33 minute read
Highlander Journeys
Pursuing Passions
Millie Huang ’11 on Finding a Career That Was a Natural Fit
In 2012, Harvard Business Review declared data scientists as having “the sexiest job of the 21st century,” and in 2019, the position was ranked the number one job in the U.S. by Glassdoor for the fourth year in a row. What’s more, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the demand for data science skills will drive a 27.9 percent rise in employment in the field through 2026. It’s a field for people who have a passion for computers, math, and discovering answers through data analysis. Just ask Millie Huang ’11, whose passion helped her discover a path towards becoming a data scientist with the online personal styling service Stitch Fix.
Huang decided to come to boarding school in the United States from China to learn the culture and language. She initially enrolled at a school outside of Chicago, but decided to transfer to The Frederick Gunn School in the middle of her sophomore year. At her previous school, she was one of many international students and didn’t feel like she was getting the experience she was seeking. When she came to what was then The Gunnery, she was told that she was the first female student from mainland China, which was appealing to her.
“The Gunnery was a much smaller and intimate feeling school than the one I came from,” said Huang. “There were so few international students at the time and being part of a smaller student body helped me acclimate quickly to being on campus. The dining hall staff and everyone knew me by name, which I really liked.”
Huang fondly remembers her advisor, Rod Theobald P’09 ’14, with whom she ended up taking AP Literature. “That class really opened my eyes to a liberal arts education,” remembers Huang. “It cemented my interest in the social sciences. The social sciences really challenged me and I was interested in taking on that challenge.”
Huang was always interested in mathematics and science as those subjects came naturally to her. In China, she competed in Olympiad Math and had the foundational knowledge to excel in math and science courses. But being exposed to a broader education at The Frederick Gunn School encouraged Huang to continue that in college, which is why she chose to attend Wellesley College.
“My experience at The Gunnery was that everyone always had the best intentions and expected the best from you,” said Huang. “Faculty members trusted you, treated you with leadership potential and truly believed in you. That expectation of me projected onto my behavior. It was really amazing to me, especially coming from China where we attend big public schools. At that time, there was no encouragement of self-identity in China. At The Gunnery, you were supported in whatever you chose to explore and encouraged to try something different. The faculty trusted you and encouraged you to trust yourself.”
This experience gave Huang the courage to explore different subject areas at Wellesley. She was enjoying taking classes she was interested in, including political science, music and French, and then realized that she wasn’t going to graduate if she didn’t pick a subject area to concentrate on. She declared an economics major the spring of her junior year and a math major the fall of her senior year.
“I took a lot of detours, but at the end of the day, I think they helped me become a well-rounded person, and not just academically,” said Huang. “These diverse experiences helped me to look at the world differently and it’s been beneficial for me.”
During her junior year, while trying to determine her career path and steps after graduation, companies came to Wellesley’s campus for summer internships. “I went to an info session on banking and was interested in it,” said Huang. “I really liked the idea of working in a fast-paced environment so I thought the trading floor would allow me to utilize my math skills while using my geopolitical event knowledge to predict how these things would impact the market.”
Huang spent the summer working at a self-trading internship with Bank of America on the foreign exchange desk. At the end of the summer, she decided that being a sales and trading analyst wasn’t something she was interested in pursuing further. She wasn’t practicing her mathematical skills as much as she hoped and didn’t see herself as a salesperson, which was what she had spent a lot of time doing. At this point, Huang determined she wanted a more analytical role, and wanted to apply her skills in a productive way.
Because economics is well-known at Wellesley and many companies recruit there, Huang ended up in the very niche world of economic consulting. She worked on economics and financial modeling but in a litigation context. Huang was able to work in a business setting where she was able to evaluate all of these potential options that she was interested in pursuing, including business school, graduate school and law school. After two years in that position, she realized she didn’t want to pursue any of those options.
While Huang was working as an economic consultant, she was also working on a personalized styling business with a friend and they entered their idea into an accelerator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received funding. Through this experience, Huang realized she wasn’t fully ready to pursue something entrepreneurial but she was interested in furthering her education. She began to take night school classes to sharpen her programming skills, and learn more about what programs she
– Millie Huang ’11
should consider for graduate school. She decided she wanted a technical master’s degree and applied to MIT’s master’s program in data science, analytics and operations research. “It was an intensive one-year program,” said Huang. “It was like drinking from a fire hose — very demanding but really great and vastly different from my Wellesley experience.”
