davis ’90, Lisa Downing ’85 and Andréa Matos ’88 created the Miller Society. The Miller Society has thrived and expanded ever since, becoming one of the most important alumnae groups at Brearley. Its purpose includes supporting current students and families of color and propelling diversity, equity and inclusion at the school.
At the celebration, which was attended by Cecile’s classmates and other alumnae, administration, trustees, faculty, staff and students, Cecile, who received a silk scarf on which "Truth & Toil" and other Brearley details were hand-painted by art teacher Rebecca Raney, was asked what advice she could give to current students. “Be yourself,” she responded. “Know who you are, what you stand for. Be willing to share and be as open and understanding and learn to respect each other.” To you, Cecile, for embodying the values of Brearley and continuing to inspire generations of students, we express our sincerest appreciation and gratitude.