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Princeton Day School Honors Three Distinguished Alumni

Princeton Day School Honors Three

Distinguished Alumni

Awards for Achievement, Service, and Outstanding Young Alumni

Princeton – Princeton Day School honored three impassioned and fascinating women whose efforts are changing lives across the globe at this year’s Alumni Weekend celebrations. As graduates from Miss Fine’s School, Princeton Country Day School, and Princeton Day School gathered to celebrate and reconnect on May 13 and 14, the following awards were announced.

The Alumni Achievement Award recipient is Deborah Moore Krulewitch ‘61, Senior Vice President, Corporate Administration, at the Estée Lauder Companies, a global corporation with net sales of $8 billion worldwide. Ms. Krulewitch works closely with Global Communications and Human Resources, and is responsible for overseeing the company’s corporate contributions. Among its many projects are the worldwide Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign, which donated more than $45 million to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation; the Think Smart/Think Green program to save company resources; and the coordination of all employee volunteer efforts. Beyond her professional duties, Ms. Krulewitch volunteers as co-chair of the Historic House Trust of New York City and vice-chair of the Mayor’s Fund to Advance NYC. She is a member of the Executive Committee at the Coalition of the Homeless’ First Step Program, which provides job-training for women, and the Director Emerita for Publicolor, a non-profit organization that transforms public school spaces with color. She also serves on the board of the M.A.C. AIDS Fund, The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and serves as advisor to the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation.

This year’s Alumni Service Award recipient is Dede Pickering ’71, a renowned photographer who is honored for her tireless efforts on behalf of CARE and Women’s World Banking. In 1998, Ms. Pickering co-founded and became the chair of CARE’s first Women’s Initiative Group in New York. She headed the Initiative for seven years and helped launch chapters in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. The group’s mission is to link women in the U.S. with those in developing countries and raise funds to create opportunities for people in need. Its main focus is the education of girls, which has proven to be the most effective means of fighting poverty and creating productive societies. Ms. Pickering donates many of her photographs to the cause and speaks from personal experience to audiences across the country.  (Her photographs can be viewed on her website: www.dedepickering.com.)

The 2011 Outstanding Young Alumni Award recipient is Marissa Vahlsing ’01, a Harvard Law School student who graduated with a degree in political science from Swarthmore College, and, while there, founded the Immigrants’ Rights Group and led the Swarthmore Progressive Action Coalition. She won the Eugene Lang Service Fellowship that allowed her to work for the National Labor Committee in New York, reporting on the effects of CAFTA on human rights in Central America. She volunteered for non-government organizations (NGOs) in Costa Rica and Tanzania and was awarded the Truman Scholarship for New Jersey in recognition of her “exceptional leadership potential.” After college she worked in Washington, D.C., at the International Labor Rights Fund. She is currently co-chair of the Harvard Law School Chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild, an editor of Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left, and recently received a Covey Fellowship in Public Interest and Environmental Law.

Alumni from across the globe gathered recently at Princeton Day School to honor classmates with awards for service and achievement. Pictured, from left, 2011 Alumni Service Award recipient Dede Pickering ’71; 2011 Outstanding Young Alumni Award recipient Marissa Vahlsing ’01; and Alumni Achievement Award recipient Deborah Moore Krulewitch ’61.