Class of 2025

Emilie Aries is the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up, a leadership development and career services company committed to closing the gender leadership gap.

After graduating from South Windsor High School in 2005, Emilie attended Brown University where she earned a B.A. in political science. She then completed a Fellowship on Organizing at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Emilie is an author, speaker, and pocaster. She has worked in DEI, social justice, and community organizing since she started her career as a State Director with the Obama Campaign’s Organizing for America initiative in 2009. She worked in politics in Rhode Island and Washington, DC before moving to Denver, Colorado in 2017, where she has been growing her company and family ever since.

In 2023, she was named one of Colorado's Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Business by the Colorado Women's Chamber of Commerce and was accepted into the Colorado Governor's Fellowship Program. She also joined the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation’s Leadership Denver Program, where she connects with changemakers committed to making Colorado a place where women, working families, communities of color, and all people can thrive.

In 2024, she joined Ball Aerospace, now BAE Space and Mission Systems, Inc., as a Senior Leadership Development Specialist, where she is designing and delivering a new portfolio of leadership development offerings for senior leaders across the enterprise.

Sue graduated from SWHS in 1980. During her high school years, she worked on the Reflections literary magazine and played percussion in the concert/marching band. Sue benefited from the encouragement and support of her SWHS teachers, especially Ella Wirth, Rita Sjoblad, Patricia Saylor, and Salvatore Randazzo. Outside of school, Sue was active in three 4-H clubs and as a drummer in the Springfield Kiltie Band.

After high school, Sue matriculated at Cornell University, where she fell captive to a fascination with medieval literature and culture. She graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Comparative Literature.

After completing a Ph.D. at Harvard University, Sue joined the English Department at Northern Illinois University, where she remained until her retirement in 2019. At NIU, Sue had the opportunity to pursue her research in medieval studies and to share her love of medieval literature with numerous generations of students, both undergraduate and graduate. She taught courses in English language and literature, directed independent studies, and conducted extracurricular reading groups. She served as the faculty adviser to the Sigma Tau Delta honor society, chaired the University Honors committee, and, for over twenty years, acted as a co-coordinator of NIU’s Concentration in Medieval Studies.

Among her peers, Sue is an acknowledged expert on early medieval English poetry and especially on the use of proverbs in English literature. She is the author of two books—“Beowulf” and the Medieval Proverb Tradition and Alliterative Proverbs in Medieval England—and the co-editor of two others. She has authored more than twenty articles in international journals and presented her research at dozens of conferences in the US, Canada, and England.

Since her retirement from teaching, Sue and her husband, Mark Richards, reside in Lexington, KY, where she continues to research and write about medieval literature and proverbs, does a little gardening, and dabbles in horse racing.

Upon graduating from Bucknell University with a degree in history in 1974, Jean Luddy attended the University of Pittsburgh where she earned a Master’s degree in Library Science in 1975. After Jean and her husband Bruce moved to Connecticut, she was hired as the Library Manager at Eli Terry Elementary School where she worked from 1977 to 1985. Following the birth of her second child, she was able to stay at home with her children for 9 years. During that time, she was a Girl Scout leader and also wrote and presented a series of talks on local history to 3rd grade students in the Vernon schools. In 1986 she found a part-time job at Rockville Public Library as the evening Reference Librarian.

From 1994 to 2000 Jean served as the Library Assistant at South Windsor High School. In 2000 she became the Library Media Specialist whereupon she started attending classes online and on campus at Southern Connecticut State University to earn her teaching certification. Later she took additional courses to gain a 6th year degree in Information Studies. It was a long and winding road that brought her to what she calls “the best job in the building” where she worked until her retirement in 2016.

Jean married Bruce, her college sweetheart, in 1975. They have two children, Sara and Dan, and five grandchildren. An active volunteer in the Vernon Historical Society, Jean has been the society’s Museum Director since 2016. Several projects of note include preparing a revised edition of the local history book for 3rd graders, working with a consultant and project manager to get historic local newspapers digitized, and designing and presenting a program, exhibit, and video celebrating the 150th anniversary of Rockville High School.

Jean can’t stay out of libraries. From 2016 to 2024 she worked part-time at Rockville Library as the Interlibrary Loan Coordinator. In retirement, Jean and Bruce have been traveling overseas and in the United States. She keeps active with yoga, Zumba, hiking, gardening and, of course, reading.

In 1965 at Union School on Main Street, first grade teacher Pat Fetterman, armed with the personality of the opera singer she had been, entered her full classroom with a ladder, a can of brown paint, and a brush. She climbed the ladder and on the high wall in the back of the room began to paint a tree. Not any tree. A yak-yak tree she announced. When a first grader would not stop talking, his or her name would be added to the tree. “Kevin,” she announced, “you are going to be the first.” Kevin Rennie was the first and he has not stopped talking in the ensuing 60 years. He is as proud of receiving tonight’s honor as he was to take the first spot on that yak-yak tree: chuffed to the gills.

Kevin knew Mrs. Fetterman until the end of her long life a few years ago, one of the South Windsor treasures to enrich my life. I attended Eli Terry, Ellsworth, Timothy Edwards, and, of course, South Windsor High School. Memories and impressions of ourselves fade, but in his youth Kevin appeared unlikely to spend his life in the contentious careers of law, politics and journalism.

SWHS, particularly Carol Harding and Sharon Moran, prepared Kevin for a glittering education at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania and then, the University of Connecticut School of Law. He had hoped to work on the business side of show business in New York but had to settle for a turn in Connecticut politics, serving in the legislature representing South Windsor and other neighboring towns in the House and Senate for eight eventful years.

Six years after the voters dismissed Kevin from the conduct of their affairs, at the age of 42, he came upon his life’s work. Editor Jenifer Frank, whose name will forever cause him to bow his head in gratitude, asked Kevin to write a political column for The Hartford Courant’s Northeast Magazine. He'd always had an ear for secrets and after six months of Sunday columns, people started sharing theirs and others’ with him. Sources and the faint sound of an axe grinding have seen Kevin through 23 years of breaking news that the powerful hoped to keep to themselves.

Technology and changes in the newspaper business combined to allow Kevin to practice law and shine bright lights into dark places. His website, Daily Ructions, is often where Connecticut’s news begins. In politics, Kevin performed the uneasy task of keeping people happy. Journalism requires making many unhappy or even miserable. He was surprised he liked that more.