The summer semester at MIT focused on a thesis project and students were matched with companies and essentially operated in an internship capacity. “Companies would come to pitch very broad topics and your task was to pick it up and narrow it down to something that fit your academic interests,” said Huang.
Huang needed a product that she felt connected with. She was always interested in the consumer and retail sector and felt there was a lot she could do with data to make the experience for shoppers better. She ended up matching with Rue Gilt Groupe and was thrilled to work on a project for them. She built a tool to grab the shopper’s attention while they were looking at a product based on their navigational patterns. For example, if you were looking at something summer-themed, the tool would help predict where you would want to go next and serve it up to you. By the end of her thesis project, they were putting her product into production!
“It was a truly amazing experience,” said Huang. “The fact that they adopted something I worked on was surreal.”
After graduating from MIT, Huang was offered a position at Stitch Fix as a data scientist working with client algorithms. Stitch Fix uses recommendation algorithms and data science to personalize clothing items based on a customer’s size, budget and style. As Huang says, the position has been a “natural fit” for her skill set and interest in fashion.
Huang’s position focuses on forecasting client behaviors and that includes everything from metrics to how they behave after they’ve “converted” and have signed up for the service. She communicates with the executive team frequently on what’s happening now and in their strategic planning.
“I have a high sense of satisfaction in my role,” said Huang. “I feel like my work has a big impact on the business and that means a lot to me.”
She also presents fairly often in front of people and credits her presentation skills to her time at The Frederick Gunn School.
“I ran for prefect my junior year and realized that I was capable of being a leader and that people saw me as a leader,” said Huang. “That kind of encouragement and support from a small community helped me to build the confidence that I have today. It taught me to lead even if I don’t have the leadership title and it changed my perspective on a lot of things.”
When Huang was a prefect, she presented to the Board of Trustees. The prefects that year pitched the idea of what is now South Street fields. She received a letter at home in China saying that the presentation was impressive and the feedback she received helped to shape some of the presentation skills she uses today.
When asked what advice Huang might give students today she said, “I would encourage them to try different things, things that you’re scared of or think you might not be interested in. Now is the time to try these things because you’re starting to form your own world view but you’re capable of absorbing new information and new skills.”
Being encouraged to try new things is something that stuck with Huang from her time at The Frederick Gunn School. Even now, Huang is learning the ukulele in her free time!
“Since we’re all at home so much right now and on our screens, I find myself wanting to take a break,” said Huang. “So I started playing the ukulele and I run outside. Running is something that I started to enjoy when I was at The Gunnery and took with me to Wellesley and now into my adult life.”
Huang stays connected to The Frederick Gunn School through her friendships with fellow alumni. She’s always stayed very close with Chao Liu ’11 and after they all relocated to the Bay Area, she met Shimeng Wang ’11 and Ricky Jiang ’12 at an alumni brunch.
“It’s amazing to see part of how the school has influenced and shaped them into who they are today,” said Huang. “They are all very accomplished professionally and carry a lot of self-assurance, which I don’t see in other international students that I’ve met. I think it can be attributed back to us having a small, supportive community. We had a good foundation and we really understand American culture and society from being here at a younger age instead of coming for college or graduate school.”
Ryan Broderick ’05 at work at Reverie Brewing, which is located in Newtown, Connecticut
Don’t Give Up Your Daydream
Ryan Broderick ’05 had a “daydream” of owning his own brewery while he was working full time in finance in Greenwich, Connecticut. While Broderick and his business partner, Frank Lockwood, were still working at their day jobs, they were inspired to name one of their first test beers, “Double Dipper.” The image on the can is a man with four arms — one holding a Post-it® note, one holding a phone, one holding money and the last holding a paperclip — and trying to juggle it all. This is exactly what Broderick and Lockwood were doing while trying to manage their “day job” and their daydream. The word “reverie” means a state of being pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts: a daydream. That’s why they ultimately chose the name Reverie Brewing for their brewery.
Broderick grew up in Woodbury, Connecticut, and came to The Frederick Gunn School as a freshman. He was a three-season athlete and played football, hockey and lacrosse. Although he was most interested in playing hockey (he still plays in a men’s league now), the local public school didn’t offer it. The Frederick Gunn School was on his radar because of its hockey program, and he ended up attending the school as a day student. He was captain of the football and lacrosse teams during his time at Gunn and he played hockey all but his senior year.
