Forget the Debt

[caption id="attachment_10293" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The Loughlin family (photo by Martha Stewart)"][/caption]Longtime leadership supporters of the HGSE Fund, Ellie Loughlin, Ed.M.'06, C.A.S.'07, and her husband, Harvard Business School graduate Phil Loughlin, believe deeply in the potential of education to transform lives. "We love the idea of access to a great education for everyone," says Ellie, an admission associate at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge. Over the past year, Ellie has gotten an up-close look at the Ed School by serving as cochair of the HGSE Alumni Council. She recently answered a few questions about her time on Appian Way and the family's support of the school. What brought you to the Ed School? I wanted to get certified as a guidance counselor and liked that I could do it in a developmentally based program that offered a broader sense of education and had an urban focus. What were your biggest takeaways? I left wanting to change so many things and give more to different environments than I possibly could. HGSE still inspires me to be better at my job and better to kids every day. How do you think the Ed School is contributing to education reform? HGSE is creating great education leaders. Whether they lead schools, develop new programs, become superintendents, or lead national reform, they will all count on what they learned at HGSE and the people they met there to succeed. Why do you support the school each year as leadership donors to the HGSE Fund? I don't think many people start at HGSE because they're hoping to make a lot of money. The idea of the people who are changing lives being saddled with loads of debt gets to me all the time. Thanks to the HGSE Fund, the Ed School is able to offer more financial aid, and, as a result, I hope that will enable talented people to choose to be educators regardless of their financial status. That is the only way we'll get the best minds working in education.