Stories from our Donors

“It’s nice to be a part of something that helps change the world.”

Tommy Cecil ’06 and his wife, Katy, are parents to 14-month-old twins and in the thick of the juggle that comes with nurturing successful careers in law and medicine while taking care of young ones at home.

However, there are some deep-rooted habits that fewer hours of sleep haven’t been able to shake, including making an annual gift to Olin.

“Each year Katy and I sit down and decide what our philanthropic priorities are going to be,” says Tommy, who is a longtime Olin donor. “We have adopted Olin as one of our primary philanthropic interests—it’s nice to have that as part of our identity.”

By now, giving back to Olin is a “reflexive habit,” says Tommy. “We believe in the college and want it to do well.

“I am a direct beneficiary of someone’s generosity. It matters to me.”

When Olin Trustee Jeannie Diefenderfer was on campus in May, a casual conversation over coffee changed the trajectory of sophomore Brooklyn Wakefield’s summer. Diefenderfer learned about Brooklyn’s opportunity to travel to Japan for a summer internship at Mitsubishi Robotics. However, as a first-generation college student, Brooklyn did not have the resources to make the trip overseas. Diefenderfer knew she had to act quickly so that Brooklyn did not lose this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“Sometimes people who have never experienced that kind of hardship don’t understand the impact of time. Because I benefitted from similar generosity as a college student, it was very important to me to act quickly for her and make the decision” to fund the internship. “It’s crucial to meet the need where the need exists—not according to the giver’s needs.”

“Being the beneficiary gave me conviction to pay it forward.”

Jeannie immigrated to the U.S. with her family when she was 13 and, after attending public school in New York, received life-changing scholarship support that enabled her to attend college at Tufts University.

Diefenderfer is passionate about teaching the next generation of young people to freely help other people regardless of their means, and to develop a level of comfort about talking openly about giving and receiving help. “To me, it’s all circular. It has a huge ripple effect. Many years from now, I hope this experience will shape her psyche around giving.”

“So many of us have grown from cultures that say it’s a weakness if you have to ask for help,” says Diefenderfer. “Metritocracy alone is not enough. You have to be more than just good—you have to have luck and other people who help you along the way.”

"My internship at Mitsubishi has been an incredible journey so far. I have been exposed to a wide range of design projects and have had the privilege of working alongside talented professionals in the UX/UI industry. The hands-on experience and mentorship I have received are truly shaping my career aspirations and fueling my passion for design, while also exposing me to a new culture and a different way of living.

I am truly grateful for the opportunity to intern at Mitsubishi’s Integrated Design Center in Japan, and for the generous gift from Ms. Diefenderfer that made it possible for me to participate in this invaluable experience.

As a first-generation college student with limited financial resources, I would not have been able to afford the flight to Japan on my own. This gift not only opened doors for me but also empowered me to pursue my career aspirations in design and gain an international experience that would have otherwise been unattainable."

Brooklyn Wakefield ’25

“Hello, I’m an Olin parent volunteer.”

These are the first words parents heard when picking up a phone call from Tim Commers P’23, the outgoing chair of Olin’s PLC. After four years as a PLC member, Commers reflects on his time volunteering with Olin’s longest-standing volunteer group.

On discovering Olin:

“Anna (Commers ’23) had a college counselor who described getting into Olin as ‘winning the lottery.’ And she won the lottery! From our first family visit, we knew this was a unique place. If Anna could get in, this is where she would go.”

On joining the PLC:

“Anna was having such a good time, I thought joining the PLC would be a fun experience. I like to be involved and give back. And I figured that fun, interesting students were created by fun, interesting parents. That has proven to be true—Olin parents are smart, dedicated, unique people.”

On building the Parent Caller program:

“We on the PLC try to make families feel welcome and to build the Olin community. During my time, I tried to be a cheerleader and organizer. When I tell friends that every new Olin family gets a phone call from a current parent in August before school starts, people can’t believe that. I believe that helps set the tone for the next four years. Parents want to know what their student will experience and feel in those first days, and I feel good about how the PLC caller program helped them feel comfortable letting go of their students.”

