As stage manager at the Academy’s Fisher Theater, Laura Callanan ’83 ran productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Night School using many of the same organizational skills that she later parlayed into key positions with the National Endowment for the Arts, McKinsey & Company and the United Nations. As chief of staff for the U.N. Development Programme’s Bureau of Crisis Prevention and Recovery, she collaborated with colleagues from around the world.

“We realized that every one of us had been a stage manager,” Callanan says of one U.N.D.P. working group. “There’s no better way to learn about deadlines and details than making sure the light goes on at the right time and in the right place.”

Today, Callanan, a Barnard College theater major who went on to earn a Master of Public Administration in public finance, has blended her many experiences into Upstart Co-Lab, of which she is founding partner. Upstart serves as a bridge between creatives who are entrepreneurs and impact investors who seek to achieve a social or environmental benefit alongside a financial return.

The idea for Upstart arose during Callanan’s time at the NEA, when she observed creatives were not just working alone in a studio or starting nonprofit organizations, but were increasingly launching for-profit social purpose businesses. She set out to connect these creative entrepreneurs to the trillions of dollars of impact capital in the U.S.

“A lot of transformation for the whole economy can begin in the creative industries,” Callanan says. “At Upstart, we’re not focused on funding ‘the arts.’ We’re focused on financing businesses in creative industries that provide products, services and platforms to customers. Businesses that hire people, that pay taxes — and that need investors to grow.”

Callanan finds creative entrepreneurs work in some 145 industries that span fashion, food, film, TV, video games and more. One such business is Making Space, whose founder, a 20-something serial entrepreneur who is living with a disability herself, connects media and entertainment companies looking for staff with qualified, skilled disabled talent. In just under a decade, Upstart has mobilized some $45 million and is recognized as the leader in the field of impact investing for the U.S. creative economy.

She is careful to point out that impact investing can play a role in anyone’s financial plan. And the creative economy, valued at more than $1.2 trillion in the United States, can be part of any impact investor’s portfolio. According to the U.N., the creative industries are expected to make up 10 percent of the global economy over the next decade. Countries around the world that have long relied on extractive industries and agriculture have grasped that it may just prove to be the golden egg for sustainable development and economic growth.

“Places like Indonesia with a very young population are intentionally leaning into the creative economy. They’re balancing tradition and innovation,” Callanan says. Given that, she and her team are routinely fielding inbound queries from community, state and international arts councils, and foundations exploring ways to invest in their local creative economies.

“That’s really exciting for us, because part of our work as a nonprofit is sharing what we’re learning to motivate and support other people who want to do this themselves,” she says of the process, now formalized as Upstart Consults.

Reflecting on her time at Fisher Theater, Callanan, who walked the boards in productions of Rashomon, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Equus, says acting, too, was pivotal to her career.

“I have no fear of public speaking. And I can translate between the creative people who are entrepreneurs and the investors,” she says, “and help people see where they’re talking about the same thing, just using different language. I would not have my deep appreciation of creativity and creative people without my experience in theater at Exeter.”

This article was first published in the spring 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

This season Big Red wrestling’s roster featured 10 girls, the most in the history of the program. A traditionally male-dominated sport, wrestling at Exeter is rapidly growing into a competitive arena for female athletes — a trend that’s happening around the country. The National Federation of State High School Associations reports that girls wrestling has experienced significant growth in participation, increasing 102% since 2021.

“There are multiple teams with double-digit numbers of girls on their roster this year,” says head wrestling coach Justin Muchnick. “There are girls divisions at both the league and New England tournaments, as well as several girls-only invitationals throughout the season.”

The rise of girls wrestling can be attributed in part to top-down efforts. The inclusion of women’s wrestling in the Olympics in 2004, the expansion of women’s college programs and the NCAA’s decision to recognize women’s wrestling as an official championship sport in 2025–26 have provided clear pathways for female athletes to compete at higher levels.

