2017 Alumni Achievement Awards

Knox celebrated the 180th anniversary of its founding with the presentation of Alumni Achievement Awards at the 2017 Founders Day Convocation on Friday, February 17, in the Muelder Room, Seymour Library.

Receiving 2017 awards were, pictured above from left: Jane Strode Miller '81, businesswoman; ​Rebecca Hollmeyer Ullman '70, certified midwife; Luella Williams '06, activist; and Harriet Drew Barringer '58, educator and volunteer​.

2017 Recipients 

Harriet Drew Barringer '58
Citation presented by Joel Estes, Visiting Instructor of Educational Studies and Chair of Educational Studies

Harriet Drew Barringer graduated from Knox College in 1958 and went on to earn a master's degree in guidance and counseling from Villanova University. She worked in education for 30 years as a math teacher and guidance counselor in Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Since retirement, Harriet has devoted her time to community service. In addition to ongoing participation in her church's life, where she is an ordained elder and has served as commissioner to the General Assembly, she has remained active in education.

Harriet tutored English as a Second Language, teaching students from the Czech Republic, Korea, Cambodia, Iran, Japan, Dominican Republic, and Germany. She was recognized as a Master Tutor in 2001 and Tutor of the Year in 2008. She assisted with the Reading Aloud with Partners program at the local elementary school for 10 years and was recognized as Senior Volunteer of the Year in 2000. She served on the Board of Directors for a local counseling center for five years, holding the position of recording secretary. Harriet has also raised five puppies for Canine Companions for Independence, a 24/7 program teaching 30 commands that are useful when the dogs are assigned to handicapped individuals.

Since 2007, Harriet has served as a Guardian ad Litem volunteer for the CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) program. During this time, she has been the voice for more than 30 children removed from their homes because of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. This involves frequent visits with the children who are in the state's care and speaking for them at their schools and during court hearings. Since 2009, Harriet has also assisted as a mentor in the one-on-one training of 36 new CASA volunteers. In 2011, she was nominated for Youth Advocate of the Year for the Volusia/Flagler County area, and in 2012, as an Outstanding Volunteer at a United Way recognition ceremony.

Harriet has deep ties to Knox. Her parents James and Sarah Drew, were Class of 1934, sister Janet Drew is Class of 1960, and brother and sister-in-law Jim and Dianna Drew are Class of 1966. Her grandfather, William Prentiss Drew, taught Latin at Knox, and Drew Hall is named in his honor.

Jane Strode Miller '81
Citation presented by Linda Dybas '64, Professor of Biology

Jane Strode Miller graduated from Knox in 1981 and went on to earn an MBA from Southern Methodist University. She is a food industry executive with experience ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Currently, Jane is the CEO of HannahMax Cookie Chips. Most recently, she was the CEO and president of ProYo, a high-protein natural food and ingredient startup. Previously, she was the CEO and president of Charter Baking Company, an organic and natural baked goods company with three bakeries and approximately 300 employees.

Prior to Charter, Jane had 25 years of experience in large consumer product companies. She was part of an executive team that brought Hostess out of bankruptcy. She served as president of the United Kingdom and Ireland division of HJ Heinz Company, where she led the acquisition and integration of HP Foods into Heinz. She ran the Western division of Bestfoods Baking. The first 14 years of her career were at PepsiCo, where she rose to president of the central division of Frito-Lay. Her management group won the firm's Herman Lay Award for excellence in sales, profits, and market share.

In addition to her work at ProYo,Jane also runs JaneKnows.com, a career website that provides support, resources, and tools for those climbing the corporate ladder. FG Press released her first book, Sleep Your Way to the Top (and Other Myths About Business Success), in 2014.

Jane serves as a board member at the University of Colorado Leeds Business School, Eldorado Springs Artesian Water, and Madhava Sweeteners. Her involvement as a mentor for young professionals and startups resulted in her being named the Lifetime Achievement Award Winner for the Denver Business Journal in 2013, the Boulder Chamber of Commerce's Women Who Light the Community in 2015, and the Naturally Boulder Industry Leader Award in 2016. In 2015, Jane established the Jane Knows Scholarship Fund at Leeds, supporting students who are the first in their family to go to college.

