Alumni Information

I am Community School

Our middle school graduates excel in local public and private high schools, as well as preparatory schools along the east coast. CS graduates have been valedictorians and salutatorians around the Roanoke Valley, have earned International Baccalaureate degrees, attended the Roanoke Valley Governor’s School and earned numerous awards.

College Acceptances

Our alumni attend top higher education programs, from small liberal arts colleges to large state universities, Ivy League institutions, and programs in other countries. They pursue degrees in disciplines ranging from engineering to the fine arts and from chemistry to creative writing. Many CS alumni pursue graduate and professional degrees.

Alumni Update Blog

From the first graduates in the early 1970s, Community School’s alumni have a long history of outstanding educational and career success. Our graduates are confident, responsible individuals who possess strong academic skills and know how to apply those skills across a broad range of disciplines in a variety of learning and work environments. Former CS students enjoy successful careers throughout the country and abroad. They are doctors, lawyers, professional artists and musicians, teachers, engineers, translators, counselors, scientists, researchers, and business owners and executives.

We love to hear from our alumni and post the updated information that they send us on a regular basis. Alumni and alumni families who want to share information with our school community should send information to victoria@communityschool.net. We appreciate receiving our alumni’s old and new photos and links to their publications, artistic creations, productions, news stories, and other accomplishments.

Alumna’s Love of Learning Shines in Multi-Disciplinary Career

Alumni in Focus — February/March 2019

Hannah Mulford

What are you up to these days? Tell us about your accomplishments since leaving Community School.

After graduating high school, I went to Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. I graduated Cum Laude with a BS in Media Arts and Technology with minors in Advertising & Public Relations and History. I earned two minors because I have varied interests and I luckily had the time in my schedule to pursue them. The main focus of my major was centered on studying how we interact with print media and digital media over time and what those trends could mean for the future (spoiler alert: print isn’t going to die for a while). In college, I found some amazing mentors and discovered during my capstone project that I really enjoy project management.

After graduation in May 2017, I moved to Minneapolis, MN for an internship at a direct mail company managing accounts. One of my mentors called me in towards the end of that internship and told me about another direct mail company that needed my skill set and interest in cross-media marketing, so I moved to the Boston area and worked there for nine months on marketing automation for their larger clients. I was with the company until they decided that they didn’t want to move forward with cross-media products anymore. And with that, I was laid off of my first job real job. All of that happened last summer.

After that, I really came to a crossroads and had to think a lot about what I wanted to be doing ten years from now, and how to set myself up for success. I took some time off while applying for jobs and travelled alone to Edinburgh and Copenhagen, which was a lot of fun and where I did a lot of Eat, Pray, Lovestyle soul searching. I ended up leveraging my mentor network from college again and landed a job as a Project Manager at an IT company this fall.

I’m really enjoying the challenge of establishing new workflows with my team. I want to continue down the Project Management path because I like that the work requires creative problem solving and teamwork and that each challenge is unique and different. I love that I can have the freedom to explore different fields throughout my career, and I’m learning something new every day. I’m currently studying to take the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification exam, which will boost my qualifications both now and into the future.

How do you feel that your time at CS influenced or prepared you for your academic and/or career path going forward?

I think that Community School, in the four years I spent there, solidified a lifelong drive to keep learning and being curious about the world. This curiosity has led me to keep diverse interests throughout my education and into my career. In college, as I mentioned above, I took a lot of classes not necessarily related to my degree. I was involved in a variety of on-campus organizations and now, post-graduation, I haven’t been afraid to try new things or things I haven’t studied yet. I think that learning to value the process of learning, as opposed to learning to get to an end goal such as a good grade, really helped me to not be afraid of things I don’t know about. I can learn anything if I have the time and drive to put the effort in.

Do you have any additional reflections or thoughts on Community School?

I still think back on and mention my time at Community School frequently. I tell my friends about how I had three recesses and sat in beanie bags and didn’t have classes on Friday or grades and they are all fascinated by it. I just posted on Facebook recently that I really only log on to the website anymore in part to see what all of my peers from Community School are up to. I don’t really speak to any of them anymore, but my old classmates are doing cool things now that we’re all (mostly) grown up.