Advice for future PLC members:

“Listen to parents. Give new parents comfort. Olin draws risk-takers. Your student is going to get a great education. Make parents feel comfortable.”

Beverly Wyse P’15 has served on Olin’s Board of Trustees for eight years, gradually expanding her leadership role on the Board over time.

First, in 2019, Wyse served as chair of the presidential search committee that selected Gilda A. Barabino as Olin’s second president. “She is a tireless, passionate woman who has the capacity, the network, and the brilliance to shape the world and we are so fortunate to have her,” says Wyse, whose enthusiasm for Olin’s future under President Barabino’s leadership is evident.

In October 2021, Wyse took over as chair of the Board of Trustees. It is work Wyse enjoys and finds meaningful at this stage of her life after a long career as an executive at Boeing. “The work with and for the college gives so much to me, in terms of what I am looking for at this stage of life, including an inspiring, impactful mission with fascinating, dedicated people who help me on my personal journey of wanting to be a lifelong learner.”

Wyse’s son, Elliott, graduated from Olin in 2015. “Elliott graduated with a portfolio of design projects, had learned to work in teams and understand, through experience, how to best apply his strengths. He made lifelong friends, both men and women, who are some of his closest friends today, who share his values… The college years are so formative, and his experience was powerful for him, beyond the excellent and thought-provoking education.”

Furthering the unique experience offered by an Olin education is one of the reasons Bev and her husband, Steve, have been donating to Olin for more than 10 years, most recently making an impactful and multiyear gift to the Presidential Strategic Initiatives Fund.

“Simply put, we believe in the mission. Gilda’s mission on equity has taken our support for Olin to a new level, in that we are also passionate about equity and equality. Without a substantial improvement in addressing equity, I believe our society will continue to deteriorate in terms of the divisiveness that is so prevalent. The new mission will focus not only on the students’ understanding of equity in the context of their interactions on campus, but also on how engineering plays a role in making the world more, or less, equitable. This is a mission that we care very much about, and you must contribute to the things you care about.”

Despite retiring from Boeing, Wyse has a full schedule. She has joined several boards and thoroughly enjoys the work, but it is her family that is her focus. If she ever forgets that, she has the word for family in Welsh, “teulu,” tattooed on her arm.

Wyse has a large, extended circle beginning with husband Steve, sons Evan and Elliott, daughters-in-law Emily and Tian, and one-year-old grandson Owen. She also has six siblings, and she recently found out through 23andMe and Ancestry that her family is bigger than she thought and includes a newly found sister, Lorinda, and a new niece, JeanTu.

What else drops in autumn besides the leaves? Matt Hill ’06, an engineering manager on the Product Design team at Apple has the answer— new iPhones!

While most of us vacationed this summer, Matt and his team were in high gear readying the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max for mass production. “Building something is always a labor of love, and never comes easily, but holding your creation in your hands and seeing it out in the world is always a rewarding experience.” 

A member of the Class of 2006, Matt remembers his time in the bubble fondly. “The experiences and network that I built at Olin follow me every day. … I’m lucky enough to work with several other alums on my team here at Apple, as well as to count them among my lifelong friends. Olin is an incredibly special place and taught me so much—both academically and otherwise.” 

Matt was able to choose to attend Olin, in part, because the 100 percent merit scholarship in place at the time made an Olin education accessible even to a kid from Chicago with no college fund. After Olin, he went on to Stanford with the support of a Graduate Fellowship. “The incredible combination of the support and the education that I’ve received gave me the freedom to follow my heart and to seize opportunities… I remain humbled by the generosity I’ve received and view it as a privilege, not an obligation, to pay that forward whenever I can.” 

And paying it forward is exactly what he has been doing since his senior year at Olin. Beginning with his senior class gift, Matt has donated to Olin consistently since graduation. Over the years he has channeled his giving into student-focused initiatives like the Alumni Merit Scholarship Fund and the Richard K. Miller Scholarship Fund. Three years ago, he decided to do something more for Olin students and as something of a challenge to his fellow alumni.

