Summer 2026
This issue of Concord Academy Magazine takes you inside the classroom and CA’s new Centennial Arts Center, profiles alums making a difference in the arts and building community through sports, and includes our annual roundup of class notes.
This year, CA students created a sitcom from scratch. In a new fall class, the Sitcom Project: Writing and Acting for Television, film teacher Justin Bull P’25 ’28 and theater teacher Shelley Bolman P’27 guided students through the process of writing episodic stories. This winter and spring, many of those scripts came to fruition on screen, with students operating cameras and sound equipment as well as acting and directing in front of a live studio audience. What made it possible? The Spencer and Colton P3 Lab in the new Centennial Arts Center, and a school culture that nurtures collaboration, community, and creativity.
“Queer media is in crisis,” says Adam Goldman ’04. A decrease in investment by major studios in films and TV about and by the LGBTQ+ community will impact the next several years of media production. That’s why Goldman has started a foundation to provide financial support and mentorship for emerging creators. Alan Cumming, Bowen Yang, and Lena Waithe have signed on as co-founders.
Helen Chase Trainor ’67 received the 2026 Joan Shaw Herman Award for Distinguished Service in April. She spoke at CA about her efforts toward systemic change in her legal career, through her mental health advocacy, and as an ordained Episcopal deacon. Guided by the southern African philosophy of ubuntu (“I am because we are”), she called on students to “dare to confront systems that would treat us as anything less than human.”
A basketball star at CA, Kevin Benjamin ’91 continued playing in college in California. Now alongside a career as a film producer and screenwriter, he has co-founded a community partnership with other weekend warriors to encourage the mentorship that meant so much to him as a young athlete.
Freelance film critic Natalia Winkelman ’11 has been a reviewer for the New York Times since 2019. She has also helped create award-winning documentary podcasts about classic cinema. We asked this film buff what it’s like to watch and respond to movies for a living.
Rithik Kundu ’22 has been producing digital music since his 9th grade year at CA. At New York University, he founded the GenAudio and AI club and studied the intersection of music and artificial intelligence. Now he is serving on the jury of the International Sound Awards, an annual competition dubbed the “Oscars of Sound.”
A literary scholar and novelist who has made her home in England, Katherine Bucknell ’75 knows the value of experiencing life outside the United States. At CA, after her 50th reunion, she established a fund to support students in studying abroad.
This spring, CA biology teacher Kim Kopelman P’26 offered a new course, Psychology of Self. She wanted students to explore the neuroscience of consciousness: how humans perceive, understand, and experience their own identities. Students engaged in research, presentations, and hands-on activities, including a neuroanatomy practical exam. They discussed philosophy with recent Wesleyan graduate Ollie Longo ’21. And in their final papers, they explored topics as varied as PTSD and plant consciousness.
In May, commencement speaker Amy Rosenfeld ’84, senior vice president of Olympics and Paralympics production at NBC Sports, reflected on her time at CA with humor and humility. She shared that she hadn’t been a model student, but that the faculty had rooted for her, and she learned that she could be herself and take her own path. “Perhaps you recognize the value of community when confronted with adversity,” she said.
This year, CA’s new Positivity and Light Society (PALS) recognized 60 students for contributing more than 2,000 collective hours of service to local communities. Established with a gift from Robyn and Paul Bostrom P’24, PALS was inspired by the memory of their son, Axel Bostrom ’24. “Service is like [a prism],” Robyn says. “One person’s gift of time and attention can impact so many people.”
Three Steinways have joined the piano fleet in the Centennial Arts Center. Two were donated by generous CA families, and the third—a new Model D full-sized 9-foot concert grand piano—was selected in person at the Steinway & Sons factory in Queens, N.Y.
CA bids adieu to retiring staff and faculty members this summer: Jackie Decareau, assistant to the Student Life Office; Sue Johnson P’20, athletics director; and Nancy Boutilier, English teacher and coach, and her partner, fellow house parent and coach Christa Champion.
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