During this time of coming back together, we spoke with UPrep alumni who help build and sustain communities. Each of the following alumni shared details about their passion and skills for bringing people together, along with how UPrep prepared them for their life journeys.

Prashant Naidu '12 

Prashant left the tech field almost two years ago to pursue a career in the arts. He's an artist and music producer who creates sound-healing blends and dance music. He also teaches UPrep students how to use digital audio workstations to compose, record, and mix music during the Dragonfly Studio Music Production Club on Wednesday afternoons. When he was a student at UPrep, Prashant co-founded the 206 Revolution Dance Club, with Phoenix Lim-Bassallo '12 and Trevor Vassallo '12; a version of the club still exists today.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in the arts?
I've been producing music since late high school. My friend Tony Walls '11 was messing around with some production tools in a practice room; he had me improvise on some electronic instruments to add to his song. I was really fascinated by the process, so I began to learn the tools for myself. I've been a close observer of the electronic music industry from an early age, and I had the financial comfort of my software development background, so it didn't feel super scary to jump into the field. With my artistic brand, I aim to bring mindfulness and dance music cultures together sonically. 

Please explain your mission statement, which really focuses on community building. 
My personal mission is to spread happiness, connect with people, and create spaces for people to connect. While working in the tech industry, I realized I derived more happiness from forming connections with clients rather than solving larger-scale problems behind the scenes. I think a lot of my instinct for that comes from being an entertainer/performance artist and being able to feel the audience so directly. I am also applying to graduate school so I can get my license to be a mental health counselor. I imagine my career combining music, software, and mental health counseling.

What's your favorite UPrep memory?
It's when Phoenix and I did our first duo dance performance on Music Day in 8th or 9th grade. Phoenix was a much more expressive and confident performer and really brought out this side of me as well. We work well together: she inspires the artistry and I'm good at figuring out the smaller nuanced details. We performed four or five pieces from different choreographers, ending with one from the second Step Up movie. We got a super-intense standing ovation with everyone screaming. That was the start of my addiction to performance arts. I love the energy exchange with the audience, that social dopamine.

How did UPrep prepare you for your career and life journey?
It was a very safe and supportive place, with many resources available to students. UPrep offers you a big palette with all the paint brushes you need to discover who you are. Our grade generally had a lot of creative and artistic people, which helped me discover my own sense of play and creativity. I was inspired by the bright light energy of [Dance and PE Teacher] Jess Klein; she ushered me into performance arts. I loved talking philosophy with [Science Teacher] Dr. Narasimhan; I can't even remember specifically what we'd talk about, but those conversations felt emotionally and intellectually engaging and informative. I feel like UPrep's community-oriented emphasis went well beyond how well prepared we were academically for college.

Linnea Soo '14 

Linnea plays on the Seattle-area Ultimate Frisbee team, BFG, that won the National Championships (mixed division) last fall in San Diego. She started playing Ultimate as a first-year in high school. Last spring, she coached the UPrep Varsity Girls Ultimate team. Linnea lives in Seattle with her twin sister, Alissa Soo '14, and Alissa's partner and their dog, Annie. She is a program manager at Success Cohorts, an organization dedicated to supporting first-generation college graduates, working parents, and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) in their careers and lives. 

Why are you passionate about playing Ultimate?
I can't help but smile to think about my experiences of being coached by [Physics Teacher] Moses Rifkin. The team was a welcoming and safe place for me to try something new; I'd never played before and I ended up playing all four years of Upper School. Playing at UPrep opened doors for me to coach youth teams, make lifelong friends, and eventually try out for national teams. Moses did an amazing job of providing a space that celebrated the athlete and full person. He pushed us to be better players while also supporting us when we were dealing with challenges. 

What have you learned about community through playing Ultimate?
Ultimate has this unique element called "spirit of the game." Partially, it's about the fact that the players self-officiate the games, and every game has a spirit score that evaluates how well we interacted with one another. It's also a sport that considers the full person. In my community, important topics are not siloed from the game, but integral to how we play the game. My team has been on a long journey that has included having open and honest conversations about race, gender, and identity to ensure everyone feels welcome and can truly feel like they belong on our team.

How has the pandemic changed your outlook on community?
I learned that community is not a stagnant thing, but an action—you must proactively work to maintain and build community. I also think you need to build structures that make communities safe for everyone, especially marginalized people. Community is really its strongest when we identify some common goals, whether they be to create a safe space where people can be vulnerable, or career development, or winning a national championship.

How do you think UPrep prepared you for your career and life journey?
I was a quiet, shy child and my parents were excited for me to attend UPrep because it was a small, supportive school. I learned how to ask for help, which is often hard for people in marginalized communities, and that really has helped me in college and my career. I also learned to convey my thoughts on paper and to speak up about my passions. I became more comfortable with myself and my skills while at UPrep.