Matt approached Olin with a proposal to endow a scholarship that would cover the remaining tuition expenses for a student meeting a few key criteria. Every year, through his own donation and the benefit of Apple’s corporate matching program, Matt now makes a sizable gift to his own fund—the Matthew D. Hill Endowed Scholarship Fund.

“By accelerating my giving and setting up a dedicated scholarship fund, I’m hoping to do two things: first, to make a difference in the lives of individual students and to share with them the same freedom that I enjoyed, and second, to show every student—past, present, and future— that they too can make a difference now and that there’s no reason to wait.” 

Matt says that in addition to a love of building things, Olin instilled in him the value and power of a story. “I’m hopeful that telling my story here does the same and connects with and inspires others to give back too.”

When Ray and Pam Marra’s sons Greg ’10 and Chris’12 were in high school, an Olin marketing piece wrapped in an anti-static plastic bag and sealed with duct tape arrived in the mail.

That caught the boys’ attention, remembers Ray. 

Greg visited Olin a few days after his high school junior year and liked the feel of the campus—new and modern vs. old ivy-covered buildings at other colleges. But more than the buildings, he—and later, Chris—could really relate to the students. “Greg was very drawn to Olin’s unique curriculum,” says Ray. “After that initial introduction, Greg pretty much made up his mind. He easily saw how Olin was different, and that captivated him.” In the end, Chris chose Olin, too, after initially considering studying pre-law or business at an Ivy League school.

One of Ray and Pam’s memories of Greg’s senior year underscores this. “I remember Greg’s SCOPE project—an autonomous vehicle. It was operating well toward the end of the year. But then the day before the sponsoring organization was scheduled to come to campus and see the final demonstration, the vehicle stopped working. Greg told me after the fact how the team calmly and quickly made a fix. ‘We just sat down, assessed the situation, gave each person an assignment; we knew that we had to explore and test until we found the issue and then fix it.’Which is what they did.”

“While Olin is small, the students have a very wide range of backgrounds, come from many states, and pursue a variety of interests. Both Greg and Chris grew personally because of that exposure,” says Pam. “That exposure also raised their awareness of a wider world and a wider job market. Since both had been interested in technology from a young age, it was no surprise that they headed to the West Coast to do summer internships at Microsoft and Google.” Both have now worked for Meta (formerly Facebook) for the past 10 years.

“We can’t conceive where else our sons would have gotten as impactful of an education and growth experience as they did at Olin,” says Pam. “We want to make sure that, for years to come, others get to experience that as well.”

Ray and Pam have the unique distinction of being Olin’s longest consecutive parent donors—16 years and counting. “We hope that our annual donations demonstrate our gratitude to the Olin community for preparing our sons for purposeful, fulfilling careers, and for giving them the knowledge and personal skills that allowed them to be successful in their post-college lives.”

“Olin recently turned 20 years old. That is still very young. With only about 1,300 alumni, Olin only reaches so far out into the engineering and business worlds.

Because of Olin’s size and culture, it really is like a family. By supporting Olin financially, we are demonstrating the strength of our bond with the school. It’s one small way to say thank you for the generous scholarships that Greg and Chris and their peers were so fortunate to receive.”

Evan Cusato ’20 hasn’t traveled too far from the Olin campus in the two years since his graduation. In fact, it’s just about five miles from Olin to Giner Labs, where he now works as an engineer.

Giner develops a broad range of products, from medical devices to energy storage systems to the oxygen generators that give astronauts air in space. He started off as an individual contributor working on spacecraft life support systems and is now leading projects and building out a team of people. “After Olin, I can go wherever I’m needed and just jump in,” said Evan.

Part of that work included advocating that Giner invest in a SCOPE team, which is now running. While Evan can’t give too many details about the specifics of the project, he can say that he believes Olin students are uniquely equipped to tackle the kinds of complicated engineering problems that Giner specializes in.

