PCS Alumni Hall of Fame
Class of 2017
Katie Stringham Bouton
Participating to the utmost has always been Katie’s style. Right up until graduation in 1993 Katie was very involved in many activities: Student Council President, Class President (4 years), Press Club, Tower, AFS, National Honor Society, Band, SADD, HOBY, RPE, Close-Up, US Swimming & Diving Program (8 years), New England Young Writer’s Conference Award. College at the University of New Hampshire produced a B.S. in English, Journalism & Women's Studies and was followed by a M.S. in Organizational Development from Towson University.
Katie started her company in the back room of her house without any startup capital in 2004. It took grit, resilience, and fortitude to grow to the successful company it is today. Katie has always believed that “the right person in the right place can change the world”. With this philosophy, she founded Koya Leadership Partners to recruit exceptionally talented leaders to work in nonprofit organizations. Naysayers questioned Katie’s working with nonprofits, “You won’t make any money and your business will fail.” But she believed two things: 1) Nonprofits deserve access to the same talent and leadership as the corporate sector; and 2) It is possible to build a for-profit company where personal and professional lives intersect and where one's professional life can feed one's personal values. Today the Koya team numbers more than 40 professionals who partner with nonprofits across the country and around the world to match exceptional leaders with leadership opportunities. With over 20 years of experience in executive search and organizational development, Katie has built senior leadership teams at leading national and international nonprofit organizations and partnered closely with founders, boards and donors to deepen the impact of today’s most pioneering mission-driven organizations.
In addition to executive search, Katie has developed and executed professional development trainings on a variety of topics from leadership development, recruitment, and diversity and inclusion best practices.
Koya is a highly recognized company. Since 2004, Koya has led over 500 searches for some of the nation's premier nonprofits, including Amnesty International, The Obama Foundation, American Red Cross, Sierra Club, and Room to Read as well as critical smaller nonprofits such as PeaceFirst, TeachPlus, and Last Mile Health. In 2017, Koya was recognized by Forbes as one of “America’s Best Recruiting Firms” (21 out of 250!) and by Hunt Scanlon Media as one of the top 50 fastest growing executive search firms. Katie’s thought leadership has been widely quoted and published in leading publications such as the Harvard Business Review. She was featured by the Boston Business Journal as an Emerging Leader for her success as founder and CEO of Koya. In 2016 Katie was named a 2016 Boston Brava Award Winner and Future 50 Award Winner by SmartCEO, which recognizes high-impact women business leaders. She was a 2013 fellow at Pipeline Angels, a network of new and seasoned women investors that are changing the face of angel investing and creating capital for women social entrepreneurs. For the second year in a row, Katie’s search firm, Koya, was recognized by Staffing Industry Analysts for a Best Staffing Firm To Work For Award. Most recently, Katie was accepted into the 2017 Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses National Cohort.
With a strong commitment to civic leadership, Katie serves on numerous boards including the national board of IGNITE, a bipartisan initiative that builds political ambition in young women. In 2016 she was invited to attend the White House sponsored United States of Women Summit focused on key gender equality issues. Visit https://koyapartners.com/blog/declare-your-ambition/ to see Koya’s sponsored PSA encouraging young women to engage in their communities at the local, state, and federal level.
Philanthropy is a trait of Katie’s. She is a long time supporter of her alma mater, The University of New Hampshire and UNH’s Swimming & Diving program. Katie also supports the Women’s Studies Program, including funding the Social Justice Leadership Project. More recently, Katie has been involved with the Center for Social Innovation & Enterprise, including serving as a judge for the NH Social Innovation Challenge which engages aspiring and practicing student and community social entrepreneurs in designing novel, sustainable, business-orientated solutions to some of society’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. In 2016, Koya invested over $200,000 in services and donations and launched the "Passion Project" initiative. Each employee is given $1500 annually to donate to the nonprofit of his or her choice. To date, Koya has given away over $500,000 to nonprofits across the country. In 2016, Katie created an endowed fund for five students from underserved communities in MA to attend the Bread Loaf Young Writer’s Conference in Middlebury, VT.
Katie is a loving mother and wife to her two sons and husband Chris. She is a swimmer, a voracious reader, and an avid traveler with a personal life goal of seeing all 7 continents.
In Katie’s own words, “What I learned at PCS, the friendships I made, and the community that shaped me will never leave me. PCS has been the bedrock of all that came after for me, both professional and personally. I learned how to be a leader at PCS and more importantly I learned that participating fully in your community is critically important.”
