2026 Guilford College Magazine

GUILFORD COLLEGE Summer 2026 | www.guilford.edu

MAGAZINE

A Different Leader President Jean Bordewich helped guide Guilford through one of the most consequential chapters in its history.

What’s next?

PRESIDENT’S LETTER

A FUTURE TAKING SHAPE Behind the scenes the College is reimagining liberal arts education, strengthening its foundation and preparing for what’s next.

PHOTO: BETSY BLAKE ’99

If you drove past Guilford College on an early summer

Last December, when Guilford secured its accreditation,

afternoon after graduation and before summer camps

there was understandable relief. But relief only gets you so

and music workshops begin, you might think not much is

far. The more interesting question remains: how do you take

happening.

a college with nearly 190 years of history and make sure

From the road, our postcard campus can look almost still.

Our bricked sidewalks are quieter than they are in October.

it prepares students for a world changing faster than any generation before them?

Students aren’t rushing out of residence halls to class. The

And just as important: how do we do this while preserving

parking lots have more empty spaces than full ones.

the values that have made Guilford distinctive for nearly two

Except the thing about colleges is that some of their most

centuries?

important work happens when nobody is watching. Spend a

The answers are taking shape in ways both practical and

little time here and you’ll discover a different story.

ambitious.

Behind office doors, in committee meetings and planning

Later this summer, we will begin to implement a new

sessions, across campus and throughout Greensboro, people

strategic plan that will guide Guilford through 2030. The plan

are doing the work of imagining what Guilford can become —

emerged from months of conversations with faculty, staff,

and then setting about the business of building it.

students, alumni, trustees, friends and community partners.

This is the second issue of Guilford College Magazine since I became president last year, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share some of that work with you.

It reflects a shared belief that Guilford’s future depends not on becoming something different, but on becoming more fully itself.

We’re also developing new ways to tell Guilford’s story,

Guilford has always possessed extraordinary strengths. Our

refining how we present ourselves to prospective students

commitment to an education that is both “civil and useful.”

and families, and making our website more compelling and

Our Quaker-inspired values. Our highly personal approach to

easier to navigate. Those efforts may sound modest, but they

teaching and learning. Our belief that every person carries an

are important. In a crowded higher education landscape,

inner Light worth discovering and nurturing.

institutions must clearly communicate who they are and why they matter.

Those qualities remain as relevant today as they were generations ago.

And Guilford has a powerful story to tell.

I often find myself returning to a simple truth the late

One sign of that story arrives in July when the sounds of

Professor Cyril Harvey shared: Human beings learn from

classical music once again drift across campus this summer

other human beings how to be human.

as the Eastern Festival of Music brings some of the nation’s most talented young musicians to Guilford for five weeks of study, rehearsal and performance.

That truth sits at the heart of liberal arts education. It sits at the heart of community. And it sits at the heart of democracy itself.

Every evening, Dana Auditorium fills with music.

At Guilford, we intentionally create spaces where people

If you’ve attended one of the music festival concerts in the

from different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives

past, you know the experience. The lights dim. An orchestra

learn alongside one another. We make room for everyone. In

or ensemble settles. Then something remarkable happens.

a fractured world, that work matters.

For a few hours, people from across the Triad gather in a shared space to listen, reflect and be moved.

I would love to see more of that at Guilford.

In the years ahead, I envision our campus becoming an even stronger

“Your support,

encouragement, advocacy and generosity have helped bring us to this moment.”

destination for the performing

— JEAN P. BORDEWICH, PRESIDENT

throughout the region come together to learn and connect.

Meanwhile, our faculty members are nearing the completion of an important yearlong effort to rethink Guilford’s core curriculum. Their recommendations, scheduled to take effect in Fall 2027, are grounded in a simple but increasingly urgent

the extraordinary commitment of Guilford’s faculty and staff. Over the past several years, they have navigated financial challenges with resilience, creativity and unwavering dedication to our students. Because of their efforts, generations of Guilford students

arts and cultural experiences of all kinds, a place where people from

None of it would be possible without

have continued to receive the meaningful, transformative experience they came here seeking.

I am equally grateful to our alumni and friends. Your support, encouragement, advocacy and generosity have helped bring us to this moment.

question: How do we educate students to live meaningful

Together, we are creating the conditions not simply for

lives in a world filled with constant distraction?

Guilford to endure, but to flourish.

Technology offers extraordinary opportunities. It also

The campus may look quiet from the road.

competes relentlessly for our attention.

A Guilford education should help students navigate that reality. It should create opportunities for reflection, curiosity, wonder, discovery and genuine human connection.

It should prepare students not simply for their first job — or even their eventual career — but for lives marked by purpose, adaptability and engagement with the world around them.

That vision is not new.

In many ways, it reaches back to the very foundations of this College.

But look a little closer.

There is music returning to Dana. There are faculty members imagining new possibilities for teaching and learning. There are first-year students preparing to arrive and upperclass students eager to return. There are alumni investing in the future. There is a community doing the patient work of renewal.

And there is every reason to be hopeful about what comes next.

EDITOR Robert Bell ’11, Director of Communications DESIGN Michael Crouch ’10 & ’12, Director of Brand & Marketing Operations PHOTOGRAPHY Robert Bell ’11 Betsy Blake ’99 Michael V. Crouch ’10 & ’12 COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING TEAM Ty Buckner, Chief Communications & External Relations Officer Robert Bell ’11, Director of Communications Brantleigh Bradshaw, Assistant Director of Marketing Michael V. Crouch ’10 & ’12, Director of Brand & Marketing Operations FUNDRAISING TEAM Elizabeth Freeze, Chief Philanthropy Officer Rick Lancaster ’88, Major and Planned Giving Officer Lauren Reinking, Director of Alumni Relations & Engagement D. Summers ’00, Director of Annual Giving & Donor Relations

A NEW SEASON for GUILFORD There’s a certain kind of leadership that mistakes noise for progress. The louder the declaration, the stronger the conviction, the faster the motion, the more it feels like change must surely be happening.

And then there’s the quieter kind. The kind rooted in listening first.

Our cover story profiles Guilford President Jean Bordewich, whose leadership style feels especially suited to this moment in the College’s trajectory. One of the first things you notice about

CONTACT US Office of Communications & Marketing Hendricks Hall Guilford College 5800 West Friendly Avenue Greensboro, NC 27410 P / 336.316.2239 E / magazine@guilford.edu

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Jean is that she doesn’t rush into words. She listens carefully, deliberately. In a culture that rewards immediacy, listening can sometimes be mistaken for hesitation. At Guilford, it has become something else entirely: a way of building trust before building momentum. And momentum is building.

The work ahead remains substantial. But there is a growing sense on campus that the College is no longer simply reacting to crisis. It is beginning to shape its future again — thoughtfully, strategically and with a clearer sense of purpose.

What struck me most while working on this issue is how

instagram.com/guilfordalum

often progress here looks less like spectacle and more like

linkedin.com/school/guilford-college-alumni

stewardship. It’s found in long conversations, difficult decisions, renewed partnerships and the steady work of people who care deeply about this institution and what it can become.

Guilford College Magazine is published by the Office of Communications & Marketing.

The views expressed within these pages do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the College.

Guilford College does not discriminate on the basis of sex/gender, age, race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, genetic information, military status, veteran status or any other protected category under applicable local, state or federal law, ordinance or regulation. For our complete statement, please visit www.guilford.edu/nondiscrimination.

We hope you enjoy this issue of Guilford College Magazine and all the stories and profiles of Guilfordians who, in their own quiet ways, make this place the gem it is.

Robert Bell ’11, Editor

IN THIS ISSUE

P H O T O : M I C H A E L V. C R O U C H ’ 10 , ’ 12

45 5 1 His presence lingers Beloved Sociology professor Paul Zopf died last fall, but pieces of his life can be found across campus.

5 The leader who listens The Quaker discipline of listening guides most of President Jean Bordewich’s decisions.

11 Founders at 50 Younger Guilfordians might think Guilford’s campus centerpiece has always been here. A tale of two buildings.

15 The bee whisperer Kaira Wagoner ’06 is giving bees – and a world that counts on them – a fighting chance.

19 Blending care with compassion Guilford showed oncologist Claire Lanier ’12 that some patients face more medical barriers than others.

She wants to change that.

27 Raised to witness Tom Clement’s ’14 documentary on protestors using light to get their message across has won an Emmy.

29 The power of presence The latest chapter of Annie Jonas’ ’90 life finds her advocating for school children across western North Carolina.

Summer 2026 On the Cover Guilford President Jean Bordewich is guiding the College forward with steady, intentional leadership.

35 A life shaped by welcome Fred Katz ’52 was 11 when he escaped Nazi Germany in 1939. He found a community that saved him at Guilford.

37 Reaching new heights

Photo: Betsy Blake ’99

GUILFORD COLLEGE Summer 2026 | www.guilford.edu

MAGAZINE

Guitarist Emmett Edwards ’22 climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

Then he composed a solo about his adventure.

A Different Leader President Jean Bordewich helped guide Guilford through one of the most consequential chapters in its history.

What’s next?

W W W.GUIL FORD.EDU | 1

CAMPUS NEWS

STILL PRESENT at GUILFORD

P H O T O : T Y B U C K NE R

Items from the late Paul Zopf’s estate have found a new home at Guilford.

One of the first things visitors notice in Ragsdale House isn’t

that makes people pause, trying to decide if it belongs to

a plaque or a portrait. It’s a clay bust of Paul Zopf, Guilford’s

furniture, sculpture or both. Paul likely would have relished

late, beloved Sociology professor. The piece, sculpted more

just such a conversation in one of his classrooms.

than 50 years ago by Paul’s wife Evelyn, resides where Guilford President Jean Bordewich and her husband, Fergus, now live, its quiet gaze carrying the same steady attention Paul once brought to everything – and everyone – he encountered.

Months after his death last fall, Paul remains scattered across campus in pieces both ordinary and deeply personal.

A chair Paul rescued and refurbished from King Hall before it was renovated in 1969 now has a new home in the Quaker Archives in the library. Even some reclaimed walnut from

Across campus, another piece carries a different kind of

Paul’s garage was repurposed this spring for Parker O’Keefe’s

history. In New Garden Hall, a cabinet – tall, layered, and

’26 Senior Art Thesis project in Founders Hall.

unmistakably handmade – greets prospective students and their families. Paul made it a half-century ago from reclaimed wood. Its narrow drawers, a chest-like base, and glass-paneled doors seem to resist easy categorization. It’s the kind of object

1 | W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U

It feels less like an estate being divided than a man continuing to inhabit the place he spent much of his life serving, says Bill Pleasants ’65, a former student of Paul’s.

“You go through somebody’s house, you go through somebody’s life,” says Bill, one of a select few former students Paul entrusted to help manage his affairs after he died.

About 15 years ago, Paul and Evelyn, who died in 2016, approached Bill and his wife, Clarajo ’67, with the request. It was practical, understated and delivered without ceremony.

Bill and Clarajo agreed immediately.

shared habits accumulated over decades.

That history could have disappeared quietly after Paul’s death. Instead, Guilford made a deliberate choice to absorb pieces of it into campus life.

When Jean visited the house after Paul’s death, the conversations centered not simply on where objects should go, but on what they represented. The

“It was an honor,” Bill says. “But it was also

goal was preservation without embalming.

payback. Just a small token for all they

These were not museum relics. They were

did for us while we were students and

pieces meant to continue being lived

afterwards.”

with.

On the first day in Paul’s

For all his meticulousness,

house after his death, Bill

Paul was never interested in

says he found not clutter

drawing attention to himself.

but accumulation with

His influence worked more

intent. More than 500

quietly than that, says

books lined shelves and

Bill. Through decades of

walls in the house on

teaching, advising, fixing,

George White Road —

building and preserving, he

sociology, anthropology,

established a kind of ethic

demographics, religion,

at Guilford — one grounded

history. Filing cabinets

in patience, usefulness and

held letters from former

care for the community

students and colleagues,

around him.

often clipped together with

What remains now is not

Zopf’s typed or handwritten

simply what Paul Zopf left

replies. Attendance books

behind. It is evidence of how

from the late 1950s sat

thoroughly he invested himself

stacked neatly in drawers.

in a place — and how, in return,

Nothing seemed accidental.

that place decided not to let him

Nothing seemed forgotten.

go.

Most people on campus knew Paul

“It’s nice – particularly for some of us

as “Dr. Zopf,” the longtime Sociology

older Guilfordians – to know that he’s

professor with exacting standards and

still a part of our campus,” says Bill.

encyclopedic knowledge. Close friends knew another version of him: engineer, artist, tinkerer.

A CL AY BUS T CRE AT ED MORE T HAN 50 Y E ARS AGO BY E V ELY N ZOPF OF HER L AT E HUSBAND NOW RESIDES IN R AGDAL E HOUSE .

Tools lined the low-slung walls in his

woodcrafter and gardener,” Bill says. “He made unbelievable things out of metal and tin that I didn’t realize he could do.”

Outside, the garden carried its own memories. Tomatoes once

the origin of the chair they use in the archives. Visitors may admire the cabinet without realizing it resists categorization

attic. There were coffee cans and boxes for every size nail and screw. “He was more than just a master

Students crossing campus may not know

because its maker resisted it too. Even the bust in Ragsdale House may be seen as decoration before memory.

But that, too, feels appropriate, says Bill.

grew there in quantities large enough for hundreds of quarts

“Paul was never a loud presence,” he says. “His influence was

of canning. Amaryllis bloomed seasonally in honor of Evelyn.

(built) over decades of teaching, advising, repairing, saving

The property felt less like a residence than a living record of

and returning things to usefulness.”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 2

CAMPUS NEWS

GUILFORDIANS CONTRIBUTE $1.28 MILLION

Guilford Madness drew support from all generations of Guilfordians.

What began as an ambitious fundraising goal became

urgently needed, including financial aid and student support

something larger – a campuswide and alumni-driven show of

initiatives designed to help students remain enrolled and

confidence in the future of Guilford College.

fully engaged in campus life.

During Guilford Madness in March 2026, 616 donors

“For many students, financial aid is the difference between

contributed a combined $1.28 million, surpassing the

continuing their education and stepping away from it,”

College’s $1 million goal by 28 percent and setting a new

Jean says. “The generosity we saw during Guilford Madness

benchmark for giving in the annual spring campaign.

directly supports students in practical, immediate ways. It

President Jean Bordewich said the campaign’s success was about far more than dollars raised.

“This was not just a campaign,” Jean says. “This was a collective act of belief in Guilford and in our students. People gave because they believe this institution changes lives and because they want students to have every opportunity to succeed here.”

The fundraising effort drew support from across generations of Guilfordians, from recent graduates making first-time gifts to alumni celebrating milestone reunion years.

helps them stay here, thrive academically and participate fully in the Guilford experience.”

Its a pivotal time for higher education nationally, as colleges across the country face financial pressures, shifting enrollment trends and increasing concerns about affordability. Guilford leaders said the strong response from alumni and supporters sends a message that the College’s community remains deeply invested in its future.

“It says something powerful when hundreds of people come together like this,” Jean says. “Guilfordians believe in this place and in one another. That spirit of connection and shared

The unrestricted and flexible nature of many gifts will

responsibility is one of the defining characteristics of the

allow the College to direct resources where they are most

College.”

HANDS-ON PROJECT

AS PART OF T HEIR GUIL FORD UNDERGR ADUAT E SY MPO SIUM PROJEC T E X AMINING T HE HIS TORY OF WQFS, BEC CORMACK ’ 26 CRE AT ED A MUR AL FE AT URING T HE PAIN T ED HANDPRIN T S OF S T UDEN T S AND S TAT ION CON T RIBU TORS ON A WAL L INSIDE T HE CAMPUS’ R ADIO S TAT ION.

P H O T O : M I C H A E L V. C R O U C H ’ 10 , ’ 12

GUILFORD LAUNCHES FLAG FOOTBALL

New coach Derrick Walker is busy recruiting the Quakers’ first team for next spring.

The recruiting pitch starts with the obvious: a chance to help build something

college coaches can match.

According to Derrick, the College has 17 students committed for the inaugural season – six current Guilford students and 11 incoming players or transfers.

from scratch.

Women’s flag football has exploded nationally in recent

But when

years, fueled by high school participation, NFL investment

prospective

and NCAA support. Athletics Director Bill Foti says Guilford

players ask why

will be one of five Old Dominion Athletic Conference schools

they should

that plan to sponsor the sport in its early stages. Bill says a

come to Guilford

conference tournament is hoped for in the 2028 season.

College to

Derrick says he’s using the newness of the program to attract

play women’s flag football, new coach Derrick Walker offers something else, too: experiencing in a sport still trying to catch up with its own growth.

Derrick was hired earlier this year to launch Guilford’s women’s flag football program ahead of its debut in spring 2027. He has spent more than two decades around the game.

He played college football at Western Carolina University before gravitating toward intramural flag football, then adult leagues and eventually national travel tournaments. Along the way, he’s coached high school teams and built a travel organization that now gives him a recruiting pipeline few

recruits. “They’ll be making history at Guilford because we’re starting something from scratch,” he says. “And that doesn’t mean we’re starting slow. We’re going to win, too.”

The Quakers will play on the school’s football field, though the dimensions differ from tackle football: an 80-yard field instead of 100, and 40 yards wide instead of 53. NCAA rules require at least 12 games.

Derrick believes the program’s edge with recruits lies in his experience as a head coach. “You want to become a great flag football player?” he says. “You get a good value here. The players want to win and I’ve done that everywhere I’ve been.

That’s a good match”

POOLE RETURNS TO GUILFORD

Standing on the blue-and-green surface of the Dorothy

where he earned Division II

Ragsdale McMichael ’37 Centennial Class Courts, Bert Poole

Regional Assistant Coach of the

sees more than tennis courts. He sees a beginning.

Year honors.

Nearly 20 years ago, Guilford gave Bert his first opportunity

He coached 11 years at Averett

to lead a collegiate tennis program.

University leading the program to

The Quakers were coming off a winless season. One year later, under Bert, the team reached the Old Dominion Athletic Conference playoffs. Now, after two decades of coaching success across the South, Bert is returning to the place where it all started.

“I really enjoyed my experience here during my first term and feel very comfortable in this environment,” he says. A lot has happened since he last paced the courts in Greensboro.

Poole went on to coach at the University of Mount Olive

eight conference tournament finals and one championship.

But trophies and records tell only part of the story. Bert says that success at Guilford will begin with the student-athlete experience.