Most of the challenges we encounter in business today are not finite, he explains. They are “wicked” problems, the kind that are difficult to solve because there is no consistent set of rules and no true right answer. Some solutions work better than others. Some don’t work at all. “The Olin students who work on our projects ask insightful questions and know how to just jump in. I can give them a nebulous objective outside of their sphere of experience, and they will not shy away from it.”

While at Olin, Evan was part of the effort to reinvent The Shop, along with Aaron Hoover—who died from a brain tumor in 2021—Daniela Faas, and Bruce Andruskewicz. “I had a lot of very specific but inadvertent learning experiences while at Olin, largely made possible because Olin is a small community and is willing to give trust and resources to its students,” he said. In part, that’s why Evan gives back through his donations. “You never know when lightning will strike. I want to do what I can to give future members of the Olin community the freedom to find those kinds of experiences for themselves.”

Evan left Olin in March 2020 with a Fauxmencement farewell. But he returns often, most recently for Alumni Weekend 2022. Proximity to other Oliners is something Evan relishes. “The ability to simply start a conversation with a group of people from different backgrounds, who I may not know, doesn’t exist in many places. The fact that those same welcoming people consistently display such intelligence and depth of character makes the Olin community singularly unique for me.”

Supporting the success of the whole Olin community is one of the reasons Evan is driven to give. “Faculty and staff are all a part of making Olin special. I know many of Olin’s employees personally. I know what resources they have access to and what their dreams for the future are,” he said. “I’m donating to not only support the vision of the college but support the people there who I care about. I want to help enable their success.”

Despite the upheaval brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the past few years have been busy ones for Diana Dabby, professor of electrical engineering and music.

Diana has authored a new patent and received $300,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her musical variations project, CantoVario.

CantoVario involves research at the interface of musical variation, chaos science, signal processing, and acoustics. With three active projects in the works—an Audio Variation Engine, a MIDI Variation Engine, and a Chaos+Music Science Museum Exhibit prototype—Diana has broad ambitions to change the way musicians and nonmusicians listen to, interact with, and create music, both on- and offline.

Her work with musical variation has also infused her artistic process. She composed “Parallel Lives, Distant Mirrors” to explore parallel universes in Iraq and America. The work offers audiences a new kind of concert experience: a variation concert where seat location determines which variation they hear.

To support the Olin Conductorless Orchestra, she authored “The Engineers Orchestra: a conductorless orchestra for developing 21st century professional skills.” It received a Best Paper Award as part of the ASEE 2021 Distinguished Lecture Series. The paper advances an argument for establishing conductorless orchestras at engineering schools.

As the college eased out of COVID restrictions, Diana had to figure out how to introduce live music back into the Olin community.

“Preparing for live music again at Olin turned out to be an odyssey,” she said. As an example, the Wired Ensemble course involves string, wind, brass, percussion, and vocal ensembles rehearsing and performing throughout the semester. Considerations of PPE, air exchanges, and safe rehearsal/performance practices pervaded the academic year. For OCO auditions, she ended up reserving five separate rooms, then timing warmup and audition slots in coordination with Olin’s air exchanges in the MAC so that enough time elapsed between wind/brass players and other players. “It was like solving a giant puzzle!” she says. It was well worth it, though, to see friends, family, and colleagues enjoying live music on campus once again.

For years, Olin has been Diana’s professional as well as creative home. She describes the college as a “remarkable community of people, all working together under a creative umbrella that resonates and delivers.”

Every year, she has committed to giving back by donating to the Olin Fund.

“I believe in Olin’s mission, Engineering for Everyone. I’m also grateful for the long rope Olin has given me to create in all facets of my intellectual and artistic life, whether engaged in teaching, research, or composing a new work,” she says. “Simply stated, at Olin, I find creativity in all I do, often coupled with the freedom to take risks. This is a community that’s resonant with the future, yet it starts with us in the here and now. It just feels natural to give back to the institution that’s given us so much.”