Certainly, PCS is exceptionally proud to honor Katie’s participating so fully in her company, her community, and her world. Koya Leadership Partners is the result of Katie's determination to build a diverse, virtual company that serves as a vehicle for social change. Katie has shown us that strategic thinking can bring about social and environmental change, making our world a more receptive, more engaging, more just, more inspired earth.
For more information about Katie’s business, see: http://www.koyapartners.com. To read highlights of some notable Koya placements see: http://www.infinitedifference.com/.
George Harold Fry
George Fry began attending Pavilion Central School in 1948, graduating in 1961. While in school, he played on the basketball and football teams, was a member of Future Farmers of America, the rifle and bowling clubs and was in the Junior play. Outside of school, George was a member of the Boy Scouts and spent much of his free time working on his uncle’s/grandfather’s farm.
He attended Alfred Agricultural and Technical College where he was a member of its National Rifle Association championship team. He graduated with an associate’s degree and returned to the area, finding employment at local airports: Page Airways in Henrietta, Bickford Airport in LeRoy and the Genesee County Airport. He became a certified aircraft mechanic, earned both his private and commercial pilot’s licenses and was a licensed airplane inspector. And in 1965, he married fellow high school classmate Barbara Loveland.
Outside of the peaceful and happy life George was leading, war was raging in another part of the world: Vietnam, and in 1968 he was drafted into the United States Army. Not going was not an option for George because he felt it was his responsibility to answer the call of duty. He became a Specialist 4, a radio-telephone operator with Company D, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry.
On July 11, 1969, his company was involved in a combat operation in the A Shau Valley. His company was advancing along a trail when it encountered a heavy volume of enemy small arms, automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade fire from an unknown-sized enemy force in well-fortified positions. During the battle, two radio-operators were killed and their radios destroyed. In addition, George’s Company D lost contact with one of the other platoons because of uneven terrain.
Realizing communication was needed immediately, George climbed a nearby ridge so he could attempt communication with all the company’s platoons. On this ridge, he effectively established radio contact within the company and to the Battalion Command post, allowing the company commander to maneuver his units and to coordinate with the Battalion S-3 element. This communication made it possible for artillery fire to be called in, for an assault to be coordinated and for medevac to be called in for the wounded.
The ridge George climbed was unprotected from enemy fire but he disregarded it, all the while relaying messages. And it was while he was relaying these life-saving messages that George was mortally wounded by enemy fire. George has been described as not flashy, as someone who never desired to bring attention to himself, but hiswillingness to put his life in jeopardy and his heroic actions in battle saved many lives, even as it cost his own.
For his sacrifice and bravery, George was awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, the Vietnam Campaign Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation Ribbon, for “extraordinary heroism in action”, the Purple Heart Medal, the Bronze Star for “distinguishing himself by outstanding meritorious service in connection with ground operations against hostile forces.”, and the Silver Star which is the United States’ third highest award for heroism in battle: “His personal bravery and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit and the US Army.” And on May 16, 2007, George was designated a Distinguished Member of the 506th Infantry Regiment.
George was Pavilion’s only Vietnam War casualty. Growing up in Pavilion, surrounded by his family and friends, the teachers at Pavilion and his experience in Scouts, as well as his work on his family’s farm instilled in George integrity and loyalty. This loyalty and integrity prepared him for service to our country during very difficult circumstances which ultimately cost him his life as he bravely saved the lives of many others.
More information about George’s service can be found at http://www.virtualwall.org/.
Sarah Noble-Moag
Pavilion’s Hall of Fame committee uses several criteria to choose their inductees who have achieved distinction in their lives through significant contributions in personal, career and community achievements. Sarah Noble-Moag has been outstanding in each of these areas but her commitment to community service will serve as an inspiring incentive to future Pavilion graduates.
Sarah was a 1976 graduate of PCS and active in a variety of school activities including music, athletics and the Junior Miss pageant. She was a proud member of the 1975 Section V Championship Field Hockey team and the 1976 Section V Class C Championship Cheerleading squad. She was a scholar athlete as well as a member of the National Honor Society.
Sarah continued her education at Cornell University where she received her Bachelor of Science degree from the College of Human Ecology in 1980, majoring in Consumer Economics. At Cornell she was a member of the Cornell Women’s Field Hockey team and served as Captain during her Junior and Senior year. She spent a Junior semester in New York working for the Queensboro Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Children. That defining experience helped Sarah develop a passion for taking small steps which make a difference in the lives of our youth.