“My hope for Guilford is that our players have a great experience here,” he says. “Winning is a big part of having a great experience, and I will be working hard to develop our current players while recruiting players capable of competing in one of the toughest Division III conferences in the country.

I’m excited to get going.”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 4

LEADING by LISTENING By making room for every voice, President Jean Bordewich is leading Guilford’s renewal.

PHOTO: BETSY BLAKE ’99

The desk in Jean Bordewich’s corner office in Hendricks

So every day Jean brews a cup of her favorite herbal tea –

Hall looks exactly as you’d expect a college president’s desk

chamomile or ginger in the morning, licorice root in the

to look like. Solid. Imposing. The kind of desk that suggests

afternoon – and goes to work rebuilding Guilford College

decisions of great importance are made here. A closed laptop

from a round table.

awaits. Files fan outward across the surface like maps of imagined futures. All that’s missing is someone to use the desk because Jean never does.

On days when she’s not out in the community raising money and building relationships for the College, Jean meets people at a round table on the other side of the room – faculty, staff members, trustees, alums. If three people show up, she makes it four. If there’s a party of five, she pulls up a chair and makes room for six. No one sits “across” from Jean in an adversarial sense. They sit with her.

That is not an aesthetic preference as much as it is a philosophy. Guilford’s 11th president feels a disconnect sitting behind a desk.

It seems a small choice – imposing desk or welcoming table – but Guilfordians working with Jean are convinced that choice is the quiet thesis of her first 18 months as president.

What makes that choice striking is not the symbolism, but instead its context. The table is where she invites people in.

The desk is where, in another kind of presidency, she might have issued orders. And when Jean Bordewich stepped into the role, there were moments when issuing orders might have been easier. Or faster. Or, at least, more familiar to institutions in crisis.

In a moment when the College needed swift decisions to survive, colleagues, friends and family say Jean leaned instead on the Quaker instincts that shaped her: listening

“There’s a space between us that wasn’t there when they

first, deciding together and trusting that leadership need not

walked in,” she says. “There’s a barrier before we’ve even

stand apart to be firm.

started talking.”

5 | W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U

Paula Sours ’76, a retired attorney and vice chair of the

Back in Florida, the bookshelves in Jean’s home held Quaker

College’s board of trustees, is convinced Jean’s Quaker traits

books by Douglas Steere, Elton Trueblood and George Fox.

displayed from the start helped rescue Guilford, the only

She read them all, but what stayed with her was the posture

Quaker college in the southeast.

behind them: the assumption that every person mattered,

“Her consensus building, active listening and discernment skills are Jean’s best attributes,” says Paula. “You can talk

that volume was not a prerequisite for being heard, that the point of a community was to make room.

about those skills in a business or MBA class, but putting

By high school, Jean didn’t apply to a dozen colleges – just

them into practice is another story.”

Guilford. She came to campus after her junior year of high

As Jean tells it, the circle matters to Quakers. In meeting houses on Sunday mornings and, just as important, at work

school and, by her telling, essentially asked to start early.

Guilford took her.

the next day. No one stands above the congregation because

Once she was a student, Snow Camp didn’t disappear. It

no one is presumed to own the Light. Authority is discovered

became her weekend refuge. A family member would pick her

through listening.

up on weekends and she’d stay with an uncle and aunt, the

“Consensus,” says Jean, “is not the absence of leadership. I think it’s leadership exercised with patience.”

A born leader

latter a schoolteacher who made most of her clothes. They sewed together: Jean cutting out patterns, her aunt at the machine and doing the finishing. There was homemade pound cake waiting when she walked in the door, sometimes chess

Those Quaker skills of listening and inclusivity were never

pie, jars of canned vegetables in the pantry, smoked ham kept

strategic in Jean’s case. They were inherited.

the old way – in a closet.

She grew up amid the palm trees and postcard sunsets of

Summers at Snow Camp were where Jean’s Quaker roots grew

Clearwater, Fla., but the deeper currents of her life ran north

wider and deeper.

among the red-clay roads of Cane Creek, a Quaker community in Snow Camp, N.C., less than an hour’s drive from campus.

“I didn’t think of it then as theology,” Jean says. “It was just how we lived. That everyone carries a measure of Light, that

Jean remembers being drawn to Cane Creek from an early

you listen before you speak, that you don’t … put yourself

age – not in a dramatic conversion way, but in the quiet,

above other people. You sit at the table. You do your part. You

persistent way something feels true before you can explain

trust the rest will come.”

why.

Steep hill

Her mother talked about Cane Creek constantly, and Jean listened. The place became real to her through stories. Stories like the aunt who helped Black teachers integrate North Carolina’s schools. And her mother who, years later, never debated or theorized over the emerging gay and lesbian

Those roots guide her now in ways both subtle and structural.

When Jean became acting President early last year, there were no ceremonies or celebrations. Just a ledger full of red ink and a ticking clock.

movement. Instead Marjorie shrugged, almost bemused by

Guilford had been on probation with its accrediting agency,

the controversy.

the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission

“My mother figured if that’s the way God made someone, who was she to object?” Jean recalls. “Mom said, ‘I’m just here to love them.’”

“These weren’t radical ideas I learned,” Jean says. “They were normal ways of acceptance and tolerance of others.”

on Colleges (SACSCOC), because of long-running financial issues, including years of operating deficits and sagging enrollment. Accreditation is a college’s oxygen: without it, federal student aid dries up, degrees lose value and a small liberal arts institution can quickly become unsustainable.

Just months earlier, the College faced a stark ultimatum:

Jean’s family returned to Cane Creek in the summers. It was

balance the budget by December 2025 or risk losing

farm country and kin country: a cluster of aunts and uncles,

accreditation altogether. The structural deficit – more than

two older sisters on the farm, relatives across the road,

$5.2 million – was not new. What was new was the timeline.

the whole family stitched into the landscape. Cane Creek

Roughly six months to make ends meet.

Monthly Meeting anchored that world. Generations of her family – many of them Guilfordians – are buried there.

Inside Guilford, even senior leadership questioned whether

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 6

survival was realistic. “About 25 percent,” Chief Operating

There were conversations about cuts, about rethinking

Officer Keith Millner ’82 recalled telling staff when he was

programs and overhead, about rallying alumni to open

asked in early 2025 the chances of maintaining accreditation.

their wallets again in a crisis. Trustees and administrators

The number traveled fast, an unvarnished assessment that

worked “at rocket speed,” Jean recalls, overhauling financial

rattled a campus already on edge.

processes and fundraising with urgency.

The pressure wasn’t just financial – it was existential.

Even the solutions carried risk. Efforts to collect overdue

Without accreditation, Guilford would effectively cease to

payments clashed with long-standing institutional norms.

operate. That reality sharpened every decision and stripped

Adjustments to tuition discounting threatened enrollment.

away any illusion of optionality.

Staffing reductions raised hard questions about who would

Jean knew she didn’t have all the answers so she surrounded herself with a core of alumni who could help. Paula, a retired

do the work — and how the community would respond. Nearly every fix introduced a new uncertainty.

lawyer, offered legal advice where she could. Keith, a former

At the same time, leadership wrestled with a question that

All-American football player and successful businessman

cut to the core of Guilford’s identity: should the College

in Atlanta, pinched every penny as COO. Carla Brenner ’73,

declare financial exigency? The move would allow cuts to

who spent years working for the National Gallery of Art, gave

tenured faculty positions, but risk fracturing trust across

a long overdue assessment of the College’s art collection,

campus. For nearly two months, trustees and administrators

helping determine what pieces to consider selling. Dan

debated the path forward, weighing financial necessity

Mosca, the board chair whose two children and granddaughter attended Guilford, brought his business acumen and years of service as a board member to the team.

“I don’t think any of us came in here saying we knew what to do,” says Jean. “We just knew that if

against institutional culture.

”We’re about human beings learning from other human beings how to be human ... That isn’t just taking place in our classrooms. It takes place across the campus.”

something didn’t change, the school

— JEAN BORDEWICH

All of it unfolded with accreditation in mind. Early guidance helped define the path forward, but by the fall, a visiting SACSCOC committee left unconvinced. Though not immediately public, the message inside leadership circles was clear: the margin for error had vanished.

What followed was a month of

wasn’t going to survive.”

near-constant preparation, refining

What they discovered, quickly,

financial models, correcting errors,

was that the crisis ran deeper than

rehearsing every detail of the

the balance sheet. Years of prior decisions – debt without

College’s case. “It was like a courtroom,” Keith says. “We had to

matching revenue, inconsistent financial oversight – had

prove it.”

accumulated into what Keith described as “an anchor around

Community effort

our neck.” This wasn’t a sudden collapse. It was a slow one, finally reaching its breaking point.

Then came the daily reminders of just how deep a hole the College had dug itself into. Millions in unpaid student accounts receivable. Vendors – many of them small, local businesses – were owed significant sums and, in some cases, refusing to continue work. In one early flashpoint, students began classes without access to textbooks because the

By now Guilford’s success story has been well documented.

The College erased its structural deficit, presented a sound operating budget for the 2026 fiscal year and maintained its accreditation.

In August the Board of Trustees rewarded Jean for her work by offering her a two-year contract as President through the 2026-27 academic and fiscal year.

College had not paid its provider. The bill was settled within

Jean is quick to remind you this was not a solo rescue but

hours once identified, but the episode exposed just how

rather a community achievement, one that set the tone for

fragile operations had become.

how she will lead over the next two years: not as a lone figure

“Every day felt like peeling back another layer,” says Keith.

“And every layer had consequences.”

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who ventured out on her own but as someone who brought together others to face the hard truths together.

JE AN SPENDS TIME W ITH MAL AKIE HARRIS ’26 AND SADIE CY R ’29 IN HEGE ACADEMIC COMMONS.

PHOTO: ROBERT BELL ’11

Consensus, she insists, is not indecision.

identity, she looks for the light already present.

“There’s this idea that Quakers just talk and never move

While other schools chase the latest trend in higher

forward,” she says. “But discernment is making decisions.”

education, Jean says Guilford’s flag is firmly planted as a

Jean’s husband, writer and historian Fergus Bordewich,

liberal arts institution.

describes her leadership style as a rare combination.

“I see Guilford 10 years from now as being more of exactly

“She has a deeply empathetic temperament that’s paired with

what it is today,” she says. “We just have to find the people

an engineer’s approach to a problem,” he says. “She listens

who want a home like Guilford and convince them, ‘This is the

long to others, she thinks deeply on what she’s learned and

home for you.’”

then she acts.”

“So many schools are trying to produce graduates for the

That balance – patience and urgency, listening and action –

hot jobs at the moment. Four years later, by the time people

was tested almost immediately. The crisis did not pause for

graduate, those jobs are going to be something different.

consensus. It demanded it work under pressure.

We’re not here just to teach a trade.”

“It truly was a team effort,” says Provost Kami Rowan, who

Around a table, she believes, people see one another. And

compiled the final report the College presented to SACSCOC.

when they see one another, decisions – even hard ones – carry

“Everyone knew their role and did it, but it was Jean who

legitimacy.

guided, who trusted us. It would have been easy to give

”We’re about human beings learning from other human

marching orders. That’s not Jean.”

beings how to be human,” says Jean, a line she borrows from

That instinct — to gather others around a table, to let them

the late Guilford Geology professor Cyril Harvey. “That isn’t

speak, to find unity and then move — shapes everything from

just taking place in our classrooms. It takes place across the

budget conversations to campus strategy.

campus.”

Jean believes Guilford’s future depends not on chasing trends

Including in moments when the answers are unclear, the

but on becoming “more of itself” — leveraging strengths

stakes are high and the outcome is not guaranteed — like

already here: The Early College at Guilford, Friends Center,

in a Hendricks Hall corner office, where an imposing desk

the Quaker Archives, the Center for Principled Problem

sits empty and a community of Guilfordians gathers instead

Solving, the Guilford Woods. Rather than impose a new

around a nearby table.

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 8

EXECUTE. THEN WIN. Keith Millner once led Guilford on the football field. Now, as Chief Operating Officer, he’s helping lead it through one of the most pivotal chapters in its history — and making the case for what comes next.

It was never a given that one of Guilford’s best student-

These days, Keith splits his time between Atlanta and

athletes would end up at Guilford.

Greensboro. As COO of Guilford since January 2025, he’s

Keith Millner ’82 was headed to a liberal arts school. It just wasn’t Guilford. Wake Forest University was the plan – until

helping steer the College to a strong operational and financial future.

an eleventh-hour visit to Guilford shifted something. Back in

Guilford College Magazine caught up with Keith, who reflects

Eden, N.C., conversations with coaches and counselors began

on why he continues to invest his time – and his belief – in a

to point him elsewhere.

place that once, almost by accident, became his foundation;

“I came to find out that Guilford had a phenomenal reputation – high academic excellence, a terrific liberal arts school rooted in Quaker principles,” he says. “It was highly regarded not just in North Carolina, but across the Southeast.”

An Economics major, Keith quarterbacked the Quakers to a top-10 NAIA national ranking in 1981. After Guilford, he built a three-decade career in senior executive roles as president of Nationwide Financial Network, president of CertusBank Georgia and Chief Operating Officer of InvestAtlanta, before moving into entrepreneurship. Today, he co-owns Social Capital, LLC, which operates multiple Jersey Mike’s submarine sandwich shop franchises in the Atlanta area and Coaching Catalyst, LLC, an executive coaching and business advisory firm.

But the through line, even now, is Guilford.

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the place that shaped his trajectory and, in many ways, still anchors it today.

Let’s start with the question everyone’s asking: Is Guilford going to be OK? I believe it is — but not by accident. We’ve come through a period that forced us to confront some hard truths about how we operate and how we sustain ourselves. The work now is about building a high-performing,thriving organization with a business model that is sustainable, scalable and resilient.

What feels different right now compared to a year ago?

The culture is completely different. Everyone, including faculty, staff and the administration are all aligned and committed. There is genuine confidence and belief. A year ago, we were reacting. Now we are proactive and creating our

future — making data-informed decisions with a longer view — how we allocate resources, how we think about enrollment, how we align what we offer with what students and families are looking for.

If you had to describe Guilford’s path forward in one sentence, what is it?

How is the College preparing students for that future?

By leaning into what we do well — preparing young adults to be critical thinkers, effective communicators, agile change-agents and capable, competent leaders. Making the connection to real-world experience. Internships, partnerships, applied learning and employability. Those are no longer add-ons; they’re essential.

Execute with excellence while continuing to focus on the mission.

Where is Guilford already winning — and where do we need to get better, fast?

We’re winning in the classroom. The faculty/staff-student

Where does Guilford need to take a risk right now?

In being willing to try new approaches — whether that’s new programs, new delivery models or new partnerships. Not every idea will work, but standing still is not an option. We need to change.

relationships, the mentorship and the sense of community — once students get here and experience our magic. The transformation is felt and seen by students and their parents.

This is evidenced by our roughly 88% retention.

What do Guilfordians misunderstand about the College at this moment?

That we’re not out of the woods just yet. Not by a long shot. I

Where we need to improve quickly is recruiting; how we tell

think some still see the College as it was, not as it is becoming.

that story and how we connect it to outcomes. Students and

This is a moment of change, and with that comes both

families want to know not just what the experience feels like,

challenge and opportunity.

but where it leads.

What does financial sustainability look like for Guilford?

As an alumnus, how does this moment feel to you personally?

It means a balanced budget every year; it means deleveraging

It’s personal. This place shaped me. That comes with a sense

our balance sheet; it means a three-fold increase in the

of responsibility — to make sure the next generation has that

endowment; it means investing in programs and experiences

same opportunity, even if it looks a little different.

that students value to drive enrollment, and it means investing in our faculty and staff.

So where should alumni support be directed right now?

What gives you confidence right now?

Guilford College has been in existence for 189 years, since 1837. We have survived many crises over that span

Recruiting new students. Partnering and collaborating

and survived. There is a resilience, a grit and a sense of

with our Enrollment team to market and promote the

destiny that is part of our DNA. At the end of the day, all

College across the nation and internationally. Our alumni

championship teams, all great organizations are as they are,

are Guilford’s best commercial. Our alumni can also offer

not because their product, service or marketing — rather

internships and employment to Guilford students and

it’s because of leadership and the people. Our faculty, staff,

graduates. Every college and university that is highly ranked

administration and alumni are our “secret sauce.”

and growing has an active, engaged and powerful alumni network. Also, continue to donate to the Loyalty Fund, the Quaker Club or your favorite professor, department or activity.

There are a lot of small colleges competing right now.

What makes Guilford distinct in 2030?

What does a thriving Guilford College look like?

We are winning! The scoreboard reads: enrollment 1,200; higher retention; a capital campaign to grow our endowment; long-term debt substantially trimmed; recognition nationally as one of the best small liberal arts colleges. Our values are consistently on display and the mission is seen and felt

It’s still the people. But we have to pair that with relevance. A

everyday by everyone who touches Guilford. Today we are a

Guilford education has to prepare students not just to think

college where students come not just for an education, but for

critically, but to navigate a world that’s changing quickly —

a sense of purpose — and leave prepared to make a difference.

technologically, economically, globally.

That only grows in the coming years.

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FOUNDERS at 50

JUDY REECE ’6 4 SAYS THE ORIGINAL V ERSION OF FOUNDERS HALL AS A DORMITORY “FELT LIKE HOME.”

Before it was a student center, Founders Hall was a home where thousands of encounters turned strangers into stories.

Judith Vail Reece ’64 first saw the man she would marry

“whether you asked for help or not”—and Founders was where

for the next 62 years from a third-floor window of the old

all that helping, nudging, colliding, and occasionally rule-

Founders Hall.

bending happened.

No, not that, Founders Hall. The original Founders, the one

The building was a women’s dormitory then, a warren of

with the soft brick, the soft-spoken rules, and the not-so-soft

rooms and rituals, where Dean of Women Mildred Marlette

curfews. Another student leaned beside her, pointed down at

’35 lived just downstairs and a German house mother guarded

Carey Reece ’62 shuffling up the red-brick walk with another

the first-floor entrance like a sentry with a kind heart and an

student and announced, with the confidence only a 21-year-

early bedtime.

old matchmaker can muster: You’re going on a blind date with

“It felt like home,” Judy says. “A real home.”

him.

Judy, to her credit, did not faint or flee. “And now I’ve been married all these years later,” she says with a laugh that suggests she’s still pleasantly stunned by the efficiency of that moment.