In 2013, Jessica McCarthy joined the Olin community as program coordinator for BOW (Babson-Olin-Wellesley Collaboration). She eventually landed within SCOPE, one of Olin’s signature capstone programs.

Her role has evolved and changed, much like the program itself. “I see the changes within SCOPE as a paradigm of the Olin ethos of constant innovation and improvement. As our original capstone, SCOPE offered a unique opportunity for external sponsors and undergraduate students to collaborate with one another in an authentic way to solve real-world problems…But at Olin, we continue to ask how it could be made more robust, more impactful,” says Jessica.

Those questions have led, most recently, to a redesign of the SCOPE program, which now has faculty and staff co-directors and more intentionality in the types of projects offered to students every year. The SCOPE collaborative team includes Jessica; Sarah Bloomer, SCOPE academic director; Ruth Levine, director of Strategic Industry Partnerships; and a rotating group of faculty partners. All SCOPE projects are now aligned with the expertise and interest of the incoming senior class and with Olin’s mission to create value and have a positive impact.

In 2019, as a member of the Presidential Search Committee, Jessica was one of the first Oliners to meet Gilda Barabino, who would soon become Olin’s second president. “I was confident that Gilda would lead us to develop a new strategy that aligns with the goals and values of our community.” Two years in, that has turned out to be true, with the adoption in May of Olin’s new strategic plan. “This strategic plan distills many years of discussions and ideation into a digestible and deliberate representation of our collective pivot,” said Jessica. “My past experience with SCOPE has made me particularly interested in our focus on impact-centered education. I’m hoping to be able to contribute to new programs and efforts to bring additional opportunities for our students to have meaningful, authentic experiences that will inform their lives after Olin. It’s an exciting time to be here!”

Jessica’s upbringing has been a powerful motivator in her pursuit of a career at a mission-driven organization. Growing up in a family that struggled financially, Jessica saw firsthand how an education can help shape a life. “Neither of my parents graduated from college and, as a result, did not have the luxury of following their passions— they needed to take jobs that paid the bills.” For her part, Jessica relied on scholarships and aid to fund her education through graduate school. She donates to Olin to ensure that Olin continues to fulfill the promise of its founding precepts. “By supporting Olin, I hope to allow the college to continue to offer to meet the financial needs of those who would otherwise not be able to join our community. The gifts, perspectives, and experiences of these individuals are an important part of how Olin will achieve Engineering for Everyone.”

I’ve always been excited about engineering and science, and I loved to tinker with things that my parents would bring home from work,” says Andy Barry ’10. “When I learned about Olin, I was really sold on the project-based learning atmosphere, and I’ve been interested in that kind of work ever since.”

After graduating from Olin with a degree in electrical and computer engineering, Barry went directly into a Ph.D. program at MIT in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He entered the world of robotics research and began working on autonomous drones—specifically fixed-wing UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles).

After earning his Ph.D., Barry began working at Boston Dynamics, where he worked for five years on the now well-known Spot, a quadruped robot. Barry’s work focused on increasing functionality in the robot’s arm; he even became “YouTube famous” when a viral video of Spot featured him in the background.

After seeing Spot through the product life cycle, Barry started considering what he wanted to do next. An avid reader of academic papers, he realized that some of the machine learning techniques he’d been using at Boston Dynamics were starting to take off in the field of biology—a class that Barry had taken and loved in his time at Olin.

Without any connections in the field, Barry began sending out applications. He found a good fit at the Broad Institute in Ben Deverman’s lab, where he is now a machine learning scientist working on gene therapy aimed at safely and effectively treating patients with severe genetic conditions.

“It’s been a wild ride, going from someone who was pretty senior in an industry to being kind of at the bottom again and learning how to do new things,” says Barry. “But this is a very ‘Olin’ thing to do—jumping in and figuring out how to teach yourself to do something you’ve never done before.”

Barry continues to give back to Olin each year to ensure other students have the opportunity to learn these same lifelong lessons.

