By Megha Lakha
Alum Cleo Chang Graham has returned to campus for the first time since graduating in 2015. Her student days are long behind her, but she’s still contributing to the community, this time in her role, helping build the new community center.
“Right now, we are preparing to get everything ready to tear down the community center this summer and then build up the new Rollins Hall,” Cleo said when I talked her in that soon-to-be-torn-down community center last Friday.
She is a Senior Director for Impact Development Management. “We are in charge of basically making sure everyone is coordinated for everything, so we helped hire the architect,” she said, “and then we also help manage the contractor.”
Cleo was just about to head into a board meeting when I caught up with her. She told me that her team presents to the board’s Building and Grounds committee. “We give them quarterly reports on how progress is going,” she said.
Cleo’s path to her current profession started when she “took an intro to architecture class with Mr. Z, who is no longer here,” she said. “Then I knew that I wanted to go study some sort of engineering or design.”
Cleo wanted to go into architecture at first, but then ended up going into industrial engineering instead. She explained how her passion grew stronger after “an internship that I got in college to work on Mercedes-Benz Stadium.”
I wondered if it was strange for her to be back on campus. “I hadn’t been here in probably four or five years after I graduated, but it was bittersweet just to see how things have changed, how things have stayed the same, but then also being part of the next phase of what Lovett will be for the future,” she said.
Cleo has significant connections to the very building she is helping demolish. “The community center was part of my school every year: when I started, that was my kindergarten hall, and then it was my sixth-grade hall,” Cleo, a Lovett lifer, said. “And then when I got into high school, it was what it is now, which is the arts building.”
Being an alum means that Cleo understands traditions, so a huge thing was “preserving the pond, so seniors can continue the pond jump,” Cleo said. She did say that it would be “off-limits for seniors next year during construction, which is unfortunate, but the tradition can continue after the new community center is built.”
During her time at Lovett, Cleo was involved in many activities. “Freshman and sophomore year, I played soccer, and then when I was a junior and senior, I switched over to golf,” she said. “I was heavily involved in the visual arts, so I took photography, basically any art class that was offered.”
Cleo said the biggest change she has noticed since coming back to Lovett is “the flexibility in uniform.” She loves this change “because I think it allows you all to express yourselves.” She told me that when she was here, “Your tennis shoes had to be a specific color and you couldn’t wear anything that wasn’t Lovett-branded.” So, despite the uniform infractions that so many of us receive, we should be grateful that we can wear whatever color shoes we want.
Cleo said that they are on track to begin construction this summer, so she will “most likely be here once a week.”
Cleo is also working on 3 other main projects right now. “One of them is the Atlanta Opera, which is renovating the Bobby Jones Clubhouse, and one with the Atlanta Falcons,” Cleo said. “And then I’m working on a small residential project for a client.”
This project is close to her heart, of course. “I actually had joined my current company three months prior, found out that we were interviewing for this project, and requested to be put on it just because I told them that I was an alum,” Cleo explained. “I know a lot about the school and know where everything is.”
So it seems like Cleo has enjoyed coming back to her alma mater, but this time making a big mark on the school.