Founders Hall — or rather, the Founders that stood before 1974 — has been gone now for 50 years. Last fall, the 2.0 version turned 50 itself, marking five decades as the student center, the campus crossroads, the hum-and-buzz place where Guilfordians gather to eat, flirt, debate, perform, organize,

Back then, women in their first year were required to double-

nap, fall in love, and basically stare into the refrigerator of life

date with an upperclasswoman. “They helped you,” Judy says,

at 1 a.m.

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If Gwen Gosney Erickson, the College’s Quaker Archivist,

still bewildered) — and reinvented it as a true student center.

is the chief interpreter of Founders’ past, Judy is one of its

WQFS finally got a permanent home. Student government

great witnesses. “It’s the centerpiece of the College,” Gwen

found its seat. Plays, protests, and makers fairs moved in.

says. “If you graduated from Guilford, you spent a lot of time

Founders’ heart kept beating; the building just learned a new

in Founders.” And Judy did — though hers had creaky wood

rhythm.

floors, rocking chairs on the porch, and a single pay phone on the second floor that turned its nearest resident into an involuntary receptionist.

Judy didn’t see the demolition. She and her husband were living in Maryland, long gone from the porch with the rocking chairs where she used to find him waiting before dinner. “It

“If you lived near that phone,” Judy says, “you were doomed.”

was sad when we came back later and saw the new building,”

She pauses. “That was my second year.”

she says. “Not because it wasn’t nice — but because it was different.”

But the story of Founders, strangely

Even so, she bridged the old and

enough, is also a story about letting

new in the same way Founders itself

go.

does. The old dorm held memories

In 1973, Guilford leaders made what must have felt like a heretical decision: to tear down the College’s first and oldest building, the one that had stood since the 1830s with its handmade brick and pine beams and its knack for holding more memories than structural integrity.

of late-night knocks on the house

“Founders was never just a building, it’s always been where Guilford comes together.”

mother’s window, skirts required

— GWEN GOSNEY ERICKSON,

never knew any of that — but who

QUAKER ARCHIVIST

found their people, their place, their

They didn’t demolish it because they valued it too little, Gwen says,

new building would come to hold the memories of generations who

reunion last fall, she brought

The 1960s had been an era of action

together residents of the old

on campus, not sentimentality.

from Quaker worship space to offices. Everywhere, higher

boundary of the second floor. The

When Gwen organized the 50th

to let it collapse.

gutted to create classrooms; New Garden Hall transitioned

rule that no men ever crossed the

Guilford, all the same.

but because they valued it too much

Duke Hall, once the site of a grand auditorium, had been

for walking with a boy, and the

dormitory and the students who made the new Founders their headquarters. “It felt important to bridge those generations,” she says.

education was being rewired, replumbed, reimagined.

And it was fitting. Because Founders — whether the 1830s

Founders, with its 1830s bones and 1920s wiring, had simply

original, the 1975 rebuild, or the freshly renovated, plaza-

run out of runway.

framed, gazebo-accompanied version of today — has always

“You start tampering with a 19th-century structure,” Gwen

been a convergence point.

says, “and 20th-century building codes come calling.”

It’s where Judy first saw her future husband.

So in 1974, they took Founders down, brick by brick — except

Where students dashed for dinner jobs without stepping

for the back kitchen and dining area, added much later and

outside.

sturdy enough to stay. That choice kept the dining hall open

Where the pay phone rang endlessly.

during construction and created a beautiful oddity still visible today: old brick meeting 1970s brick, a literal seam between centuries.

When the new Founders opened in 1975, it was not a replacement but a reboot. It took the spirit of the original — the place where students slept, gossiped, studied, snuck

Where the College has gathered for nearly 190 years in one form or another.

Founders hasn’t fallen or vanished. It’s morphed. It’s adapted.

And yet it has stayed stubbornly itself in every version along the way.

back in after curfew, and occasionally weathered a panty

“Founders was never just a building,” Gwen says. “It’s always

raid (“I didn’t even know what a panty raid was,” Judy says,

been where Guilford comes together.”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 12

LILY BROW N ‘26 MEE T S W ITH THE DAL AI L AMA , THE SPIRIT UAL LE ADER OF THE TIBE TAN PEOPLE, DURING A SPRING GUILFORD S T UDY ABROAD TRIP.

THE GIFT OF PERSPECTIVE Study abroad programs create life-changing experiences that endure long after students return home.

The most important thing Guilford College students often

In northern Italy, Honors students studied sustainable living

bring home from a study abroad experience isn’t a souvenir.

at Brunnenburg Castle, perched high above vineyards and

It’s a different way of seeing.

valleys shaped over centuries. They examined food systems,

A mountain becomes more than a mountain. A game becomes more than a game. A border is no longer just a line on a map.

The world, once flattened by screens and textbooks, suddenly acquires depth.

That is what Guilford’s Global & Off-Campus Initiatives programs do so well. They do not simply take students to another country. They teach them how to see things differently.

environmental stewardship and human relationships with the land while standing in the middle of those very systems.

The classroom wasn’t separate from the lesson. It was the lesson.

In South Africa, students found something harder to put on a transcript. They wandered through the lingering shadows of apartheid, sat in classrooms with children whose stories complicated their assumptions, studied the uneasy parallels between South Africa and America, and discovered that the

In May, that learning unfolded across three continents and

world is always larger — and more human — than the version

countless moments that could never fit neatly into a syllabus.

we carry around in our heads.

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Another group traveled through Europe exploring the global business of sport. They visited Olympic venues, met industry leaders and saw firsthand how athletics can shape economies, cities and national identity. The trip wasn’t really about sports. It was about understanding the forces that

abstract ideas into human encounters.

And those encounters have a way of lingering.

Years from now, most students will forget a quiz grade or a textbook chapter. But they will remember standing in the

bring people together, and sometimes pull them apart.

shadow of the Himalayas meeting with the Dalai Lama. They

For three weeks, Guilford students traveled across India

remember the feeling of realizing that the world is far larger,

through Delhi, Agra, Dharamshala and Bir as part of a course examining Tibetan communities living in exile. They stood thousands of miles from Greensboro and wrestled with questions that have no easy answers: What does it mean to lose a homeland? How do people preserve culture when they are scattered from the place that gave it life? What

will remember looking out from a castle in Italy. They will more complicated and more interconnected than they once imagined.

A college education should expand a student’s horizons. The best study abroad programs make sure those horizons are real.

responsibilities do nations and individuals have to displaced

Experiences like these do not happen by accident. They

communities?

happen because generations of Guilfordians have believed

Those questions cannot be fully understood from a lecture hall.

You have to hear the stories. Share meals. Walk the streets.

Sit with people whose lives have been shaped by decisions made generations ago.

That is the enduring value of study abroad. It transforms

that education should extend beyond the boundaries of campus and beyond the limits of what students already know.

If you share that vision, consider supporting Guilford’s study abroad programs. Click HERE to help ensure that future students have the opportunity to see more of the world – and, in the process, discover more about themselves.

A GROUP OF GUILFORD SPORT MANAGEMENT S T UDENT S TAKE A BRE AK IN FR ANCE FROM THEIR S T UDY ABROAD TRIP ACROS S EUROPE.

AWESOME ALUMNI

Through patience, chemistry, and a little intuition, Kaira Wagoner is giving bees – and the humans who depend on them – a fighting chance.

When Kaira Wagoner ’06 talks about bees, the air seems to hum. Her sentences move – dare we say? – like bees in flight.

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They dart and double back, making connections that at first feel unpredictable but somehow land precisely where they should. One moment she’s explaining how compounds emitted by a sick bee can trigger an entire colony’s defense response; the next, she’s talking fondly of the childhood garden she once roamed and where she began to pay attention to the natural world around all of us.

“I’ve always been interested in animals, from the biggest

P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y O F K A I R A WA G O N E R

THE BEE WHISPERER

K AIR A WAGONER MAINTAINS ABOU T 25 COLONIES AT GUILFORD COLLEGE’S FARM.

down to the tiniest – that includes insects,” says Kaira, who

health, and the founder and CEO of a company that helps

graduated from Guilford as a Biology and Health Sciences

beekeepers breed stronger colonies. If you’ve ever wondered

double major. “I’m doing what I love.”

how a liberal arts education can pollinate a scientific career,

That foundation – equal parts curiosity, empathy, and a

Kaira is your answer.

refusal to accept easy answers – has carried Kaira from the

She didn’t start out chasing bees. After Guilford, she spent

Biology Department at Guilford to one of the world’s most

three years working with ceramic water filters in developing

complex creatures: the honey bee.

countries in Latin America and Eastern and Southern Africa.

Today, she’s a leading researcher on honey bee behavior and

When a close friend and mentor died from malaria in West

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 16

AWESOME ALUMNI Africa, Kaira decided to return to Greensboro and begin her

Sensing these pheromones, adult bees remove those

master’s work at UNCG studying mosquitos. After two years,

unhealthy bees from the colony so the colony can thrive.

she focused on bees.

After her discovery of these pheromones, Kaira set out to

Kaira says she wanted her work to matter, to connect to

create a practical tool for beekeepers. Her solution, UBeeO

life rather than death, and that meant turning away from

– short for Unhealthy Brood Odor – is a test that measures

the world of mosquitoes — creatures that could only ever be

a colony’s hygienic response using a mixture of synthetic

studied through killing. “I didn’t want to continue to always

pheromones which mimic those emitted by stressed bees.

try and kill my subject matter,” she says.

A beekeeper applies the mixture to a small section of

So she began to look elsewhere, toward a different kind of

capped brood, waits two hours, and scores the colony’s

insect — one that builds instead of destroys, one that lives for the colony. Bees, she realized, were not just fascinating but essential, the small machinery behind much of what humans eat and grow. Though most people fear the winged,

responsiveness. A high score signals a strong, hygienic colony; a low score indicates vulnerability. It’s a way to select for disease-resistant colonies, potentially reducing the need for chemicals that, while lifesaving, can impair bee health in

golden insects with their stingers (though they rarely attack),

subtle but significant ways.

honeybees play a pivotal role in the production of about 100

To get this technology into the hands of beekeepers, Kaira and

crops Americans consume. “We’ve become so reliant on bees

a labmate created Optera. Through Optera, Kaira has turned

for crop production that they really are a very important

that fundamental science discovery into a practical tool that

species in this country,” she says.

beekeepers can use to manage their hives and improve colony

She earned her master’s and Ph.D. at UNCG, where, armed with her expertise in gas chromatographymass spectrometry, she started investigating the chemical communication that governs honey bee colonies.

pest and disease resistance.

“I’ve always been interested in animals, from the biggest down to the tiniest – that includes insects”

Kaira focused on a phenomenon

— KAIRA WAGONER ’06

known as hygienic behavior, the colony’s innate ability to detect

“Compared to other livestock, the honey bee industry is a little behind in breeding for pest and disease resistance. ” Kaira says. “But with this finding, we thought, maybe we can turn this into a tool for beekeepers to actually measure how hygienic a colony is and then make management and breeding

and remove sick or dying brood to protect the colony. It’s a

decisions based on those results.”

complex process involving chemical signals, wax caps and the

Kaira’s research isn’t just about commercial agriculture. It’s

precise timing of intervention.

about ecosystem health. Unhealthy honey bees can transmit

The stakes have never been higher for bees and U.S. crops.

diseases to native bees through shared floral resources,

Parasites, loss of habitat, climate change and pesticides threaten to wipe out as much as 70 percent or more of the nation’s honeybee colonies this year, according to the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. The varroa mite, a parasite that attacks and feeds on the insects, has been a major

creating a cascade of risk across pollinator populations.

For Kaira, educating the public is as critical as the science itself. She emphasizes planting pollinator-friendly flowers, especially late-season blooms, to sustain bees through the lean months, and reducing the use of chemical pesticides that

contributor to bee deaths over the years. It weakens their

threaten both honey bees and native species.

immune systems and spreads viruses.

Kaira’s work bridges science and public engagement. She

The USDA believes the pests played a role in a major

maintains about 25 colonies at Guilford’s farm, smaller

colony collapse 20 years ago when large numbers of bees unexpectedly disappeared.

That’s where Kaira’s research comes in. She discovered that unhealthy honey bee larvae release a higher amount of certain pheromones, including those that are carrying parasites such as the varroa mite.

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hives in her community, and dozens of colonies at UNCG’s apiaries off Spring Garden Street and at the Plant and Pollinator Center in Browns Summit, about 20 miles north of Greensboro. Occasionally, she’ll install observation hives on her rooftop for her three boys to watch over breakfast.

All of that honey has to go somewhere and a large amount finds its way into the College’s community-supported

agriculture programs, connecting her research to the local food system.

Kaira also sells honey through her business, Optera, which launched the UBeeO product in January 2024.

Optera, named after Hymenoptera – the scientific order including bees, ants, and wasps – serves as a bridge between research and practical application. Kaira’s website, opterabees.com, features open-access publications, instructional videos, and information about bee hygiene and pollinator health. Through it, she hopes to reach a broad audience, from backyard beekeepers to commercial operators.

The life of a bee, Kaira reminds us, is brief yet vital. Spring and summer workers live for weeks, winter bees endure months to carry the colony through cold, and queens, ideally, may live two to three years, though contemporary pressures often shorten this dramatically. Maintaining healthy

K AIR A’S RESE ARCH HAS PRODUCED A TOOL TO HEL P BEEKEEPERS PRO T EC T V UL NER ABL E COLONIES.

colonies, she emphasizes, benefits not only honey production but also the wider web of pollinators in an area.

Her commitment to pollinator health traces back to her childhood in Charlotte, where she lived just down the street from Wing Haven, a garden and bird sanctuary. The owners of the land, her neighbors, cultivated a lush garden, gifting each other plants instead of conventional presents every year, and teaching young Kaira to feed wild birds and respect the

that would eventually inform her approach to bees: patient observation, careful experimentation, and a focus on communication within species.

Even her personal life is intertwined with these formative spaces. She first met her future husband, Reynaldo Diaz ’06, during a chemistry lab. Nature, bees and human connection seem to follow Kaira wherever she goes – a thread running from childhood to Kenya, from Guilford to UNCG.

rhythms of nature.

For Kaira, research is never purely academic. It is applied,

“I just kind of grew up loving nature,” she recalls. That love of

that signal stress in bees, she is helping beekeepers breed

nature guided her to Guilford College. Kaira is not Quaker, but she grew up around many Friends, who suggested she look into Guilford when she began her college search as a teen.

ethical and forward-thinking. By decoding the chemical cues resilient colonies, reduce chemical exposure, and protect native pollinators. By opening her labs and fields to the public, she is fostering awareness of the invisible work that

“I fell in love with the place the first time I saw it,” she says.

underpins ecosystems and food systems alike. And by running

“The trees, the lake, the woods – all of it spoke to me.”

a business dedicated to translating science into practical

Kaira studied Chemistry but pivoted to Biology her junior year after a transformative semester in Kenya studying

tools, she ensures that the benefits of her research reach far beyond the ivory tower.

human-wildlife conflict in the Maasai Mara National Reserve.

“Bees are absolutely fascinating,” she says, her voice tinged

Among the Maasai denizens of lions, leopards, crocodiles

with wonder. “The more I work with them, the less I feel like I

and wildebeests, she discovered animal behavior, an interest

know, which is incredibly inspiring as a scientist.”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 18

AWESOME ALUMNI

PAINTING RADIANCE, PRACTICING HEALING With brush and beam, Claire Lanier blends art, science and compassion in her care for patients.

When Claire Massagee Lanier ’12 walks into a treatment

Claire is a radiation oncologist at Cone Health Wesley

room, she brings more than her medical training. She brings

Long Hospital in Greensboro. Despite her father being a

perspective – on illness, on inequity and on what it means to

doctor, she didn’t grow up dreaming of working alongside

stand with someone else at a vulnerable point in their life.

linear accelerators and Gamma Knives. Shortly before her

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P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F C L A I R E L A N I E R ’ 12

first year at Guilford, Claire’s father Terry Massagee, an

few years later, long hours in his hospital room changed

anesthesiologist, told her to explore all of her options.

everything. She hung on to every detail of his prognosis and

Being a physician is incredibly hard, he warned Claire when

the procedures being used to stabilize him.

she was 18 and just starting college. “He told me if I wasn’t

She realized then what she had always known but never

100 percent sure, don’t do it,” she says.

admitted: medicine was her calling. “I wanted to be in those

At first, Claire listened. She imagined other paths, looking outward. But when her father suffered a heart attack a

conversations,” she remembers. “It felt important. It felt like where I belonged.”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 20

AWESOME ALUMNI If her father’s heart attack gave her urgency, Guilford gave

says. “That meant he was starting on a different playing field

her shape. Claire grew up in Greensboro and hadn’t planned to

altogether. It was a turning point for me.”

attend a small liberal arts college close to home.

Guilford continued to challenge her perspective. As a

“I explored the campus, met faculty and just felt like it would

Principled Problem Solving scholar, she worked on projects

be a good fit,” she says. “It turned out to be perspective-

exploring Quaker values in action. For one, she placed a globe

shifting in ways I couldn’t have predicted.” She remembers

in the middle of a classroom and asked everyone to describe

one English class where a reading forced her to grapple with

what they saw. Each perspective was different, partial and

race and poverty in ways she hadn’t considered before.

valid.

At first she resisted. Her father had grown up with little;

“It was simple but powerful,” Claire says. “We literally all had

his parents had limited financial means. He worked hard

different views of the world, and they were all real.”

and overcame barriers. Didn’t that prove obstacles could be overcome with effort alone?

Over time she began to see the distinction. At Guilford she learned that marginalized groups and people of color face additional barriers her father never had to confront. Hard work matters, she says, but it is often not enough in the face of entrenched, systemic inequities. “(Dad) might have been poor, but he was also white,” she

Years later, in a cancer clinic, she would recall those lessons.

Every patient arrived with a story shaped by family, hardship or gratitude. Each view mattered.

Claire first learned about radiation oncology while applying to medical schools. The field intrigued her because it was deeply technical and deeply human. She loved the precision, the evolving technology and the chance to see concrete results — whether curing disease or easing pain.

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“It felt like the right balance between technology and human

creates collages and vision boards, and finds joy in patterns

connection,” she says. “You get to work closely with patients

and fabrics.

at such an important moment in their lives.”

To mark the 25th year of the Gamma Knife at her hospital,

She also knew the specialty

Claire didn’t reach for statistics or

was competitive. Rather than

plaques.

discourage her, it pushed her to dive

She painted. The canvas, Radiance,

deeper. “The more I learned, the

hangs in the Radiation Oncology

more I fell in love with it,” she says.

