Thank you to Christina Vial Comer, C'95 & Patrick Comer, C'96 for agreeing to serve as the emcees for the evening! 

Thank you to our faculty and student musicians for their participation in the event program. 

Gala Speakers

Dr. Lily Thompson, Assistant Professor of Geology

Dr. Lily Thompson took an unconventional path to become a professor, having dropped out of college twice (despite maintaining a 4.0) and working as a hairstylist before returning to college in her late twenties. Once she found geology, however, everything seemed to click. She earned an M.S. and Ph.D in geophysics from the University of Chicago and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University before coming to Sewanee. At the University of the South, she was honored with the Excellence in Teaching award in 2023, and this spring was awarded the largest National Science Foundation Grant in the University's history. Her research leverages the tools and theoretical underpinnings of chemistry, physics, and material science to investigate the properties of geological materials at the extreme pressures and temperatures of planetary interiors.
 

Halim Labi, C'23

Halim Labi, from Atlanta, Georgia, graduated from Sewanee in 2023 with a degree in politics. During his time on the Mountain, he engaged actively in numerous extracurricular pursuits, such as serving as an officer in the Order of the Gown and participating in the Sewanee chapter of the NAACP. Halim was a Dean’s List student and is the recipient of a number of department awards in politics, including the prestigious Robert Lancaster Scholarship and the Rosalyn Higgins Prize. Currently, Halim works in Atlanta as an analyst at Deloitte.