Havergal College NOTABLE ALUMNI

I think what people don’t know is that, once you graduate from Havergal, you’re not done with Havergal. Whether it’s the faculty, whether it’s the staff, whether it’s the security guards that sit at the front, whether it’s your peers, whether it’s the girls behind you, Havergal is a lifelong community where, if you want to be a part of it for years afterward, you absolutely can. I don’t know if I realized that when I was at the school.

Every year I reflect on the experiences I had at Havergal College and think about how they have shaped who I am today—through my pursuit for higher education, through my forever connection with sport and rowing, to my personal relationships with my classmates at Havergal, my former teachers at Havergal, and people that I’ve connected with after I graduated through the Havergal community. Havergal College is a place that I am proud to have gone to. I’m very lucky to have gone to Havergal. The people in the Havergal community inspire me to be better every day. The Havergal College family has created opportunities for me as I pursue my professional career.

It’s hard to pick one thing I appreciate most about Havergal College. I love the school.  One thing I love about it is the community and the fact that, at Havergal, they really support you in whatever you’re doing. I just love that, in every aspect, it was really ‘cool’, for lack of a better word, to be really into academics, it was also really cool to be great at sports, it was really cool to be really into whatever club you were joining or whatever house you were a part of. That showed me—especially now that I’m navigating a very male-dominated industry—that women can do anything.  When I was at Havergal, the smartest scientist was a girl, the best hockey player was a girl, and the funniest person was also a girl. It shows you that you can be anything you want to be, and the Havergal community really supports that.

Havergal College has probably shaped my personality the most strongly, out of all of the schools I’ve been to. That’s where I figured out who I was as a person. I was able to succeed after that because of Havergal. Havergal College does a great job of showing you a character model that you should work towards, or aspire to. Showing it through the teachers, but also the students. There was a culture where you looked up to the older students every year. Everyone was trying to better themselves, to be like those role models. I think it really solidified me as a person because I was constantly looking up to the older girls.

I think the one unifying factor is the really strong sense of community that students have, both as they are here at the school and after when they leave. And we see that through the connections that they maintain as alumni, and as they transition through the school. Those threads and those connections are that unifying factor. 

Our graduates, when they head out into the world, know that they have this enormous network of supporting, caring friends who are really going to reach out and to help them in the future. It is a remarkable connection that exists, and it's one that's really deeply rooted. I was just in Boston and saw alumni who were 40 years out from their experience and many who were just a year out of Havergal coming together. Seeing that connection, that offering of mutual support was really heartwarming. 

The Havergal community has extended past graduation even more than I thought it would. It’s been almost 10 years since I graduated, and I don’t live in Toronto anymore, but just this morning I was talking to two Old Girls, some of my best friends to this day. I always reach out to past teachers for their recommendations or career advice. Young alumni often reach out to me with different questions, and I reach out to older alumni as well. I’ve been so pleasantly surprised at this community that I cherished so much while I was there — and that supported me — still supports me 10 years out.

Havergal allowed me to set a foundation that I don’t think I was totally aware of until I left the school—and Havergal has always been home.

My grandmother went to Havergal, my mom went to Havergal, and my sister, who is a year younger, went to Havergal as well.  I don’t think my parents were planning to send both my sister and me to Havergal College when we were in Grade 4, but my mom says that I came home one day from my public school and informed her that ‘girls were not supposed to do math and science, that girls were only supposed to do the languages.’ My parents decided then that a single-gender education was the best choice for me.

Being surrounded by incredible students was something I appreciated about Havergal. All my classmates were brilliant and talented, and I’m amazed at what they’re doing now. Oh, my goodness, I’m just so amazed and so proud. In short, if I had to pinpoint a time in my life that was the most influential, and helped to grow me into who I am today, it’s my time at Havergal, hands down.

Your connection to Havergal doesn’t stop the day you get your diploma — it continues for the rest of your life. There is an Old Girl community out there of almost 10,000 Old Girls, which is an extraordinary resource. And not just for networking or mentoring — it’s those global friendships and those global connections that span decades. Your daughter will have lifelong friendships, and they’ll have access to a community that is just amazing and welcoming and safe and exciting and inspiring.

We've got alumni all over the globe, willing to connect and offer mentorship to our current students. What we're also doing is working really hard to make sure those relationships, and the ability to create formal and informal mentorships, continue on. They will connect, they will offer support, they will ask great questions, and they're genuinely interested in the students’ paths and their journeys.

Havergal College has made a real conscious effort to engage more of the Old Girl community—to inspire, to mentor, and to lead the current students, which I think adds a whole other element to the experience of younger students having real-life people to look up to and say ‘Oh my gosh, they came from Havergal and they did this!’

With the interruptions and isolations of COVID-19, we really saw the huge benefit of having the relationships, the mentoring and the caring, between our graduates and our current students. In addition to what happens here at the schools, we're looking for continuing ways to foster that sense of support and connection. 

A lot of the time we can tend to focus on those Havergal students and those Old Girls who are extraordinary. There are a lot of them, and they do spectacular things. But there’s also the students and the Old Girls who are quietly making an impact every day, whether in school or in their community, and they’re really upholding the mission statement of the school to ‘make a difference’. Not too long ago we gave the Old Girls Award to a woman who wasn’t the fantastic scientist or the best-selling author — she was a woman who, in small ways, had dedicated her entire life to volunteering. And when you looked at her life as a whole, it was extraordinary. That helped send the message to students: you don’t have to be out there as a superstar to make an impact, you can also make an impact in small ways all the time.