“A lot of what I learned at The Gunnery is what helped me start my own business,” said Broderick. “I learned how to focus on things and be regimented. I had to figure out how to manage my time and school work. Those skills more than any specific course I took helped set me up for where I am now.” Broderick fondly remembers his time at The Frederick Gunn School and is still in touch with many of his classmates. One of his close friends, Peter Macary ’05, accidentally found the Stray Shot during their senior year. Broderick planned to play lacrosse in college and was very interested in attending Providence College. He visited the campus and stayed with Mark Rhoads ’04, but decided at the last minute that his heart wasn’t in it. He ultimately attended Loyola University Maryland, where he studied marketing. Broderick loved the campus and the manageable distance from home, and he joined the university’s club hockey team.
When Broderick graduated from Loyola in 2009, it was a difficult time to find employment, especially in the finance sector, so he took a year off before landing a job at Morgan Stanley in Baltimore as a financial analyst. Shortly afterward, he started
working towards a Master of Business Administration in finance, which helped him as he started working in this field.
Three years later, Broderick moved to New York City and went to work for JPMorgan Chase. A few years after returning to New England, on a slow summer day, Broderick wrote an entire business plan for his entrepreneurial “daydream” venture. He knew the corporate life wasn’t for him long term and was wrestling with the idea of how he would someday balance a family and long hours in a corporate setting. Would he have to burn through his vacation days just to go to a recital or game?
After working on the business plan, he did a demographic study of Newtown, Connecticut, and started looking for investors to get his idea off the ground. At the time, the craft beer industry was exploding. According to The Brewers Association, in 2011 there were 16 craft breweries in Connecticut, which has expanded to 112 in 2020. Currently there are about 249,784 barrels of craft beer produced per year in the state. Nationally, the craft brewing industry contributed $82.9 billion to the U.S. economy in 2019 and more than 580,000 jobs.
Broderick always really enjoyed craft beer. Growing up, Broderick’s father, Mark, owned a restaurant in Waterbury, and it was one of the few in the 90s that carried beers produced by smaller, local brewers. Their fridge at home was always stocked with Yuengling, which was a smaller local company, at a time when national brands like Budweiser and Coors were far more ubiquitous.
“It was a bond we had together,” recalled Broderick. “We always were looking for new beers to try.”
While Broderick always loved beer and knew he could run the business-end of the operation, he needed someone to actually brew the beer. “I am by no means a brewer,” says Broderick. “I actually met my partner, Frank, through a friend at Loyola. They grew up together and he introduced us. If I never met Frank I never would’ve had the willingness to go for it. That and the support of our wives is what allowed us to take this leap.”
Reverie Brewing officially opened in February of 2019 and had a great first year. The focus of their business plan always has and always will be a community-based taproom. “We have a lot of seating, a stage and no TVs,” says Broderick. “People come here, put their phones away and talk to each other over a beer.”
The taproom hosts a lot of different events, from wreathmaking during the holidays to live performances and ticketed comedy events throughout the year. In the warmer months, they have a run club that meets every other week at the taproom. Its members go for a run and then gather over half-price beers for the night. The taproom has 12 taplines, and while Reverie wants to have a product and brand that is recognizable, they don’t want to be known for a “flagship beer.” They want beer lovers to come to the taproom and try new beers that they haven’t tried before. They’ve created 110 brews since they started and are somewhere in the mid 50s for actual beers that they’ve produced! They also have an experimental line — if you’re at the taproom and see “Oo” next to a beer, it’s one that they’re testing out. “The idea for the ‘Oo’ next to the experimental beers came from when you’re in a meeting in an office building and you’re like, ‘Oo’ a distraction,” said Broderick. “If we really like them or we get good feedback from customers, then we put them into production.”
Clockwise from above: the logo for Reverie’s Douple Dipper IPA; members of the run club, who meet every other week at the taproom; Broderick with his wife, Ali
In 2019, Reverie beat their estimated sales projections, had just started canning their beers, and were planning for major growth in 2020. Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened. “We’re in better shape than a lot of places, but not in as good of a place as we had hoped,” said Broderick. “When COVID first hit in March 2020 we brewed a beer called ‘Small Business Relief’ and were able to give 11 businesses in Newtown around $12,000 to help them out.”