Department at Atrium Health Wake

Claire wrapped up her residency

Forest Baptist in Winston-Salem,

last summer and is now practicing

where she completed her residency.

independently. During that time,

The painting carries both the

she learned what many doctors

weight of medical physics and the

eventually do: medicine does not

small, stubborn hopes of patients

always live up to its ideals.

who have lain under the machine’s

Time is scarce. Systems are built for

crown. Cranial nerves and blood

efficiency, not empathy. “You go in

vessels curve across the surface,

wanting to take care of people, and

joined by butterflies catching a

then you find you’re not given the time to be the best caretaker you can be,” she says.

She also sees daily how socioeconomic status affects prognosis. Patients with fewer resources often arrive later in their disease course or face barriers that

“People think oncology is

only sad,” she says, “but there’s also so much joy.

Patients carry a perspective on life that’s inspiring.”

— Claire Massagee Lanier ’12

complicate treatment. “These are

suggestion of light. Transformation, fragility and strength share the canvas.

Claire dreams of designing cancer centers that feel as calming and supportive as the care delivered inside them.

“You can’t just go crazy with wallpaper and fabric,” she says.

things we can’t fix just by treating

“The goal is to make people feel at

the disease,” she says.

peace.” She traces that philosophy

Through it all, her patients keep her

back to Guilford, where she learned

grounded. Some arrive filled with

disciplines need not be siloed

gratitude; others with anger or fear.

and creativity can intersect with

“And if they are angry or scared,

science.

that’s absolutely understandable,”

“Things are interconnected,” she

she says.

says. “There isn’t just one path.”

Either way, Claire says she’s

Claire’s life today is busy,

privileged to walk alongside them.

demanding and joyful. When she

“People think oncology is only sad,”

reflects on what sustains her —

she says, “but there’s also so much

the patience to listen, the

joy. Patients carry a perspective on

imagination to design healing

life that’s inspiring.”

spaces, the conviction that

At home in Greensboro, Claire and her husband Patrick Lanier ’12 are raising three boys.

Between work and family, she makes space for creativity.

inequities must be acknowledged — she returns to Guilford.

“My education there was so important,” she says. “It gave me

She laughs off the label of artist, preferring to call herself

critical thinking skills and pushed me to see perspectives I

“crafty.” Still, her creative streak is real. She decorates rooms,

might never have considered.”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 22

AWESOME ALUMNI

P H O T O : D AV I D M A R T I N ’ 2 6

HEAVY LIFTING Three degrees.

Zero shortcuts.

Dawson Edwards would love to coast if he had the time.

To the list of questions that have nagged mankind through the ages, add this one: Which version of Dawson Edwards ’24, MBA ’25, MISM ’26 was harder to keep up with — the basketball player or the Presidential Fellow?

On the court, Dawson was as quick as he was elusive, slicing through defenses in his final season with the Guilford Quakers in a transition between head coaches, leading in ways that don’t always show up in a box score.

Off the court, he was just as difficult to pin down — running tours for prospective students, printing materials in the Admission Office before most of campus had its coffee, wrapping up a second master’s degree to stack neatly atop his undergraduate diploma.

He is, in short, a study in motion.

Spend five minutes with him – if he has that time to spare – and you begin to understand that motion is not restlessness. It’s purposeful. He has a dream, one sketched out on a piece of paper at his kitchen table last year.

Every move he makes, every breath he takes is designed to realize the dream.

“I truly want to build my own business one day,” Dawson says, leaning forward as if already pitching it to a roomful of investors.

He wants to build a gym – only it’s not just a gym. He wants that gym to have a library. You read that right.

And offices and a maker’s space.

His target audience is mid-career people and retirees, the ones with the most disposable income. But also elementary, middle and high school students. In short, everybody.

“It’s going to incorporate a little bit of sport, a lot of the operational stuff I W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 24

AWESOME ALUMNI learned during my MBA — but really it’s going to incorporate

“His leadership on the floor is what I noticed first,” says Tom,

relationships and community.”

now the associate head coach at Longwood University. “That’s

Relationships and community. When Dawson speaks, the phrase returns again and again, like a drumbeat.

It is, he admits with a grin, the very reason he chose Guilford in the first place.

He grew up in Durham, N.C., in a world textured by Sunday mornings and public school hallways. “First thing I think about is church,” he says about growing up. “My parents always made sure we were up and there every Sunday. Sunday school — that’s where I made my first friends.”

not always something you can teach a player, but Dawson had it in him in high school.”

By the time Dawson visited campus, basketball was only part of the equation.

“Relationships and community, that’s all I heard about Guilford,” Dawson says. “So I thought, let me just go to campus and see what it’s about. After visiting, I was convinced.”

At Guilford, he found not just a roster spot, but a runway.

He completed his undergraduate degree in Business

Those friendships often stretched beyond school boundaries.

Administration. He added an MBA and, in 2026, a Master’s

Many of the children he knew from church attended private

in International Sport Management. Along the way, he

schools or different public schools. The diversity of his early

became one of four Presidential Fellows for 2025-26 – recent

education left an imprint. “We were learning about Black

graduates who work in a department on campus while earning

history, Hispanic history — in fifth grade,” he says. “In college

a master’s degree at Guilford.

I’d hear people say they barely learned about that in middle school or high school.”

The Presidential Fellowship is a “win-win” program fostering leadership and providing practical experience in higher ed for

In eighth grade, he completed a community service project

students. For Dawson, it was a role that places him in the room

that quietly altered his trajectory.

He chose to interview members of Durham’s homeless community.

One man stood out — a military veteran whom everyone assumed was living on the streets.

“He wasn’t,” Dawson says. “He lived with his sister. He had family. He just walked the streets every day

where decisions are made.

“Whenever I’m thinking about my idea, I’m thinking about providing value in the best way possible for as many people as possible” — DAWSON EDWARDS ’24, MBA ’25, MISM ’26

picking up trash.”

“He felt a duty to make the planet look better,” Dawson says.

“People thought he was homeless, and he was just living his best life.”

application was how much I love Guilford College, and I want to be a part of its direction,” he says. “As a student you can have input. But when you have a staff position, you can really be in the room when is more considered.”

times in war. He had been diagnosed clean highways running through and around Durham.

clear on my (Presidential Fellowship)

decisions are made. Your perspective

The man had been shot multiple with PTSD and paranoia. And yet he rose each morning to

“One of the biggest things I made

If that sounds ambitious, it is. But it is also disciplined.

His typical Monday was like a time-management case study.

He woke at 7:30 a.m., walked his Golden Retriever Maximous before reporting to work in Hendricks Hall. He printed materials for morning tours, fielded calls and shepherded

That lesson — that purpose is not always glamorous, that

prospective families across campus. Around 11 a.m., he

fulfillment is not synonymous with applause — stayed with

squeezed in a workout if practice loomed. The last tour wraps

him.

at 2:30; he headed straight to practice. After practice, the

So when colleges began circling during his senior year of high school, he weighed more than playing time. An assistant coach from Guilford watched him compete in a game crowded with recruiters. UNC Greensboro, a Division I program, deemed him

team lifted. Then home to Maximous. Then homework. Then, perhaps, a late-night conversation with Natalie Moore ’26, his girlfriend who graduated from Guilford in May with a Biology degree.

undersized. Former Guilford head coach Tom Palombo saw

The arithmetic of his days required some heavy lifting of

something else.

discipline and time management until, he says, the darting

2 5 | W WW. G UIL FOR D . ED U

around campus,

start working, it’s the same thing. You’re going to feel

weight lifting,

responsibility if the project succeeds or fails.”

studying and basketball becoming less a chore and more routine.

“Sometimes you hit a wall and say to yourself,

kitchen table, before a predawn shift at Target. Dawson and a roommate began sketching what downtown Greensboro could become if they had the land.

“I thought, everyone builds athletic facilities,” he says.

“What would I want to build? A place where community and ambition collide.”

“‘man, I need

The concept has since grown into something like a hybrid of

some personal

a YMCA, a co-working space, a library, and a civic commons.

space.’ But after

There would be fitness facilities, yes, but also career fairs,

doing so much

speaker series, food spaces, professional learning areas. “It’s

and wanting

like reinventing the college experience without classes,” he

to be involved

says. “Open to all ages.”

in so much, it

He has mapped it down to phased construction. He has run

becomes your life. I’d rather be a part of change than watch

feasibility scenarios. It’s all right there in a Google Doc. He’s convinced his Guilford MBA will give him the edge he needs when it’s time.

change happen

“I got an ethical education here at Guilford,” he says. “That’s

and have no

going to be huge. Whenever I’m thinking about my idea, I’m

input.”

thinking about providing value in the best way possible for as

Basketball

many people as possible.”

provided the

Guilford professors emphasize ethics and feasibility. But

crucible.

perhaps the most important lesson Dawson has absorbed at

“You can’t show DAWS ON EDWARD S WAS A T WO -Y E AR S TART ER FOR T HE QUAKERS’ BASKE T BAL L T E AM

Back to Dawson’s dream. The idea sparked at 2:30 a.m. at a

Guilford is persistence.

up to practice

“If you have a dream, you can do it,” he says. “It might not

five minutes

happen in a year or two. But who’s to say it won’t happen in

before and

the third?”

expect to be ready,” he says. “There’s preparation.”

For now, his path is practical. He’s working in Admissions, but he plans to pursue work in real estate or as a sports agent,

He laughs as he recalls his high school coach’s mantra: proper

careers adjacent to his interests that will allow him to build

planning and preparation prevent poor performance — the

capital and connections.

“six P’s.” At the time the line, to keep the alliteration going, piqued Dawson.

In college, it made sense.

“It’s a starting point,” he says. “I still get to have relationships with people. I still get to impact the next generation.”

And one day, when the timing is right, perhaps that sketch

“A failure to plan is planning to fail,” he says. “Once you’re

from 2:30 a.m. will become brick and steel and glass — a place

thrown in the fire, you understand and my time at Guilford

where community and ambition collide.

has been one big fire. A good kind of fire. It’s made me stronger and ready for what comes next.”

Not surprisingly, Dawson was one of the basketball team’s

Guilford didn’t hand him the dream.

It gave him the space — and the discipline — to refine it.

captains. Leadership, he believes, is less about speeches

“This place taught me to be okay with the process,” Dawson

and more about stamina. “Being a team captain, you feel

says. “Finding your dream isn’t quick. But if you keep

responsible for the direction of the team. And once you

preparing, you’ll be ready when it’s time.”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 26

AWESOME ALUMNI

WHO GETS HEARD?

That’s the question at the center of Tom Clement’s work — from Guilford classrooms to an Emmy-winning film about protest in the digital age.

Ten years ago, Tom Clement ’14 was a production assistant

and what happens when ordinary people discover a way to

hoping to break into documentary filmmaking.

command attention.

This spring, he stood on a stage in Los Angeles accepting a

“Following all different kinds of people using the same tactic

National Emmy.

– that’s what makes this story so interesting to me,” Tom says.

The path between those two moments wasn’t straight,

“The ability to project a message means almost any message

predictable or particularly easy. It wound through

– good or bad – can be put out there.”

newsrooms, film festivals, early-morning White House

The documentary earned critical acclaim, premiering at Doc

assignments and countless hours spent editing footage when

NYC, one of the nation’s leading documentary film festivals.

most people would have been asleep.

Still, Tom didn’t expect to hear his name called at the Emmy

It also began, in many ways, at Guilford College.

Awards.

Tom won the Emmy for Outstanding Short Documentary

“I was definitely surprised,” he says. “I was not expecting to

for “Projecting Protest,” a 22-minute film that explores

win. I was shocked, and I was elated.”

how activists use light projections to transform buildings

He remembers sitting among teams that seemed much larger

into temporary billboards for political messages. The

than his own.

documentary examines a tactic used by groups across the

“When they announced the category, every team was

ideological spectrum, from progressive activists protesting economic inequality to white nationalist organizations spreading hate.

For Tom, the project began the way many of his stories do: with curiosity.

While covering a Senate debate in Pennsylvania as a video journalist, he noticed a message projected onto a nearby building.

Tax the ultra rich.

The projection lasted only a short time, but it captured his attention.

cheering,” he says. “It sounded like there were 15 people on each team.”

Then came the announcement.

“I basically just said, ‘Oh, (expletive),’ stood up and walked to the stage,” he says with a laugh. “It’s remarkable. It’s such an honor.”

The win carried special meaning because of everything that came before it.

In late 2024, Tom was among the journalists laid off during downsizing at Scripps News. Around the same time, “Projecting Protest” premiered at Doc NYC. For months, he

“I just thought it was fascinating,” Tom says.

didn’t know whether the film would ultimately air nationally,

Most journalists would have treated the projection as an

a requirement for Emmy consideration.

interesting moment in a larger story. Tom wanted to know

The uncertainty could have ended the project’s awards run

more. Who was behind it? How did it work? Why was it so

before it began.

effective?

Instead, the documentary eventually aired and qualified for

Those questions eventually became a documentary.

national competition.

“Light projection as a protest tactic is a uniquely impactful

Today, Tom works as a freelance cinematographer and

tool for dissent,” Tom says. “Anyone with the right technology

filmmaker, producing documentaries and documentary-style

can make a splash, disrupt powerful organizations using the

content for advocacy groups, labor organizations and other

facade of a building.”

clients.

The finished film explores something larger than the

The move has brought new challenges, but also new freedom.

technology itself. It asks who gets heard in modern society 2 7 | W WW. G UIL FOR D. ED U

GUIL HELisPED TOM DIS COV ERas T HE KIND S OFheS TORIES “TheFORD work definitely not steady,” says. “But I’m not HE WAN T ED TO T EL L : PEOPL E CONFRON T ING L ARGER exhausted all the time.”

SYS T EMS WHO ONLY WAN T TO BE HE ARD.

power,” he says. “That’s always been a part of me. I want to

TheT OEmmy PHO C OUR T EShas Y OFstrengthened T OM CL EMEN T ’ 14 his confidence in pursuing the

His Quaker upbringing reinforced those values. So did his

stories that matter most to him.

years at Guilford.

“It gives me more conviction that I should listen to my gut and

“People looking out for each other,” he says. “When you see

pursue the ideas that I think are interesting and worthwhile,”

something that’s wrong, you do something about it.”

he says. “It gives me confidence in my own tastes.”

Listening to Tom talk about his work, a pattern emerges.

That confidence can be traced back to Guilford.

Whether he’s documenting environmental concerns in

As a student, Tom served as a video editor for The Guilfordian

eastern North Carolina, activists projecting messages onto

and began developing the skills that would define his career.

skyscrapers or men searching for belonging in a changing

He credits professors like the late Jeff Jeske and retired

culture, he is ultimately interested in people trying to make

Economics professor Robert G. Williams with helping shape

themselves heard.

his thinking about storytelling, ethics and the role journalism

That theme continues in his newest project, a documentary

can play in society.

help them tell their story.”

exploring masculinity through a community of male dancers.

More importantly, Guilford helped him discover the kinds of

The film examines friendship, vulnerability and the search

stories he wanted to tell.

for connection among men.

One of his first documentaries, “Swine Country,” examined

The subject is different. The questions are familiar.

industrial hog farming in eastern North Carolina and its

Who belongs?

impact on nearby communities.

“The neighbors of these farms basically get sprayed with fecal mist routinely,” he says. “They’ve been speaking out about

Who has a voice?

How do people find the courage to use it?

it for a long time, but their concerns have not really been

The Emmy sitting on Tom’s shelf offers one answer. It is

addressed.”

recognition from peers that his work matters.

The subject matter was different, but the instinct was

But the award itself feels less significant than the path that

familiar.

led there.

Tom has always been drawn to stories about people

A curious student at Guilford College picked up a camera and

confronting larger systems — individuals trying to be heard

started asking questions. A decade later, Tom is still asking

by institutions that may not be listening.

them.

“The power of observing people righteously standing up to

Only now, the rest of the country is paying attention.

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 28

AWESOME ALUMNI

BEING THERE A Guilford education taught Annie Jonas the power of presence. These days, she’s showing up for the young people across Western North Carolina.

Annie Jonas’ 90 story starts, as these things often do, with a feeling that won’t quite go away — though, in Annie’s case, the feeling arrived while she was already where most people assume the searching ends: a longstanding professor at Warren Wilson College, settled into the kind of role that signals you’ve made it.

Not a grand declaration. Not a lightning bolt. Just a quiet tug that lingers in the background of a life that, by most measures, is already going well.

For Annie, the feeling showed up anyway, a desire to reconnect to youth work and community work that’s been important to her for most of her career. “I’ve always had this connection with youth, but I wanted something deeper,” she says. “Something where I was a little more engaged with them.”

So, after 20 years at Warren Wilson, she left.

Left the security, the title, the version of success that reads cleanly on a CV and quietly impresses at dinner parties.

Because somewhere underneath all of it was something older, steadier, and far more insistent: a belief that young people matter. Not in the abstract, not in the language of mission statements, but in the lived, ordinary stretch of time between the last school bell and dinner.

These days Annie is the program manager for the WNC After 3PM Collaborative, part of the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs. It’s the kind of work that doesn’t always draw attention, but matters deeply.

The Hours That Decide Everything By the time the last school bell rings across western North Carolina, the day is far from over for many kids. The buses pull away, the classrooms go quiet, and what comes next can look very different depending on what’s waiting on the other side of the afternoon. For some, it’s a warm room, a steady snack, a familiar adult who knows their name and notices when something feels off.

2 9 | W WW. G UIL FOR D . ED U

ANNIE JONAS IS T HE PROGR AM MANAGER FOR WNC 3PM COL L ABOR AT I V E , WHICH OFFERS S T UDEN T S AF T ER-S CHOOL SERV ICES IN WES T ERN NORT H CAROL INA .

For others, it’s a long stretch of hours to fill, hunger that hums

these safe spaces of resilience for families and youth that we

in the background, homework that might as well be written in

had not even imagined,” she says.

another language. Afterschool programs, in these places, are

Food. Batteries. Basic supplies like water and toilet paper. But

not enrichment in the abstract. They are a kind of soft landing – part classroom, part kitchen, part refuge – where learning continues, yes, but so does something more fundamental: the quiet, daily assurance that someone is paying attention.

Annie overlooks programs many might take for granted. A math problem explained one more time. A second helping

also something harder to measure — a place to land.

“Sometimes it’s as simple as kids just need somewhere to go,” Annie says.

That sounds small until you imagine the alternative.