Barry was a young professional still early in his career when Olin’s full-tuition scholarship became a half-tuition scholarship for students. For Barry, the opportunity to graduate from college debt-free was “the chance of a lifetime.” That is why he supports the Alumni Merit Scholarship Fund each year.

Olin’s new vision of Engineering for Everyone resonates with Barry and his classmates. When supporting the AMSF, he thinks of families that can’t afford to send their kids to school; students who can’t afford to work for non-profits; students who want to accept jobs that focus on engineering for people who don’t have similar resources.

“Graduating from Olin with no debt offered my classmates and me a lot of flexibility,” says Barry. “We were very fortunate. Making a gift that can help that happen for other people is meaningful to me.”

“Now is the time to pay back some of the money Olin spent educating me.”

Catherine Chen and Feng Pan, parents of Emma Pan ’21, live just 15 minutes from campus, but Catherine remembers despite the family’s proximity to campus, Emma didn’t come home until the Thanksgiving break.

When she finally did come home for a visit, Emma wasn’t alone. Beginning that first fall and continuing throughout the pandemic, Emma always had a group of Oliners in tow. “Olin feels like a big family; it feels like home,” says Catherine.

Emma was an art student who also happened to excel in math in high school, and her parents were surprised to see her end up at an engineering school. But the Olin environment “gave her the power to do this kind of engineering program and gave her the opportunity to take on leadership roles,” says Feng. “This was the right school for her.”

Catherine and Feng appreciate the community of creative-minded students at Olin—especially the way they can see and identify opportunities to create things that benefit society.

Olin’s style is so unique, added Feng. “It brings real-world projects to the classroom. Once students graduate, they can easily solve many kinds of problems.” Emma never had difficulty finding an internship or summer fellowship, said Catherine, something they were impressed by and incredibly proud of. Their daughter was able to be selective in selecting a fellowship because she was so well prepared.

Catherine and Feng continue to give back to Olin’s UROP and Innovation Funds because Emma benefited from them so deeply as a student.

“We want to continue to support these bright minds financially and give them opportunities to bring their thoughts to life,” says Feng. “College is a time for kids to grow, and they need support to test their ideas. If even one of their ideas becomes a benefit for society, then that’s worth it to us.”

After 15 years at Blackbaud, Ann Marie Getchius ’06 decided it was time to try something new.

Getchius is now at Self Financial, a software company based in Austin, Texas, that helps people build up their credit. She joined the company as a principal program manager, along with a raft of other new engineers as the company staffs up after a big expansion.

Getchius lives in Rockford, Illinois, with her husband, Jamie, and three boys William (9), Alfred (6), and Robert (3). “They are good at being three little boys,” laughs Getchius.

There are deep Olin connections in the Getchius household. Jamie is a nuclear engineer who also recently joined a new company, SHINE Technologies, which is looking to be the first U.S.-based company to produce molybdenum 99.

The couple were introduced by Kathy King ’06 and met at a dinner with another Oliner, William Clayton ’06. Tom Cecil, Joelle Arnold, Sarah Oliver and Clayton remain close friends—as do many others from the first year of ’06 graduates.

Getchius recalls those early days of living in trailers, the small class sizes, the professors, and the emphasis on communication skills and entrepreneurship as well as technical skills. She believes that rare combination of skills is what allows her to have a thriving career in program management. “You are an engineer, but an engineer with perspective. Getchius says she graduated from Olin with a degree and something more; a network, a community, and a give-back mentality that has stayed with her.

Jamie attended the Naval Academy and also graduated from college debt-free. “When you aren’t beholden to paying loans, you are able to pay it forward. I have been given a world-class education and have the freedom to pursue projects that make a difference. I urge the classes that come after us to consider that with your Olin scholarship, you are being given a gift; what are you going to do with it?”

As to why they decided to join Olin’s Legacy Circle and make a bequest to the college in their estate plans, Getchius says it’s really quite simple.

“We are so very thankful for the opportunities we have had and want other qualified and deserving people to have the blessing of similar opportunities. We don’t have student debt and hope that we are able to give that benefit to current and future students, giving them the freedom to do great things.”