Throughout the pandemic, there has been a push to continue to support local businesses and Reverie has seen that support from the community. When the weather is nice at the taproom, there’s a lot of outdoor seating available. People were able to brave the cooler temperatures much later into the year with the addition of a tent and outdoor heaters.
In December, Reverie Brewing became the first brewery in Connecticut to have a winery and cider permit. Their first experimental cider was a dry cider that went on tap in early January. “We’re utilizing local ingredients for the cider,” said Broderick. “We’re using apples from a place in Massachusetts and there’s an old tobacco farm in South Windsor, Connecticut, that now grows malt that we’re using to make the cider.”
Over the last year, Broderick has realized there is more that he needs to learn personally, to continue growing alongside Reverie Brewing. “When you own your own business, you wear a lot of different hats and it’s eye opening to realize what you don’t know,” said Broderick, who is continually looking for ways to improve the business as well. “It’s so rewarding to find something that you love to do, but it’s a lot of work. It doesn’t go away on the weekends. If something goes wrong or breaks, you’re going to be the one to fix it.”
Broderick believes his greatest accomplishment so far was taking the first step to make the leap and start Reverie Brewing. “I think I’m most proud of having the courage (and support from my wife) to be able to leave a well-paying, secure job with benefits in a Fortune 500 company, knowing there was no guarantee that we would be successful or even in business.”
His advice to current students or young entrepreneurs who are considering going out on their own is “don’t be afraid to try and fail. Surround yourself with people that you trust and that are smarter than you,” advised Broderick. “One way to be successful in business is to find someone with a different skill set from you. Some people make the mistake of surrounding themselves with the same types of people to make them feel like they’re right or correct. Find people that think differently than you do. And don’t be afraid to talk about your ideas or what you’re doing. I wouldn’t have found Frank if I wasn’t talking about my plans to anyone that would listen.”
– Ryan Broderick ‘05
Fearless Litigator
David Bancroft ’55 Reflects on His Adventures in the Courtroom and the World
Bancroft was photographed at his office by the San Francisco Business Times for an article about former prosecutors founding their own private practice law firms.
David Bancroft ’55 began his long and distinguished law career in Washington, D.C., working in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice when Robert F. Kennedy was Attorney General. He rose through the ranks to become Chief of Special Prosecutions for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco before going into private practice with a colleague there. They were the first former federal prosecutors in Northern California to leave their positions to open their own firm, which over the next 40 years, grew into one of the most well-regarded mid-size law firms in the region.
As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Bancroft prosecuted cases involving a wide range of federal crimes, including organized crime, domestic terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and fraud against the government. He also played a pivotal role in the prosecution in the 1976 trial of newspaper-heiress-turned-bank-robber Patty Hearst. In April 1974, Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, was abducted from her Berkeley, California, apartment by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a domestic terrorist guerilla group. She subsequently joined the SLA in robbing banks, became a fugitive from justice and, following a nationwide manhunt, was apprehended by the FBI in San Francisco in 1975. She was charged with bank robbery and using a firearm during the commission of a felony.
At her trial, Hearst’s attorneys argued that she had been coerced and brainwashed into participating in those crimes. But Bancroft successfully rebutted those defenses by carefully cross-examining the defense expert witnesses, including UCLA psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West., M.D., UC Berkeley psychologist Margaret Singer, Ph.D., and two other professors. In addition, Bancroft prepared two government expert psychiatrists as rebuttal witnesses for the prosecution, helping to secure Hearst’s conviction.
Still, Bancroft does not consider the Hearst case to be his most important case and has only spoken about it publicly in recent years when a newly published book rekindled much interest in the then more than 40-year-old case.. “When I look back, it was all of the other domestic terrorism cases I did,” said Bancroft, who prosecuted members of the Black Liberation Army, the Venceremos, a wellarmed, radical Communist group (whose members were found guilty of murdering one unarmed prison guard and wounding
another while helping a Venceremos recruit and prison inmate escape) and the Weather Underground, among others, when he led the U.S. Attorney’s Office anti-terrorism unit in San Francisco from 1972 to 1978. In an article about the 1970s as an era of radical domestic terrorism violence in the Bay Area, Bancroft told reporter Michael Taylor of the San Francisco Chronicle: “We’d get cases where (the BLA) would have significant amounts of guns, ammunition, explosives, passports, birth certificates and false identity material.”
