Past Speakers

2006-07 Speakers

Thomas Lovejoy, Renowned Conservation Biologist

Renowned conservation biologist Thomas E. Lovejoy spoke to the Upper School community about climate change as part of the Distinguished Speakers Series Tuesday, April 17. He spoke about retreating glaciers and diminishing arctic ice, as well as the "small signals throughout the natural world" - lilacs blooming earlier, corals losing their color, tree swallows nesting sooner, and the disappearance of the Golden Toad in Costa Rica.

Looking ahead, he described models predicting the effects of doubling greenhouse gases from their pre-industrial levels. According to the models, species that inhabit high mountains or low lying islands would be eliminated - some 20 - 30 % of all species. The eastern part of the Amazon would no longer be a rainforest and sugar maple trees in North America would disappear.

Responding to questions following his talk, Dr. Lovejoy urged students to continue to learn and talk about climate change issues. After all, he noted, “This is not a backyard experiment where if it turns out poorly you can go to a different backyard.” Dr. Lovejoy explained that climate change is reversible in principle, but it is hard to predict whether the same climate system will result. He stressed, however, that it is never too late to do something to mitigate climate change. “It's a big challenge, but you guys are up to it.”

Dr. Lovejoy is the President of the John H. Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. He previously served as the World Bank’s Chief Biodiversity Advisor and Lead Specialist for Environment for Latin America and the Caribbean, and he was Senior Advisor to the President of the United Nations Foundation. He has served on science and environmental councils or committees under Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton. In 2001, Dr. Lovejoy was awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

Linda Greenlaw, Celebrated Fisherman and Author

"Just tell us a story," urged the first student to raise his hand after Linda Greenlaw spoke to Upper School students, faculty, and guests as part of the Distinguished Speakers Series March 14, 2007. Greenlaw, the first and only female swordfishing captain in the Grand Banks fleet and a best selling author, responded with tales of catching a 695 pound swordfish, prying angry sharks off fishermen's legs, and frantically pulling in 40 miles of fishing gear as her radio warned of the "Perfect Storm" heading towards her ship.

Greenlaw was able to move her ship, the Hannah Boden, to cooler waters and avoid the brunt of the storm, but another ship, the Andrea Gail, was lost in the storm. Sebastian Junger detailed the story of the storm in his best-selling book, The Perfect Storm, calling Greenlaw "one of the best swordfishing captains, period, on the East Coast." After The Perfect Storm hit the bestseller lists, several publishers asked Greenlaw to write her own book. She went on to write four. Three of them, The Hungry Ocean (1999), The Lobster Chronicles (2002) and All Fishermen Are Liars (2004), spent several weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. The Lobster Chronicles won the U.S. Maritime's 2003 Literature Award.

Greenlaw confessed that writing her first book was the hardest thing she had ever done, but encouraged students to seize opportunities that present themselves and not to be paralyzed by the fear of failure. In her remarks, Greenlaw also passed on the best and worst advice she had received from her mother. The best? “You can be anything you want to be.” The worst? If you become a commercial fisherman, “you’ll waste your education.” Greenlaw, a graduate of Colby College, said that it is impossible to waste an education; she has used her education every day of her life. Her real success, she told students, has been finding work that consumes her; “Nothing makes me prouder than to say that I am a fisherman.”

Save the Children

A panel of leading education experts from Save the Children discussed “Innovating to Reach Vulnerable Children” at The Potomac School’s first annual Vanessa Pean Memorial Lecture, Wednesday, February 28. The lecture honored Vanessa Pean, beloved Potomac student and former classmate of this year’s senior class. Vanessa had grown increasingly interested in and committed to the needs of the people of Haiti, her father’s native country, and in her name Potomac students have raised money to support the education of vulnerable children in that country.

