ALUMNI PROFILES

2022 ALUMNI EXCELLENCE AWARD | ROGER TACKEFF ’72, P’10

Giving Back is in his DNA

From an early age, Roger Tackeff ’72 was taught to give back. “My father and grandfather, as they became successful, got involved in philanthropy,” says Tackeff. The lesson wasn’t lost on the younger Tackeff: By his reckoning, he has served on the board of three dozen nonprofits, from schools (including Rivers) to hospitals to the Boston Preservation Alliance and other historic preservation organizations. And it’s not just his charitable work that’s made a difference. Through his company, Renaissance Properties, he has played an important role in preserving Boston’s neighborhoods. His tireless efforts have helped make Boston a better place—and make him a fitting recipient of this year’s Alumni Excellence Award.

Tackeff was born in Brookline and lives there today; he likes to joke that he hasn’t gone very far, having lived within a five-mile radius his entire life. His older brother, Matthew ’70, attended Rivers, and Tackeff was eager to follow. “I drove my parents crazy until they agreed I could go to Rivers as well,” he says. Entering the school in sixth grade, he created strong bonds with his classmates and teachers. Tackeff says he “discovered himself” here, learning about history, literature, and the classics. Importantly, he was exposed to philanthropy and building (in the form of shop class) at Rivers—two areas that eventually came to define his personal and professional trajectory.

“A charitable organization called Camp E was run by a legendary teacher, Paul Licht P’64,” he recalls. Licht recruited Tackeff to sell hot dogs at sporting events, to support the camp. “It was the first time in my life I had the opportunity to raise money for a meaningful cause.”

Tackeff attended Brandeis University, a school that his father had helped found. He studied economics and history, but just as significant, he was elected to serve as one of the University’s first student representatives to the board of trustees. “It was an era when campuses were in chaos,” he remembers. “Universities struggled with how to respond. Brandeis creatively dealt with the unrest by allowing a couple of students to serve on the university’s board.” Despite some trepidation, he pursued the opportunity, hoping that he could “help make a difference and lower tensions.” He became an important liaison between the administration and the students, and he learned what it means to serve on a board.

Following Brandeis, Tackeff attended Harvard Business School—after convincing the dean of admissions that he wasn’t too young to take up the challenge, going directly from college. Eager to set his own course in life, he bought a run-down 1868 townhouse in the South End and fixed it up. “I was very idealistic,” Tackeff explains. “I was passionate about saving the city’s historic neighborhoods and got involved in the effort to preserve the South End.” Thus was born the business he has run for 43 years: Renaissance Properties, a real-estate development firm that works to prevent old and historic buildings from being torn down. By breathing life into abandoned buildings, creating offices and residential and retail spaces, he has helped preserve the city’s character.

Asking Tackeff to choose his favorite nonprofit would be like asking a parent to choose his favorite child. Today, he devotes much of his time to Hebrew SeniorLife, New England’s largest nonprofit provider of senior care. “There’s a little poetry for me there,” he notes, “because my greatgrandmother was one of a handful of women who founded Hebrew SeniorLife.” For four decades, he has served on the board of the Boston Preservation Alliance, an organization that represents preservation groups citywide. One of his proudest accomplishments with the BPA was playing a role in saving Fenway Park from demolition. “We fought for a decade for Fenway Park,” says Tackeff. “And now it’s a magnificently preserved stadium for the hometown team, the Boston Red Sox.”

As a board member of the Friends of the Public Garden, he speaks with great pride about their recent restoration of the Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial on Boston Common. And as a trustee of The Rivers School, serving from 1997 to 2009, he gave back to the place where it all started.

Tackeff is not just an alumnus and a former board member—he’s also a Rivers past parent. David ’10, the younger of Tackeff’s two sons, “loved Rivers, and Rivers did amazing things for him.”