“In the world of New England prep schools, a lot of this has been driven from the bottom up, by individual coaches and programs committing to girls wrestling,” Muchnick says. “You have to give a ton of credit to Andover for being the prime mover here: Kassie Bateman and Rich Gorham have spent a decade-plus making this vision a reality. But at this point there are quite a few other programs — Choate, St. Paul’s, Hyde, Northfield Mount Hermon and now us — that have made girls wrestling a priority.”

Exeter ranks in the top third of NEPSAC wrestling programs in terms of girls participation. The focus moving forward is on retention, recruitment and building a team capable of filling all 12 weight classes.

“I really want to use our current momentum to add as many girls as we can to our program!” Muchnick says. “Beyond competition, the growth of girls wrestling is reshaping the culture of the sport itself. The camaraderie among female wrestlers, even between competitors from different schools, is setting a new standard. As girls wrestling continues to flourish, it is clear that the sport is becoming stronger, more inclusive and more dynamic than ever before.

This article was first published in the spring 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

Just three years out of college, Lauren Arkell ’18 is fulfilling one of her big career goals in aero-space: working on a mission to the moon. As flight controller on the mission operations team at Firefly Aerospace, she is playing a key role in the debut flight of the company’s lunar lander, Blue Ghost, which is scheduled to launch in mid-January.

During the two-month mission, the Firefly team will work around the clock in the console room, with Arkell and two other flight controllers alternating in 12-hour shifts. “I’ll be sending all the commands from the ground to the spacecraft and working hand in hand with the flight director to run through all of our operations procedures,” Arkell says. The procedures “make sure we meet our mission requirements and do all of the payload operations we need to, as well as monitor the health and safety of the vehicle.”

Blue Ghost will spend nearly a month orbiting the Earth and about two weeks in lunar orbit before landing near Mare Crisium, a basin in the far northeast quadrant of the moon’s Earth-facing side, for 14 days of surface operations. Dubbed Ghost Riders in the Sky, the mission will use 10 scientific instruments (or payloads) to collect data as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

Arkell’s ties to Blue Ghost go back to a summer internship at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio during college. She worked on a passive coating to mitigate lunar dust, the abrasive fragments from the moon’s surface that can wreck astronauts’ spacesuits and equipment. “That coating is one of the payloads that Blue Ghost will bring to the moon,” Arkell says.

After graduating from Davidson College in 2022, she worked on various projects for a contractor for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland but kept her eye on the lunar dust mitigation project. When a position opened at Firefly, she jumped at the opportunity, moving to Austin, Texas, to fulfill her goal of working on a lunar mission. “Getting that data on lunar dust mitigation can solve the issues we saw during all of the Apollo missions and be super beneficial for NASA’s return to the moon,” Arkell says.

A presentation by Tom Marshburn, a Davidson alumnus and former astronaut who made three flights to the International Space Station, inspired Arkell to enter the aerospace field. At the time, she was majoring in physics and on a pre-med track but was undecided on a career. “I was able to connect with him personally,” she recalls. “He was such a nice guy, so normal and willing to chat, that I saw myself in him and saw the path that he took as an option for the first time.”

But Arkell says she discovered her passion for STEM at Exeter, where she was a three-year senior day student from nearby Brentwood. She loved her chemistry and physics classes, and vividly remembers taking astronomy with Science Instructor John Blackwell, including regular trips to Grainger Observatory. “Mr. Blackwell had a great take on how expansive space is, and how we know so little about it,” Arkell says. A co-captain of the varsity lacrosse and soccer teams at Exeter, Arkell went on to play lacrosse at Davidson. She brings those well-honed teamwork skills to the work she’s doing on the Blue Ghost mission.

“So much of it is active troubleshooting, working with everyone in  the room,” Arkell says. “You really have to trust yourself, your co-workers and the other people on console that are the specialists, and you’re constantly working through problems. It’s a lot of pressure, but I think it’s very exciting.”

Andy Novick ’01 enjoys all aspects of his work as an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, a psychiatrist and a researcher. But spearheading clinical trials in treating major depressive disorder with psilocybin, a component found in certain species of fungi, is what he finds the most exciting.