In December 2014, Jane returned to Knox to serve as the keynote speaker for the Career iMPACT Summit, a career development program for current students.

Jane has an outstanding record of achieving strong business results, mentoring junior executives, and managing teams through periods of significant change.

Rebecca Hollmeyer Ullman '70
Citation presented by Susan Schlaufman Deans '70

Rebecca Hollmeyer Ullman graduated from Knox College in 1970, and went on to earn a certificate of nursing and master of science degree in maternal-newborn nursing from Yale University, and a certificate in international public health from University of North Carolina. She has been a certified midwife for 26 years and has trained midwives in Tanzania and Ethiopia, as well as worked in maternal child health projects for Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Ivory Coast, Laos, and South Sudan.

Rebecca began delivering babies in the 1980s during three years in the Federated States of Micronesia. As a practical nurse, she worked in labor and delivery, pediatrics, and the emergency room; all except high-risk deliveries were done by nurses. She then settled in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where she taught nursing and worked as a certified nurse midwife in practices involving obstetrics, well woman gynecology, family planning, and other facets of women's health care.

Rebecca built Mountain Midwifery & Women's Clinic from scratch in Klamath Falls, to improve medical care for an underserved population of women. She has delivered more than 2,000 babies, many of them in extremely challenging circumstances.

After closing her practice in 2011, Rebecca took on international volunteer projects in Niger and Ethiopia. Her first assignment with MSF was an emergency project in Cote d'Ivoire in 2012, during a time of political conflict and ethnic violence. In Lao PDR, she opened a maternal-child health project in a remote province where the maternal mortality rate is the highest in Southeast Asia. In South Sudan, she trained and supervised midwives and medical assistants in a hospital-based maternity project, in region torn by violence, and where the maternal mortality rate is more than 2,000 per 100,000 births. In Nepal, she supervised and trained midwives in a temporary hospital following devastation by two earthquakes. In 2016, she returned to Cote d'Ivoire to work with the professional training of midwives, nurses and medical assistants, developing a curriculum for in-service training of maternal and postpartum professional care providers.

Rebecca has also taken on the role of speaking and writing about what she has seen and experienced in maternal and child health care, and advocating within MSF to more directly address the consequences of sexual violence.

Luella Williams '06
Citation presented by Elizabeth Carlin Metz, Professor of Theatre

Luella first traveled to New Orleans with a post-Katrina recovery trip through Knox with the American Red Cross. She has been working for the city's youth ever since, becoming a leader in New Orleans' public health and social justice sector.

Currently, Luella is the director of Up2Us Sport, an innovative nonprofit organization committed to leveraging the power of sports to help young people in underserved communities succeed, addressing challenges such as violence in the community, childhood obesity, and academic struggles. Up2Us Sports' national service program, Coach Across America, has a dual impact on the communities in which it operates-providing job readiness and an intensive youth development training program, as well as providing youth in those communities with a trained coach mentor. Luella is responsible not only with bringing this program to New Orleans, but for making New Orleans a model region by implementing the largest and highest quality program.

Prior to her position at Up2Us Sport, Luella worked in student development at Tulane University and in program management at City Year and Leading Educators.

Luella's leadership is felt not only at Up2Us Sports, but widely in the New Orleans community. She is a member of the mayor's public health taskforce, FitNOLA; plays a leadership role in the anti-violence collaborative, NOLA for Life; serves on the steering committee for the NOLA Sport for Community coalition; and was named a member of the All State Foundation Greater Good Nonprofit Leaders Program. In her spare time, Luella has been active in expanding sport opportunities for girls in New Orleans by starting the city's only girls' lacrosse program.

Also a leader during her time at Knox, Luella served as an RA and a member of Honor Board. She was a cross-country letter winner and participated in the Odyssey Mentoring Program. According to her co-worker, Megan Bartlett, "Luella is a thoughtful and dynamic leader. She does Knox College proud."

Previous Alumni Achievement Award Recipients