Following graduation, Sarah joined her family at Noblehurst Farms. This seven generation farm family in Livingston County provided her with daily lessons in community stewardship and sound agricultural practices. While raising her family, Sarah stepped back from the rigors of the 24/7 dairy business to work in student academic development at GCC’s Educational Opportunity Program and later with the
Livingston County Business Education Alliance. She was able to come back to the team at Noblehurst in 2000 as the Human Resource Manager, a role she defines primarily as the farm’s “people person.” In that unique position Sarah has the opportunity to work with a variety of committed family, friends, and employees who are mostly local but also can include folks from throughout the world, all of whom are passionate about farming. Sarah was selected to participate in Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences research study trip to Veracruz, Mexico to study the socioeconomic factors behind Hispanic immigration. She recently has worked with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Wyoming County and Community Action’s Bhutanese Refugee resettlement efforts into our rural communities and employment. Sarah’s educational background also includes successfully completing the LEAD New York program which helps participants develop leadership skills in the agricultural, food and natural resources industries and make a difference in the communities in which they live and work.
Sarah has worked within our community and beyond in a variety of volunteer efforts. She’s a member of the Northeast Agriculture Education Foundation Board promoting sound funding for agricultural programming, New York Agriculture Society, Ag Affiliates advocating for immigration reform, and Genesee Gateway Local Development Corporation. She worked alongside co-worker Gary McIntyre and a team of farm and community volunteers at Noblehurst Farms to host a benefit for the Pluta Cancer Center and also a fundraiser for the NYS Ag Society named “Feast from the Field.”
Most memorable among Sarah’s local involvement was her role on a team of volunteers who raised awareness, capital and had the wherewithal to construct the Pavilion Public Library current building. Sarah commented that “this group of committed townspeople worked creatively together finding abundant resources and talent to construct a facility which met the needs of our community and raised expectations of how a small town can serve its people.” She’s just one on a long list of Pavilion’s Friends of the Library after serving as both a Pavilion library and NIOGA library trustee. In addition, Sarah served as a member and President of the Pavilion School Board and was a recipient of the Albert Hawk Genesee Valley Educational Partnership for Distinguished School Board Service in our region. As a community member and parent in the Pavilion School district, Sarah continued to work alongside committed faculty to raise the bar in this rural school district, by volunteering with Music and Sports Booster clubs, Code of Conduct and School Building studies, and advocating for continuous student opportunity. She and her husband Tim, coached Pavilion summer soccer as their own children progressed through the program. She continues to be involved in “school to work” experiences which specifically engage students in career awareness, most specifically those opportunities in production agriculture.
Involvement in her church is an important aspect of Sarah’s life as well as another contribution to her community. She is an elder of the Covington United Presbyterian Church, serving on the Mission committee, and has served as a member of the Genesee Valley Presbytery Committee on Ministry and Migration Working Group. Sarah was a recipient of an award for both the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. Women of Faith in 2016 and Greater Rochester Community of Churches Faith in Action in 2012.
Sarah will be quick to say her opportunities to be involved in our greater community have been influenced and are inspired by a variety of teachers, teammates, pastors, community leaders and family in her life. It’s all about teamwork. As her husband fondly says, “there is no I in team”. She is married to Timothy P. Moag CPA, PCS ’76 and together with him have three children, Griffin Moag PCS ’02, Rella Moag Getty PCS ‘05 and Austin Moag PCS ’08 – “all proud Golden Gophers” and graduates of Cornell University. She enjoys farming in her garden, reading, and traveling, especially to see her four young grandchildren.
In her nomination of Sarah, Ginger Sackel (high school coach and mentor), stated that “Sarah has always been an outstanding role model who is always upbeat with a one hundred percent level of commitment that has inspired others as well.” Sarah Noble-Moag is an outstanding example for future graduates, especially those who choose to call Pavilion their hometown.
Gregory Reinhart
Gregory Reinhart grew up in Pavilion and has become an internationally renowned singer who has performed in Singapore, Brazil, Israel, Norway, and the major opera houses, festivals and concert halls of Europe and North America. He is known for his versatile “musicianship, remarkable acting and a generous and beautiful bass voice, appreciated in the concert hall and yet especially effective onstage.”
Greg graduated from PCS in 1969, and to this day credits caring Pavilionites for nurturing his interests in music. Here are Greg’s own words as he tells his story:
“Becoming an opera singer from Pavilion, NY, who lives in Paris might sound far-fetched, but it all happened naturally, inevitably, with the determination founded in confidence, some luck, and the talent that was well-nurtured from ‘way back then.'
