Alumni Panel Events

Starting in Fall 2014, we began asking interested former students to participate in our once-a-semester alumni/ae panels.

So far, our guests have been teachers, lawyers, and policy makers, as well as speech-writers, advocates for the homeless, creative writers and financial advisors. Panel members have shared their hard-earned wisdom about how to hold onto a writing practice while learning the ins and outs of asset allocation, shared war stories about breaking into the fields of marketing, publishing, and public policy, and confessed how they too at one time were gripped by that senior-year “job-hunting panic.” Current students have found these panels immensely useful.

Spring 2025 English Alumni Panel

Tuesday, February 11 @ 6pm

Reese Room, Smith House

Featuring: Kelly Vaughan, Gail Brussel, and Leslie Fitzgerald

Kelly Vaughan is currently the recipe editor for The TODAY Show, where she oversees all stages of digital recipe creation. She was previously a food editor and writer for digital publications including Food52 and Martha Stewart Living. Her work has appeared across digital and print publications including Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Real Simple, and Hartford Magazine. Prior to her editorial career, she spent a year and half working as a line cook at A’Vert Brasserie in West Hartford, Connecticut. Kelly is also writing her first novel inspired by her restaurant experience.

Gail Brussel ‘90, has held roles in the publicity departments at Doubleday, Putnam, and Ecco Press, and is currently the Deputy Director of Publicity at Penguin Press. She has created and executed campaigns for New York Times bestsellers and award winning authors including novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, music producer Rick Rubin, actor/director Griffin Dunne, Senator Raphael Warnock, social scientist Jonathan Haidt, and journalists including Dahlia Lithwick, Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, NPR’s Steve Inskeep and MSNBC host Chris Hayes. She has an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and lives with her family in Westchester NY.

Leslie Fitzgerald is a Partner and Client CIO, responsible for working with both educational endowments and private clients. Prior to joining Partners Capital in 2017, she was an Investment Director at Cambridge Associates, serving Endowment, Foundation and Family Office clients. Leslie holds a BA from Trinity College. At Trinity, Leslie double majored in English, Creative Writing and Public Policy & Law. She is a former Trustee of the Buckingham Browne and Nichols School and member of its Investment Committee. Leslie also serves on the Trinity College Board of Fellows.

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Scroll for Previous Alumni Panels:

Spring 2024 English Alumni Panel

Tuesday, March 26, 6:30 p.m.
Reese Room, Smith House
Featuring: Trevor Stern, Alix Morrow, and Ben Gambuzza
Food will be served!

FALL 2022 English Alumni Panel

Wednesday, October 19, 6:30 p.m.
Admissions Grand Room
Featuring: Kendall Mitchell, Pete Durning, and Allison Stegeland

SPRING 2021 English Alumni Panel

Beck Prigot Keller is an Enterprise Search & Corporate Librarian for Echo Services Inc., where she helps make information more visible by configuring search engine indexing tools, connecting data sources to ontologies, and doing occasional sleuthing on the internal network.

Beck graduated from Trinity in 2014 with a BA in English Literature and French, and was one of the inaugural Research Associates. She received her Masters in Library & Information Science in 2016 from the University of Washington iSchool, where she currently serves on its Alumni Advisory Board.

Chelsea Vasquez is an eighth grade English teacher at Rowland Hall, an independent school in Salt Lake City. After graduating from Trinity in 2010, she completed an M.Ed. in English Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Despite her student teaching experience in the high school setting, she fell in love with the energy, honesty, and joy of middle schoolers at her first job at a public school in Wayland, Massachusetts.

Three years in, she and her family needed a change, so they headed out to Utah for what was supposed to be a one-year sabbatical. Chelsea taught skiing at Snowbird while tutoring middle and high school students. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, biking, skiing, paddleboarding, and spending time outdoors with her husband and puppy.

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