Why Young People

of something warm. A place where the lights stay on long

Ask Annie why she keeps circling back to young people, and

enough for a child to finish what they started.

she pauses — not because she doesn’t know, but because the

In a region where distance can be isolating and resources

answer feels almost too plain to dress up.

uneven, Annie says consistency becomes its own form of stability. “Studies after studies show that kids perform better when they feel safe,” she says. “They show up differently

“I think … they are the ones inheriting the earth and our society,” she says.

when they aren’t worried about their next meal or whether

“And that sounds pretty simplistic.”

anyone will notice if they don’t understand.”

But then:

And so the stakes, while rarely framed this way, are

“They’re learning from us all the time about how the world

enormous. Because in the small, steady rhythm of those

works and the kind of world that they want to live in,” Annie

afterschool hours – snack, study, conversation, care – entire futures are being quietly, persistently shaped.

Holding It All Together

says.

“I’ve always enjoyed kids, but it wasn’t like, oh, that’s going to be a career.”

The collaborative stretches across

— ANNIE JONAS ’90

— in that quiet exchange. The modeling. The watching. The slow accumulation of what it means to be a person in the world.

“I’ve really tried to center their voice

18 counties – rural, spread out, the

and center their perspectives and

kind of geography where distance

help them gain skills and a sense

isn’t just measured in miles but in access. Annie’s new position

This is where her work lives

that they matter,” she says.

is about a year old, but she already sees her role as equal

Not just helping young people.

parts convener, coach and translator, bringing together

Believing them into themselves.

after-school providers who might otherwise feel like they’re working alone.

This is where she works now.

“Just bringing folks together in these widely dispersed geographic areas has been really powerful,” Annie says.

And then the hurricane came.

Guilford’s impact Before the programs and the advocacy and the long drives between counties, there was Guilford College, where brothers Eric ’85 and Jim ’88 also graduated.

And before that, a version of Annie who liked kids but hadn’t yet built a life around them.

In 2024, Hurricane Helene didn’t just knock out power lines

“I’ve always enjoyed kids, but it wasn’t like, oh, that’s going to

or flood roads. It scrambled routines. It stretched already thin

be a career,” she says.

systems. It left families looking for anything stable.

And in that gap, after-school programs – the ones that rarely make it into glossy reports – became something else.

Guilford changed that – not loudly, but steadily.

“I found Guilford to be much more … relational and community-minded than my own experiences in school,” she

Second homes.

says.

“After the hurricane, after school providers ended up being

“I felt like I was in a community that seemed to want to know

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 30

AWESOME ALUMNI who I was and asked me to contribute my gifts and skills.”

Richie and Annie remain good friends. He says he was initially

She uses the word agency.

surprised when he learned Annie had given up so much

“A strong sense of agency,” she says.

It showed up in working at WQFS and spending a semester abroad in Munich.

security at Warren Wilson to pursue working with young students. At least at first.

“The more I thought about it. Annie has never shied away from doing anything,” he says. “She’s always been open to

And then it sharpened.

doing interesting things and different things. This is more of

Annie had several internship opportunities through the

that plus it’s such important work.”

Psychology Department that included working at the juvenile

The Long Way Around

detention center and working on a ropes course for first years that once ran through the College’s woods.

“I started to see in myself that I wanted to do that, to be involved in their lives. Guilford brought that out of me or,

After Guilford, the path wasn’t straight, but it was consistent.

Outward Bound. Wilderness trips. Students learning more than how to read a map.

ANNIE JONAS BEL IE V ES I T ’S IMPORTAN T FOR S T UDEN T S TO BE SUPPORT ED BE YOND T HEIR FAMIL IES. maybe, helped me find that in me.”

So many Guilfordians share similar stories of finding their passion during their time at the College. Often that passion is nurtured here eventually — with professors who don’t quite leave.

For Annie, two names come quickly: Psychology professors Richie Zweigenhaft and the late Claire Morse.

“I think I knew when I was at Guilford how important they were,” she says. “What I didn’t see – gosh, how could I? – was how they would continue to be lifelong … inspiring mentors.”

3 1 | W WW. G UIL FOR D . ED U

“It was a great launching point … to learn about best practices for working with young people,” Annie says.

The South Bronx. North Carolina wilderness programs. A master’s degree at Harvard. Teaching. Nonprofits. Leadership.

A deanship back at Warren Wilson.

On paper, it reads like a climb. In hindsight it now appears to have always been a loop.

“I wanted to return to some of the work that made me the most passionate at the beginning of my career,” she says.

So she did.

Years later, she’s doing the same thing — just in different

Spend enough time listening to Annie, and you realize her

rooms, across more miles.

work isn’t really about programs.

“I think [Claire and Richie’s] mentorship showed me it’s important you challenge people, but

It’s about presence.

After-school spaces, she says, aren’t just extensions of the school day.

They’re something looser, more human.

Homework help. Snacks. Structure.

But also woodworking. River sampling. Robotics. Music.

“They’re engaged in really meaningful experiential activities,”

at the same time, you’re offering

“I started to see in myself that I wanted to do that, to be involved in their lives.

Guilford brought that out of me or, maybe, helped me find that in me.”

— ANNIE JONAS ’90

that support and guidance,” she says.

And now, somewhere in western North Carolina, a student is finishing homework. Another is picking up a tool for the first time.

Someone else is learning how to speak in a room full of adults.

And nearby, there’s an adult paying attention. Not announcing it. Not

she says.

branding it.

“It’s really exciting to see kids

Just showing up. The kind of

flourish in these programs where

attention that lasts. Maybe even a

they … have not had opportunities

lifetime.

like that.”

“At the end of the day, it’s just about making sure young

At Guilford, Annie learned what it felt like to be noticed. To

people know they matter,” says Annie, “and then showing up

be challenged and supported in the same breath.

in ways that prove it.”

AWESOME ALUMNI

PHO TO: PENN Y PARSONS ‘75

FINDING HER VOICE

Penny Parsons was a Guilford student searching for her place in the world. Guilford and Bluegrass helped her find it.

The funny thing about life-changing moments is that they

Which is why it fits Penny perfectly.

rarely announce themselves. No spotlights or trumpets or

Because while she never became the person standing in the

thunder claps from above insisting you pay attention because this one matters. Usually, they’re just another Saturday night.

spotlight, she has spent most of her life helping shine it on everyone else.

For Penny Parsons ’75, it was Sept. 16, 1972.

The story starts at Guilford.

Even now, all these years later, Penny remembers the date.

Actually, it starts before Guilford.

She was a first year at Guilford when she saw the flyer on campus that Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass were playing Dana Auditorium. She’d seen Lester perform on television and liked the music.

That was it. Nothing remarkable.

Except it changed everything.

“That was the night my life changed,” Penny says. “That’s when I became infatuated with Bluegrass, obsessed with it.”

Last year, more than five decades later, the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) recognized that obsession with a Distinguished Achievement Award, one of

Penny’s father, David Parsons, was the College’s business manager for more than 30 years. Her mother, Cora Worth Penny ’39, was a Guilford graduate. Penny grew up on campus, long before she enrolled as a student.

She remembers the woods.

Always the woods.

“Those woods were my home,” she says. “My dog and I would wander all through all the paths in the woods.”

She fished in the lake and swam in the lake with her father.

Rode her bicycle around campus.

the organization’s highest honors. The award isn’t reserved

“That was where I grew up.”

only for performers. It honors people whose work has

Like many Guilford students, she arrived without a perfectly

strengthened Bluegrass music itself – the writers, historians, producers, promoters and advocates who keep the culture alive.

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plotted future. She majored in Psychology and Religion. At home she listened to Led Zeppelin and Neil Young. She loved

Johnny Cash. Bluegrass wasn’t some inherited calling. It was

“I realized that there could be a book there and I really

simply one of many sounds competing for her attention.

wanted to be the one to tell his story,” she says.

Then Lester Flatt walked onto a stage in Dana Auditorium.

The project eventually became a biography published by the

The music hit her differently. Maybe it was the intensity.

University of Illinois Press.

Maybe it was the emotion. Maybe it was something she

Guilford prepared her for exactly this sort of life. Not a

couldn’t quite explain.”I still can’t put into words how I fell

specific profession. A way of moving through the world.

for the music and the energy it produced,” she says. “I was hooked.”

She followed Lester to other performances around North Carolina. She attended festivals. She subscribed to Bluegrass Unlimited magazine and read every issue. She worked parttime at Greensboro’s Music Barn. The music stopped being entertainment and started becoming a community.

Then came one of those moments that seems accidental until you look back years later.

Barry Poss, a pioneer in the world of Bluegrass, old-time,

“I learned to write when I was at Guilford,” she says. “Not just write but write well, and that has served me ever since.”

Writing became one of her most important tools, allowing her to tell stories, preserve history and connect generations of musicians who might otherwise never know one another.

In many ways, her hall of fame recognition acknowledges that work as much as anything else.

The award celebrates a lifetime spent documenting a musical tradition and helping sustain it.

roots and Americana music, of Sugar Hill Records in Durham,

These days Penny describes herself as “mostly retired” though

N.C., needed an employee and he asked Penny if she was

the evidence suggests otherwise. She still serves on IBMA

interested.

committees. She still attends festivals. She still travels to

“He did not have to ask twice,” she says.

That one opportunity led to another.

Then another.

She worked in publicity and marketing. She became involved with MerleFest, the renowned music festival in Wilkesboro, N.C., serving as the festival’s publicist for nine years. She worked in record distribution. She launched her

places like Jerusalem Ridge in Kentucky, Bill Monroe’s old homeplace, because the music continues to matter.

And recently, something else happened.

The Flat Creek Ramblers, a Bluegrass group Penny helped form with fellow Guilford students in the 1970s, got back together.

For decades the band mostly existed in memories and old

own company. She wrote articles. She built relationships

photographs.

throughout the industry.

Then the musicians reunited.

Looking back, she sounds a little surprised by all of it.

“It was really cool,” Penny says.

“I certainly didn’t expect it to take me as far as it did,” she

That understated assessment feels appropriate.

says. “I didn’t expect so many of the opportunities that came to me.”

Because the reunion wasn’t really about performing.

Maybe that’s because Penny never seems to have approached

It was about returning to where the story began.

Bluegrass as a career ladder.

A campus. A group of friends. A shared love of music.

She approached it more like a fan who kept finding ways to

And a reminder that the most important journeys often start

stay close to the music.

in places that feel ordinary at the time.

One of the best examples arrived in 2003.

Fifty-three years later, Penny is being honored by the people

Someone suggested she visit Curly Seckler, one of Bluegrass

who know Bluegrass best.

music’s pioneers and a longtime mandolinist for Flatt and

But the roots of that achievement still trace back to Guilford

Scruggs.

Penny figured she might write a magazine article.

Instead, she found herself sitting with an 82-year-old legend

College and a September night when a freshman took her seat, listened carefully and discovered the thing she would spend the rest of her life pursuing.

who had preserved decades of photographs, correspondence

“I wouldn’t change anything,” she says. “Somedays I feel like

and memories.

the luckiest person on earth – maybe I am.”

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AWESOME ALUMNI

AF T ER FL EEING NA ZI GERMAN Y AS A CHIL D, FRED K AT Z FOUND HIS WAY TO GUIL FORD. “I T WAS A GOD SEND,” HE SAYS.

A LIFE SHAPED BY WELCOME Guilford became a sanctuary for Fred Katz, launching a journey from loss to learning, and lasting purpose.

Even now, all these years later, Fred Katz ’52 can summon

It was 1939. Germany had just invaded Poland. War was

the scene as if it were this morning: the long bus ride from

beginning.

his family’s farmhouse to the crowded train station in

From the rail car, he watched her wave through a window

Frankfurt… his mother pulling him close on the platform, kissing his cheek. All around them, other mothers clutching other children.

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filmed with soot. Watched her become smaller as the train gathered speed. Smaller still, until she was only a dark speck, and then nothing at all.

Fred was 11, one of thousands boarding the Kindertransport,

Guilford that gave me a sense that my life could have purpose

the Quaker-organized rescue that ferried mostly Jewish

— that I could do meaningful, creative work. It opened up a

children to England and beyond. He never saw his family

new life for me.”

again. Years later, he would learn they were killed at Sobibor.

Even now, he says, the memory is sharp. “I had a sense of what was going on and who I was leaving,” he says. “But I also had a sense of what I was getting — a chance to survive.”

Facing the Past Every Holocaust story is a dormant volcano. Disturb it and the past erupts. For years, Fred kept his past contained. Survivors’ guilt, he says, is “guilt without perceived wrongdoing.”

“It’s not because we did something wrong,” he says. “It’s

From Survival to Scholarship

because we lived and loved ones didn’t.”

Fred survived. More than that, he built a life. That train ride

After Guilford came a master’s and Ph.D. in Sociology from

began a path from farmhand and factory worker to Ph.D.

the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and teaching

student, sociology professor, author of several books. At

posts at Texas Tech, the University

the center of it all was a Guilford College degree.

And yet it isn’t the diploma he remembers most. Even at 98, he thinks of Guilford as more than a college. It was a sanctuary, “a safe nest,” he calls it, lined by professors, administrators, classmates.

Those years, he says, saved him.

“They saw something in me.

Quakers talk about a light we all have within ourselves.

I like to think maybe Guilford saw my light.”

“Maybe not at the time, but years

— Fred Katz ’52

nurturing and home, sure. But enjoyable is not one. “You’re talking to a refugee who lost his parents and his family,” he says. “Being able to enjoy life is not part of my vocabulary.

That was destroyed for me in childhood by Germany.”

But the College was patient. Religious Studies professor

the Holocaust entirely. “I told colleagues it wasn’t interesting,” he says. “But I was in denial. Of course it was. Eventually, I woke up.”

When he did, he wanted to understand how ordinary people commit the unthinkable.

Extraordinary Evil and Confronting

was to me,” he says. “It was a There are many words Fred uses to describe Guilford. Safe,

Aviv University. At first he avoided

He wrote Ordinary People and

later I understood what Guilford godsend.”

of Missouri, SUNY Buffalo, and Tel

Evil: Two Journeys, exploring how average, “decent” people can be drawn into atrocity. One chapter examines Rudolf Hoess, the Auschwitz commandant who had once been expected to become a priest — a man initially shaken by what he saw, yet who came to oversee a death factory.

A New Lens: Social Space

Fred Crownfield knew his story. Classmates welcomed him.

Fred’s latest book, We Live in Social Space: A Window to a

He arrived as a 22-year-old freshman, urged by a Quaker

New Science, takes a wider view.

colleague in New York.

He defines social space as the invisible rules, expectations,

No high school diploma. No money. The admissions director

and power currents that shape behavior. Not a physical place,

didn’t flinch.

but a mental and relational environment that steers how

“We can help with that too,” the director told him.

“No papers, no credentials, no high school diploma, and no money — but none of that mattered at Guilford,” Fred says.

“They saw something in me. Quakers talk about a Light we all

people act, often without realizing it.

“In this space,” he says, “people aren’t acting freely. Culture, institutions, language — they all guide us. We don’t even see it.”

have within ourselves. I like to think maybe Guilford saw my

But once understood, he argues, it can be challenged. Maybe

Light.”

even changed.

Class by class, conversation by conversation, the College gave

Even a small liberal arts college, he says, is its own kind of

him something few others could: hope. “I had friends who

social space. “For four wonderful years, I was part of one at

tried to give me a sense of belonging,” he says. “But it was

Guilford,” Fred says. “It shaped me for the better.”

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AWESOME ALUMNI

REACHING NEW HEIGHTS Before leaving for the Yale School of Music, Emmett Edwards climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, the inspiration for a composition that is headed for publication.

The guitar solo begins in the dark.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

At midnight on Mount Kilimanjaro, Emmett Edwards ’22 was climbing by headlamp, breathing air that felt rationed, trying to keep his legs moving while altitude sickness pressed against his ribs. Somewhere between base camp and the summit, in that long, unbroken stretch of night hiking, the shape of a guitar composition began to settle into him.

Today, that seven-plus minute composition that has its roots in Tanzania is called “Kilimanjaro.”

Three years later, the piece stands as Emmett’s capstone work as a master’s student at the Yale School of Music.

It premiered last year at the Saigon International Guitar Festival in Vietnam. Earlier this spring, it was published by

ONE OF T HE FIRS T T HING S EMME T T EDWARD S PACKED FOR HIS AS CEN T OF MOUN T KIL IMANJARO WAS HIS GUI TAR.

Les Productions d’Oz, a publishing house and label dedicated to classical and contemporary music.

paid attention to what the mountain was doing.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. At the start,

Kilimanjaro unfolds in biomes. You begin in a jungle –

“Killimanjaro” was nothing more than a few chords bouncing

monkeys in trees, humidity pressing in. You climb into heath

around in Emmett’s head. “I had been starting to write this

and moorland, sparse and wind-brushed. Near the top, the

piece before the trip,” he says. “Something programmatic —

earth becomes almost Arctic: rock, ice, thin air.

something that follows a story.”

That progression from lush to spare to stark becomes an

The mountain gave him the story.

emotional arc of the piece.

In the summer of 2023, before leaving for Yale, Emmett and

“The landscapes were really inspiring,” he says. “And also just

his father, Will, traveled to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro.

the spirituality of the mountain.”

They had never left the country together. They’d hiked and

That surprised him most.

camped plenty in the U.S., but this felt different. A line of demarcation before graduate school, before the next life chapter.

Emmett, a Music major at Guilford who grew up playing a

In Tanzanian culture, Kilimanjaro is sacred ground.

Respected. Revered. Hallowed.

“It felt like being at a church,” Emmett says.

guitar, packed a travel guitar for the trip. “I’m the sort of

That feeling – not the hiking, not the photo at the top, but the

person who couldn’t foresee a world where I don’t play for

reverence – makes its way into the music.

eight days,” he says.

“Kilimanjaro” does not charge forward like a victory march.

He didn’t carry it to the summit — that would have bordered

It builds. It ascends gradually. The harmonies shift the way

on delusion — but he brought it to base camp. At night, over

terrain shifts. Tension accumulates. Space opens. The summit

six days in the cold, he wrote fragments. He recorded voice

section widens instead of explodes, a musical horizon rather

memos into his phone so he wouldn’t forget melodic ideas. He

than a fanfare.

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Emmett and Will reached the top after nearly 24 hours of

first publicly performed in Southeast Asia – that global arc

climbing on summit night.

feels fitting for a work about elevation and perspective.

