Welcome from our New Associate Director of Alumni

I’m thrilled to be joining the Brooklyn Friends School community at such an essential moment in the school’s history as its Associate Director of Alumni and Major Gifts. Visiting the BFS campus, I was immediately captured by the warmth and vibrancy that emanates from all corners—joyfully punctuated by the culture of Downtown Brooklyn.

I’m greatly looking forward to learning more about the school’s identity and values through conversations and relationships with BFS families and alumni when school begins in September. Every school community is uniquely defined by the people, past, and present. Our alumni embody the living legacy of Brooklyn Friends School, an institution with 157 years of educational, economic, and cultural impact within Brooklyn. As our alumni hold that history, it is important for me to sit with your stories and hear your memories to authentically unlock the collective hope and intention I can help facilitate for the alumni body.

Over the coming months, I will be reaching out to alumni Friends to ask for guidance and advice.My goal is to build an engagement program and strengthen a network that can best serve current and future BFS alumni. I can only do that by partnering with all of our esteemed alums.

Grounded in the Quaker values of community and stewardship, I envision a robust alumni program that can bring BFS alumni together for their own sake, but also for a cause much greater—ensuring that this institution can continue its social and spiritual good well into the future. I want to co-create this program with your input, so that we can ensure it reflects the needs and aspirations of our diverse alumni network.

Whether you submit a class note for The Light magazine, follow BFS on social media, tell a BFS story to friends, make a gift to the annual fund, attend a regional event, or come visit us in Downtown Brooklyn, your contribution to BFS is in your participation. Please share your ideas for enhancing the BFS alumni experience by emailing alums@brooklynfriends.org or giving me a call at 718-852-1029 ext. 323. I will be thrilled to hear from you.

MEET CICELY UPHAM

Cicely comes to BFS after a decade of working in independent school development offices. Most recently, she served as the Director of Alumnae and Parent Engagement at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn., for three years. In this role, Cicely helped build community among parents and alumni by cultivating relationships, leading committees, organizing events on an off campus, and launching new initiatives that were strategically designed to strengthen community engagement. Prior to her time at Miss Porter’s, Cicely served in key fundraising roles at Riverdale Country School in New York and the Episcopal School of Knoxville in Tennessee. When she is not at work, Cicely enjoys seeing musicals with her husband Adam, spending time walking in Central Park with her dog, and watching her daughter Carmela belt out Frozen tunes.