Distinguished Alumni Award

Stephen Belber ’85 is an internationally recognized, critically acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, and director. His career has shaped cultural conversation and challenged audiences around the world to grapple with themes of justice, identity, and the complexities of the human experience. Across theater, film, and television, Belber has examined human behavior with empathy, intelligence, and urgency.

His narratives give voice to those at the margins and create space for uncomfortable but important questions. His acclaimed play Tape — (also a Richard Linklater film now being remade in three countries) — offers a probing look at truth, memory, and accountability; his work on The Laramie Project helped catalyze national dialogue on LGBTQ+ rights and hate crimes; and his script for the film O.G. — shot in a maximum security prison where the majority of actors were actual residents — examines criminal justice reform through intimate character portrayal. Collaborations with actors like Patrick Stewart, Jennifer Aniston, and Jeffrey Wright have deepened his reputation for crafting nuanced, emotionally resonant stories that leave a lasting impression.

What keeps me writing is the need to discern my beliefs, find an artful way to express them, and hope it connects with a few people out there. The fact that beliefs and connection evolve, keeps me at it.” — Stephen Belber ’85

Most recently, Belber created and show-ran The Madness, starring Colman Domingo, which explores contemporary racial tensions, disinformation, and the power of political extremism. It became one of Netflix’s most-watched shows of 2024.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Trinity College and was a fellow in the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard.

Over the years, Belber has volunteered his time and talents to connect with Maret students who are interested in storytelling. His extraordinary contributions to the arts and his continued engagement with our school community continue to inspire and uplift us.

Dr. Phoebe Aron ’09

Dr. Phoebe Aron ’09 is a climate change scientist and water resource management engineer. She is a senior principal scientist at Hazen and Sawyer, a leading national environmental engineering consulting firm focused on water supply and water quality challenges. Aron leads Hazen’s applied research program on water resources and climate change to help clients ensure that drinking water and other water resources are safe, reliable, and sustainably managed. She directs a team of data scientists and engineers who use cutting-edge climate models to help solve some of the most complex water challenges we face today. Before joining Hazen, Aron worked as a water science researcher at the US Geological Survey, University of Michigan, and DC Water. She also leads wilderness trips all around the world, combining a love of being outdoors with a passion for leadership education.

Aron holds a BA in chemistry, environmental studies, and history from Bowdoin College and an MS and a PhD in earth and environmental sciences from the University of Michigan. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan.

Aron received the University of Michigan Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship Award and the John Dorr Graduate Academic Achievement Award in recognition of outstanding doctoral research that was unusually creative, ambitious, and impactful. Maret holds a very special place in Aron’s heart. She is a Maret lifer; met her husband, Dylan Reffe, also a 2009 Maret grad, in fourth grade; got engaged on the roof of Woodley; and held her wedding rehearsal dinner on the Maret front field. She lives in Silver Spring, MD.

Travis Allen ’93

Travis A. Allen is a Managing Director overseeing AB Bernstein’s private wealth practice in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. He is based in the Washington, DC, office and is a 25-year veteran of the firm. Until recently moving to the Managing Director role in early 2023, Travis served as a Senior Investment Strategist and National Director of Purpose Driven Strategies where he was a member of Bernstein’s Investment Strategy Group (ISG), the investment decision-making body for the private client business.

Travis held several leadership roles in the ISG, which oversees strategic asset allocation for high-net-worth, nonprofit, and family office clients. He led the efforts to design and build the Private Wealth ESG, responsible, sustainable and impact investing platform from its inception to $6.5B in assets. He also spent years overseeing the asset allocation advice for mission-driven foundations and endowments, as well as Cash Balance retirement plan clients. He joined the ISG in February 2012. Travis also spent 10 years as a member of Alliance Bernstein’s global Responsibility Steering Committee and served on the firm’s Controversial Investment Advisory Council from its inception to 2022. Previously, he was a member of the Wealth Strategies Group, serving as an analyst and senior analyst before becoming a Director in 2011.

Travis earned an MBA in Finance at the University of Maryland and BA in Organization, Behavior and Management at Brown University. He is a former trustee and head of the Investment Committee of YouthBuild USA and the Kingman Boys and Girls Club.

Travis has been giving back to Maret in various volunteer roles as an alumnus and parent since graduating from Maret. He served as President of the Alumni Council from 2007 to 2009 and remained on the Board of Trustees until 2021, lending his financial expertise as Treasurer the last five years. Travis is an enthusiastic participant in alumni basketball games and frequent presenter on our Alumni Career Panels. He and his wife, Paloma Adams-Allen, live in his native Washington, D.C., with their two daughters and Maret students, Priya Allen ’23 and Emilie Allen ’27. 