“You’re above the clouds on land,” Emmett says. “You’re only

While refining “Kilimanjaro,” Emmett was teaching at Yale

ever seeing that from a plane. It’s surreal.”

as a secondary lessons instructor. Students enroll for credit

They stayed maybe 20 minutes. At 19,335 feet, the summit –

or as an elective. Some arrive wanting classical repertoire —

Uhuru Peak – has less than half the oxygen than there is at

Bach’s “Lute Suite No. 3.” Others want blues improvisation.

sea level. They also needed every minute of daylight to begin

One student wanted Emmett to teach him all things Metallica.

their descent.

“It keeps me on my toes,” he says. “Completely different skill

Just like in the piece, the summit does not last long either.

sets.”

Emmett wrote “Kilimanjaro” as part of his master’s degree

He also taught privately in New Haven, working with

recital at Yale. The mountain sketches became manuscript paper and hours of disciplined refinement in practice rooms

students of varying ages and backgrounds. Teaching, for him, is not fallback; it is vocation. He speaks about it with the same

in New Haven, Conn.

energy he brings to performance.

If Guilford gave him foundation, Yale gave him acceleration.

And then there is Dogboy. The band began in New Haven with

“At Guilford, what I expected to learn in a semester,” he says, “I needed to learn in two weeks.”

The adjustment was jarring. The first semester felt like being thrown into the deep end with no floaties — expectations rising exponentially, output required at a pace that left little room for doubt.

“I don’t think anything really could have prepared me for that,” he says.

But then he pauses.

“I had wonderful teachers at Guilford,” he adds. “They gave me tools. They gave me direction that felt personal.”

Guilford, he says, prepared him not by simulating Yale’s intensity, but by helping him develop a voice — one that didn’t evaporate under pressure. Study abroad in Spain. Recitals.

other Yale students and alumni. They perform mostly in New York and will soon record a debut album.

The sound? Neo-soul with rock influences — think D’Angelo and Lauryn Hill with a sharper edge, says Emmett.

If “Kilimanjaro” represents discipline and reflection, Dog Boy represents groove and collaboration. Emmett moves between the two worlds comfortably. Bach one day, blues the next.

Classical recital hall one week, club stage the next.

It is less a contradiction than a range.

Emmett received his master’s from Yale this spring and now lives in New York City.

For now, the focus is simpler: Build. Teach. Play. Collaborate.

“In New York,” he says, “for music, somebody of the highest caliber of whatever instrument you want to collaborate with

Faculty mentorship. A campus culture where music is not a

is there. That’s where I want to be.”

sideshow but a conversation.

The opportunity is dense. The expectations are high. It

“Kilimanjaro” is not just a travel piece. It’s the product of

sounds, in its own way, like another mountain.

someone trained to think about context – about landscape,

Which brings us back to midnight.

spirituality, story. Guilford’s liberal arts lens is embedded in

On summit night in 2023, Edwards was exhausted. His father,

the composition. The mountain is not a backdrop. Emmett says, it is narrative.

he jokes, handled it far better. He battled altitude sickness.

The climb was “very, very, very taxing.”

The piece traveled farther than its origin.

But he kept going.

Emmett premiered “Kilimanjaro” at the Saigon International

That persistence — the willingness to stay with tension,

Guitar Festival in Vietnam as part of a Yale guitar studio tour through Thailand and Vietnam. The performance landed on his birthday. That global arc feels fitting for a work about elevation and perspective..

to climb without spectacle — is what makes “Kilimanjaro” resonate. It is not flashy. It is not self-congratulatory.

It unfolds with patience, moves through terrain, and understands that the summit is brief.

The setting mattered.

They stayed at the top for maybe 20 minutes.

A piece born on an African mountain, written in New Haven,

He laughs. “I hope,” he says, “this piece lasts a little longer.”

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AWESOME ALUMNI

THE SKILL that STICKS

Elizabeth Meinhart didn’t plan for a career in global manufacturing. Guilford’s liberal arts education prepared her for one anyway.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ELIZABETH MINEHART ’05

Guilford College has a way of making big claims sound small.

hindsight, sure, that answered a lot of questions for me about

The College talks about preparing students for a changing

me.”

world, about the elasticity of a liberal arts education, about

The result wasn’t a setback. It was a kind of alignment.

how you can major in one thing and end up somewhere else entirely.

It’s all true, of course. But if you’re looking for a cleaner, more convincing example, you could skip the messaging altogether and just bring Elizabeth Minehart ’05 back to campus.

No, really. Give her a chair, an hour and let her talk.

“Life makes a lot more sense,” she says.

The diagnosis didn’t change who Elizabeth was. It explained it. The way her mind moved. The way she connected ideas.

The way she could hold something abstract in one hand and something structured in the other and not feel a need to choose between them.

She’d probably start with a shrug.

That tendency – to move between worlds – would define what

Elizabeth, now the marketing manager for Ziehl-Abegg – a

came next.

German company that produces industrial fans and motors

It started with a yes

— oversees strategy across North and South America. It’s a job that requires fluency not just in marketing, but in people: cultures, expectations, ways of thinking that don’t always line

Elizabeth’s start in marketing wasn’t strategic. It wasn’t even particularly intentional.

up neatly. It’s also not the job she imagined when she was a

It was, like so many things at Guilford, relational.

student at Guilford.

She got a job at the YMCA on the recommendation of hall

It was the kind of realization that doesn’t announce itself

director Thayle Jackson ’97 — the kind of person who

loudly, but once it arrives, everything that followed starts to

notices students and takes notes. It didn’t take long to begin

make a little more sense.

her climb. She was quickly put in charge of marketing and

What Guilford gave her — what she would later lean on in

fundraising for one of Greensboro’s YMCA sites.

rooms far from Greensboro — wasn’t a straight line. It was

That was it. No long deliberation. No five-year plan. Just yes.

something closer to a reflex. The ability to adjust. To take in

“The Y really gave me a shot,” she says. “And that was all

new information without panicking. To sit in the discomfort of not knowing and work forward anyway.

because of knowing her from Guilford and maybe her knowing a little about me.”

That mattered, though not always in obvious ways.

What followed was a decade of learning in public. She

Elizabeth didn’t arrive at that understanding all at once. In

worked her way up, eventually becoming director of annual

fact, one of the most important realizations came quietly,

campaigns and communication for the YMCA of Greensboro.

almost sideways, when she was diagnosed at Guilford with

The work was less about theory and more about feel —

dyslexia.

understanding what resonates, what matters, how to reach

Looking back, she didn’t see it coming. “I was an honors

people without talking past them.

student in high school, good grades, right? There was that

“When I left Guilford, I knew I wanted to do something that

thought that those two things don’t go together. But in

made an impact,” she says. “But I kind of didn’t know what that looked like.”

So she figured it out. Slowly. Imperfectly. The way most people do, though not everyone admits it.

The path widens Eventually Elizabeth moved into healthcare, into the B2B side of a system that would become one of the largest in the country. It was a different environment — bigger, more complex, less forgiving of improvisation. But it taught her something she didn’t expect.

“I got really comfortable in manufacturing environments,” she says.

AWESOME ALUMNI It’s a detail that doesn’t seem important until it is.

how business gets done.

Because when she decides to leave healthcare – “it was just

“There are very different cultural references and ways to

too big for me,” she says – she carries that comfort with her.

work through,” she says. “I don’t know how to market on

“I mean, you don’t go to a place like Guilford and then go

WhatsApp — that’s actually something we’re working on this year, but I’m adapting and learning.”

to a place that has 150,000 employees,” she says.

“That just wasn’t the right fit for me.”

There’s a moment in that line that feels telling. Not the uncertainty, but the

What she wanted was something smaller.

acceptance of it.

Closer. Something that felt, in some way, familiar.

She doesn’t pretend to know everything. She builds around what

She found it at Ziehl-Abegg.

she doesn’t know.

“I didn’t have any connection

“We have fabulous sales guys

with the company,” she says.

in each one of those areas,”

“But luckily, they were willing

she says. “I’ve built solid

to take a shot with me.”

relationships with them …

Two and a half years later,

they help me with that.”

she’s still there, overseeing all the marketing strategy for North and South America.

If the job sounds expansive, that’s because it is. It demands Elizabeth think beyond borders, beyond assumptions,

“That allows me to be open to new opportunities,” she says.

“To thinking through things with them, instead of telling others how to do it.”

skills, she says, she picked

— Elizabeth Minehart ’05

It’s not a top-down approach. It’s collaborative. It requires listening.

That’s not always easy, especially across cultures. Ziehl-Abegg is a family-owned company based in Germany, and she says there is more than

up at Guilford.

time zones to manage.

“I’ve never marketed in

“As Americans, we have a

Colombia,” she says. “And

tendency to kind of jump in

so having the skill set that

and figure it out as we go,”

allows me to say, yeah, let me

she says. “And Germans are

go on and think about this …

much more thoughtful and

think about it rationally.”

process (oriented).”

That’s where her Guilford

The difference can create friction.

education shows up. Not in the specifics, but in the approach.

“So sometimes that very opposite way of working can cause some

“The critical thinking skills that come

hiccups that you have to work through.”

with a liberal arts education are critical to what I do every day,” she says. “Without

At Guilford, she studied abroad in London.

those … I wouldn’t be this far.”

She learned early that her way wasn’t the only way.

Work without borders

“That allows me to be open to new opportunities,” she says. “To

The challenges Elizabeth faces on a daily basis at Ziehl-Abegg

thinking through things with them, instead of telling others

aren’t abstract. They’re practical.

how to do it.”

She works with teams in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil. She

Then she adds, more pointedly: “That American

navigates differences in language, but also in expectation. In

exceptionalism can easily come through. And so the liberal

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arts education has really helped me minimize that.”

Impact still matters There’s another layer to her work, one that runs parallel to the professional.

She spent years in the nonprofit world. That doesn’t disappear just because the job title changes.

She served on the board of Dance Project in Greensboro, a nonprofit focused on making dance accessible to everyone.

She’s spent eight years with the group, including two as president, bringing much-needed structure to the organization’s finances.

But what she talks about most isn’t the structure. It’s the people.

“One of our regular sayings is everybody dances,” she says.

“Meaning that no matter who you are, you can be dancing.”

She mentions programs for the hearing impaired, ways to expand who gets to participate.

“Regardless of who they are, they can find joy in movement and dance.”

It sounds simple.

It isn’t.

No neat ending This spring, Elizabeth was recognized by a local publication as one of 25 women making an impact in business in the Piedmont Triad.

If you ask her now whether she could have predicted any of this, she doesn’t hesitate.

“No, not at all,” she says.

Her father visited her plant recently, walked through the facility, took in the scale of it. She asked him if he could have imagined his art-major daughter working in marketing for a global manufacturing company.

“He said, ‘No’ — and he said it very fast,” Elizabeth says, laughing. “That’s OK, because I didn’t see this coming either.”

There’s no punchline after that. No neat resolution.

Just the understanding that the path doesn’t have to make sense at the beginning to make sense later.

Guilford can explain that to its students, current and future.

Or it can just bring Elizabeth Minehart back to campus, let her tell a few stories, and let students connect the dots.

AWESOME ALUMNI

WHEN SCRIPTURE MEETS SYNTAX A double major in Computer Science and Religious Studies, Nick Opie found common ground between faith and technology.

In the beginning, Nick Opie ’26 did not set out to build a

Part of the project’s backbone is an open-source AI music

digital hymnal for the age of artificial intelligence. He set out

generator called ACE-Step, which allows users to create music

not to fail his Operating Systems class.

locally rather than on a server owned by a company. That local

That’s the honest start to this story, which already tells you something about him. The project that became an AI-powered Christian music generator – complete with lyrics, music, and

detail is not just technical trivia — it’s philosophical. Serverside AI often means you don’t own what’s created. Local generation gives you the rights.

cover art rooted in Bible verses – started as a practical act

“You actually own the music,” Nick explains. “It might not be

of academic self-preservation. Guilford College’s Operating

as high quality as server-side stuff, but you can do whatever

Systems 321 course carries a final project that looms like

you want with it.”

weather on the horizon. It counts for most of the grade.

It does not forgive procrastinators. Nick knew that, so in August, long before panic season, he began building.

“I wanted something unique,” he says, leaning back into the memory. “This was kind of a make-or-break assignment.”

Ownership, agency, responsibility – these are themes that run quietly through everything he says.

Nick didn’t walk into the semester knowing this was the project. The idea crystallized a few weeks in, after conversations with Chafic Bou-Saba, Professor for Computing

Uniqueness matters to Nick. At the start of his senior year at

Technology and Information Systems, who floated the general

Guilford, he listened as classmates pitched robotics projects

concept of an AI music generator. Nick’s instinct was not to

and camera-based security systems. Smart, impressive, not weren’t his curiosity. He needed a project that fit his hands, his head and, maybe most important of all, his heart.

Nick graduated this spring as a double major in Computer Science and Religious Studies, the kind of academic pairing that makes people pause politely and then ask follow-up questions they don’t quite know how to phrase. Faith and code? Scripture and syntax? He hears the surprise often enough to smile through it.

But that tension – real or imagined – is exactly where his project lives.

What Nick built is essentially a hymn generator. The program selects from a bank of roughly 100 Bible verses he coded into the system. From there, it generates lyrics inspired by those verses, produces original music on his laptop, and creates cover art that visually matches the tone of the music.

This isn’t ChatGPT spitting out a few pious stanzas. Nick is quick to draw that line. Text generators can write lyrics, sure, but music is another animal entirely. His system actually composes songs.

That distinction matters, especially to Nick.

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PHOTO: ROBERT BELL ’11

his lane. Robotics wasn’t his language. Filters and doorbells

chase novelty for novelty’s sake, but to personalize it.

someone explore faith privately, tentatively, without the

Christian music wasn’t a gimmick. It is his home turf.

pressure of a worship space or a polished sermon? He thinks

“I listen to Christian music more than anything else,” he says simply.

Music has always been there. He played drums in Guilford’s jazz ensemble for three years, absorbing rhythm and collaboration, learning how sound moves people when it’s performed right. Faith has always been there too. Nick is active in Cru, the campus Christian organization formerly

so. The tools are already there. They’re open-source. They’re accessible.

Music, he insists, is in the ear of the listener. Whether the final piece feels shallow or profound, he argues, depends on the person listening and the prompts guiding the machine.

Depth is subjective. Faith is personal. AI, at least right now, mirrors what we bring to it, he says.

known as Campus Crusade for Christ, part of a national

He’s candid about the limits, too. Locally generated AI music

network of college ministries. His Religious Studies

isn’t yet capable of the kind of deeply probing, soul-wrestling

coursework sharpened that faith rather than sanding it down.

theology that critics of Christian pop music often crave. That

If you want to understand why Nick doesn’t see science and

kind of complexity may come with time, computing power,

belief as opposing forces, talk to him about his classes. He

and better models. Or it may always require human hands and

lights up describing Guilford’s Religious Studies faculty and

voices.

the way they teach students to think. Not what to think, but

Nick isn’t trying to replace anyone.

how to interrogate ideas, including their own. He mentions a three-week Title IX course taught by Jill Peterfeso, Eli

In fact, he doesn’t want to monetize the project at all.

Franklin Craven and Minnie Phipps Craven Professor of

By the end, the thing nearly broke him. He laughs about it now,

Religious Studies, and the way it reshaped his understanding of women’s experiences and institutional power.

but there’s still exhaustion under the humor. He used another AI tool — Claude — to help generate code, and it repeatedly

“I learned so much,” he says. “By the end, I felt like I could

deleted critical sections. Fix one thing, another breaks. Music

actually have a real conversation about it.”

but no image. Image but no music. Late nights. Head-meets-

That, to Nick, is the point. Faith without thought is thin.

brick-wall frustration.

Thought without humility is brittle. He doesn’t feel torn

“When I submitted it, I was like, ‘That was awesome,’” he says.

between his majors; he feels expanded by them.

“‘I never want to look at this again.’”

His AI hymnal project sits squarely in that overlap. It’s

And that’s okay. Not every meaningful project needs to

technical and devotional. Rigid and interpretive. Built on logic,

become a startup.

aimed at mystery.

That doesn’t mean he’s naïve about the implications.

Ask Nick whether AI threatens artists, and he doesn’t duck the question. He plays music himself. He understands the anxiety. If a system can mimic a singer’s voice or style, he believes artists have every right to feel unsettled.

“It depends on whether it’s copying someone’s likeness,” he says. “If it sounds exactly like a real person, that’s a problem.”

His own project avoids that by design. The voices are not replicas. The music isn’t trying to impersonate Chris Tomlin or Phil Wickham or Brandon Lake. Still, he’s realistic about where this technology could go, and how easily lines could blur.

What he doesn’t believe is that AI automatically cheapens art.

Nick has an internship lined up in Raleigh in IT. It’s a path that might raise eyebrows, but makes sense to him. He worked on Guilford’s IT help desk, seeing how something as simple as patience can cut through frustration. Some people expect to be rushed, talked down to, dismissed. When that doesn’t happen, it lingers.

In that sense, the AI hymnal feels less like a one-off class project and more like a quiet throughline in his life: take what you know, apply it thoughtfully, and leave things a little better than you found them. Whether that’s code that finally compiles or a person who feels heard, the outcome matters less than the care.

Nick shrugs when he talks about it, as if it’s obvious. Maybe it is. “People are so used to bad service,” he says. “If you can just be kind and do your job well, that actually stands out. That’s

Could someone someday use a tool like his to generate music

how I think about representing my faith — just doing the work

for personal reflection? Absolutely. Could that music help

right, wherever I am.”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 4 4

AWESOME ALUMNI

FROM PITCH to APP

Isaac Garbia’s app helps soccer fans from around the world navigate their way through the World Cup. The story of Isaac Garbia’s ’26 app starts, as a lot of good

While reading an article about fans planning trips to the

stories do, with something he loves.

World Cup, Isaac learned that many visitors were booking

Soccer.

hotels in downtown Dallas without realizing the matches

Not likes. Loves.

The Guilford College student has been playing the game since

would actually be played nearly 40 minutes away in Arlington.

That got him thinking.

he was two years old. Back then, the shin guards were almost

“What if everything was in one place?” he says.

as tall as he was. He was nervous. Sometimes he would sit on

Instead of opening multiple websites and conducting

the sideline and cry rather than take the field.

endless searches, users could simply open an app and

That phase didn’t last long.

find transportation options, hotels, attractions, maps and

Soon he was playing every day. Then coaching. Then

recommendations tailored to their destination.

refereeing. Today, when he’s not in class, there’s a good

The idea sounded simple.

chance you’ll find him officiating youth matches at Bryan

Building it wasn’t.