Times were turbulent, and it was difficult for law enforcement to predict when and where domestic terrorists would strike. As Bancroft told the newspaper, “There was that awful sinking feeling of the indeterminacy of it all, and so much of the [violence] was a way for people to rationalize their own criminal instincts. These were killers, robbers and arsonists.”
An important part of his life
Born in West Hartford, Connecticut, Bancroft moved with his family to Stamford before coming to what was then The Gunnery as a boarding student in 1951. He played soccer and some baseball for the school, but his passion was working for the newspaper, which was then the main vehicle for the school communicating with parents and alumni.
“At that time, one of the big things was to be the editor of The Gunnery News. I had worked on the school newspaper, and was lucky enough to be named editorin-chief,” he said. Fearless even then, he approached then-Head of School Ogden D. Miller H’69 P’50 ’54 ’55 GP’84 and asked him if he could interview one of the school’s greatest benefactors, Adrian Van Sinderen of the Class of 1906, who was very formal and “old-school,” and who regularly stayed at The Mayflower Inn.
“The Headmaster said, ‘Well, just one moment, young man, we’ll have to see about that,’” Bancroft said. But Miller arranged the interview and Bancroft wrote the story. “That was kind of a big
deal. The Gunnery News was an important part of my life at The Gunnery. I like to think that maybe I did a good job as Editor, and if so, that was the reason that when I graduated, I was awarded the Headmaster’s Prize.” Elizabeth Kempton taught him mechanical drawing. Classmate Andy Masterbone ’55 taught him photography, and art has remained a passion throughout his life. One of his jobs at the school was to help with maintenance. “I took care of the art Bancroft received this award from the shack. I had to sweep it out and sweep the Attorney General of the United States for porch,” Bancroft said, recalling that on his 50th his work in the Hearst case. reunion, he returned to the porch of what we know today as Kempton for a warm reflection. After graduation, Bancroft attended a boarding school in England for a PG year as an English Speaking Union schoolboy before enrolling at Swarthmore College as a freshman. He chose Swarthmore after hearing it was coed from another Gunn student, William Boone ’54, who was going there. “He said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you this, they have girls.’ I said, ‘Well then, I’m in,’” Bancroft joked. He graduated in 1960 from Swarthmore with Honors, and a degree in art history, and in 1963 from the University of Chicago Law I was fortunate to School, where he also met his wife, Cheryl, get that appointment who was a graduate student in English. “I and to be assigned tried to get a seat next to her in the library,” he recalled, but it was always too crowded. to Bobby Kennedy’s “We finally met on a bus that was going back ‘red garnet’ Organized from O’Hare to the University of Chicago. I Crime Section. I had a got on the bus and who was there but Cheryl wonderful experience and nobody else on the bus. I went up to her there. He would invite and said, impishly, ‘Is this seat taken?’ She looked like she just didn’t know what to say, us to his office on but said the obvious, ‘No, it’s not taken.’ I sat Saturday mornings.” down, and the rest is history.” – David Bancroft ‘55 A young pollywog prosecutor In law school, Bancroft was one of only two or maybe three students in his class who had any career interest in criminal law. When he graduated, he interviewed at the same Wall Street firms as his peers, but he also applied for a job in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. “I was fortunate to get that appointment and to be assigned to Bobby
Kennedy’s ‘red garnet’ Organized Crime Section. I had a wonderful experience there,” he reflected. During that time, he had the opportunity to meet with Kennedy. “He would invite us to his office on Saturday mornings. It was very heady stuff, really.”
Bancroft was part of a squad of attorneys pursuing Jimmy Hoffa, who was head of the Teamsters Union and involved in organized crime. His assignment involved assisting in the prosecution of a union official from New York, who was accused of attempting to bribe the jury in the Hoffa case in Nashville, Tennessee. “I was just a young pollywog prosecutor and the senior trial counsel had a stroke just as the final argument was about to begin. He just passed the yellow pad to me and said, ‘You do it, kid.’ So I had to speak for the first time in my life in a courtroom in the most important part of the case and bring it to conclusion,” Bancroft said, adding, “ And fortunately, they convicted the defendant.”