Paige Hoffman ’06

Paige Hoffman ’06 is the Deputy Chief, School Improvement at District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) where she has also served as Deputy Chief, Design & Systems Improvement; Director for Innovation; and as a founding Special Education Teacher at Stanton Elementary School.

The DCPS mission is to ensure that every school guarantees students reach their full potential through rigorous and joyful learning experiences provided in a nurturing environment. With a focus on combating systemic inequities and individual biases to accelerate growth for students furthest from opportunity, Paige’s work seeks to dramatically accelerate the number of excellent DCPS schools through community-driven transformation, including design, partnerships, and comprehensive school planning.

She leads the District’s data-driven Equity Strategy and Programming Team to promote equitable outcomes for all students and also the implementation of DCPS Connected Schools—a holistic and “whole community” approach to school improvement focused on making schools spaces that support not only a student’s academic development, but a family's overall wellbeing. Paige launched DCPS’s first Design Lab for forward-thinking school leaders to reimagine their schools using human-centered design practices. She implemented this transformational approach at Anacostia and Ballou High Schools, garnering national attention for significant increases in community engagement. The schools have also experienced increases in graduation rates, teacher satisfaction and retention, and the number of students who report feeling loved.

Paige has distinguished herself through her service and leadership within the Maret alumni community. She served on the Alumni Council for many years, including two as President and member of Maret’s Board of Trustees. She earned a BS in social sciences from Harvard University and an EM in leadership from Georgetown University. Paige is also a Trustee at award-winning charter school Washington Yu Ying. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, Simon, and daughter, Annabel.
 

Dominique DeLeon ’00

Dominique DeLeon ’00 is the global creative director at Google Creative Works in Los Angeles, CA. DeLeon is an exceptionally creative professional who has used his many talents to write, direct, and produce award-winning film and television projects and develop meaningful content reaching over 30 million viewers.

DeLeon earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard University where he studied government. Realizing that he was more interested in storytelling than politics, he began a journey that started in music and continued with an MFA in film from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He now manages production teams, working with multiple stakeholders within agency and production frameworks and overseeing on-set operations to deliver ambitious products with tight deadlines and budgets.

DeLeon directed the 2014 narrative Rez, a film about life on the Leech Lake Ojibwe reservation. It caught the eye of Spike Lee and was distributed by FNX and Seed & Spark. His 2010 film, Tags, was a finalist at the Shadow and Act Digital Filmmaker Showcase. In serving as creative director and owner of Special Boy Films, he produced the VMA-winning music video for Surefire, as well as directed music videos for John Legend’s Penthouse Floor and Preach. RollingStone called DeLeon’s video for Preach both “powerful” and “a harrowing look at a handful of issues taking root in America: school shootings, children being separated from parents at the border, law enforcement’s aggressive tactics toward African-Americans during traffic stops and more.”

Since graduating in 2000, DeLeon has regularly made himself available to current students and fellow alumni for professional insight and guidance. Sensitive to and thoughtful about systemic barriers to the entertainment and art industries, he loyally participates in Maret’s annual Alumni Career Panels and never turns down a request from teachers to visit classrooms and share his journey with students.

Drew Chafetz ’00
has combined a passion for soccer and social enterprise to become one of the foremost experts in mobilizing communities through sport. In 2006, shortly after returning from a trip to Morocco where he witnessed children playing soccer in dangerous conditions, Drew cofounded love.fútbol and has since served as CEO. A nonprofit that envisions a future where every child has a safe space to play soccer, love.fútbol partners with communities worldwide to create, reclaim, and redefine sports spaces as lasting platforms for youth and community development. Through the organization’s award-winning methodology, local residents from 46 communities across five continents have dedicated over 70,000 volunteer hours to plan, organize, and build inclusive and inspiring sports spaces. Tens of thousands of children play on love.fútbol spaces every day. Sponsors include ESPN, Coca-Cola, Disney, Under Armour, Unilever, UEFA, and the Pincus Family Foundation, which last year funded love.fútbol’s first projects in the United States.

Drew regularly speaks as a panelist on sport for social development, community empowerment, and social enterprise. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Colorado, has been a featured Ashoka Changemaker, and was twice named one of DC’s most influential residents under 40 by Washington Life.

De’Ara Balenger ’99 is a disruptor, creative, and strategist for brands and organizations on social impact, partnerships, philanthropy, and community engagement. She recently co-founded Maestra, a women’s thought leadership cooperative and social impact agency. 