Through this annual lecture series, the school will seek to educate future generations of Potomac students and inspire them to action on issues facing children and adults who are vulnerable to conflict and poverty. Currently, students at The Potomac School are involved in a number of initiatives that raise awareness and funds for global issues, including:

• NAIS Challenge 20/20 (the National Association of Independent Schools’ 20 global problems to be solved in 20 years): Potomac students teamed with a school in Germany to raise awareness of the problem of child labor, developing potential solutions to be shared at an international conference in June.
• STAND (Students Take Action Now Darfur): Potomac students raised over $4,000 to help internally-displaced and refugee Sudanese.
• Learn, Serve Ethiopia: a group of Potomac students and faculty joined others from area schools on a service learning trip last summer with the Center for International Education.
• Service Learning trip to Kenya in July 2007 included Potomac students, faculty, and parents, and was led by Potomac history teacher Ken Okoth. Ken grew up in the Nairobi slum of Kibera and Save the Children sponsored his attendance at the Starehe Boys School, one of Kenya’s top high schools.
  

International Rescue Committee

The Potomac student leadership of STAND (Students Taking Action Now Darfur) raised over $4,000 to help internally-displaced and refugee Sudanese, and presented a check to speaker Shannon Meehan of the International Rescue Committee at the US Assembly January 31. Hilary Platt, Jenny Ledig, Katy Warren, and Heidi Fisher led the fundraising effort that included donut and t-shirt sales and Denim Day. (Denim Day on January 31 raised $750 in one morning.) The leadership credited the IS with their generous donations for helping make the fundraising a big success.

The IRC provides water and sanitation, primary health care, and special programs for women and girls to people in Sudan and Chad, driven from their homes by the current conflict.

Ms. Shannon Meehan, Deputy Director for Advocacy of the International Rescue Committee, spoke to the students about the crisis in Darfur and the efforts by organizations such as the IRC to help. Shannon has spent more than 17 years working in conflict zones around the world.

 

Frances Sternhagen

Frances Sternhagen, the noted Broadway and film actress and Potomac graduate, enthralled students, faculty, and parents with a monologue set in a funeral parlor which she performed in the Tiered Classroom December 5th. Within a few short minutes the audience was transported by Ms. Sternhagen’s mesmerizing performance. Students asked for advice. “Stay in shape!” Another wanted to know the biggest challenge she faced in her acting career. She replied, “Auditions. You get rejected so many times.” Equus was probably the biggest acting challenge, but also one of her favorite performances.

Ms. Sternhagen created the original character in “On Golden Pond” on Broadway as well as the original Daisy in “Driving Miss Daisy” which ran for two years at Playwright's Horizons in New York. She has received two Tony awards for her work in Neil Simon's "The Good Doctor" and for her role in the 1995 revival of "The Heiress" based on the Henry James novella. She has also received an Obie award for her work in "The Admirable Bashville". She recently starred in the 2005 revival of Edward Albee's "Seascape" at the Lincoln Center Theater and was featured in the 2005 Broadway production of "Steel Magnolias". She is best known to TV audiences as Esther Clavin on the long-running TV series "Cheers." Her television roles also include the role of Millicent Carter in "ER" and various character roles on "Sex and the City" and "Law and Order."

Frank Sesno

The Distinguished Speakers Series presented its first Town Hall Meeting of the 2006-2007 school year on November 15, moderated by Frank Sesno, CNN Special Correspondent, Professor at George Washington University, and Potomac parent to 11th grader Emily.

Mr. Sesno engaged the students from the first moment of the presentation asking them, “Where is your family from?” Answers: “China, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Iran . . .” The topic was immigration and was brought to immediate reality by four extraordinary panelists, all individuals from the Potomac community.

Potomac staff member Bernie Montiel told of the horrors visited upon his family in Nicaragua during the Somoza regime. Amanda Shi, grade 11 student, spoke about her dual life in the U.S. and in China, and her experiences in the more stressful Chinese school environments. Potomac French teacher Dr. Kabahita, who has lived in America for 20 years and is a U.S. citizen, spoke about the mismanagement of his home country Congo under 32 years of the dictator Mobutu and during the last ten years of the country's civil war. And Farah Ebrahimi, aunt of Potomac student Samee Gharagozloo, told of her amazing escape from revolutionary Iran during the early days of the Islamic Republic.

