Alumni Awards
The Blake School honors distinguished alumni through our alumni awards program. Alumni from Northrop Collegiate School, Blake School and The Blake School are recognized in the following categories:
Outstanding Alumni Award
The Outstanding Alumni Award honors alumni who have demonstrated outstanding leadership, achievement and influence in their field and/or in their community activities. If you would like to nominate yourself or a fellow alum, please fill out the nomination form here.
Young Alumni Award
The Young Alumni Award honors graduates of Blake from the last 25 years who have made significant contributions to civic or professional organizations, who are driven by a bold sense of curiosity and openness to differences and who constantly strive to be an engaged, courageous and intelligent world citizens. If you would like to nominate yourself or a fellow alum, please fill out the nomination form here.
Jenny Stephens Hagen Spirit Award
The Jenny Stephens Hagen Award honors alumni who have shown commitment to The Blake School community in the following ways: have devoted extraordinary time and energy to the school; have served as stalwart enthusiasts for the school; and have promoted, attended and supported with vigor the involvement of alumni in The Blake School community events. If you would like to nominate yourself or a fellow alum, please fill out the nomination form here.
Athletic Hall of Fame
The Athletic Hall of Fame highlights the accomplishments of alumni, coaches and friends and celebrates the school’s sports history. In addition to this year’s inductees, the Hall of Fame honors members of Blake’s Hockey Hall of Fame and past recipients of the Alumni Athlete of the Year award, which includes 40 alumni spanning multiple sports and 30 years. To nominate alumni, coaches or Bears supporters for the Athletic Hall of Fame, complete this form. Nominations are welcome year-round, but consideration for the following year closes on Jan. 31. The ceremony and reception are held the weekend of Homecoming & Reunion.
2025 Recipients and Biographies
James Stock ʼ74: Outstanding Alumnus
James Stock '74 is Harvard University’s vice provost for climate and sustainability and the director of the Harvard Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. He leads the development of a coordinated university-wide strategy to address climate change and bring greater focus and visibility to Harvard’s climate and sustainability work. He was named vice provost in 2021; the Salata Institute was established in 2022.
For nearly 40 years, Stock has taught at Harvard and is the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, for which he was also named in 2007. His academic research areas are macroeconomic forecasting, monetary policy, econometric methods and environmental policy. Stock chaired the Harvard economics department from 2006-09.
Stock currently serves on the panel of advisors of the Congressional Budget Office and on the National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee. He is a university fellow at Resources for the Future and a nonresident senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institute’s Center on Regulation and Markets.
He co-wrote “Introduction to Econometrics,” a leading undergraduate econometrics textbook. Stock is the co-editor of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity and on the editorial board of NBER’s Environment and Energy Economics publication. He was the co-editor of Econometrica from 2009-12 and the managing editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics from 1992-2003.
Stock served as a member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers in 2013-14. He won the Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET) Isaac Kerstenstzky Scholarly Achievement Award in 2010. He was elevated to a fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006.
Stock holds a M.S. in statistics and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale University, receiving a bachelor's in physics. While at Blake, he was a member of the glee club, won the Yale trophy and the Spirit of the Blake School award. He now resides in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Stock will be honored at Breakfast at Blake on Sept. 26 when he will be the featured speaker.
Thea Traff ʼ09: Young Alumna Award
Thea Traff '09 is a freelance editorial photographer. Her portraiture focuses on the psychology of human communication and connection through the use of dramatic lighting and sculptural poses.
Traff’s work is frequently used for profiles and articles in the New York Times including commissions of Robert de Niro, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig and President Joe Biden for the New Yorker.
Traff started her career as a photo editor at the New Yorker Magazine in 2013. She likens her experience in this role as “editorial photography graduate school.” From 2018-20, Traff was senior photo editor at Time Magazine. She credits these experiences as further developing her storytelling abilities and her photography approach.
Traff received her undergraduate degree at Colgate University receiving a bachelor's in philosophy, art and art history. While at Blake, she played basketball, softball and tennis. She studied abroad for a semester in Switzerland in 2006.
Traff will be honored at Breakfast at Blake on Oct. 30 when she will be the featured speaker.