“It’s the ability to oversee people getting dosed with this psychedelic compound, making sure it is done safely, and the potential things we can learn from it,” Novick says.

A Drug Enforcement Administration Schedule I license allows Novick to possess and administer the drug for research, and an investigational new drug license from the Food and Drug Administration authorizes him to specifically study psilocybin for major depressive disorder, he says. The FDA “had to green light me and go through my study protocol with a fine-toothed comb.”

Novick’s interest in psychopharmacology began at Exeter, where he felt supported as he explored the topic. Science Instructor Kathleen Curwen, one of his favorite teachers, taught him both chemistry and biochemistry. “It was in her class that I got to write my first psychopharmacology paper,” he says, “critiquing an article on testosterone derivatives and aggressive behavior. When I told her the topic, she didn’t consider it odd. Instead, she let me run with it.”

Novick began doing research in neuroscience at Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmacology. He went on to receive his medical degree and Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of South Dakota. In 2019, he joined the faculty at the University of Colorado.

“It became really obvious around 2021 or so that psychedelics were going to be a part of psychiatry that wasn’t going anywhere,” he says. “Psilocybin was something I wanted to start with given that it had some research suggesting a really high utility in things like major depressive disorder.”

The clinical research Novick is conducting at the university’s Anschutz Medical Campus entails a psilocybin trial in 40 individuals with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder. He says, “Subjects are randomized to receive either a therapeutic dose of psilocybin or an inactive microdose of psilocybin that acts as a placebo.”

Results from the eight-week trial have proved auspicious. “What we think psilocybin does is that it creates a window of opportunity in the brain for significant change,” he says. “People with depression are often stuck in a brain state in which they have certain thoughts and feelings, often of a very negative nature, that they can’t get out of. Psilocybin makes the brain more plastic and more open to potential change — to change those patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors.”

Novick tempers his enthusiasm with reality. “Major depressive disorder is a serious and difficult illness,” he says. “I don’t think this is going to be the ultimate fix for the entire population. But I do think it’s going to be a huge improvement from what we have right now.

“This work is very much my life,” Novick continues. “Some call that being a workaholic or not having balance. I prefer to view it as getting to do interesting stuff that I enjoy, every day.”

Just as outdoor temperatures start to dip, a familiar chill begins to emanate from the south end of the George H. Love Gymnasium. For decades, Rinks A and B have been the home to Exeter’s boys and girls hockey teams and the setting for recreational skating for the Academy community. Construction of the first indoor rinks on campus began in the late 1960s as part of the massive “new gymnasium” project which was officially rededicated as Love Gymnasium in 1980. Since then, the rinks have played host to thousands of competitions, dorm night outings and, when not frozen, alumni receptions.

1. FILLING THE RINK It takes tens of thousands of gallons of water at the start of every season to turn the concrete subfloor into a skateable surface.
2. KEEPING IT COOL The rinks’ refrigeration system keeps the ice temperature from 17 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit. The indoor air temperature is set to 55degrees with an ideal humidity level no greater than 50%.
3. SMOOTH SURFACE Zamboni is a brand of ice resurfacing machines made by a California-based company, but it has become the common term for any apparatus that performs this function. They shave a thin layer of ice, wash the remaining ice with hot water (about 140 degrees Fahrenheit), then spread the water to create a smooth surface as it refreezes. Ice resurfacers can weigh more than six tons with a full tank. According to Zamboni.com, the machines’ top speed is 9.7 m.p.h.
4. ICE TIME Academy teams, clubs and physical education classes, as well as local public high school teams keep the facility bustling all winterlong. On average, the rinks are in use 70 hours each week. Five dedicated employees keep them in top condition.
5. WINNING HISTORY The first E/A hockey game took place in 1914. The seeds of what became the first Academy-sponsored hockey team were planted a few years earlier, but we all know that sports don’t get real until Big Red and Big Blue clash. Girls hockey at Exeter began for the 1974-75 season. In 1998-99, the boys team posted a 30-3 record en route to its only New England crown. The next season, the girls team took home their own New England championship.