Lakeside School

The 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award was presented to Noah Bopp ’92 at the Upper School assembly on Nov. 3. The following citation was read aloud at the Upper School assembly and highlights his commitment to education and nurturing the next generation of leaders. Bopp then shared a memorable story of a Lakeside talent show mosh pit and reflected on the connections between his time at Lakeside and current students’ experiences, before fielding questions from students. 

Following assembly, Bopp visited with 9th grade English students. 

Noah Bopp ’92
Distinguished Alumni Award 2021

Noah Bopp clearly remembers the moment he decided to become a teacher: It was 9th period, and he was sitting on Tom Doelger’s couch in Moore Hall. Says Bopp, “Mr. Doelger inquired, ‘What do you want to be doing in 10 years?’ No one had ever asked me that question. I thought for a moment and then said, ‘I’d like to do what you do, Mr. Doelger.’” Bopp had already been coaching his younger brother’s soccer team, the Thunderbolts, for several years. He’d worked on the Tatler with Susan Saunders, learning how journalists — and teachers — uniquely set the community agenda for what’s important. A Shakespeare lover, he would soon direct a one-act version of “Julius Caesar.” “I was interested in motivating groups to be more than the sum of their parts.” Little did he know how well his experiences would come together in a holistic, innovative, and influential career as an educator.

At Oberlin, along with captaining the men’s basketball team, Bopp focused on the humanities: earning a double major in philosophy and Law and Society, plus a minor in English, in 1996. “What drew everything together was that I was really interested in ethics,” he says. He put his degrees to the test at his first job, a political consulting firm in Seattle that focused on the election of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community to public office. But he couldn’t shake the vivid memory of that afternoon on Doelger’s couch that kept nudging him toward his ultimate calling. In 1998, he received a Master of Arts in Teaching at Duke University, and joined St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, where he taught history and philosophy and chaired the Community Service Council.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Bopp finished his World History class, turned on the television and, like so many, witnessed a seismic and visceral global shift. “The next day, I had to stand in front of my students. They were scared and confused and making all kinds of assumptions, and I realized the world had changed,” he says. “I started asking myself, ‘What is my part in that change? How can I help create post-9/11 American leaders?’” It was a question that drove the rest of his career. From 2002 to 2005, he headed the history department at the Mountain School of Milton Academy. From 2002 to 2007, he founded and ran the Duke University Talent Identification Program (TIP) Global Dialogues Institute, a summer program for motivated high school students. And in 2006, he received a Master of Arts in Private School Leadership from the Klingenstein Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Bopp was methodically working toward his end goal: To create a new generation of ethically strong, internationally aware post-9/11 leaders. In 2009, Bopp opened The School for Ethics and Global Leadership (SEGL) in Washington, DC. SEGL’s hands-on curriculum emphasizes leadership development, ethical thinking skills, and international affairs. Students study conflict resolution by meeting with leading Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. They study speechwriting in a Master Class with Hillary Clinton’s longtime top speechwriter. They defend policy documents at the State Department, Pentagon, or White House. They hear from a veritable Who’s Who of leadership, politics, and media, from both sides of the aisle: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Senator Kristin Gillibrand, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, UN Ambassador Samantha Power, CIA Director James Comey, President Barack Obama. Today, SEGL has three campuses: in Washington, DC, Johannesburg, South Africa, and London, United Kingdom. Above all, Bopp sees SEGL as a convener — of ideas, of students, of points of view. “Just like Lakeside when I was there, I designed it to be supremely student-centered, a place where the robust exchange of ideas will bring future leaders closer to truth,” he says.

Bopp is developing leaders who can listen, engage with, and constructively disagree with others — a critical and undervalued skill in our collective civic life these days. For his unwavering dedication to nurturing the next generation of leaders and his brave vision for a more ethical world, the Lakeside/St. Nicholas Alumni Association is proud to honor Noah Bopp ’92 with the 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award.

Learn about Lakeside's Distinguished Alumni Award and read citations from recent recipients, including Marjorie Liu ’96 and Lt. Col. Tim Curry ’94, here.