"Mrs. Griswold spotted my strong sense of rhythm in 3rd grade, and advised my parents of some possible talent. I loved to hear the choir in my church, and couldn’t wait for my voice to change, to join the singing. My grandmother loved to sing and play the piano, so I spent hours listening to her. Mom, Leora Reinhart, bought me a piano, so I took piano lessons from age 8 (in LeRoy). Mrs. Bernice Thomas spotted my singing voice in the crowd, and helped me to prepare a solo for the first time for an assembly. I sang in the High School Chorus, also performed numerous vocal solos in concerts, and, thanks to Mrs. Joyce Noble, began private voice lessons from age 15 in Rochester, driven to and paid for by my father, Paul Reinhart. I acted in several plays, including the leading role of Charley’s Aunt, which competed in a tri-state contest in Brockport where I was awarded prize of Best Actor. I still prize the marble bookends with the bust of Dionysus that were given me. At 17 I was cast in the Batavia Rotary Show Mame, and for two years was president of the PCS Drama Club, which organized field trips to Stratford, Ontario, Rochester and Buffalo. Besides numerous teachers and town activists, at this time I was encouraged enormously by Pavilionite Teresa Gratwick Abbott. I performed while still in High School in a SUNY Geneseo summer production of Most Happy Fella. During my last two summers I took jobs for college money with the PCS Janitorial Dept doing general maintenance, painting indoors and out, and most enjoyably scrubbing down incinerators!
"I attended SUNY Geneseo (1969-1971) as a Music/Drama major, and performed many plays and musicals there. I was a member of the Geneseo Chamber Singers, and made my first summer tour of Europe during a 6-week concert tour. In 1971 I was accepted as an undergraduate at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music, and received generous work/study and private scholarships. I also toured Europe two more times with the NEC Chorus, and finally obtained the degrees Bachelor of Music With Distinction and Master of Music in Applied Voice in 1977, and was featured in the graduation exercises accompanied with orchestra. I received a full scholarship to Tanglewood Institute of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as in 1978 for the Graz, Austria Academy (AIMS) for continued training for an opera career in Europe. There, I met a voice teacher who lived in Paris.
"After two years in Paris as a founding member with William Christie of Les arts florissants, including tours, concerts and recordings, I was engaged to sing the title role in a rare opera by Paisiello. This led to being engaged in 1983 in Paris for the bass role of Huascar in Les indes galantes (excerpts available on YouTube), the first staged opera of Rameau with baroque orchestra in modern times. A great success, widely commented by the press, we toured from Paris to Venice, Italy. Engagements followed successively for 30 years to this day: concerts such as Handel’s Messiah in Oxford, England; Rossini operas in the important Rossini Festival in Pesaro, Italy, the composer’s birthplace; numerous Handel operas in Halle, Germany, at the Handel Festival. Many more engagements followed with leading European opera houses and concert halls from Paris, Bordeaux, Nice, London, Madrid, Venice, as well as across Italy to Palermo. Apart from various US concert engagements in Boston and New York, my opera debut in New York came in 2001 with the New York City Opera, in Agrippina. This success led to being engaged in 2003 at the Metropolitan Opera (in The Magic Flute), where I am still a Principal Artist, specializing in the leading bass roles of Mozart and Wagner. Other US highlights include singing Samson and Delilah with the Washington (DC) National Opera, conducted by Placido Domingo, and singing as guest with the San Francisco Opera. After a last minute step-in in a Wagner opera (I had studied it at the Met) in Lisbon, Portugal, I was asked to travel to Brazil for several more Wagner and Mozart adventures, in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The high point of my career may well be being asked to sing the role of Don Quixote, the deluded knight errant in Massenet’s opera Don Quichotte (final scene on YouTube). The consummate bass role required maturity, humor, a stentorian but sometimes tender voice, and, of course, a lanky profile. The production was designed around me, and was greatly rewarding both personally and artistically. It also won the 2016 Critic’s Prize for Best Opera Production of the Year in Brazil!
"At the present time, I am honorably retired from the Paris Opera. In Paris my time is taken up with coaching and teaching, forming a duo with my teacher of long standing Jacques Chuilon, voice teacher and musicologist.
"Writing these lines, I’m reminded of the phrase "It Takes a Village". My earliest teachers from grade school gave me ample encouragement; my high school teachers spotted my talents and gave me so many chances to channel and exploit them (special mention to Mrs. Joyce Noble since she is still with us). They all gave me limitless vision and dreams. Both of my parents spent many hours driving me to lessons, waiting, and helped me to finish college. Locally, Mrs. Teresa G. Abbott from Linwood offered to me as an adolescent the possibility to see the best Shakespeare performed onstage in Stratford, Ontario. A patroness business lady from Boston (where I conducted a church choir for two years) helped me to make the bridge from Boston to Paris, during two crucial years."
Gregory’s career has taken him across the globe many times. His repertoire is varied and vast. His website,www.gregoryreinhart.com, as well as You Tube, offer more details, photos, and videos. PCS is extremely fortunate to have the multitalented Mr. Reinhart among our alumni.