Filmmaker Deborah Garcia H’67 Returns for Alumni Speaker Series

The Upper School welcomed filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia H’67 back to campus as part of the Alumni Speaker Series celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Seven Hills School. Garcia has made fiction and nonfiction films, with a focus on documentaries about agriculture and the food system. She shared with the environmental club and film and animation and creative writing classes about how she got into filmmaking, her interest in environmental issues, and her writing process.

During an all-school assembly, she shared with students how a speech writing contest and a science project about plants during her time at Hillsdale helped her in her later film career. “I learned to not take the superficial way out and to dig really deep into something and distill it and present it in a way people can understand it and are moved by it,” Garcia said.

“I wish that you continue to be so well-educated and appreciate your education as much as I did,” Garcia said.

Also in March, Graeme Harten ’11 returned to campus to speak with students about economics and finance. Harten is an analyst at a financial services company in San Francisco. He told students about his experience and answered questions about emerging markets and the impacts of agricultural.