Prior to Maestra, De’Ara spent over a decade in public service; she worked in the criminal justice system in South Florida, ran the Philadelphia Youth Commission, worked on two presidential campaigns, and was a political appointee in the Obama administration at the US Department of State, primarily serving as special assistant and then senior advisor to Cheryl Mills, counselor and chief of staff to former US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In the last presidential election cycle, De’Ara was the director of engagement for Hillary for America, where she forged strategic and creative alignments. She was the spark that activated the creative community, leading to creative fundraising opportunities and cementing a roster of millennial influencers, celebrities, activists, entrepreneurs, designers, and artists that the campaign tapped into for support.

De’Ara was a national organizer and strategic advisor to the Women’s March and was named a 2017 Glamour Woman of the Year for her role in the Women’s March. She is co-chair of the board for the Lower Eastside Girls Club, active supporter of the Women’s Prison Association, and a fundraiser for progressive political candidates. 

De’Ara has a B.A. in Black Studies from Macalester College and a J.D. from Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University.

She lives in Brooklyn with her partner, Paola Ramos.

Benjamin Marcovitz ’98 is the founder and CEO of Collegiate Academies (CA), currently operating three high schools in New Orleans and one in Baton Rouge. Beginning in 2007 with Sci Academy, CA has led the district in high school performance and has won honors from the Oprah Winfrey Show and US News & World Report. Ben previously taught in New Orleans, DC, and Boston. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Ben’s work at CA has earned him recognition from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, fellowships at Achievement First’s Charter Network Accelerator, the Pahara-Aspen Institute, the Broad Academy, as well as the Ryan Award for transformational urban school leadership. He has served on the faculties of New Leaders and Leading Educators and presents with Relay Graduate School of Education and Future Leaders in the United Kingdom, among others.

Susannah Wellford ’86 has founded two organizations designed to raise the political voice of young women in America.

In 2007, Susannah founded Running Start to inspire young women and girls to political leadership. Running Start has trained over 12,500 young women and girls from all around the country to lead in politics. Running Start furthers the work begun by the Women Under Forty Political Action Committee (WUFPAC), which Susannah cofounded in 1999 and led for five years. WUFPAC continues a national nonpartisan women’s group dedicated to electing young women to political office.

Susannah travels around the country speaking to colleges, law schools, political groups, and nonprofits about the importance of inspiring and empowering more young women to lead in politics she also regularly meets with groups from around the world including most recently Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Territories. She was invited to Kuwait by the Kuwaiti government in spring 2006 to meet Kuwait’s first women candidates and to advise them on their campaigns and The State Department has sponsored her to speak in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Israel, Belgium and Russia.

After receiving her J.D. from the University Of Virginia School Of Law in 1998, she worked for several years at Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, lobbying for state and local governments, foreign governments, corporate entities, and trade associations before Congress and the Executive Branch. Prior to law school, Susannah worked for Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Task Force in the Clinton White House and was a former legislative assistant for Senator Wyche Fowler from Georgia. Ms. Welford is a 1990 graduate of Davidson College she lives in Washington, DC with her twin sons, Ben and James.

Dr. Sarah Greenberg Bowman graduated from Maret in 1991. As a student at Maret, she was an active participant and team captain of varsity tennis, she was editor of the yearbook and student director of the spring musical. At graduation, she received the Alumni Spirit Award. Dr. Bowman has been involved with the Alumni Council and Association since 1999 including roles such as secretary, Alumni Fund class agent, Reunion Executive Committee and the School’s Strategic Planning Committee, 2006-2007. In addition, she has been very active in the Maret community since she graduated, helping with the Slices of Science lunches and hosting Maret seniors at CityPaws Animal Hospital for their senior projects. Her siblings, Max Greenberg ’00 and Anna Greenberg ’02 also attended Maret. Dr. Bowman graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Biology in 1995 and received her V.M.D. from the School of Veterinary Medicine at the The University of Pennsylvania in 2000. She worked in New York City for one year before joining a small animal hospital in McLean for five years. In April of 2006, she and her business partner opened CityPaws Animal Hospital on 14th Street in Washington, DC. In February of 2016, they opened a second location in Cleveland Park, CityPaws Uptown. She enjoys spending time with her husband, Jolyon Bowman, and their children. Her children attend Hearst Elementary School where her daughter Zoe (8) is a third grader and her son Zac (5) is in kindergarten.

