Fall Alumni Summit: Service
On Thursday Millbrook held its fifth annual Alumni Summit, switching things up by hosting it in the fall rather than the spring. In keeping with this year’s focus core value of service, we invited 22 alumni with careers centered around helping others to speak to students about how service has impacted their lives. The impressive lineup included medical professionals, military veterans, scientists, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and more.
The professional-conference-style summit featured breakout sessions all over campus sandwiched between two keynote speakers, who, as Head of School Jonathan Downs ’98 pointed out, provided a shared experience for all summit attendees.
LtCol Andrew Williamson '05, a military fighter pilot & instructor for the United States Marine Corps, got the summit started with the opening keynote address in the Chelsea Morrison Theater. He advised students and faculty that service requires showing up regardless of feelings, noting how he learned that mindset from his parents and then applied it in the trash truck community service at Millbrook. “As I pulled on my boots and put on my jacket, I was practicing something I wasn’t even aware of at the time,” he explained. “I was learning that my willingness to show up couldn’t depend on how I felt when the alarm went off.” The lessons he learned from his time at Millbrook stayed with him as he responded to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, during his IIIrd form year, by joining the military and rising to his current role as a Top Gun instructor.
For the sessions that followed Andrew’s address, students chose presentations that aligned most with their own interests and aspirations. They engaged in interactive presentations and networked with alumni, and some sessions even led to potential internship opportunities.
After a full day of breakout sessions, the community returned to the theater for the closing keynote, delivered by Robert Austrian ’13. An attorney and Army National Guard judge advocate, Robert shared about his path from Millbrook to opening his own law firm to a surprise tour of duty in the Middle East that resulted in a tense moment in a bunker in Jordan as Iran counterstruck Operation Epic Fury early this year. Following that experience, he had an epiphany:
“I realized something that I actually kind of knew all along, but I had never really figured out how to articulate. And that was that the only score card of success in life that really matters is service: what you have done for others. ... How many people's lives have you directly, meaningfully, and positively impacted? That is, to me, what service is. … It's the number of people who are better off because of something you did.”
Rob, Andrew, and the rest of the amazing alumni who returned to campus for this special day reminded us all how important service is—and how Millbrook is the perfect place to practice serving. With community service built into our daily schedule and a zoo that requires dedicated students and staff to run, it’s hard to imagine a better environment for training the next generation of leaders.
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