RE LOG Spring '25

SPRING 2025 Ransom Everglades LOG 15 “Amazing generosity … This will transform lives at many levels for many years to come.” – Bob DuBard, science teacher and robotics coach “This gift has helped ease the cost-of-living burden [and] brought many smiling faces to both campuses.” – O’Jhonte Armstrong ’17, science teacher options seemed insufficient, and acquiring nearby land to build housing brought financial and other challenges. Trustees realized that any construction project would take years to complete. Another issue was that not all faculty wanted housing from RE. Some needed funds for childcare, insurance or, in Grace’s case, transportation. “We wanted a solution,” Dueñas said, “that would help everyone out of the gate.” It was then that trustees met with the McMahons. A creative solution to a growing crisis Patrick and Kristen McMahon, both born in New Jersey, brought a passion for philanthropy and education to Ransom Everglades when they arrived in 2021. Founder and Chief Investment Officer of MKP Capital Management, Patrick McMahon has served on the board of his alma mater, Villanova University, generously supporting the school’s most recent capital campaign. An Ivy League champion in field hockey while at Brown University, Kristen McMahon contributed to a number of non- profit boards and committees and agreed to join RE’s board last summer. With two children at RE, the McMahons became increasingly connected to the school community and wanted to find a meaningful and powerful way to extend their contributions. Fitzpatrick and Due˜nas let them know the board had an idea for a creative endowment that would support teachers. All that was missing, the trustees explained in fall 2023, was a lead donor. The idea excited the McMahons. Patrick’s mother had served as a teacher’s aide, and Kristen’s mother worked as a school teacher. In Closter, N.J., she taught every level from nursery school through eighth grade, primarily as an English teacher. Kristen McMahon idolized her mother and her teaching colleagues. Even at an early age, she understood their importance to the local school and larger society. So when they learned of the proposed endowment, the McMahons jumped. “When the idea was first presented to Pat and me, it resonated with us immediately,” Kristen McMahon said. “What intrigued us was the dual impact: not only would the endowment directly benefit our teachers, but it would also enhance the educational experience for every Ransom Everglades student by helping to attract and retain top talent. The excellence of our faculty is a tremendous gift to every child who enters Ransom Everglades, and demonstrating to our teachers how much we value and support them as a community was a clear choice.” The McMahons made the lead donation, and other members of the RE community soon followed suit. RE parents Alex and Danna Slusky and Alex Kleyner and Diana Ulis also have generously contributed. As this issue goes to press, $17 million has been raised. The goal is $30 million. The McMahons are confident others will be inspired to join the effort. “It really is a game changer from a competitive-advantage standpoint in our ability to attract, retain and recruit teachers,” Dueñas told RE parents from the podium of the Lewis Family Auditorium at an upper school event last fall. It helps “not only locally against our competition, but nationally, to be able to find, hire and convince the best faculty and teachers to come to Miami and teach at our school.” RE teachers: the heart and soul of Ransom Everglades RE faculty members teach, coach, mentor, serve as advisors and lead clubs. They also help students with advanced research and special projects. Grace and fellow science faculty members Heather Marshall and Kristine Stump assisted two dozen physics students with abstracts for projects or research posters this past year that were accepted into a professional physics conference (the APS Global Physics Summit), which takes place in March in Anaheim, Calif. (The conference does not officially include high school students.) Matthew Helmers, English teacher