What would you think of San Francisco?
Bancroft and his wife were living in Washington, D.C., while he continued working for the Justice Department, traveling to Pennsylvania and Ohio to prosecute organized crime cases. “I was away from home a third of the year,” he said, recalling they decided it would be better for him to get a job as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in one city, which would require him to travel much less. That decision seemed even more appropriate after Cheryl became pregnant with their first child, Bancroft said. So he went to his boss, Henry Peterson (who later played an influential role in the Watergate investigation), telling Peterson that he “needed to find a place to roost.” The result was that he was offered a post in Las Vegas, Nevada, where his focus would be prosecuting organized crime cases.
“I nearly died at the prospect of having to move to Las Vegas,” Bancroft recalled. But he knew if he turned the job down, his career would be “dead in the water.” Cheryl encouraged him to take it, believing it would only be for a few years, but when he went back to accept the offer, Peterson looked very unhappy. “He felt terrible. He explained to me that he hadn’t known that that job had been offered by his boss to someone else.”
Two weeks later, Peterson called him into his office and said, “What would you think of San Francisco?” Standing there, I asked myself, “How lucky can you get?”
The Bancrofts moved there in 1966 and over the course of the next almost 12 years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he tried all kinds of criminal cases and became Chief of Special Prosecutions. In 1975, he became a senior member of the legal team that tried the Hearst case, going up against famed criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, who would later defend O.J. Simpson at his murder trial.
“About a year ago, the federal court local historical society put on a program about the Hearst case and asked me to present what it was like to have actually been involved in it,” he said. Thinking back to the trial, he recalled that it took place in a grand, two-story, ceremonial courtroom in order to accommodate the public and media throngs. There were two jury boxes there, one on either side of the room. The press were seated in one, staring directly at the jury in the other. A special sound amplification system was brought in, along with a “jumbotron” movie screen, to show the bank security camera footage of Hearst, fully armed, assisting in the bank robbery. “I’d never seen a trial like that, before or since,” he said, noting that demand for attendance was so high, it was an undertaking to get his wife a one-day seat in the courtroom.
Asked how he had found the experts who testified for the prosecution, Bancroft said he enlisted the aid of a brilliant attorney, who was also a librarian. “I called her up and I said, ‘Here’s what I need: I need you to research for me in professional journals and the general literature everything you can about brainwashing. Who
The core team prosecuting the Hearst case included Bancroft, who was then an Assistant U.S. Attorney, the lead FBI agent (standing, left), and his boss (seated).
are the experts? And I want a bibliography that’s 20-yards long. I want every book, every monograph, every article, everything that has ever been written about brainwashing. I want you to get these things and we are going to create our own library.’”
The case inspired movies, songs and books, including “Anyone’s Daughter: The Times and Trials of Patty Hearst,” published in 1979 by author and journalist Shana Alexander, who worked for Newsweek and Life magazines and “60 Minutes” on CBS.
“There is something serpentlike about Bancroft’s manner. The high forehead, hornrimmed spectacles, and cool intelligence recall John Dean,” Alexander wrote, noting that Bancroft had pored over thousands of pages of psychiatric literature in preparation for the trial. “But the month paid off. Bancroft is superbly prepared and near-sizzling with prosecutorial zeal.”
When Jeffrey Toobin, the former chief legal analyst for CNN, asked to interview Bancroft for his 2017 book, “American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst,” the former Assistant U.S. Attorney told him, “‘Who knows about the case? Who cares about it now? You’re crazy.’” Bancroft said that
Toobin replied, “That’s the whole point. A lot of people don’t know about it, and it’s a helluva tale.’” In the book, Toobin wrote that the outcome in her case — her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and she was ultimately pardoned by President Bill Clinton — is not afforded to many who have been convicted and imprisoned for committing much lesser crimes. “Rarely have the benefits of wealth, power, and renown been as clear as they were in the aftermath of Patricia’s conviction.” To this day, Bancroft has no doubt about what really happened in the case. “There never was any brainwashing as such. Participate in things. She was an active participant in the bank Try to excel at robbery … then ran around the country things. Be honest, be with these people after having shot up a considerate. I said this sporting goods store in order to free them at the 50th reunion. when they were caught shoplifting. The jury, the trial judge, and the court of appeals These were profound determined that’s exactly the way it was, things for a kid who and the Supreme Court declined to disturb was searching for a their determinations.” behavior model and how to determine A life of adventure what’s important.” Bancroft was rock climbing when his – David Bancroft ‘55 colleague, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Sideman, asked him to leave the U.S. Attorney’s Office and join him in starting a new firm. To him, the answer was obvious. “You hang by a rope held by someone … you learn to trust their judgement. So we decided that we were going to just jump off the cliff and do it.” Sideman was a tax litigator who had experience prosecuting criminal and civil tax cases, and Bancroft decided the firm would focus on defending people accused of white collar crimes. It became successful, growing to include 35 lawyers before the pandemic. Bancroft retired six years ago and his principal protege is now the
Celebrating their 50th anniversary at the Sea Ranch in Sonoma County, California, with all eight grandchildren!