Park or another local soccer complex.

Isaac admits there were moments when the project

“When I say it’s part of my life, it’s the center of my life,” Isaac

felt intimidating. Many of his classmates had years of

says. “Everything rotates around it.”

programming experience. He had almost none.

That passion recently led him somewhere he never expected

His father offered advice that would become something of a

to go: the Apple App Store.

guiding principle.

As part of his senior seminar capstone project, Isaac developed Plan Play Go, a travel-planning app designed to help visitors navigate major sporting events, beginning with the 2026 FIFA World Cup. What’s remarkable isn’t just the app itself.

It’s that a few months before he started building it, Isaac barely knew how to code.

“I started from zero,” he says with a laugh.

The idea for the project came naturally enough. Isaac knew he wanted his capstone to focus on something he genuinely enjoyed.

“If I’m doing something I care about, I’ll put everything into it,” he says. “If I don’t care about it, it feels like a task.”

Soccer certainly wasn’t a task.

The inspiration came from his own experiences living overseas and traveling. Visitors arriving in a new city often struggle with basic questions: Where should I stay? What’s the easiest way to get to an event? What attractions are nearby? How do I get around without a car?

4 5 | W WW. G UIL FOR D . ED U

“Everybody starts not knowing anything,” Isaac recalls him saying. “The only way you’re going to learn is by putting yourself out there and doing it.”

So he did.

Over four to five months, the project grew. What began as a simple website evolved into something much larger.

Maybe, he began to think, this could become something real.

That confidence was reinforced by one of his biggest supporters on campus: Computing Technology and Information Systems professor Chafic Bou-Saba.

Isaac transferred to Guilford from Saint Leo University in Florida midway through his sophomore year. He arrived looking for more playing time on the soccer field and quickly found something else: faculty members invested in his success.

Chafic became especially influential.

FROM GUILFORD to the WORLD CUP The FIFA World Cup being held in the U.S. this summer is a spectacle measured in goals, flags and television ratings. But every event of that size runs on something less glamorous:

“He kept telling me my bar was too low,” Isaac says. “You don’t

people in matching shirts who arrive early, stay late and

hear that very often from professors.”

make sure the experience feels effortless.

When Isaac doubted himself, Chafic pushed him.

This summer, Guilford College student Katia Shammas ’27 is

When he questioned whether the project was worth

one of those people.

presenting at the Guilford Undergraduate Symposium,

The Sport Management major is spending the tournament in

Chafic encouraged him to share it.

New Jersey, working with Career Group Events, a company

“He believed in me before I believed in myself,” Isaac says.

supporting FIFA World Cup operations. Her assignment is

Then came another challenge: getting the app approved by Apple.

hospitality, which sounds simple until you consider the scale.

She welcomes fans, scans tickets, distributes wristbands and gift cards, answers questions and helps steer thousands

The first submission was rejected.

of visitors toward food, entertainment and, eventually, the

Then another.

stadium gates.

Then another.

In other words, she is helping manage the controlled chaos

Eventually, after months of work, Isaac received an email while attending a business dinner with his father.

His app had been approved.

that accompanies one of the largest sporting events on the planet.

For Katia, a native of Palestine who came to Guilford after her sisters Kristy ’19 and Kareen ’21 graduated from the

Today, Isaac has bigger ambitions.

College, the experience is equal parts education and audition.

He hopes to expand the concept beyond the World Cup and

The lessons have little to do with textbooks.

into broader travel planning. He envisions partnerships with

They involve patience, communication and maintaining

hotels, tourism organizations and attractions. One day, he’d

a smile when long lines form and expectations from

like users to book tickets and reservations directly through

demanding spectators run high.

the platform.

The opportunity grew out of classes taught by Assistant

For now, he’s focused on taking the next step. His advice to

Professor of Sport Management Michael White, who shared

others is simple.

information about the internship with students in Sports

“Start small,” he says. “Nobody is born with superhero powers.

Communication and Sports Marketing.

Everyone’s starting out the same. You learn something and

“Studying at Guilford opened this path for me,” Katia says. “I

build on that. And you keep on building.”

want to make the most of it.”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 4 6

FANTASTIC FACULTY

MORE THAN A GAME Michael White turns students’ passion for sports into meaningful careers.

Michael White’s office does not whisper. It talks. Loudly. It tells stories in full color, in framed photographs and media credentials, in the visual shorthand of a life spent orbiting sports. There’s a scarf for the Sydney Swans, an Australian rules football team, hanging from a wall, a photograph from Manchester City F.C.’s locker room resting on his desk. A Masters flag signed by Fred Couples next to his phone. Guilford students standing on the turf at the Sydney Cricket Ground. At St. Andrews. In every photo, they are wide-eyed, jet-lagged, permanently changed.

This is not décor as ego. It is a vision board, syllabus and curriculum blended as one.

Michael, an Assistant Professor for Sport Studies and director of Guilford’s International Sport Management master’s program, understands something essential about sports — and about teaching — that has nothing to do with box scores or championships. Games are a conduit: For connection. For memory. For moments that linger long after the final whistle. His job, as he sees it, is to help students learn how to build lives and careers around that truth.

That philosophy did not emerge in a classroom. It began decades earlier in the eastern Tennessee community of Elizabethton. Michael grew up in a house where sports were not background noise but a shared language. His father, Gary White, was a postal employee and a devoted sports fan who didn’t simply watch games — he inhabited them. He learned fight songs. He took his children to stadiums. He turned his fandom into family glue.

Michael laughs remembering how his mother used to say the only way he would fall asleep as a baby was if Gary rocked him and sang the Washington NFL team’s fight song — “Hail to the Redskins” — as a lullaby. That kind of childhood does not fade. It shapes you.

Michael played everything. He read everything. Like countless kids, he dreamed of going pro. Baseball became his sport, the one that earned him a scholarship to Milligan College (now University). When the playing days ended — as they do for almost everyone — the sport did not disappear. It simply changed shape.

What followed was a career that zigged and zagged through nearly every corner of the sports ecosystem: journalism, athletic administration, communications, Division I athletics. He is courtside at Duke basketball games and sits in a booth high above Bank of America Stadium for Carolina Panthers games handling stats for both. Each position adds another layer of not only skills, but perspective. Seeing how decisions are made behind the curtain did not diminish his love of sports, it refined it.

“I always saw the business as a means to an end,” Michael says. “The end was people — families, friends, communities — coming together.”

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MICHAEL WHI T E , AS SIS TAN T PROFES S OR FOR SPORT S T UDIES, T EL L S HIS S T UDEN T S T HE Y CAN’ T CHANGE T HE OU T COME OF A CON T ES T, BU T T HE Y CAN IMPAC T T HE FAN E X PERIENCE .

PHO TO: ROBERT BEL L ’ 11

FANTASTIC FACULTY That belief sits at the center of his teaching. On the first day

products for companies like Nike in the equipment and

of class, Michael tells students that Sport Management is

apparel industry, creating immersive environments for

not a “fun major.” It is a serious one. The U.S. sports industry

sport entertainment businesses like Topgolf, or building

generates roughly $1.06 trillion in revenue annually, more

client strategies at major sports agencies such as Creative

than the gross domestic product of many countries. The

Artists Agency. “The setting may change, but the core work

stakes are real. The competition is fierce. And unlike most

remains the same,” says Michael. “You need to understand the

businesses, the product itself is beyond your control.

audience, anticipate their needs and deliver moments that

“You never control whether your team wins or loses,” Michael

make them want to come back.”

says. “What you control is the experience.”

Michael’s classes blend the mechanics of marketing,

Experience over outcome is a refrain in his classroom. Sports

administration, law and communication with something

are ephemeral by nature. Fans do not leave with something they can hold in their hands. They leave with stories, emotions and memories. That reality places enormous

harder to quantify: ethics, empathy and self-awareness.

Guilford’s Quaker roots shape that approach. Classes begin with centering silence. Disagreement is encouraged, but

responsibility on the people who design, market and manage

always with respect. Debate is welcomed. Ego is not.

those moments.

“I tell them, push me,” Michael says. “We can disagree. But we

Guilford’s Sport Management program prepares students same customer-first mindset applies whether graduates

IN A 2025 S T UDY ABROAD TRIP TO EUROPE, GUILFORD S T UDENT S V ISITED THE OLD COURSE AT S T ANDRE WS, S TOPPING LONG ENOUGH FOR A PHOTO ON THE GOLF COURSE’S FAMOUS SW ILCAN BRIDGE.

are shaping the fan experience at a stadium, developing

PHO TO: MICHAEL W HITE

for more than just game days and event operations. The

do it as humans first.”

principles transfer. The stakes simply feel louder. He assigns

Vivian Cavataio ’28, a double major in Sport Management and English & Media Studies and a member of the volleyball team, says those discussions are what make Michael’s classes

books like The Power of Moments and Building a StoryBrand not just to teach marketing frameworks, but to reorient perspective.

distinctive. He frames lectures around questions rather than

“Put the customer at the center,” he tells them. “You’re not the

conclusions, inviting students to engage with the material

hero. You’re the guide.”

rather than absorb it passively. The classroom becomes

It is a philosophy he practices daily. Students drift in and

a conversation, anchored in real experiences rather than abstract theory. Seeing the path Michael has taken, she says, makes a future in sports feel attainable.

out of his office to talk about internships, résumés, graduate school and life. Some come seeking direction. Others just need reassurance. Michael listens more than he speaks. When

Michael is equally candid about the less glamorous realities

he does speak, it is often to nudge rather than instruct.

of the industry. He talks openly about layoffs, burnout, long

This is the part of teaching that never appears on a syllabus:

hours and instability. He wants students prepared not just to succeed, but to recover — to know who to call and how to recalibrate when careers veer off course.

the late-night recommendation letters, the follow-up emails months after graduation, the quiet pride of watching former students working court side at Duke’s Cameron

That honesty extends to how he uses his professional

Indoor Stadium or carving out careers they once thought

network. Michael’s connections stretch across the sports

unreachable.

world: ACC offices, Duke Athletics, USA Baseball, the NBA, Formula One, local parks and recreation departments and, of course, Guilford alumni in the industry. He treats that network not as personal capital, but as a shared resource.

Michael did not set out to become

“You never control whether your team wins or loses, what you control is the experience.”

— MICHAEL WHITE, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR FOR SPORT STUDIES

a professor. At various points, he imagined himself as a Major League Baseball player, a Sports Illustrated columnist, an athletic director. Life intervened. His wife took a job at Duke University, bringing them to

“I don’t want it for myself,” he says. “I

North Carolina. He completed his

want it for them.”

doctorate. A teaching opportunity appeared.

The results are tangible. Guilford Sport Management students work

“I didn’t see this coming,” he says.

for MLB, NBA and NFL teams, athletic conferences and

“But I learned to pay attention to where the path was leading.”

international organizations. Some move directly into the

That lesson now sits beneath everything he teaches. Careers

industry. Others pursue graduate school, carrying with them

evolve. Identities shift. Success is not about clinging to a

résumés shaped by immersion rather than abstraction.

single version of yourself, but about fully inhabiting the role

Michael believes sports offer one of the clearest windows into

you are given — and remaining open to what comes next.

culture — how communities organize themselves, what they

These days, Michael is firmly rooted at Guilford. He talks

value, how they celebrate and grieve. That belief drives the

about the College the way coaches talk about programs they

program’s emphasis on international study. Travel is not an

are building — with urgency, pride and a restless eye toward

add-on, it is a cornerstone.

the future. Alumni engagement. Expanded international

When students travel abroad, Michael insists on places that

partnerships. Conversations around name, image and

carry historical weight. St. Andrews is non-negotiable when

likeness. Bigger questions about where sports and higher

the itinerary includes the United Kingdom. Students may not

education intersect in a changing world.

play the Old Course, but they stand on the Swilcan Bridge.

His competitiveness remains. It always has. But it is no longer

They walk the grounds. They feel the gravity of tradition.

measured in wins or rankings.

Those moments accumulate. They shift how students

It is measured in impact.

understand both sports and themselves.

“If we do this right,” Michael says, “we create better human

Michael often reminds students that the business of sports

beings. And better human beings tend to do pretty

is not fundamentally different from any other business. The

well in life.”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 5 0

FANTASTIC FACULTY

A DIFFERENT CLASSROOM At a Greensboro trivia night, Chad Phillips turns trivia into connection, creating the kind of belonging Guilford fosters every day.

On a Thursday night in Greensboro, the crowd at Twist Lounge

been coming up with trivia questions for eight years, two bars

is already leaning forward before the first question even

and one pandemic. The work begins Wednesday mornings

lands.

and stretches toward Thursday evening, a slow accumulation

A dozen teams, give or take. Same as most weeks. They come early, claim their tables, settle into small rituals that make familiarity feel like belonging. A few teams huddle over

of ideas that eventually becomes a night. Chad spends three to five hours building each game, shaping categories, editing music, designing slides, testing the arc of difficulty so that

drinks. Others spread out pens and scratch paper like they

everyone in the room has a way in.

are preparing for something more formal than what this is

But what distinguishes Chad’s trivia isn’t just the preparation.

supposed to be.

It’s the attention.

At the front of the room, Chad Phillips glances up from his

He studies the room.

laptop and scans the crowd. He does this every week, taking

“He judges the audience,” says Lynn Irwin ’87, who has

inventory not just of numbers, but of faces, of energy, of who’s new and who’s back. The buzz in this LGBTQ-friendly bar is peaking and Chad knows it. He picks up a microphone.

“Okay,” he says, “who’s ready for some trivia!” The room erupts.

What follows is trivia, technically. But that word doesn’t quite hold it.

Chad, a longtime Theatre Studies Visiting Professor at Guilford with a focus on documentary filmmaking, didn’t set out to build one of Greensboro’s most popular trivia nights. He arrived there sideways, the way many Guilford stories begin, with curiosity, community and a willingness to try something new.

“I was a player,” Chad says, recalling his early days moving through the city’s trivia circuit with a team that knew its way around pop culture.

Back then, he played at a spot called Breakers, winning often enough to notice the rhythm and flow of the game. What he liked and didn’t like. When the host quit, Chad saw an opening. He offered to run a month of games for free. That was 2018.

He hasn’t stopped.

These days Chad is Greensboro’s version of Alex Trebek. He’s

5 1 | W WW. G UIL FOR D . ED U

been following Chad’s trivia nights since those early days at Breakers. “He understands, like, okay, this is a new group. I need to hone in on what they might be interested in.”

Lynn laughs a little when asked whether she’s a trivia fan or a Chad fan.

“Both,” Lynn says.

She and her group have followed Chad from venue to venue over the years, drawn not just by the game, but by the way he runs it. They knew him before trivia, through mutual friends.

But it’s the trivia that has kept them coming back—week after week, year after year.

“Chad does really great trivia. It’s fun,” Lynn says. “And he doesn’t let it get stale.”

At some point, the recognition caught up to what the room already understood. A local publication nominated Chad as one of Greensboro’s best trivia emcees, a small, tidy line that tries to name something much less tidy — the way people keep showing up, the way they follow him from one place to the next, the way a night built on questions has quietly become something they count on.

That’s by design.

Chad resists what he calls “normal trivia”—the predictable mix of sports stats and niche knowledge that can leave parts

FACULTY PROFILE

PHO TO: ROBERT BEL L ’ 11

E V ERY THURSDAY, THE ATRE S T UDIES PROFES SOR CHAD PHILLIPS TAKES TO THE S TAGE AS ONE OF GREENSBORO’S MOS T POPUL AR TRI V IA EMCEES.

of a room behind. Instead, he builds something more elastic,

Which means the only way to succeed is together.

more responsive.

At one table, a player recognizes a melody but can’t place it.

Each week, teams choose categories, and Chad interprets

Across the table, someone else knows the artist. At another,

them. A prompt like “quarterbacks” might become something

a generational gap becomes an advantage — one person

entirely different in his hands — once, a round about the

recalling a reference from the 1970s, another filling in the

backs of state quarters. A category like “the Constitution”

present.

becomes a music round built around songs with “right” in the

“That’s what’s fun to watch,” Chad says.

title.

The point is not to trick people. It’s to include them.

“I make it to where you can’t prepare,” Chad says.

Over time, those small exchanges have added up to something larger.

Lynn has watched it happen.

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 5 2

FANTASTIC FACULTY “When it first started, it was only a few teams,” Lynn says.

generations to strengthen their chances.

“And people, word of mouth, keep coming.”

The result is more than competitive. It’s communal.

Now, the room is full—one of the largest regular trivia crowds

“That’s what I’m proud of,” Chad says. “The community of all of

in Greensboro, she says—and notably diverse. Different

this.”

ages. Different backgrounds. People who might not

At Guilford College, that word carries particular

otherwise share space.

meaning. Community is not an abstraction

“It’s a very diverse group here,” Lynn says.

here; it’s a practice — something built

“And he caters to that.”

intentionally, through shared

She pauses, searching for the right

experience and mutual care.

way to describe it.

What Chad has created at Twist

“Some places you go, it’s like, ‘Well,

feels like an extension of that

I don’t know anything. This is all

philosophy, translated into a

one kind of trivia,’” Lynn says.

different setting.

“He keeps it a good variety.”

Here, the classroom becomes

That variety shows up in the

a bar. The lesson becomes

details.

a question. The outcome is

A music round might pull

not a grade, but a moment — someone remembering

from the 1960s through the

something, someone else

present. A visual category

adding to it, the two arriving

might obscure familiar images just enough to

clues in plain sight.

“That’s what I’m proud of.

The community of all of this.”

There are recurring

OF THEATRE STUDIES

require collaboration. A wordplay round might hide

— CHAD PHILLIPS, VISITING PROFESSOR

features — like a category called “Jellyfish,” where actors’ faces are covered and teams must identify movies without them — but even those evolve.

“He’ll introduce something new,” Lynn says. “We’re getting ready to have a new little mini-

at an answer neither could have reached alone.

Chad sees the connection.

“I get just as much fulfillment from trivia as I do teaching,” he says.

There are other touches that reinforce the feeling.

At halftime, when the room loosens a little and people turn back toward their drinks, a dog appears on the screen — quietly, almost without announcement. A name. A face.

game category.”

