Distinguished Alums to Return to Campus as Honored Commencement Speakers

Jeffrey Dearth, C'68, and Laurie Rubiner, K'80 have been chosen as this year's recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award.  This award is presented to an alumna and alumnus who has brought honor and distinction to herself/himself and to Cranbrook Kingswood through career achievement, public service or through contributions in other areas. 

This year's recipients will also speak at the upper school graduation ceremonies on June 6, 2008.  We congratulate them on all they have accomplished and look forward to welcoming them back to campus in June.

Laurie Rubiner is Executive Director of the Malaria No More Policy Center, which works to raise awareness and galvanize support to address the global fight against malaria, with specific focus on engaging policy leaders in the United States and the other G-8 nations. From 2005 through 2007, Rubiner was a legislative director to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and a key member of her senior management team in the Senate. Previously, she was director of the Health Care Program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Rubiner also served as vice president for public policy at the National Partnership for Women and Families and as a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Senator John Chafee. She has received awards for her public service from Catholic Charities, the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, the National Association of Children's Hospitals and the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. Rubiner received a bachelor's degree from Barnard College and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Jeffrey Dearth is currently a Partner in the investment banking firm of DeSilva & Phillips, specializing in media related mergers and acquisitions with a focus on digital media. He is also the founder of VerticalSearch.com LLC, “the search engine for the B2B community”. Prior to joining DeSilva & Phillips in 1997, Jeff spent over 20 years in traditional publishing and digital media. He was president and COO of the Magazine Group of Mecklermedia Corp., and founder and CEO of The Electronic Newsstand, Inc. (Enews.com). The latter was one of the first successful e- commerce Internet ventures. Jeff is credited with selling the first advertising on the Internet and is widely recognized as an early Internet pioneer. He has been featured in several books that trace the development of the commercial Internet, including Ken Auletta’s “The Highwaymen” and “Bamboozled at the Revolution” by John Motavalli.  From 1984 to 1995, Jeff was President and Publisher of The New Republic magazine, the weekly magazine of politics and opinion. Prior to The New Republic, Jeff spent three years with Smithsonian magazine and seven years with Time magazine, including assignments in New York, London, Amsterdam and Paris. He has been a member of the board of the Magazine Publishers of America, and sits on the board of several digital media companies. He is a frequent speaker at numerous publishing and digital media conferences. Jeff received his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of North Carolina, where he was a Morehead Scholar and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. A native of Michigan, Jeff attended Cranbrook School and also spent a year as an English Speaking Union/International Schoolboy Fellow at Harrow School in England before matriculating to UNC.