“Think about what you’ve gained from the communities you belong to as a sort of North Star,” Trustee Osaremen Okolo ’13 urged Upper School students during a recent talk. This reflection will be “a guiding light that will illuminate your own path in seeking opportunities to give back to those same communities.”
Okolo returned to Milton to speak about philanthropy as part of Mustangs Care Month. Since her graduation, she has been an incredibly active and engaged alumna, which eventually led her to make history in 2022 when she became the youngest member of Milton’s Board of Trustees.
Okolo is a Ph.D. candidate in the history of science and a Presidential Scholar at Harvard University. Previously, she was in Washington, D.C., working in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; the House of Representatives; the Biden-Harris Transition team; and the White House Office of the COVID-19 Response.
It was no coincidence that Okolo came to speak to students about engagement on election day. Voting is a unique opportunity to engage with many different levels of community, she explained. She began the conversation there because “voting has been essential to my own civic engagement, my own philanthropy, my own giving back to community,” she said.
“Over thirty years ago, my parents journeyed here on promise,” Okolo said. She spoke about how being a child of immigrants, her identity as a new American, and the fulfillment of promise led her to pursue a career in public service. “While my commitment to civic engagement through public service began at the dinner table at home, I now realize that it was at Milton that the seed my parents planted first began to blossom.”
When Okolo moved to Washington after college, she missed home more than she would have liked to admit. However, she connected and engaged with a group of young Milton alumni also in the area. “I kept coming back—I kept engaging—because I realized that the fellow Milton alums I got to spend time with at our ‘Milton in D.C.’ events offered me something entirely different than the fellow Capitol Hill staffers I spent all the rest of time with—something more. We had shared the incredible, unique Milton experience together, even if in different eras or over different years. And we carried that experience with us in every facet of our lives that followed.”
Her consistent engagement and involvement eventually led her to join the school’s Board of Trustees. Okolo shared with students that she defines philanthropy in three equal categories: time, expertise, and money. “What I’ve been lucky to learn since I last sat here in 2013, is that you can’t have a philanthropic mission if you don’t have the people who are volunteering, engaging, and stewarding.” Then, she shared various examples of how students could participate in all three categories.
Okolo urged students to think about the community they create and build at Milton and in the world around them. “What’s most important is that you engage and you care,” she said. “Milton teaches us to think that way. I urge you not to leave this place and forget what our motto meant to you. Think about what daring to be true in the world means to you.”
To learn more about philanthropy at Milton or to get involved, please visit www.milton.edu/graduates/volunteer.