A small biography written in the

The night, in other words, is always

plain language of waiting. It began,

in motion.

as many things here do, with a

But the foundation is stable.

group of players — volunteers from

There are regulars now — teams that return week after week, forming a kind of informal network. Among them is the Carolina Aging Alliance, a group that provides social connection for older members of Greensboro’s LGBTQ community. They come in numbers large enough to form multiple teams, sometimes blending

5 3 | W WW. G UIL FOR D . ED U

the Friends of the Guilford County Animal Shelter — who showed up to compete and, over time, brought something of their work with them. Now the image travels beyond this room, surfacing in bars across Greensboro on trivia nights, the same dog, the same hope, carried from one gathering to the next.

There are Pride-themed events, tied to Greensboro’s LGBTQ calendar. There are inside jokes, running categories, familiar rhythms.

TRIVIA

And there is the way the night ends.

Lynn has heard it countless times now. She’s even come to expect it. Still, it lands.

“It’s fun,” Lynn says again, but this time it sounds like something fuller, something closer to why she keeps coming back, why she followed Chad from one bar to another, why she and so many others have made this part of their weekly routine.

For the questions, sure. But just as important, for everything that builds in between them. which, through the years, has proven to be anything but trivial.

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After the final round, after the scores are tallied and the

IN MEMORIAM

REMEMBERING GUILFORDIANS A look at some of the Guilfordians who have died in the past year.

A LIFE THAT REFUSED BOXES Amita Jyoti Hanagud Kaneria ’98 had a way of standing at the center of a room without announcing herself. You could miss her if you weren’t paying attention. You could never miss what she left behind.

“She was always kind of a collector of different viewpoints,” her husband, Rishi Kaneria, says. “She swam in lots of different lanes. She was dipping her fingers into lots of different things.” It’s a gentle phrase for a life spent insisting that no one gets erased just because they don’t fit neatly into a category. She died Dec. 21.

Jyoti was born into contradiction – South Indian and white, Atlanta and Montana, science-minded father and deeply progressive mother — and she never tried to resolve those tensions. She moved freely between them. “She grew up feeling like she was part of two different cultures, but maybe didn’t completely fit into either,” Rishi says. In high school, she floated between social groups, never landing fully in one.

Jyoti found that intellectual and moral footing at Guilford, a place Rishi believes didn’t change her so much as clarify her.

“Her going to Guilford kind of summarizes who she was,” he says. “She followed her soul and found her community — her

“You could say she was an outsider,” he says, then corrects

people.”

himself. “Actually, she was a collector. I like that better.”

Against expectations and easier paths, she chose a

That instinct — to gather, to translate, to notice who wasn’t

small liberal arts college rooted in conscience and social

being served — became the through line of her life. Jyoti was a Sociology and Anthropology major with a minor in

responsibility. “I really feel like when she went to Guilford, that’s when she became who she was truly meant to be,” Rishi

Spanish, becoming fluent through immersion after a study

says.

abroad in Mexico. She advocated for vulnerable immigrants

Those values stayed with her. Later, as a mother, she fought

at San Diego’s Casa Cornelia Law Center, translating for

for dual-language immersion programs in public schools —

unaccompanied children, then earned a master’s in Applied

not as an abstract policy position, but because she believed

Linguistics and taught English as a second language. After

children deserved to live in more than one language, more

completing her doctorate in language and literacy education

than one worldview. The politics followed naturally. “She was

at Georgia State University she served as a postdoctoral

very left,” Rishi says, without hesitation. “One of the most

research fellow at Georgia Tech, advancing inclusive, justice-

liberal people I could think of.” But it wasn’t ideology that

centered education for Latinx and global communities.

drove her — it was proximity. “She was always speaking out

Rishi recalls a story a friend told after her death, about a

for the underrepresented, the marginalized,” he says. “People

young woman detained by immigration authorities who didn’t

of color. Immigrants. Anyone who wasn’t getting served.”

speak English. “Jyoti was there to comfort her and translate

That worldview changed him, too. “She opened my eyes,” Rishi

for her,” he says. “All the education in the world means

says. “I didn’t grow up thinking about social justice. She really

nothing if you don’t have empathy and a heart for others.”

reshaped the way I see the world.”

5 5 | W WW. G UIL FOR D . ED U

CYRIL HARVEY BUILT MINDS & COMMUNITY Cyril Harvey Shaped Guilford Classrooms for Six Decades Cyril Harvey, Jefferson-Pilot Professor of Geology emeritus and former Academic Dean, died June 28, 2025.

A cherished member of the Guilford community for nearly 60 years, Cyril began teaching at the College in 1966 and founded the Geology Department.

He developed an innovative teaching approach known as the “Quaker Quadrangle,” emphasizing discoverybased learning, collaboration, critical thinking, and student-led research, principles that continue to shape the Guilford experience. community. Both were instrumental

as Academic Dean, and was Director

in the founding of New Garden Friends

of Institutional Research for nearly

founding director of Friends Center,

School in the 1970s.

two decades. He recruited outstanding

shared a deep commitment to Friends

Before retiring in 1999, Cyril taught

faculty across disciplines and remained

values of equality, diversity and

at Guilford for 33 years, served twice

Educated at Quaker schools, Harvey and his wife, Judith Weller Harvey,

a devoted mentor long after retirement.

Virginia

Charles S.

Campbell

Austin III ’54,

’44, whose

a U.S. Marine

father penned

who taught

the words

combat

to Guilford’s

swimming

alma mater,

to thousands

died Dec. 23

of other

at 103. Raised

Marines, died

in Greensboro

Jan. 1. Charles

after her father,

graduated

Russell Pope,

from Guilford

joined the College’s faculty, Virginia

Louise Beasley Beamer ’59, an

with a degree

lived a century defined by faith,

Education Studies major who spent

in History. He served as an Ocean City

curiosity and service. Ginny served as

more than 30 years teaching at

(Md.) lifeguard, rose to captain in the

a deacon in her church, helped manage

Franklin Elementary School in her

Braddock Heights (Md.) Volunteer Fire

rummage sales, played in the bell choir

hometown of Mount Airy, N.C., died

Company, and devoted decades to the

and withing a short time of her death

Jan. 2. Her passion for teaching

Rotary Club of Frederick, Md., where

participated in preparing weekly meals

extended beyond school. She was also a

the Club’s Rotary Fellow Award was

for the homeless.

lifelong Sunday School teacher.

renamed in his honor.

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 5 6

IN MEMORIAM

j Mary Murrow Hamilton ’52, an English major who found comfort in words and numbers, died Dec 8.

A Greensboro native, Mary took her English degree and promptly went to work as a bookkeeper for the next 40 years, most recently with the Children’s Museum of Greensboro, where she worked until 2018 when she retired at age 90.

Counselor with the U.S. Bankruptcy Administrator, providing credit

k Larry Chriscoe ’68, an Air Force

counseling and financial management

veteran who became a corporate audit

education while also serving her

manager for IBM, died Dec. 6. Larry

community through teaching and

received a Business Administration

mentoring.

the world before his retirement in 1992. He spent his retirement as a licensed chauffeur.

distinguished and trusted storytelling skills.

p Gary York ’65, a lifelong public servant, died May 18, 2025. A former

degree and worked for IBM for more than 30 years. His job took him around

Southern charm — all through his

n Samuel Russell Scott ’65, a longtime physician and medical professor at the University of Kentucky, died July 5, 2025. After graduating from Guilford, Sam received a medical degree from

student body president, Gary played football at Guilford and was later inducted into the College’s Athletics Hall of Fame. He served as a Guilford trustee, earned multiple “Citizen of the Year” honors by communities he

l Max Dewey Ballinger ’54, a

Wake Forest University. He was a

Greensboro attorney and fierce

member of the American College of

advocate for the Guilford College

Physicians and the Kentucky Medical

community who devoted much of

Association. The Dr. Samuel R. Scott

his legal career to pro bono work

Endowed Fellowship was created at

representing underdogs and working

Guilford through the generosity of

q Howard McCoy Braxton Jr. ’63,

families, died Feb. 9 at 93 on his

Sam.

who spent 36 years in education as a

o Charles Gaddy ’53, a beloved journalist and broadcaster who

m Molly W. Miller ’82, who enrolled

anchored WRAL-TV news in Raleigh,

at Guilford College shortly after

for 24 years, died June 12, 2025.

moving to Greensboro and earned a

Charlie, as loyal viewers came to call

Criminal Justice degree, died Nov. 29.

him, connected North Carolina to the

Molly built a long career as a District

world with integrity, warmth, and

5 7 | W WW. G UIL FOR D . ED U

distinguished Order of the Long Leaf Pine for civic leadership.

teacher and principal in Greensboro,

family’s Horsepen Creek farm in Greensboro.

helped, and received North Carolina’s

died May 4, 2025. After retiring from Guilford County Schools, Howard picked up politics. He spent four years on the town board in Topsail Beach, N.C., followed by 16 years as mayor. He also led numerous civic and environmental organizations.

CHARLIE WHITE and the ART OF HELPING There are colleges that do not simply educate people so much as absorb them into their grain. Colleges that seep into your bloodstream slowly – through late-night conversations in dorm rooms, through faculty meetings that stretch too long, through friendships that somehow survive marriages and careers and geography and time.

That is certainly true of Guilford.

And sometimes a person becomes so stitched into the fabric of the place that it becomes difficult to tell where the institution ends and the person begins.

This was certainly true of longtime Guilford employee Charlie White ’66, who died May 16.

Charlie arrived at Guilford in 1962, a Quaker kid who lived in Rock Hill, S.C., and attended Westtown School in Pennsylvania. After that, he never lived more than five miles from the College over the next 64 years.

Not physically, anyway.

His obituary notes the formal landmarks: graduate of the Class of 1966, conscientious objector service worker, a staff member for more than 43 years who helped oversee purchasing and technology and, at one point, the College’s first mainframe computer. But the official titles and suits can only explain so much. Friends like Rudy Gordh ’66 talk less about what Charlie did and more about how he moved through

until it breaks, where things are “buried.” Rudy and other friends recall him teaching people photography in basement darkrooms, helping colleagues inspect houses before they bought them, finding ways to make life easier without ever

the world doing it. Quietly. Competently. Generously.

making a performance of it.

“Not that many people in the world are that generous,” says

Once, when Rudy had been asked to perform old protest

Rudy, who met Charlie when they both arrived at Guilford as freshmen in 1962. “If he could help you out, he did. If he

songs at a faculty gathering, Charlie secretly arranged for a decades-old photograph of him playing guitar to be projected

couldn’t help you out, he’d still find a way to.”

on the wall before he walked in.

Charlie and Rudy became Physics lab partners in a class on

“He never admitted he did it,” Rudy says now, “but I know he

electricity and magnetism. Rudy went on to become a Math

did.”

professor and spent 42 years teaching at Guilford. Charlie

That detail feels important somehow. Charlie appears

stayed close, too, building a life that seemed inseparable from

repeatedly in people’s stories not as the center of attention

the College itself.

but standing just off to the side, making something better for

When Rudy returned to Greensboro from a trip to Yugoslavia

someone else.

in 1974 with no house and no real plan, Charlie immediately

His death came as a shock, even to those who knew his health

told him to stay with him and his wife, the late Sara

had declined. Parkinson’s disease had slowed him physically,

Schoonover White ’69, until they figured things out. So they

but friends say his mind remained sharp and his instincts

did. It was, Rudy says, classic Charlie behavior.

unchanged. Days before he died, visitors found him asking

Over the decades, Charlie became the sort of person every

questions about their lives instead of talking about his own

campus quietly depends on: the one who knows how systems

ailments.

work, who to call, how to fix the problem nobody else notices

“Typical Charlie,” says Rudy. “Always thinking of others. ”

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 5 8

CLASS NOTES

DAISY ARGUELLO DOES THE QUIET WORK that HOLDS FAMILIES TOGETHER For Daisy Arguello ’20, the work does not arrive with

Criminal Justice. A required course introduced her to Peace

ceremony. It arrives quietly, in apartments and borrowed

and Conflict Studies — and to professors who emphasized

rooms across Greensboro and Guilford County, in kitchens

mediation, community-based problem-solving, and the

where the lights work but the future feels uncertain. It

discipline of listening. She added the second major.

arrives in questions about hot water and electricity, about

“The mediation part of peace and conflict — how to help

doors that lock, about where a child sleeps at night.

communities and how to help with peace — that interested

Daisy is a case worker with the U.S. Committee for Refugees

me,” she says.

and Immigrants. Her days are shaped by careful attention.

Learning extended beyond the classroom. Through

She supports unaccompanied refugee and immigrant children — many of them survivors of trafficking, persecution, or violence — and the families or sponsors who take them in.

She conducts safety assessments. She connects families to medical and mental health care. She advocates for education.

community work in Greensboro’s Oakwood neighborhood, Daisy helped children learn English and complete homework after school. The work felt familiar. It also clarified her path.

“That’s where it started to click,” she says. “I realized I needed

She documents cases that can mean the difference between instability and the fragile beginnings of permanence.

The language used to describe the people she works with shifts constantly — migrant, immigrant, refugee — but the needs don’t. Safety. Stability. Someone who notices.

Much of Daisy’s work unfolds far from public view. She steps into homes to assess whether they are safe, whether there is heat, water, food. She asks questions that sound simple but carry weight. With children who arrived alone, she moves deliberately, letting trust build at its own pace. With parents and sponsors, she explains complicated systems in plain language, translating fear into steps, uncertainty into something that looks like a plan. Progress is rarely dramatic.

It is measured instead by consistency: showing up, following through, making sure no one disappears quietly between systems.

The habits that shape Daisy’s work were refined at Guilford College — habits of listening closely, asking the right

to stick with helping immigrant and refugee communities.”

questions, and acting with intention once the answers begin

After graduating, Daisy moved directly into that work, first

to surface. But they were formed even earlier.

at FaithAction International House in Greensboro, and now

Daisy grew up in an immigrant family. Her parents came to

in her current role. The work remains demanding, especially

the United States from Mexico nearly three decades ago. By

for children navigating systems not built with them in mind.

the time she was eight years old, Daisy had become the family

“They’re the ones who keep me going,” she says.

interpreter — in doctors’ offices, grocery stores, fast-food

Guilford, Daisy believes, did not prepare her by offering easy

counters. It was responsibility that arrived early. “You’re really doing grown-up work,” she says. “It gave me a lot of anxiety when I was a kid.”

She arrived at Guilford in 2016 intending to major in 5 9 | W WW. G UIL FOR D. ED U

answers. It prepared her by teaching her how to pay attention — to systems, to people, to what is at stake when no one is watching. The work she does now reflects that education, carried forward quietly, one careful visit at a time.

j Stephanie Quad ’13, MBA ’23 was

double major, Exel is working as a

p Robert Reidy-Bialobok ’23 is

named Lead Quality Manager for

Bilingual Patient Navigator at United

pursuing a Master’s of Science

Reynolds American in Tobaccoville,

Therapeutics Corporation in Durham,

in Management at Wake Forest

N.C., where she was previously a Lead

N.C..

University. Robert, who majored in

Compliance Manager. Stephanie

Exercise Science and Health Science

earned a Business Administration

m Hunter Neal ’22, MISM ’23 joined

at the College, was a Physical Therapy

degree at Guilford and later her MBA.

the Special Olympics of North Carolina

Technician at EmergeOrtho.

Before working at Reynolds America,

as the Inclusive Schools Specialist for

she was a Research and Development

Guilford County. Previously, Hunter

q Jair Ballesteros Delgado ’24

Scientist and Innovation Manager

served as the Director of Events and

accepted a position with Wells Fargo

at Smurfit Westrock, in Winston-

Volunteer Services for the Greensboro

as an Associate Operations Processor

Salem, N.C.

Sports Foundation.

in Miami. Jair, an Economics major at Guilford, is pursuing an MBA in

k Leke Ademoyero ’18 accepted a new

n Andriquez Brooks ’23 started a new

Business Intelligence and Analytics

position as a Federal Analyst at the

position as a Probation Officer at the

from Nova Southeastern University.

Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

North Carolina Department of Adult

Prior to that, Leke, who played soccer

Correction. Previously Andriquez

r Adyson Franken ’24, MBA ’25 was

at Guilford, held a similar position at

served as a student intern in the Iredell

promoted to General Manager at O2

Live Oak Bank in Wilmington, N.C.

County (N.C.) Sheriff’s Department

Fitness Clubs in Winston-Salem, N.C.

and later for the Department of Adult

Before that, Adyson, a Presidential

Correction.

Fellow at Guilford, was the Member

l Calyn Davis Brown ’21 was named Senior Accountant at fundraising

Experience Team Supervisor for an O2

consultant Golden Aster Advisors in

o Dominik Pocrnja ’23, MISM

Chapel Hill, N.C. Calyn, an Accounting

’24 was promoted to Director of

major, previously held a similar

Athletics Communications at Averett

s Mitchell Griffin ’25 accepted

position at Bernard Robinson &

University in Danville, Va., after

a position as Retail Banker for

Company.

serving as Assistant Director. Domink

Woodforest National Bank in

branch in High Point, N.C.

earned a bachelor’s degree in Sport

Greensboro, a bank with more than

Exel A Valle Estrada ’21, is pursuing

Management and also completed

750 branches in 17 states. Mitchell,

an MBA at Louisiana State University.

a master’s in International Sport

an Accounting major, was a Resident

A Biology and Health Sciences

Management at Guilford.

Advisor while a student at the College.

W W W. G UIL FOR D . ED U | 6 0

LAST LOOK

In 1977, Ted Edgerton ’75, Melissa Meyer ’76, Penny

though we’ve remained friends, it was 47 years before we

Parsons ’76, and I found ourselves still around campus and

played again. That came when we jammed at the 1975 Golden

we continued playing the Bluegrass music we loved playing

Circle reunion.

informally as students. We called ourselves the Flatt Creek

That reunion inspired us to get together when possible,

Ramblers, inspired by the groups of the day and the iconic album, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” We had a lot of fun but were missing the key ingredient for a REAL Bluegrass band, a banjo player. Enter Bill Terrell ’80, and the group was solidified.

The high point for us was a performance at the 1978 Alumni Day, a long-standing tradition at the College at the time. Even

6 1 | W WW. G UIL FOR D. ED U

including in April when we performed on the patio at Hendricks Hall for the 1976 Golden Circle. I hope this particular “Circle of Friends” remains unbroken for years to come.

– Steve Taylor ’75

Some days remind you exactly why a place like Guilford matters. Last month, 237 graduates became alumni, and if you missed the smiles, hugs and hard-earned moments, click here to see some of our favorite photos from Commencement.

P H O T O : M I C H A E L V. C R O U C H ’ 10 , ’ 12