from left: Rory Cronin, Julia Valentino, Jill McGovern, Alana Burrows, Olivia Gaffney, Kate Leach, Brooke Bellamy, and Gabriella Grasso.
Katharine Forst with her parents, Ed (a Holy Child trustee) and Susan Forst, after the ceremony.
Graduation special award winners: Julia Lane, Kailah Comrie, Caroline O’Neill, and Eliza Mills Featured speaker Dr. Andrea Hooper Robert ’91, Director, Precision Medicine, Early Clinical Development and Experimental Sciences at Regeneron Class President Lindsay Ricciardi Back row, from left: Charlotte Irwin, Ali Marzen, Caroline Cleary, and Hannah O’Shea; front row: Karlie Jellinek, Emilia Ponce-Ocampo, Coco Marriott, and Jackie Riordan.
The afternoon of June 5 was a glorious day for speeches at Holy Child’s Graduation Ceremony. Sixty-eight young women “of conscience and action” were lauded and celebrated.
Head of School Colleen Pettus praised the class for “daring greatly. In a year that has challenged our education system, our physical and mental health, and has called us to address social and racial injustices, you showed up, you were seen, and you were heard. You dared to step outside yourselves for the greater good — the good of our school, our greater community, and our world.” In conclusion, she said, “I have no doubt you will continue to do so, in even bigger and bolder ways, in your next chapter of learning and growing into the best version of yourselves.”
The featured speaker was Dr. Andrea Hooper Robert, Director, Precision Medicine, Early Clinical Development and Experimental Sciences at Regeneron.
A member of Holy Child’s class of 1991, she urged the graduates to “Continue what you have been doing this school year — embracing the unexpected, using challenges that may come at you for the greater good, and continuing helping one another to make it through.”
Lindsay Ricciardi, Class President, described her peers as “artists, athletes, singers, dancers, musicians, engineers, and so much more. Most importantly, we now embody the portrait of a graduate. We are intellectual, courageous, spiritual, confident, and compassionate young women. We had a lot to learn walking into the lobby doors on our first day, but there was one thing we all understood, and that was that we were going to support each other through thick and thin. And we did just that.”
The Colleges They Are Headed to:
American University
American University of Paris
Auburn University
Bucknell University
College of the Holy Cross (2)
College of William and Mary
Cornell University (3)
Elon University
Fairfield University (2)
Georgetown University (2)
George Washington University
Grove City College
Harvard University
Indiana University, Bloomington
Loyola Marymount University
Loyola University, Maryland
Marist College
Mount Holyoke College
New York University
Northeastern University
Northwestern University (2)
Purdue University
Santa Clara University (3)
Savannah College of Art and Design
Skidmore College
Spelman College
Syracuse University
Trinity College (CT)
Tufts University (2)
Tulane University
University of Arizona
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of Connecticut (2)
University of Miami
University of Michigan (2)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Pittsburgh
University of Richmond (3)
University of Scranton
University of Southern California
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin, Madison (2)
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Villanova University (6)
Wake Forest University
Warren Wilson College
Washington University in St Louis