Tackeff shares that his wife, Maryanne, has said—perhaps only half in jest—that if he wants to take on one more cause, he’ll have to give one up. But the habit of giving back is deeply ingrained, and he has no intention of dialing it down. “Being involved in the community,” he says, “is like oxygen to me.” —Jane Dornbusch

2022 YOUNG ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD | DEREK STENQUIST ’06

Committed to Caring

Derek Stenquist ’06 is disarmingly modest about his accomplishments. Ask him about his career path, his pastimes, or his athletic achievements, and he’ll lead with how fortunate he has been and how grateful he is for the breaks that have come his way. But Stenquist’s trajectory is not merely the result of good luck; after all, it takes hard work, talent, and focus to become an orthopedic trauma surgeon, an accomplished musician, and a Division I athlete. Stenquist, this year’s recipient of the Young Alumni Achievement Award at Rivers, has done all that and more, but he keeps it in perspective: In conversation with Stenquist, the word that comes up time and again is “opportunity”—and unquestionably, he has made the most of his.

The path of opportunity, says Stenquist, began at Rivers. The oldest of three siblings (the other two, Nicole ’08 and Jake ’15, also graduated from Rivers), Stenquist was a standout soccer player and musician who attended local public schools through eighth grade. Hoping to play soccer in college, he looked to enroll at an independent school that might help him reach that goal. “Nobody in my family had been to private school,” he says, adding that generous financial aid put Rivers within reach. He explored a few options, but the connections he made with then athletic director Bob Pipe P’19 and with Philippe Crettien, director of the jazz program, sealed the deal. It was the right choice, says Stenquist: “Rivers changed my life—there’s no question in my mind. It just opened up so many doors and maximized my potential in every area.”

After graduating from Rivers, says Stenquist, “I had the opportunity to go to Dartmouth College and play soccer there. That’s where I figured out that I wanted to go to medical school—just from realizing I wanted a career in service, which was something Rivers instilled in me.”

The path, he says, was “a little intimidating,” as no one in his family had ever pursued a medical career. He was admitted to Harvard Medical School, but he deferred enrollment for a year to pursue another meaningful opportunity. “I lived in Zimbabwe for a year, working for a program that teaches HIV prevention through a soccer curriculum. I wrote grants, monitored the evaluation of the program, and played soccer. It was amazing,” says Stenquist.

Enrolling at Harvard upon his return also proved to be an amazing experience, he says, albeit in a very different way. “Anything you want to do [in medicine], you can find it there. It’s an unbelievable place for research.” It was there that he realized that his interest lay in surgery: “I can’t sit still too long—I need to be moving. Surgery is using your hands in addition to your brain.” He says, too, that there was a throughline from his father’s profession, carpentry, to his own: “It’s very hands-on, with a lot of the same kinds of tools.”

Stenquist was drawn to orthopedics because of the dramatic and profound impact it can have on patients. He embarked on a five-year residency in orthopedic surgery at Harvard following medical school, electing to stay in Boston for that phase of his training.

Then, he says, within orthopedic surgery, he gravitated toward specializing in trauma. “It is the most practical and useful of all the specialties. You’re just taking care of people who are hurt, and you fix them…. You’re getting to use your hands to put people back together.” He also appreciates that trauma “disproportionately affects the disadvantaged,” a population he is particularly interested in supporting.

Thus a fellowship in orthopedic trauma surgery at Tampa General Hospital followed his residency, taking him out of New England for the first time. Florida provided a different perspective and a new set of challenges. “It’s important to see a different way of doing things,” he notes.

Somewhere along the way, he picked up Spanish (his wife, a pediatrician, is a native speaker; they met in medical school while taking part in the “second-year musical,” a Harvard Medical School tradition). And at this writing, the couple, along with their toddler daughter, was heading back to the Boston area, where both will be starting new jobs—Stenquist back at Mass General Hospital and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, where he did his residency.

With all that he’s accomplished, Stenquist says that the most rewarding opportunity of all has been the chance to give back and make a meaningful contribution: “If you can have a career where you get to go to work every day and help others, and work with those who are also motivated to help others, that’s a pretty cool job.” —JD

Derek Stenquist ’06 with wife Nicole de Paz and their daughter, Luisa.

