Alumni Awards 2025

On August 22, 2025, LJCDS hosted the 3rd Annual Alumni Awards Ceremony to honor members of the Torrey community who have made significant contributions in their chosen professional field and have distinguished themselves through service to LJCDS (including our current and alumni communities). The Torrey community nominated candidates for the awards, and the LJCDS Alumni Council selected the recipients.

 

The awards ceremony kicked off Alumni Weekend with approximately 90 guests celebrating the three award winners.

2025 Alumni Award Recipients

 

As each recipient delivered their remarks, a common throughline emerged as each echoed a core foundational value that LJCDS instilled in them as students—that if you are passionate about something or want to create something new, move boldly towards that goal, and Country Day will be there to empower you along the way.

 

“Country Day is a place where initiative and hard work are rewarded, and that’s rare,” Joshua shared. “That is really important in our culture, especially now, that we need to incentivize and support people who want to take initiative.” He went on to share a prime example of how taking initiative can create both lasting change and personal growth, as he and classmate Kelsey Plum ’13 (professional basketball player) created the “Jungle”—the student cheer section at athletic contests that still exists to this day.

 

“I had an injury during football season that kept me from playing basketball the winter of 2010, but I still wanted to be part of the team and show my support. So, I went to my friend Kelsey Plum, who knows a thing or two about basketball, and we decided to start a student cheer section. We put our heads together and came up with the Jungle. We made ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ shirts, organized cookouts, got faculty and student support, and brought the energy every game. It was incredible. That’s a perfect example of seeing something that didn’t exist and deciding to build it. That mindset—identifying a gap and filling it—is something I started developing at Country Day, and it translates directly to the real world and to entrepreneurship.”

 

“Country Day is part of us all, and that’s no small statement,” Rick shared. “The faculty and staff have made lasting impressions on us and have instilled a drive for excellence and perseverance that is embodied in our successes. Country Day created a perfect blend of support and discipline that shaped us all.”

 

Harry shared, “Country Day was truly a gift on so many different levels. The first gift was the idea of a new experience. When you came here, they expected you to be a scholar, they expected you to be a writer, they expected you to be a musician. There were no boundaries to what you could do and what you wanted to try out. The answer was never ‘no’ here. It was always ‘try and see, see what happens, see what you can do.’ There weren’t any boundaries. That’s a lesson that I take away. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized it more and more that I share with my kids, I share with people I mentor, I share with people I care about. That’s a gift I got from Country Day.”

 

The recipients of the 2025 Alumni Awards have left the confines of Genesee Avenue imbued with the values of what it means to be a Torrey. They have gone on to transform our world and then returned home to LJCDS to serve the next generation of Torreys following in their footsteps. LJCDS is beyond proud of these remarkable individuals and offers our utmost gratitude to them as they embody LJCDS’s mission: “to prepare individuals for a lifetime of intellectual exploration, personal growth, and social responsibility.”

 

Read about the Alumni Awards and winners.