Ellis School to Mark Its 100th Anniversary with Gala
Pittsburgh, PA, September 12, 2016 – Over 450 alumnae, students, family members, community leaders, administrators and friends of The Ellis School will come together on Saturday, October 15, 2016 at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Music Hall to mark Ellis’s first 100-years of educating and shaping the lives of girls and young women. The “More Power to Her: The Ellis School Centennial Gala” will celebrate Ellis’s many milestones through the years and showcase the school’s students, alumnae, educators and leaders, past and present.
The Centennial Gala is the pinnacle in a series of events marketing the school’s 100th anniversary. The highlight of the evening will be the formal program recognizing 13 highly accomplished and distinguished alumnae as Ellis Laureates who have demonstrated outstanding achievements in their fields. WTAE-TV’s Sally Wiggin will emcee the program. The 13 to be honored are:
Eileen Halpern Lane ’64 (Advocacy) – A community advocate, volunteer and writer who has dedicated herself to Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and the region’s Jewish heritage. Lane has served on many nonprofit boards, including the founding of the Komen Pittsburgh Race for the Cure, as chair of the Family Health Council (now Adagio Health), and as chair of the Ellis Board of Trustees.
Dr. Deane Marchbein ’68(Medicine) – President of the U.S. Board of Directors of Médecins Sans Frontiérs/Doctors without Borders. Marchbein recently retired from Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was an anesthesiologist.
Kathleen McMorran Murray ’70(Finance) – A business leader specializing in angel investing, business development and coaching, she is the owner of McMorran Strategists, LLC. Murray had previously served at Aetna and PwC. An angel investor in several start-up companies, she has also served as president of the Harvard Business School Women’s Association of New York.
Carol Ostrow ’73 (Performing Arts) – The producing director of The Flea, an award-winning off-off-Broadway theater in New York City. She has produced more than 100 world premiere productions. She has enjoyed a rich career in the theater, which has also included service as an adjunct professor of theater at Vassar College, Chatham College and McGill University. Ostrow is a trustee of Vassar, a member of the Yale Drama School Board of Advisors, a trustee of Central Synagogue, and she serves on the boards of the National Psoriasis Foundation and the Sag Harbor Partnership.
Barbara Aaron Rosston ’80 (Civics/Law) – An environmental attorney and strategic consultant for nonprofit organizations, she has chaired the boards of two independent schools in Palo Alto, California, and was instrumental in leading both through strategic expansions. Rosston serves on a variety of nonprofit boards, including the John Austin Cheley Foundation and Challenge Success.
Darcy Frank Mackay ’85 (Business) – President of CBRE’s Global Workplace Solutions, West Division, she is responsible for CBRE’s global occupier clients headquartered in the Western 13 United States across several company divisions. Mackay specializes in portfolio optimization, corporate strategic planning, and organizational change and design.
Kelly Brent Schoeneman ’89 (Industry) – CEO and partner at WorldDealer, Inc., a Pittsburgh agency that provides multi-channel marketing to the retail automotive industry. Schoeneman is director for Women-Drivers.com, a subsidiary of World Dealer that provides data for marketing to women auto shoppers. Before helping found WorldDealer, she was a media buyer for JW Messer, a Michigan-based advertising agency.
Sara Sutton Fell ’92 (Technology) – CEO and founder at FlexJobs, an award-winning, innovative career Website for telecommuting, flexible, freelance and part-time jobs. She created the idea for FlexJobs in 2006 while pregnant with her first son, after she faced the challenge of finding flexible professional employment options. She had previously founded an entry-level employment service in 1995 with fellow Ellis classmate Rachel Bell Robards ’92. Fell has founded 1 Million for Work Flexibility, an advocacy initiative, as well as Remote.co, a resource for remote companies.
Tomar Pierson-Brown ’97 (Education/Law) – Clinical Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh. Brown has served as a clinical instructor at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) David A. Clarke School of Law, and an attorney with the Children’s Law Center in Washington, D.C.
Shira Toeplitz Center ’01 (Journalism) – Political editor at The Boston Globe, where she oversees a team of reporters who cover City Hall and the presidential election. Previously, she served as the politics editor and a writer for CQ Roll Call, Capitol Hill’s top news source on Congress. She has been a resident fellow at The Institute of Politics at Harvard University. Center regularly appears on cable news and radio programs to offer political commentary and analysis.
Elizabeth Ross Radigonda ’02 (Music) – An assistant professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Elizabeth teaches Musicianship, Jazz Musicianship, Jazz Vocal Improvisation, and runs the Jazz Singers Ensemble. In addition to teaching, she maintains an active performance schedule, leading the Elizabeth Ross Quintet.
Jean Yang, Ph.D. ’04 (Computer Science) – Yang recently finished her postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School, and has joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, where she is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department. Previously, she completed her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research focuses on programming languages.
Lani Lazzari ’12 (Entrepreneurship) – President and CEO of Simple Sugars, a company that makes handmade, all-natural skincare products specially formulated for sensitive skin. The Pittsburgh-based company has grown into an international phenomenon with 22 employees and products sold online and in more than 700 retail locations. The company catapulted to success after Lazzari’s appearance on television’s Shark Tank in 2013. She founded Simple Sugars in 2005 when she was just 11 years old.
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