Alumni Legacy Family: Anne Gifford Ewing, Class of 1992 - Trusts and Estates Lawyer

 

I started at Clairbourn as a preschooler and graduated from 8^th grade in 1992, so I was a lifer! I went to high school at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, and then to Stanford University for bachelors and masters degrees. I went to UC Hastings for law school.

 

 

I have so many vivid memories of Clairbourn — it was part of the fabric of my childhood. More than any one event, what stays with me is what Clairbourn’s atmosphere felt like as a child ― the encompassing sense of feeling safe, happy and loved in this beautiful place surrounded by kind people.

 

 

I have not served as a trustee, but my late father, G. Grant Gifford, served as a trustee for a number of years throughout the 1980s when I was a student. Among other projects, he was part of the group that hired now-retired head of school, Dr. Nafie. A few years later, the group put together a long-term master plan and fundraising to update the campus. Among other projects, they built the MPB, and the music, art and library buildings.

 

He would be so pleased to see how the campus has been improved over the years to its gorgeous present state, and how well the school has adapted to contemporary needs while preserving the heart of what makes Clairbourn so special. My mother, Carolyn Gifford, also contributed so much to Clairbourn during my student years ― volunteering with the CFA, being a Girl Scout troop leader for the girls in my grade, sewing countless costumes for our all-school shows, driving carpools and holding down the fort at home when my dad was serving at board meetings.

 

 

I have so many happy memories of class time at Clairbourn. I can remember circle time in preschool with Mrs. MacMullin. Nap time and learning to write in kindergarten with Mrs. Thompson. Fun reading in third grade with Mrs. Knight. Idolizing my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Leadbeater, and wishing I could grow up to be just like her! Adoring literature and history in junior high with teachers like Mrs. Gyatt and Mr. Taylor. I remember Mrs. Jeter jokingly threatening to defenestrate someone in sixth grade Latin class in a passionate effort to help us learn Latin verbs. Priceless!

 

My seventh-grade class may have been the first to put on a Shakespeare production, which I loved and am so glad to see continuing today. Some of my most vivid, happy memories are of learning songs and choreography with Mrs. Sensenbach for our all-school winter and spring programs, and for the old performance choir, Clairbourn Singers. I look back and am amazed by the scale of those productions! We had so much fun.

 

As far as preparation, in my opinion, what Clairbourn does best are the very most important things, especially when children are young: instilling a sense of character, kindness, an inner/spiritual life and comfort with being still, a love and appreciation for our country and its ideals, confidence in yourself as an individual while being humble rather than arrogant, exposure to a wide variety of experiences, an emphasis on qualities as much as accomplishments, and celebration of excellence in all areas, not just academic and athletic.

 

I think Clairbourn’s refreshed motto, “Creating Scholars and Leaders with Heart,” perfectly expresses what is so unique about Clairbourn. These days it’s trendy to talk about teaching children kindness and mindfulness, about teaching that emotional health is as important as academic accomplishment. Those things, the “heart” parts if you will, are frankly the hardest to get right, beyond paying lip service at a surface level. Clairbourn has been focusing on these topics forever, way before it was cool. It’s in the school’s DNA and no school does it better than Clairbourn.

 

 

Yes! A handful of my closest friends from Clairbourn are still very close friends today, and I’m loosely in touch with a lot of my classmates thanks to social media. It’s a special feeling to have close friends who have known you since childhood. The older I get, the more I realize that not everyone’s childhood circumstances allow for having lifelong friendships, and I feel really lucky to have them. You cannot make any new childhood friends once you’re an adult, so treasure them!

 

 

Well, I am thrilled to see that Clairbourn now has a strong instrumental/orchestra program. I wish we’d had that when I was a student! I was midway through my Clairbourn years when the school adopted uniforms, and it tried a few different approaches before settling on a long-term fit (ha). I think the current uniforms are utterly fantastic, and wish I’d had them from day one! I am really happy that we still do a Morning Meeting, because those consistent daily routines and messages are the core of the “heart” I talked about earlier. And I’m so glad that some of the charming historical features that make the campus special and fed my imagination as a child, like the Manor House, Admin Building and the Jungle, are still here.

 

 

I am a trusts and estates lawyer, as was my late father. I didn’t think about becoming a lawyer during my childhood years at Clairbourn, and it wasn’t what I pursued straight out of school. But looking back, seeing my dad have a busy and successful law practice, while also being so involved at Clairbourn and with his family, set an example for me of how to aim to balance my adult life, which is definitely still a challenge and work in progress. My favorite things in school were always literature and writing, foreign language, history, and music and theater. All those contribute to what I do professionally now: a love of language, an ability to read, digest and translate long documents, an interest in observing people and understanding their family stories, and an ability to be “on stage,” whether in a business meeting or a courtroom.

