“We’re limited by the fact that this is a high school. We want to supplement the curriculum with stuff that people are interested in.”
For Finn Weigand ’25, a co-founder, that idea—supplementing the Upper School’s (US) curriculum—is the goal of the Masterclass Club. Before the club was founded, US students had little exposure to what life beyond the school could look like. Finn, alongside Rohan Jayaraman and Kenneth Tsay (both ’25), founded the club earlier this year to address that concern after applying for and receiving an innovation grant.
The club evolved over time. In fact, Finn said that the club started off as a completely different idea, eventually transforming into the current Masterclass Club.
“We were also thinking of another club called ‘life skills’ club where we would teach people how to do their taxes and stuff, but then we found out there was a senior seminar that does that,” he said. “We first started the club as an idea, because I saw an ad on YouTube for the Masterclass website.”
For the group, after coming up with the original idea, the process going forward was fairly simple, Finn explained.
“We had to fill out the club form, and in terms of having our first meeting we just sent out cold emails. We had to get the speakers approved by the administration.”
And just like that, the Knights Masterclass club was born.
The club aims to showcase professionals from a variety of fields through talks at the US. The founders try to pick relevant and interesting fields, such as artificial intelligence or cybersecurity. So far, the Masterclass Club has hosted Joe Kennedy, a United States representative, and David Cohen, the Deputy Director of the CIA, among others.
The club tries to hold talks once or twice a month. Rohan described the act of convincing speakers to come to the US as more of an “art.”
“Working, connections, getting someone you know to introduce you to someone they know, those are big steps for setting up these things,” he said.
The club’s leaders encountered difficulty trying to contact Joe Kennedy, one of their first speakers. Since then, the process of recruiting guests has become much easier, Rohan said.
“Name-dropping helps a lot to be honest, and using the ‘I know this person’ just to create some sort of connection, even if it’s a really surface level connection.”
Rohan said he found that alums of the school were much easier to approach.
“It’s a lot easier to get people who are connected with BB&N,” he said. “I had to organize another panel of purely non-BB&N people, and it takes a while versus people who are alumni or parents of BB&N students who are much more willing to come in.”
Upper School Director of Development, Micheael O’Brien, helps contact many of the alum speakers. He, like the founders, is specifically interested in reaching out to those who are at the top of their respective fields.
“More often than not, the presenters accept,” he said. “And they make time to come speak at the US.”
The club’s leaders have aspirational goals and hopes. According to Mr. O’Brien, the club is “facilitating the connection between the BB&N of today and the BB&N of yesterday,” solidifying the club’s legacy for years to come, he said.
Fitzgerald Hung ’25, who has attended four events, understands that the Masterclass Club provides a rare opportunity.
“The speakers are very unique people,” he said. “It’s an experience that we shouldn’t take advantage of.”
In particular, he said that Moungi Bawendi’s P ’20 speech resonated with him.
“It’s such an international thing, and it’s really amazing that someone in the BB&N community is a Nobel Prize winner.”
Around 50 faculty members and students attended Mr. Bawendi’s speech, which was a relief to the founders. Kenneth, Rohan, and Finn were nervous about the attendance rates for their events, but it ended up working out, Kenneth said.
“Thankfully, our club advisor, Dr. Spring, got the history program to give out extra credit to the people that came, so a lot of people showed up,” he said. “I think it was a good event.”
Kenneth also hopes that the wide breadth of people that the club hosts can continue to educate and inspire people at the school.
“Our goal as a whole initiative is to educate BB&N on the different career paths and career fields that they can pursue,” he said.
He also acknowledged the lasting impact he and his co-founders want to have.
“We want to educate BB&N on the different paths that these different successful professionals have taken, and see what we as students want to mimic,” he said.
In the future, the Knight’s Masterclass is hoping to expand their audience and impact on the US. No guest is considered out of reach for the club, as they hope to host extremely well-known speakers, that would grab people’s attention.
“When the club started, the first person we reached out to was Obama,” Kenneth said, adding that the former president would be his dream guest to bring to the US.
