Monie Thomas Hardwick ’74 has spent her entire adult life working in schools: After receiving her bachelor’s in history from Yale, she took a teaching internship at the Taft School. She spent 12 years there, teaching, serving as director of college placement, and earning a master’s degree in English from Middlebury along the way. When her husband, Chan, was appointed head of school at Blair Academy in 1989, she joined him there, serving in multiple roles for 24 years: teaching, running the library, overseeing new-teacher training, and, eventually, working in strategic planning and serving as director of advancement. 

“I joke that I was the utility player,” Hardwick says. “There wasn’t a job that I didn’t do at some point.”

Ironically, the all-absorbing nature of the work meant that, for a number of years, Hardwick didn’t have much free time to come back to Northfield Mount Hermon, where her love of boarding schools was born. It wasn’t until she transitioned to a second career in educational consulting that she began to reconnect with her alma mater. She joined the NMH Board of Trustees in 2018 and served for two years as co-chair, with Justin Wai ’02, of This Place, This Moment: The Campaign for Northfield Mount Hermon, the school’s $275 million fundraising initiative. 

Today, Hardwick serves as chair of the NMH Board of Trustees. “The board is made up of an extraordinary group of people whose commitment is deep and service oriented,” she says. “As board chair, I see my role as enabling them to do the best work that they can do and supporting Head of School Brian Hargrove and his work.”

Hardwick came to NMH as a 10th-grader, from Kalamazoo, Michigan. “My parents cared very much about education,” she says. “The two things they cared most about were that the school had strong academics and a diverse student body.” Northfield, recognized as the best girls’ school in the country at the time, was an easy choice to make — although her parents’ plan to send her to a single-sex school was derailed, she notes, by the news, announced not long before she enrolled, that Northfield would merge with Mount Hermon to create a coeducational school.

Hardwick flourished at NMH. “I was one of those kids who loved school and loved learning,” she says. In the classroom, she was fortunate to study with “some of the icons,” among them, Burt Clough, Tommy Donovan, Rudy Weber, Fred Johnson, and Dick Peller. She spent a year living in Hibbard Hall and two in Cottage V, riding the bus between the two campuses for classes and activities, including serving as editor of The Bridge. “The independence, for me, was huge,” she recalls. “I’m not sure I handled it particularly well, but I think I thrived on it and did a lot of growing up.”

She also forged friendships that are still meaningful all these decades later, as seen by the Class of 1974’s strong turnout for its 50th reunion. “These are the people who, other than your family, knew you during those years when you changed so much,” she says. “These are the people who remember your 15- and 16- and 17-year-old self.” 

Underscoring that bond is the profound influence NMH continues to exert in the lives of its graduates. “Many of our lives have been impacted by the values that the school and its mission represented,” Hardwick says. “I came from a family that was very public-spirited and committed to the community they lived in. The school amplified and supported those values.”

Hardwick is confident about NMH’s ability to continue to shape lives for generations to come. When she first joined the board, she says, “it was a very exciting time in the school’s history,” thanks to two important developments: In 2018, Mariah Draper Calagione ’89 became the board’s chair. Then, in 2019, the board chose Hargrove as the new head of school. 

“Now, for the first time in many years, the school has enjoyed a sustained period of outstanding leadership,” Hardwick says. Working with their colleagues, Calagione and Hargrove led the school through a period that saw the COVID-19 pandemic but also significant progress in strategic planning, fundraising, and campus construction projects. Student financial aid also increased dramatically, bolstered by the historic $50 million bequest left to the school by the late former trustee John Mitchell ’56, whose example has done so much to unlock generosity throughout the NMH community. 

Hardwick is also proud to endorse Hargrove, now in his seventh year, as “a superb leader who believes in the mission and values of the school and is ambitious for its success. … Being a head of school is a very difficult job, and Northfield Mount Hermon has been lucky to have Brian and his wife, Linda, who get up every day, dedicated to the students and the faculty and to making Northfield Mount Hermon the best school that it can be. It’s a kind of energy and commitment that Northfield Mount Hermon is extremely fortunate to have, especially in these times. I believe many alumni have reconnected and re-engaged with the school, and it’s because they have seen the impact of that sustained leadership and what it’s been possible to accomplish.”

By Maureen Turner