managing partner. “We have allowed the firm to continue to use our names so in that sense the old firm continues on, and I don’t have to go to work, which is great.”
He and Cheryl still live in San Francisco, in a home with “modestly nice views” of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, and Alcatraz. Cheryl is a former Trustee and former chief docent of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Together they enjoy collecting early 20th-century American color woodblock art prints, traveling, and trying to keep up with their three children, Jennifer, James and Jessica, and their eight grandchildren.
Bancroft and his wife have traveled a good deal abroad, most recently to Europe, Australia and Russia, and he promised to share stories about his adventures in Yemen, India, China, the Marquesas, Africa, the High Arctic, and Pitcairn Island with anyone who attends the next reunion. Pitcairn was the refuge for 1790 mutineers on the ship, HMS Bounty. “Pitcairn sent Captain Bligh afloat on a rowboat and the mutinous crew sailed around until they saw this island ... which was mismarked on the map and is just a craggy rock with trees in the middle of the South Pacific. Today, it’s a tiny one-and-half-mile sized British territory and you have to get special permission to go. I stayed there with Steve Christian, direct descendant of the leader of the mutiny on the Bounty, Fletcher Christian.”
The trip to Pitcairn involved a flight to Tahiti, a second plane to Mangereva, the westernmost French Polynesian island, and then three days aboard a New Zealand freighter, and a wave ride onto Pitcairn on a whale boat. “Only 110 or so souls live on the island. It’s extremely isolated,” said Bancroft, who traveled with a very close friend who had retired early and started an adventure travel company. Their fathers had known each other. “The stuff we’ve done together, maybe someday it will be a book.”
Now 83, Bancroft has climbed every mountain in the U.S. over 14,000 feet and has traveled to 45 countries. When he traveled to China, his personal guide was his roommate from Swarthmore, Michael Oksenberg, Ph.D., who was President Carter’s assistant National Security Advisor, and accompanied Zbigniew Brzezinski to Beijing in 1978, on a trip that helped to stabilize U.S.-China relations at the time.
Bancroft credits The Frederick Gunn School with instilling in him certain values: “Participate in things. Try to excel at things. Be honest, be considerate. I said this at the 50th reunion. These were profound things for a kid who was searching for a behavior model and how to determine what’s important,” he said.
He has kept in touch with Dwight Miller ’55, Harvey Chess ’55, Bob Levine ’55, Alan Bain ’55, Fred Fields ’57 P’85, the late Andy Masterbone ’55, and Bruce Porter ’55, who was his roommate senior year (and who began his illustrious writing career as Sports Editor of The Gunnery News). And his memories of campus remain strong. “I would look out from my room onto this snowscape. I mean, it was just so gorgeous. What’s the expression in ‘The Night Before Christmas?’ ‘The moon on the breast of the newfallen snow…’ It was a picture-postcard setting. I can remember being a teenager and just stopping in wonderment, pausing, and looking. I can still see it in my mind’s eye so clearly.”
The Bancrofts in South Africa (after a safari in Botswana), “about as far south as one can get on that continent after being almost as far north as one can get on the North American.” In April 1989, Bancroft and his longtime friend and fellow adventurer completed a seven-day photo expedition by dog sled from Canada’s Northwest Territories out onto the polar icecap. The route took them within 800 miles or so north of the Arctic Circle. They were accompanied by 12 dogs and their guide, Matusi Akumalik, and observed polar bears, narwhales, icebergs, and seals busting up through the icecap in temperatures that dipped to 45 degrees below zero.
