Blair Brandt ’06 writes: “I recently traveled to Cambridge, MA to host a private cocktail party for Harvard juniors and seniors. The event was designed to be a meet and greet between Harvard students and my business partner and I, as an opportunity to introduce them to our company, The Next Step Realty. A few of our Brand Ambassadors at Harvard are Deerfield alums, and a few of the other attendees were Deerfield alums too, so we got lucky and captured a moment of us all together. I’ve attached the photo and hoped you’d include it in the next set of class notes for the Deerfield magazine. In picture from left to right is Will Nitze, Oliver Lee, (Blair in center), Pete Berg, and Liza Cowan. Will Nitze and Oliver Lee represent Next Step at Harvard.
In other news, we’ve actually expanded our Brand Ambassador network to almost 400 students across country, and will be closer to 1,000 before the Class of 2012 graduates from college. More interesting, though, is that nearly 100 of the current ambassadors are also Deerfield alums who have taken a particular interest and enthusiasm to the company, especially after many of their friends interned for us this summer in Manhattan or posted a link to the company on their Facebook profiles, mentioning that a Deerfield alum had started the company. Including DA alums in our Brand Ambassador network has been something I have felt strongly about doing from the get go. I’d imagine that my time as a campus rep for the Gordie Foundation encouraged this belief. This is definitely a trend of loyalty.”