Alumna Interview with 2007 Graduate Avery Lovejoy

After graduating Washington and Lee University I worked at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, England (80 miles West of London). Marlborough is a private boarding school for grades 8-12 with prestigious pupils (Sting's kids went there as well as Princess Eugenie, Fergies youngest daughter) I worked as the lacrosse coach as well as a teaching assistant in the English department. The lacrosse teams played against many other boarding schools across the country as well as in Wales. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to travel during breaks and visit other cities and countries: a few I visited were Dublin, Galway, Cork, and Waterford, Ireland; Madrid, Spaid; Paris, France; Stonehenge, Avon, London, Avebury, Salisbury, Swindon, and Bath, England. It was quite an experience! (Avery with fellow 2007 grads below)

After returning from England, I worked from the end of this past August until the end of December at Spaeth Design in New York city. Spaeth design is the company that does all the Christmas windows for Macys, Lord and Taylor, Saks, and we did Cartier this year as well. I was working on all those animated windows and was pretty much in charge of the "treats" window for Lord and Taylor (it had a big gingerbread house and revolving cake) I had to work on my pastry decorating skills and use pastry bags to decorate the large house and cake carousel as if they were actually made with icing! (I used caulk).

The weekend after Thanksgiving ('08) John Richard Garland Jr., an '07 W&L alum and former baseball/football player, proposed to me. We are getting married October 10, 2009 in Greenwich, Connecticut. I will then be moving down to Fort Worth, Texas where his job is at US Growth Funds (a private equity group). For now, I am working at E C Scott group a fragrance distribution company in Norwalk, Connecticut. I am in charge of their "operations", which basically means I am in charge of updating the new system of old and new merchandise, helping to create the website for the company and keeping it current, and doing credit checks on companies that want to use us as their distributors. I will be working at E C Scott while planning the wedding and finding a job in Texas!