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Meet Barbara Najar: Chadwick’s first communications director
by DAVID DING
Chadwick welcomes Barbara
Najar, who recently began serving as the school’s first executive
director of communications and
marketing.
Najar brings more than 20
years of experience to the job, having worked at Honda for 14 years.
Najar’s job at Honda ranged from
leading corporate and diversity advertising to managing market advertising, market campaigns and
public relations.
Her marketing skills played
a big factor in Honda’s being the
highest-selling car among Hispanic families. She also created
and produced an award-winning
documentary, Dream the Impossible, part of Honda’s “Power of
Dreams” series and advertising
campaign. This is Najar’s first year
in a school setting, though she previously participated in and helped
run a program with 100 historically black colleges and universities in
a Honda sales event.
“I think Chadwick has a great
opportunity to communicate all
the good work and all the great experiences that are happening here.
They have hired me to help bring
that. My expertise is branding,
which is communicating the brand
essence. I think I have the skills
that Chadwick needs, ” Najar said.
Najar plans to define the
Chadwick brand, or Chadwick’s
brand personality. This means using words to define what Chadwick
is all about, and promoting those
ideas.
“We hear a lot of what’s so
great about Chadwick, and everybody says different things,” Najar
said.
“What do we stand for? What
is the most important part we
want to share with the community?”
Najar has just finished an indepth research project about what
Chadwick students think about
the Chadwick brand. She asked
things such as what students like
about Chadwick and what they
think Chadwick can improve upon.
“This will bring greater awareness to Chadwick,” Najar said.
“There is a whole new skill set corporations are working for, such as
teamwork, collaboration and inquisitiveness.
“These are the skills that are
really taught by our core values. I
want to help get the word out that
Chadwick’s education really prepares students for success in life.”
STAFF PHOTO
New communications director Barbara Najar brings a wealth of experience.
Chadwick sends students to spring break trips around the world
by OLIVIA POWELL
Chadwick’s annual spring
break trips are right around the
corner. This year there will be four
excursions heading out: a Model
United Nations (MUN) trip to China, separate community service
trips to Zambia and Nepal, and a
theater trip to New York City.
The Model United Nations excursion will leave March 19 and return April 5. Students have a wide
variety of activities planned. They
kick off their trip by first attending
an international conference being
held by Harvard MUN in downtown Beijing.
After the first few days, the
students will head out for a tour of
the Great Wall of China, concluding their spring break by embark-
ing on trips to Shanghai and the
province of Guizhou.
In each location, the group
will participate in a few tourist activities and perform community
service.
The highlight of the Guizhou
trip is a four-day trek through the
wilderness.
“I can’t wait to be a part of
this conference,” junior Harini
Shah said.
“It’s probably one of the most
unique opportunities I will ever
have for a Round Square trip and
for MUN at Chadwick.”
The delegates must be careful
while traveling during their conference, as there are political issues at play in China.
“We have to be careful because last time Harvard MUN had
a conference at Harvard, these
Chinese delegates decided to start
a fight with some delegates who
were representing Taiwan because
the two counties have unresolved
issues,” Shah said.
“We have to be watchful of
how we present ourselves.”
Other Chadwick students
will be heading to Zambia for one
of Chadwick’s annual community
service trips.
The attendees will be performing some unique services for the
Zambian farming communities,
such as building fences in a conservation effort to keep elephants
from eating farmers’ crops and
keeping farmers from harming the
elephants.
Students will also have the opportunity to view wildlife.
“I am super excited for the
camping part of the trip! We are
going to a site where there is a
bunch of wildlife--monkeys, elephants, giraffes and zebras,” junior
Katie Haas said. “And then we are
going to see Victoria Falls, which
should be really neat.”
Chad Detloff, Director of
Global Programs, will be leading
students on another community
service trip, this one to Nepal.
Students will be building
greenhouses, painting and planting, as well as volunteering at the
Children’s Village by helping and
playing with underprivileged children. This trip will conclude with a
trek through the Himalayas.
Another highly anticipated
trip over this spring break will be
the annual theater excursion to
New York City, led by the Chair of
the Drama Department, Nigel Williams.
Attendees will get to see four
Broadway shows, speak with the
cast of one of the productions,
attend a workshop with another
Broadway cast, and take tours of
Grand Central Station and the
Brooklyn Bridge.
This will be the third time the
New York trip has been offered,
after the great success of previous
year’s trips.
Shah believes that many other
students share her excitement for
their spring break excursions.
“I can’t express how elated
and unbelievably excited I am to go
on this trip,” she said.
“All of the trips Chadwick offers are great opportunities!”
French Club bonbon sales helping to educate Rwanda orphan
by DAVID DING
The Chadwick French Club
recently concluded another successful sale of bonbons, the fruitflavored French candy, during the
weeks leading up to spring break.
For the past seven years, the
French Club has bought hundreds
of packs of bonbons and numerous chocolate bars to be sold on
the main deck and in the Middle
School Courtyard. For about two
weeks, the club sells bonbons for
$2 each, chocolate bars for $1 each,
and Eiffel Tower fruit snacks for $1
each.
Students can be seen purchasing amounts ranging from a pack
of bonbons to a whole box filled
with a hundred packs--there is no
limit on how many packs students
can purchase. The French Club
generates about $2,000 in profits
from sales every year--more than
that of any other student-run club.
Juniors Randy Friedman and
Isabelle Garvanne, along with their
advisor, French teacher Chantal
Wilson, run the French Club and
manage these yearly sales. Friedman and Garvanne started the
sales when they were in Middle
School, in seventh grade. Since
then, they have brought the French
Club to the Upper School and continued the bonbon sales.
Bonbon sales have not only
been successful due to the deliciousness of the candies and their
popularity, but also because they
can’t be purchased in the United
STAFF PHOTO
Students often swarm the table at Chadwick’s annual French
Club bonbon sale, which typically raises about $2,000.
States, since they are manufactured and sold in France.
“The bonbons are made in
France, and we order them from
a company that disperses foreign
candies to schools in the United
States. We go through a U.S. company, and they ship them to us
from France,” Friedman said.
The bonbon sales not only
bring delicious goodies to Chadwick students, they also serve
another important purpose. The French Club has been
supporting an orphan who currently lives in Rwanda and whose
parents died during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. So far, the
French Club has paid for the child’s
undergraduate college education.
He is currently attending graduate school, which the bonbon sales
have also helped fund.
“People enjoy bonbons and
supporting us, so we will continue
our support for his education,”
Garvanne said.