Before

After

Gabrielle Torres draws on her experiences as a student to support the next generation of Master’s students. She returned to The Masters School years after graduating. Although she never imagined working at her former school, a conversation with a former teacher encouraged her to pursue a career in education. (Courtesy of Gabrielle Torres / Siena Olay)

Years after graduating from The Masters School, Gabrielle Torres returned to the same dorm she once lived in as a student with her closest friends. But this time, she returned as a staff member.

For some Masters alumni, graduating didn’t mean leaving Masters behind permanently.  After pursuing careers, several alumni returned as faculty members, bringing their experiences as former students into their work with the next generation at Masters.

Now Associate Director of Admissions, Torres never imagined her career would lead her back to Masters. As a student, she planned to become a lawyer, a goal she held onto through most of college.

“I never thought I would be back at Masters. I was very much into the plan that I had at the time and that plan didn’t change for me for a while,” Torres said.

After graduating during the pandemic, Torres worked at a law firm before going into sales at Politico Pro and later marketing. Still uncertain about what she wanted to pursue, she spoke with Richard Simon, an Upper School languages teacher she stayed in contact with after graduation.

“I told him, ‘I’m really lost and I’m not sure what I want to do next,” Torres said. “He was the one who said, ‘Have you ever thought of education?’”

For Director of Residential Life and Upper School English Teacher Pilar Méndez-Cruz, a former Masters student, returning was also unexpected. After teaching in California for four years, Méndez-Cruz accepted a one-year position at Masters to learn how to apply the Harkness method she loved as a student to her teaching.

“It was fully my intention to come to work for a year,” Méndez-Cruz said.

She continued, “And then, as life does, [it] had other plans for me and here I am.”

Similarly, Director of Parent Engagement Amie Servino, a class of 1995 graduate, returned in 2012 after discovering a job opening while working at a nonprofit in New York City. With a son and a major commute, the opportunity initially appealed to her for practicality.

“I applied because I was getting tired of my old job and commuting, but I thought it would be cool coming back. It ended up really working out,” Servino said.

For all three alumnae, returning has offered a different perspective on the community that shaped them.

Torres explained that she can better understand that students need room to make mistakes. “You’re kids. You are going to make mistakes and we should expect you to make mistakes,” she said.

She continued, “I was very fortunate to have adults on this campus when I was [a student] here who looked out for me. If I could be that for other students, that’s all I could want.”

Now in her sixth year at Masters, Méndez-Cruz works alongside former teachers who inspired her career in education.

“The opportunity to come back and work alongside them and learn from them is an incredible honor,” she said.

For Servino, returning has also meant witnessing the school’s evolution firsthand. Since she graduated, Masters has become coeducational, expanded its campus and introduced Harkness.

“Despite all of Masters’ transformations, the heart of what the Masters experience is to me has remained the same,” Servino said.

Similarly, Torres feels many changes have been made since being a student, specifically the stigma there was surrounding financial aid and being a student of color.  She said, “There would be one [student] in a classroom and being the only one of anything is tough.”

She noted how she has seen the school change to make the institution more welcoming to students of color.

“They do a really nice job of saying, ‘Hey, the students do come first. Let’s constantly be changing to see how we can make it even better.’ That’s something I have really enjoyed seeing,” Torres said. 

She continued, “I get to talk to kids about it and they don’t feel any shame because there’s no reason to.”

Méndez-Cruz said, “I think all the ways in which we [ as a Masters community]  are weird, chaotic, funny and unconventional have remained true since I was a student to now.”

Looking back, Servino would tell her younger self, “You will have an opportunity to pay back this place for all the things it did for you.”