Sonja Lyubomirsky ’85, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. Originally from Russia, she received her A.B., summa cum laude, from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology from Stanford University. Lyubomirsky currently teaches courses in social psychology and positive psychology and serves as the Department of Psychology’s graduate advisor. Her teaching and mentoring of students have been recognized with the Faculty of the Year Award (twice) and Faculty Mentor of the Year Award.

Sonja’s research has been awarded a Templeton Positive Psychology Prize, a Science of Generosity grant, a John Templeton Foundation grant, and a million-dollar grant (with Ken Sheldon) from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct research on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness. Her research has been written up in hundreds of magazines and newspapers and she has appeared in multiple TV shows, radio shows, and feature documentaries in North America, South America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. She has lectured widely to a variety of audiences throughout the world, including business executives, educators, physicians, entrepreneurs, military officers, mental health professionals, life coaches, retirees, students, and scholars. The How of Happiness is now translated and published in 22 countries, and The Myths of Happiness is translated (or will be) in 18 countries.

In her work, Sonja has focused on developing a science of human happiness. She is currently exploring the potential of happiness-sustaining activities – for example, expressing gratitude, doing acts of kindness, visualizing a positive future, and reflecting on happy moments – to durably increase a person’s happiness level beyond his or her “set point.” She has been conducting research on happiness for 23 years and has published widely in the area.

Frances Z. Brown '98 has worked for over a decade as a practitioner at the intersection of conflict, development, and political transition, including over five years on the ground in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and the Sahel. Her experience includes three years with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), overseeing conflict mitigation programs in Afghanistan, Mali, and the Middle East. She won the 2011-2012 Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) International Affairs Fellowship, which allowed her to spend a year researching the Afghanistan conflict while based at the US Institute of Peace. Before joining government, Frances served a year at a Kabul-based non-governmental organization, and spent two years in Beirut, Lebanon, teaching world history at an international baccalaureate school and volunteering in a Palestinian refugee camp. Other experience includes roles managing projects in Jordan, Iraq, and the UK, as well as with the International Crisis Group and the US Embassy in Kuwait. Frances's commentaries on Lebanese and Afghan politics have appeared in the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the International Herald Tribune, the LA Times, Foreign Policy, the American Interest, and elsewhere. Currently an Oxford PhD student researching development aid and countering violent extremism, she holds a BA from Yale and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

J. Lorand (Randy) Matory ’78 is the Lawrence Richardson Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Director, Center for African and African American Research at Duke University. He earned an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Harvard University, and his master’s and Ph.D. in anthropology from University of Chicago. Prior to his appointment at Duke, he was a professor of anthropology at Harvard. Randy has won numerous awards and distinctions for his work in the field of anthropology and African and African American studies. He is currently writing a book on the history and experience of Nigerians, Trinidadians, Ethiopians, African-descended Native Americans, Louisiana Creoles, Gullah/Geechees and other ethnic groups that make up the black population of the United States. It will be published by the University of Chicago Press under the title Of the Race but above the Race: Stigma and the Schooling of Ethnicity in the “Mecca” of Black Education.

Daniel Solomon ’78 was selected as our inaugural Distinguished Alumni Award winner in 2012 for his tireless efforts to bring voting rights to the District of Columbia and for his committment to Maret and our students, we are pleased to present Daniel Solomon with Maret’s inaugural Distinguished Alumni Award.

Daniel entered Maret School as sixth grader in 1970, and graduated in 1978. Daniel went on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Berkeley, then earned a juris doctorate from Northeastern University. He later worked for the Labor Department promoting worker rights and discouraging child labor through international trade agreements. His work at the Labor Department took him to five African nations.

In 1998, Daniel helped establish DC Vote, an educational and advocacy organization whose mission is to secure full voting representation in Congress and full democracy for the residents of the District of Columbia. As the stalwart voice behind DC Vote, he has brought the organization’s message back to Maret many times, including last year during the Centennial Alumni Panels and just last month to the sixth grade. Daniel also participated in two summer service learning institutes and works with Lynn Levinson's civil liberties class.

Daniel was selected by the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area as a recipient of the Community Human Rights Award in 2010. He is Vice-President of The Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation, Vice-Chair of the University of the District of Columbia School of Law Foundation Board of Directors, and serves as a board member for the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers. He is active with the Jewish Funds For Justice, which pools Jewish investments to support low-income communities in the DC area.

In addition to working with our students, as an alumnus, Daniel has served Maret on the Board of Trustees, as a Class Agent, and as a Class Reunion Chair. He also participated on two Strategic Planning Committees.