STURDY WATERMAN ’74

A Well-Framed Life

Simple or ornate, antique or contemporary, the right frame can enhance the beauty and value of a piece of art. No one knows that better than Sturdy Waterman ’74, who has run Page Waterman Gallery & Framing in Wellesley for more than 40 years. The gallery sells works of art, but its primary business is custom framing, and Waterman likes to point out that the staff of four has more than 100 years’ combined experience among them.

Tucked into an old Victorian set off the street—one of two buildings owned by the Waterman family—Page Waterman’s roots go back more than 100 years. It was located around the corner and called the Sue Page Shop when Waterman went to work there, in the 1970s; it was then owned by the aunt of Waterman’s future wife. Visitors may first notice the gallery to the left as they enter, its walls covered with paintings of New England landscapes. But the heart of the business is across the hall, where Waterman meets with customers at a large wooden work table in front of a display rack featuring hundreds of frame samples.

Waterman exudes the contentment of a man who has found his calling— but to hear him tell it, the calling really found him. His father (Frank Waterman ’47) and brother (John Waterman ’69) preceded him at Rivers; enrolling here seemed nearly a foregone conclusion. He entered in seventh grade, and in his own description, he “wasn’t the best student.” He learned later that he had an attention deficit disorder, at a time when such conditions were routinely dismissed.

But, challenging as it was, Rivers was a fit for Waterman at a time in life when, as he puts it, “You’re trying to figure out your interests.” Here, he says, he found several teachers who “had the ability to engage students, which is a special quality.” In particular, he credits Jack Jarzavek, Erv Prince, and Chris Smick for opening his eyes to art history, math, and geology, their respective subjects. His interest in art actually pre-dated his time at Rivers: Recalling a family trip to Europe at age 10, he says, “My parents thought I’d be bored, but I was interested in the churches and museums. But,” he adds, “in Jack’s class, I realized just how interested I was.” He took up photography at Rivers, which also proved to be a pathway of sorts into his later professional life.

The other significant strand of Waterman’s time at Rivers was found outside the classroom—way outside. “I worked at the camp in summer,” says Waterman, “and I got exposed to camping and hiking.” He continues to be an avid outdoorsman who is currently hiking the 500-mile Colorado Trail, accompanied by his daughter, in annual 100-mile increments.

At Hartwick College, Waterman continued to develop the twin interests that had emerged at Rivers, first pursuing a geology major for a couple of years before turning to art history. After graduation, he worked as a wedding photographer for a time before taking a job at the Sue Page Shop. A few years later, the opportunity to buy the business arose, and Waterman bit. He hasn’t looked back since.

Waterman has been in business long enough to see design trends come and go, which he considers “part of the fun.” He was sorry to see modern, simple frames replace traditional gold leaf frames some years ago, and he’s pleased to report that the pendulum now seems to be swinging back. “Gold frames are starting to come back in style, and that can’t happen soon enough,” he says. And he enjoys the special projects that come his way, such as shadow boxes of memorabilia that require a more creative approach.

A few years back, gallery director Ryan Black came up with yet another way to keep the work fresh. Page Waterman launched Next Up!, a juried art show for high school students from the surrounding towns. “We wanted to recognize these kids; they work so hard,” says Waterman. One benefit to launching the competition, he says, was that it helped reconnect him with Rivers, as he worked with David Saul, former Visual Arts Department chair, to organize the Rivers student submissions. Prior to COVID, the selected artworks were displayed in the gallery; the pandemic pushed the competition into an online format, and this year Waterman took a brief hiatus, with the intention of bringing Next Up! back next year.

At 65, Waterman has no plans to retire, and he knows he’s one of the lucky ones: “I can’t wait to go to work every day,” he says. “My customers are like family, and there are so many facets to the business.” —JD