Charles River School | Young Alumni Award

2018 Award Recipient

EMILY WHITTEN '14

Emily Whitten ’14, the 2018 recipient of the Charles River School’s Young Alumni Award, is a passionate voice for social justice – whether galvanizing her friends to make holiday cards for incarcerated minors, ensuring that local elementary school libraries have books that represent diversity, or attending rallies and demonstrations in Boston. There is no doubt that her interest in social justice is rooted in the 7/8 curriculum and in her involvement with the CRS Model UN program. She took to heart what she learned at CRS, and has continued to strive to consider others' perspectives and to take action where she can.

For two years, Emily served on MA State Senator Karen Spilka’s youth council, providing her with the opportunity to weigh in on pending legislation at the State House, observe lawmakers in session, and help strategize ways to increase the involvement of youth in the government. She was also selected as one of the Massachusetts representatives at the World Affairs Seminar held at Carroll University, an annual program that brings together students from around the world for a week-long intensive seminar on education and social justice issues.

In high school, Emily was an active member of the National Honors Society and committed many hours to community service. For the past four years, she has spent several weeks each summer volunteering for a summer academic enrichment program for elementary children. She was a founding member of the Natick High School Peer Advocates, a group created to encourage conversations about diversity and inclusion within the Natick High School. Through this group she was trained by “Facing History and Ourselves” to moderate difficult discussions; subsequently, she helped plan an evening of speakers last April called "Brave Conversations," where she led a breakout session.

As a member of the NHS Gender and Sexuality Alliance, Emily presented to local educators about discussing LGBTQ topics in the classroom with middle-school aged students. Emily is also a founding member (and one of only two students) of the Natick Freedom Team, an organization comprised of government officials, clergy, and public safety officers dedicated to fostering unity within the community. One of their first initiatives has been to establish a hotline, monitored by the Natick Police, to report biased-motivated threats, violence, and harassment. In addition to her academic demands, Emily has worked at the Natick afterschool program for years.

Emily believes strongly in giving back to CRS and has actively volunteered at the school since she graduated – as an assistant field hockey coach, an Open House tour guide, speaking on admissions panels, and preparing mailings. She has returned to work with the CRS GSA to discuss developing resources for CRS families to learn about LGBTQ+ topics, and presented to Spanish classes about her travel in Costa Rica.

This June, Emily graduated from Natick High School and was the recipient of four different awards and scholarships: Global Citizenship Achievement Award; Virginia Tartakoff Social Studies Award; Katie von der Leith Spirit Scholarship; Johnson Elementary School Scholarship. She will join the class of 2022 at Bryn Mawr college in Pennsylvania this fall. We congratulate Emily on her extraordinary achievements and on receiving the 2018 CRS Young Alumni Award!

Previous Award Recipients

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2015 - Emily Chen '13

Ever since 8th grade, Emily has played with the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. This group is comprised largely of high school and college age musicians and as an eighth grader Emily was the youngest musician in the orchestra. A few days after graduating from CRS, she toured with them in the Netherlands.

Last season the orchestra Music Director asked Emily to mentor a 10-year old violinist as her stand partner last season. Her “buddy” experience at CRS provided the necessary skills for Emily to help a very young boy with no orchestral experience to perform advanced repertoire with much older musicians. This mentorship spanned the regular season and their second European Tour, where BPYO performed in the major concert halls of Prague, Berlin, Lucerne, and others.

In addition, Emily won a position in both the Eastern District Senior and the Massachusetts All-State Orchestras, and earlier this month she was a prizewinner at the annual Roman Totenberg Young Strings Competition.

Community service is very important to Emily. She has been involved with outreach projects as a fellow at the Center for Development of Arts Leaders under National Public Radio’s From the Top, where she teaches and performs in diverse settings. At Winsor she emceed the traditional Winsor Banner Ceremony, serves as an admissions tour guide, writes for the school newspaper and two weeks ago she was the featured artist in the ceremonial opening of the school’s new fine arts/athletics center. She is also a member of the Winsor School crew team and swim team!

Emily would probably credit a lot of her success to her foundation at CRS, transforming from a shy and cautious Pre-Kindergartener to a confident and self-motivated young woman. Emily, we are all proud of your extraordinary achievements and are honored to call you a CRS alumna.
2016 - Lily Hicks '14

After graduating from CRS, Lily attended Phillips Exeter Academy. This fall, she transferred to Nobles, where she is involved with the community service tutoring program.

Lily was invited to represent Exeter at the National Student Leadership Conference. Lily earned the invitation by scoring 99% on the PSAT. She chose a program at Yale Law School, where she received the Best Mock Trial Lawyer Award. At Yale, Lily learned about the Youth Court program, where she plans to volunteer next summer in a court room environment helping troubled youth.

At Exeter, Lily worked as a volunteer tutor in the center for grammar and writing, which was a natural extension to her involvement at The Exonian, the school’s weekly newspaper. As the Boston Globe Spotlight Team published its series on sexual misconduct at boarding schools, Lily was chosen to cover the sexual misconduct articles for The Exonian.
She tutors 6th graders from Roxbury to prepare them for entrance exams for Charter and Private Schools, some of whom speak English as a second language.

Lily is currently a member of the Young Democrats, Young Republicans and Students for Gender Awareness, which focuses on feminism. She also rides horses competitively and is active on the ski team.