Parker Alumni: Modeling Lives of Purposeful Action

Morgan Lindsay ’00 is now a Parker trustee.

A dedicated bobsledder through middle school and then in high school at Doane Stuart, Morgan switched to crew while at the University of Chicago.   Creating her own major in Scandinavian Studies, Morgan graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2008.  She received study grants at the University of Oslo during two summers and wrote her bachelor’s thesis about literary and pop-cultural assertions of Norwegian national identity, entitled “Et lite eventyr” meaning “A Little Fairytale”.

When Morgan decided to go to medical school she got a job as a medical assistant in a primary care clinic.  She completed all the pre-med requirements in one year in the Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medical Program at Bennington College while also working part time as a nanny and a medical assistant.

In August 2011 Morgan began medical school at Albany Med, joining the US Army’s Health Professions Scholarship Program and spending the summer of 2012 on a base in Texas.   She is a president of the Outing Club, helping to organize medical student involvement at the Capital Region Stand Down for Homeless Veterans event and she is training to become a Tobacco Cessation Counselor.

Tom Dollar ’00 attended Troy High after Parker.  He graduated from Princeton University in 2008 where he majored in public and international affairs, also maintaining an interest in Latin American literature.  Tom recently wrote:

I just started my first year at NYU Law School. So far, it’s going pretty well. I’m interested in doing public-advocacy litigation when I finish, but realize that I may change my mind one or two times before all is said and done. Before law school, I worked at a reproductive rights non-profit in Washington, DC. And before that, I spent a year working in Sierra Leone on public health projects. Sierra Leone was a real eye-opener for me, and helped push me in the direction of legal advocacy for human rights, especially women’s rights.

I think Parker really created a foundation for me for being intellectually curious, not taking for granted that the way the world works is how it has to work, and valuing giving back to the community.