The 2026 Alumni Award of Distinction recipients pose with the Alumni Council Selection Committee.
Three alumni, Marna Borgstrom AA’72, Nnaemeka Egwuekwe ’91, and Evan Thomas ’69, took the stage to receive the 2026 Award of Distinction for their accomplishments during last Friday’s All-School Meeting (ASM). Each recipient delivered a speech detailing their life experiences and advice for the student body.
During her tenure as Chief Executive Officer of Yale New Haven Hospital, Borgstrom sought to expand access to care by developing local hospitals in underserved neighborhoods. Borgstrom elaborated on her takeaways from working with different parties in an interview with The Phillipian.
“I learned early on [that] you hire the best people you can find, smarter people than you are, and you give them resources, you push them, but you also love them. The thing that I’ve learned, and it wasn’t just my direct team, but it was working with people in food services and housekeeping and other things,” said Borgstrom.
She continued, “When people know that you’re authentic and that you really care about them as well as the work you’re doing, when times get tough, like they did during Covid, people will move mountains with you. That was the thing that I was most proud of. It’s that we had a team of people, not just at the senior level, but that was pretty deep. When the going got tough, people raised their hands, they showed up, and they did great work.”
Following ASM, a lunch was held in Paresky Commons to engage with the alumni. Sylvia Su ’29 expressed her appreciation for the opportunity to speak with Borgstrom.
“I really connected with [Borgstrom] because she’s doing a lot of stuff on the front lines… During the alumni lunch, I got to speak with her about her opinions on healthcare, specifically in the U.S., and her thoughts about how the U.S. doesn’t really have a great universal health care system, and just her thoughts. That [was] really interesting to me,” said Su.
In 2015, Egwuekwe founded CodeCrew, a non-profit based in Memphis, Tennessee aiming to provide accessible computer science education for students of all ages. In his talk, Egwuekwe shared his story on discovering his interest in computer science.
“I was a 10-year-old boy in South Memphis. I asked [my mother] for a home computer for Christmas in 1983, and she made that happen for me. I really just wanted to play games on it, but I got bored with it after about six months, and my allowance was not growing fast enough for me to keep buying games,” said Egwuekwe in an interview with The Phillipian.
He continued, “I came up with a book on how to program in a language called BASIC, Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. I learned how to program my name to move across the screen. I went to my mother and told her, ‘Hey, my name is on TV!’ That was a big deal for me because you never saw a name like Nnaemeka Egwuekwe on television, and that sparked my interest in computer science.”
Across all three alumni, Victoria Li ’28 noted a throughline where different career paths converge. She elaborated on this takeaway in the context of her perspective.
“What stood out to me was how differently the three alumni approached their careers, but how much they had in common when it came to working with other people. They all talked about the importance of collaboration and building relationships, which I thought was interesting because you don’t necessarily think about that when you’re imagining what your career might look like,” said Li.
Thomas served as a writer and editor at the “Time” and “Newsweek” magazines for more than 30 years, writing over 100 cover stories and 11 nonfiction books that brought to life influential figures and moments in American history. Thomas described his perspective on navigating journalism in an interview with The Phillipian.
“When I got out of Andover, I was too snarky, too cynical. That was one thing that was not so great about Andover in the 1960s. It was kind of a cynical place. So I had to learn in journalism to be less cynical, a little bit more trusting, a little kinder… Journalism is all about going out, asking people, being curious, and being involved. It’s not something you can do sitting around back in your room. You’ve got to go out and do it,” said Thomas.
During ASM, Thomas offered an anecdote about flunking a math class at Andover. Andy Jin ’30 found this story resonant for him, connecting it to the value of persistence in the long term.
“[Thomas’s] story was really interesting and funny at the same time. It talks about Andover’s current situation where, right now, a lot of people are worrying about grades, and [the speech] helped release some pressure off of me… The problems you encounter right now shouldn’t affect what you want to be and what you’re going to do in the future,” said Jin.
In addition to speaking at ASM, the alumni visited various classes throughout the day. Jeffrey Domina, Instructor in English, explained his experience engaging with Thomas in one of his classes and underscored the significance of alumni connection.
“It’s always great to have someone as distinguished as Mr. Thomas sit in on [an English] 200 class, where we’re thinking so much about the writing process, revision in particular, and to hear from someone who has made a life of doing that work and continuing to improve his craft. He also did a great job connecting the extraordinary things he’s done to any writer’s experience, even to high school students,” said Domina.
Domina continued, “They may choose three people, but those three are just representative of all the great things of different kinds that alumni are doing, and it’s a great reminder of the connection a lot of people still have to their school. You guys are all looking forward to your careers, and other things that lie ahead. It’s cool to be told that even these people who have done so, so much in their time, since they were at school, have [Andover] very much in their minds, within their hearts.”
