Impact Fund Director Message

CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER: ALI GANT

RECENTLY, AN ALUMNA watched GPS’s social media post from opening day.

The video on Instagram showed the entire sea of girls in Frierson Theatre, clad in their colorful dresses and grouped by grades, flush with excitement about a new year. Together they sang “Dancing Queen” loudly, happily—and honestly—surprisingly beautifully for all having been born three decades after the song was released! The friend watching the video messaged me: “I feel like this video is a decoder pen to my life. It explains so much about who I am as a person.”

That’s it—right there—the “special sauce” of GPS. The ties that bind. The faces might change, the world has certainly changed, and some things at the school have changed to meet 21st-century learning expectations. But myriad traditions remain the same. These foundational touchpoints are what I hope you will remember when asked to give to Girls Preparatory School.

The Class of 2019 chose “Y(our) Story” as the theme of the 2018-19 school year. The wordsmith in me loves how OUR is part of the word YOUR; it so clearly illustrates how we at GPS are the sum of many individual experiences. And this is why we are all thankful to each of you listed in this report for making GPS part of your story—whether you attended here; your mother, wife, sister, daughter, or granddaughter is a GPS girl; or you have a passion for what a GPS education provides girls in our area. Perhaps you fall into more than one category!

I joined GPS in June of 2019, just as the year we are reporting on closed out. I had the pleasure of coming on board to quickly announce that our Development team had surpassed the Impact Fund goal of $1.1M for the 2018-19 fiscal year. I would especially like to thank Bilda Acuña Small for serving as Interim Director of Development and Lisa Reynolds Shanahan ’83, Director of Impact Fund, for their tireless leadership and hard work to make the goal a reality.

As the new Chief Development Officer, I’m personally thrilled to be working to share the benefits of an all-girls’ education, a topic about which I’m very passionate. My family is excited to be in Chattanooga (back to Chattanooga for my husband, McCallie Class of 1997), and I am humbled and honored to make GPS part of my own story.

In the coming years, I hope you will continue to participate as a donor at whatever level matches your giving goals. Each donor matters and every gift to GPS—small and large— matters. We are grateful that you include us in your story.

All the best,

Ali Gant Chief Development Officer