Four Kent Place Alumnae Honored with Prestigious Awards

Four outstanding Kent Place graduates have been honored with prestigious awards, and will be recognized during Kent Place School’s Alumnae Weekend at the Welcome Brunch and Alumnae Association Awards on Saturday, April 29. Read on to find out more about these incredible alumnae and their distinguished honors.

Lisa Krieger ’73 has been honored with the Barbara Wight Biddison ’30 Distinguished Alumna Award. Lisa, a San Francisco Bay Area journalist, writes about science, the environment, and medicine for the San Jose Mercury News and before that was a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner/Chronicle. The recipient of environmental writing's most prestigious prizes — Columbia University's John B. Oakes Award and Scripps Howard's Edward J. Meeman Award — Lisa also teaches science journalism for the master’s Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her series "The Cost of Dying," a chronicle of her father's final days and a call for reforms to the American end-of-life experience, was awarded first place in four major journalism contests. Lisa covered public health crises in Mississippi after 2005's Hurricane Katrina and rebel-held Sri Lanka after 2004's East Asian tsunami, on loan to Knight-Ridder. The daughter of the first director of the Reeves-Reed Arboretum, in Summit, she is a lifelong hiker, photographer, and amateur naturalist. She sits on the board of the Palo Alto Historical Association and the Point Reyes National Seashore Association. Born in Chatham, Lisa graduated from Duke University with a degree in biology.

Jenny Dodson Mistry ’03 has earned the Alumna Professional Achievement Award. Jenny is the vice president of Programs and Partnerships at the National Institute for Reproductive Health, where she for more than 11 years she has supported organizations and policymakers engaged in proactive work on the local and state levels. She is the creator of NIRH’s Local Reproductive Freedom Index initiative, a first-of-its-kind report that evaluates 50 cities and counties on their policies related to reproductive health, rights, and justice. In addition, Jenny is the cofounder of NJ SEEDS Alumni Alliance, the official alumni association of NJ SEEDS, a nonprofit that prepares motivated, high-achieving, low-income students for admission to private schools and colleges across the country. As president, she worked to maintain and build relationships among alumni, current scholars, and staff by offering social, volunteer, and networking opportunities and engaging in ongoing fundraising to support the organization. Jenny holds a BA in political science from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in health policy from Columbia University.

April C. Bauknight, Esq. ’95 has been selected for the Alumna Community Service Award. April is an attorney practicing estate law and real-estate closings. Her passion for helping others establish and secure financial peace and freedom is what drives her. April’s journey started when she was at Duke University, where she double-majored in public policy studies and political science, with a minor in Spanish. After a year working with the Council on Affordable Housing, in Trenton, April enrolled at Rutgers University School of Law. Although she has worked in a variety of legal fields, she says she found her niche in private practice specializing in creating and maintaining generational wealth. Coupled with a will to secure and protect their future, April is helping her clients create and maintain wealth for their families.

Sophie Huttner ’18 will receive the Young Alumna Award. Sophie is a senior at Yale studying global affairs, with a particular interest in migration and refugee studies. She has worked with asylum seekers in legal settings and is especially interested in studying the root causes of migration, as well as the role of the state in combating gender-based violence. Sophie was for two years president of the Yale Interpretation Network, a student organization that provides free interpretation services to nonprofits in New Haven, with the goal of expanding language access city-wide. She has also taught English as a second language to immigrants in New Haven, and last summer she designed and taught a philosophy and ethics course for New Haven public middle schoolers. She loves learning languages, and speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew, and is learning French. She was nominated to Yale's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. Sophie is headed to Oxford next year as a Rhodes Scholar, to earn a master’s in refugee and forced migration studies.

Alumnae Weekend is April 28–29 and all graduates are invited to their alma mater. Special celebrations are planned for class years ending in 3 and 8. You may register here.