Sesno asked the panelists why they decided to leave their home country and why they chose the United States. All four said freedom of speech and choice, education, and prosperity. Their powerful stories provided a personal perspective on the immigration issue and a reminder to the audience that we are all immigrants with stories of our own.

Dr. Ron Taffel

The Tyranny of Cool: The New Reality of Raising Your 21 st Century Kids was the subject of the Dewey Lecture Series presentation by renowned author and child and family therapist Dr. Ron Taffel, November 6, 2006. Dr. Taffel spoke about keeping open lines of communication and the importance of ritual and family time. He talked about setting compassionate and reasonable rules and appropriate consequences, but recognizing when it is time to say no and stop the negotiating.

Dr. Taffel also spoke with Potomac faculty on trends in child-rearing reflected in education. Some interesting topics included the role of understanding individual student temperaments, the role of praise, and teachers as the replacement for old-style, small- town communities. Sponsored by the Potomac Education Resource Coalition (PERC), a unique partnership of faculty and parents, the lecture series also included two parent book talks to discuss and share insights gleaned from two of Dr. Taffel’s books.

For over 25 years, Dr. Taffel has worked with children and families, helping parents try to connect with their children. Author of Parenting by Heart, Why Parents Disagree, Nurturing Good Children Now, and The Second Family, he is known as one of the most practical child-rearing experts. His workshops are used in social work training, doctoral programs, medical schools, and even major corporate settings.

Carl Dennis

Carl Dennis, author of Practical Gods , which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, read from several of his poems and shared ideas about poetry with students and teachers at several workshops and presentations at The Potomac School in October.

Dennis said he likes to write about transcendental moments in everday life and, like Emerson, he writes for the “unknown friend.” He shared some ideas about reading and writing poems, and answered a wide range of questions from Potomac students.

Dennis attended Oberlin College, the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota, receiving his Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently at the University of Buffalo. Dennis has received several prizes for his poetry in addition to the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, including a Fellowship at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1988), and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2000).

Clarke Murphy

Clarke Murphy, transatlantic ocean racer, spoke to the Upper School October 26 kicking off this year’s Distinguished Speakers Series. Mr. Murphy stepped out of his career as a business executive for a couple of weeks to live his dream - a race across the Atlantic sponsored by the Rolex Cup and the New York Yacht Club.

“The difference between a goal and a dream is that a goal has a deadline,” he said as he described the excitement of preparing a 70-foot yacht and a crew of nine to try to beat the record of a schooner set in 1905, a record of 12 days and 5 hours to cross from New York City to England. He talked about choosing a crew with experience and a sense of humor, citing humor as an important contribution to a team.

Regaling the audience with tales of storms and encounters with whales, Clarke told of his excitement when his boat held first place for the first several days and then his despondence when a blown out sail eliminated his chance of winning. He learned, “You can’t give up when you don’t win. Victory was completing the race.”

The first of the 20 boats broke the record set in 1905. Murphy finished in 13 days taking 5th place in class and 11th overall

 

2005-2006 Speakers

• Michael Dunn , EPA
  Disaster Debris, the Gulf Coast and the Environmental Big Picture
• Lonnie Bunch
  Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture 
• Scot Anthony Robinson
  Actor-Vision Warrior
• Bob Vanderhye
  Patent Attorney and Inventor, Renewable Energy 
• Judge Leonie Brinkema
  United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, Zacarias Moussaoui Case
• Somers Randolph
  Sculptor
• Tracy Grant
  The Washington Post, Editor, KidsPost
• Kerry Kennedy
  Author, Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World
• Andrei Israel
  Quaker Service Program Camps
• Professor David Shambaugh
  US-China Relations
• Dr. David Johnson
  Sports Medicine & US Olympic Advisor
• Lyric Wallwork Winik
  Intelligence Report Columnist, Parade Magazine
• Glen O’Gilvie
  President Earth Conservation Corp 
• Stephen D. Potts
  Chairman, Ethics Resource Center