Hattie Claire Andres '09 

Hattie is the manager of artistic programming at Seattle Rep, a nationally recognized nonprofit theatre. In her role, she helps identify artists and programming for the season, and is heavily involved in the creative producing work of putting a show onstage. Additionally, Hattie is a freelance director, working frequently at the 5th Avenue Theatre, among others. She lives in Seattle with her partner, actor and filmmaker Drew Highlands.

Why are you passionate about working in theatre?
I have always been passionate about bringing people together. I think the theatre is a beautiful place to do that, whether that's in the collaborative process in the rehearsal room or when we bring the audience together during a live performance. I also love telling stories. Theatre is a multiform medium where we get to use written text, oral traditions, music, movement, dance, and visual arts to amplify important stories. 

How do you build community through theatre?
Seattle Rep's vision is theatre at the heart of public life, and our Public Works (PW) program is at the center of that vision. I am grateful that this program, which holds weekly classes for participants in social service programs around King County, continued online during the pandemic. Once a year, we invite everyone who has participated in this program to audition to be part of a large stage production at Seattle Rep. During the pandemic, we were able to keep the PW community connected and growing by producing a virtual musical adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night that I directed in December 2020, as well as a full feature film of The Winter's Tale that we just screened and streamed to thousands of audience members in December 2021.

What do you think it takes to build a safe and supportive community?
One of our theatre practices is creating community agreements where every person in the room voices what they need to feel safe and supported. This acknowledges that people are going to have different needs and there is not one person who decides what those needs are. This practice also provides a framework within which conflict resolution can happen respectfully and authentically when community agreements aren't upheld.

What did you learn at UPrep about creating community?
I always had an intuition for leadership and community building, and I was encouraged to lean into these strengths at school. During my senior year, I led student government, and that was absolutely the highlight of my years at UPrep. Our team, with the support of faculty and staff, was committed to inspiring students to celebrate our school. Students realized they were in control of our school culture and that shift was thrilling.

How did UPrep prepare you for your career?
The small class sizes and the relationships that teachers built with each student at UPrep—that was hugely impactful for me. Those relationships built my confidence during those crucial teenage years. The adults talked to us like we were human beings, not somebody younger with something to learn. That really prepared me to go into a field where right off the bat I was working with people of all different ages. I was a 25-year-old director who was expected to lead people much older than me. To be in equal relationships with adults at UPrep really set me up to build professional relationships, regardless of my age. 

Jon Halfaker '82 

Jon was one of the founding students who attended UPrep when it opened in 1976. He has been an educator since 1994, serving the students and families of Seattle Public Schools in various roles, including as a history teacher, soccer coach, and principal of Washington Middle School. Jon is currently serving in his ninth year as a Director of Schools P–12/Secondary. In this role, he supports and evaluates principals' instructional leadership in order to increase student achievement and racial equity and eliminate opportunity gaps. His family continue to call Seattle home, with pets and adult children keeping their lives busy.

Why are you passionate about working in education?
I decided to become a teacher after talking with [former] UPrep teacher Mark Cullen. Two years later, I began teaching history at Washington Middle School. What I like about doing the work I do now is that I'm still able to be in the schools. I am in middle and high schools, on average, three days a week, and I spend time in classrooms with the teachers and principals. This reconnects me to what I really enjoy doing—creating a supportive and fun learning community. That's why I keep doing the work: I know we can make positive changes at the classroom level.

How is the pandemic affecting the work you do?
The pandemic continues to shape our students and school communities. We're seeing students who have lost the ability to connect with each other and solve problems in positive, collaborative ways. At the same time, our teachers and support staff are working massively hard while also having to balance their own pandemic home lives. We can't lose sight of the fact that our work is as instructional leaders, but we can't get there if we don't also take care of the social-emotional needs of our kids and staff. How do we build the ability to connect with each other, and do that in a meaningful way? I've been proud of our middle and high schools because they have created built-in times where those connections can happen with adult advisors and mentors.

What are your favorite memories as a founding student at UPrep?
My favorite memory was our senior year prank. We completely switched Sue Patella and Mark Cullen's classrooms in the middle of the night, including lifting the lockers that were in those rooms and putting them down in the other room. The not-so-fun part was getting a stern talking to and then having to move everything back into the original classrooms.

How did UPrep prepare you for your career and life journey?
The school song was written when I was there, and one of the lines still informs me as an educator today. It said, "Academic excellence is not your sole demand—friendship, effort, honesty, they all go hand in hand." There was a high level of academic expectation, but it was also about who you are and who you're developing into, and friendships and relationships. UPrep Founder Jon Makinen was a strong role model for me. He instilled in me a really strong sense of who I am, and he pushed me academically. We would literally race into his classroom to put the problems on the board that he had assigned to us the night before and show how we solved them. My approach to being an educator comes down to this: it's not just about academic excellence; it's also about relationships, effort, and honesty.