 

 

I started my trusts and estates law career as an aid in a probate court while I was still in law school. For many years, I was a practicing trusts and estates lawyer, meeting with clients about estate planning or incapacity or post-death matters, and appearing in probate court regularly. Currently I work for a global investment firm, Capital Group, which focuses on improving people’s lives through successful investing. Within Capital, I work in the Capital Group Private Client Services group, where I help our high net worth clients and shareholders navigate trusts and estate law issues with their investment advisor, attorney and family, as a part of our comprehensive wealth management service. Fulfilling experiences at work always turn on being able to help people through stressful situations, to help them understand complex information and make good decisions that will help protect them and their loved ones. As far as challenging experiences, I am doing this interview in April 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus stay-at-home period. Many people I talk to find this time to be an unsettling reminder of the importance of estate planning. I encourage people not to be afraid but, yes, put your estate-planning on your to-do list if you have been putting it off!

 

 

I would say two things. First, when you are at Clairbourn and later in high school and college, don’t hesitate to pursue the things that interest you and bring you joy, whether or not you see a connection between those things and a future career. I was an English and French literature major in college because I was passionate about those subjects, even though I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for a career or how those subjects would relate to my eventual career. And I did a lot of student theater, both at Clairbourn and in high school and college. I never had a desire to pursue acting professionally, but I loved student theater, so I did it.

 

As an adult, I have a job and everything is ok! Looking back, I can see how crucial to my career are skills I learned from being a literature major and doing theater: the ability to read and synthesize large volumes of complex information, the ability to write and communicate clearly, and the ability to speak publicly, among others. I know some students and parents question the wisdom of pursuing liberal arts today, wondering whether it might hinder a student’s ability to have a profitable career. That concern is understandable in a fragile, global economy with rapidly changing technology. But there really are so many things you can wind up doing as an adult if you have a liberal arts background!

 

Second, don’t worry if you don’t know what kind of path you want to take for a career. I think it’s normal to not know what you want to do professionally when you are a student. I certainly didn’t. And things change so rapidly now that I don’t think it’s even possible to know years in advance what all your career options will be once you are out of school. Just focus on doing your best, trying lots of new things and doing what you love, and the rest will take care of itself.

 

 

Any credit for helping to build Clairbourn goes to my parents, not me, but I will say that being able to send our daughter to Clairbourn has been one of life’s precious surprises. However much we may love our alma maters, and I have always loved Clairbourn, it’s not possible to plan too far in advance where to send our children. You may not know where you will live as an adult, depending on your professional or family demands, or what your child’s needs will be at any given time. You have to wait and see what unfolds, and consider all options to identify the best available fit for a child at a specific point in time, rather than making a default decision based solely on tradition.

 

With all that said, I am delighted that it worked out to send our daughter to Clairbourn, and I’m grateful that Clairbourn was here when we were ready. Our daughter loves the fact that she goes to “mommy’s school” and enjoys asking me what Clairbourn was like when I was a student. It was extremely special to get to bring my mother to Moms and Grands Visiting Day recently, and I think my late father would be pleased to know that our daughter is happy here. She represents the third generation of our family at Clairbourn, which is pretty neat!

 

This may sound silly. As a student, I was always very strong in the classroom but absolutely terrible in P.E. and the required after-school sports teams. I tried hard, but athletics were just not my strong suit and I allowed that to cause me a lot of distress and embarrassment. I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self to relax and not worry about flubbing the ball or being picked last for a sports team. This advice applies to anyone who is having to do something they aren’t good at (yet) and reflects the “growth mindset” that Clairbourn is teaching students today. Doing something hard is an opportunity because if you haven’t mastered something yet, that means you’ve got lots of room to grow. The need is to be willing to try, to do your personal best, to learn as much as you can, to try to keep your humor about the situation and find joy or value in what you are doing, and then don’t worry about the rest. Looking back, I am grateful to have experienced and learned the rules for all sorts of sports I wouldn’t have sought out on my own as a kid, because it allows me to enjoy and appreciate sports more as an adult, even if I’ll never make it to the Olympics! Even more, I think it was important character-building for me to experience something being hard and uncomfortable, to be forced to embrace the humility of not being the best at something.

 

 

I am so impressed with Clairbourn today. It has a real sense of optimism, energy and freshness, while thoughtfully preserving so much of what was good about the past. The school is better than ever and we feel lucky to be a part of it.