Nearly 260 years ago, Baret Scholars’ namesake, Jeanne Baret, boarded the ship Étoile on her way to becoming the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.

This month, Baret’s second cohort, led by an accomplished Traveling Team, has begun their own journey around the globe in her intrepid spirit. From 28 different countries, Scholars have come flocking to the foothills of New Hampshire for Orientation. With the foliage turning from green to yellow and red around them, they’ve gotten to know each other and make plans for their year ahead.

Helmed by Baret’s founder and Dean Chris Whittle, as well as our Associate Dean, Claudia Kahindi, Baret is led by an accomplished group we call Fellows. They are teachers, documentarians, scientists, expedition leaders and writers.

Two new Fellows are setting sail, as it were, with Baret:

• Tom Snow, an educator and Art Historian who holds a Master’s and PhD in History of Art from University College of London and has taught at UCL and Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
• Himraj Soin, who has led expeditions all over the world with Ibex Expeditions and written for National Geographic, Vogue, and Reader’s Digest, among others.

They are joined by three returning Fellows and a Fitness & Security Coordinator:

• Wendy Lin, a biologist with expertise in gut microbiomes, who holds a PhD from Weill Cornell Medicine.
• Omar Knio, who holds a master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.
• Ronan MacRory, a graduate of Oxford and UCLA’s MFA in Film Production & Directing.
• Rodrigo Falcon, who will lead Baret’s Fitness program and provide security, has led a diverse career including banking, consulting, and coaching a CrossFit team to 5th place in the Americas.

Orientation has set the table for an engaging and fruitful year. Our Scholars were educated on maintaining their emotional wellbeing by Nadim Saad of the Happy Confidence Club, and given an introduction to Life Design by Baret’s own Evan Grillon. They also availed themselves of the various opportunities for hiking, football, frisbee, drawing, journaling, and golf that peaceful New Hampshire offered. In their Houses, Scholars reflected with their Fellows on the best moments from their life and made plans to create many more. They thought about how they can find not only a career, but a calling, in order to set themselves up for a life of fulfillment rather than just success.

Our Scholars are already accomplished, graduating from prestigious schools like the United World Colleges, Roxbury Latin School, Holderness, Rosslyn Academy, Stuyvesant High School, St. Clare’s, Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz, and Hastings School. They’ve received various accolades: among them are the youngest helicopter pilot in Europe, an intern for the Financial Times, and many others who have committed to illustrious colleges and universities.

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The immense possibility of the journey they are about to embark on is beginning to strike them: seven regions of the world, seven cosmopolitan cities, seven educational adventures. Cities like New York City, São Paulo, Paris, Istanbul, Nairobi, Delhi, and Beijing will be their home base, but they’ll also journey through others like London, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Shenzhen, and many more. They will explore the Amazon, Patagonia, Kilimanjaro, Madhya Pradesh, and many other regions.

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Their fellow Scholars will be their friends for life. They will be there to pick them up when they fail and celebrate their triumphs when all of their efforts pay off. When their year is over, they will depart to all corners of the world, but they will remain tied together by this year they have embarked on.

And they will be free. That is, as Chris Whittle put it in a speech to our new cohort, what we hope for: that our Scholars will not just “taste freedom, but drink from a firehose of freedom.” That they will “surrender themselves, go with the flow, relinquish control for a while, leave the old order behind, be swept away.” In doing so, they will become students of the world.

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