Our Webb Alumni Fund (WAF) was another great success this past year! Your generous and record-breaking contributions provided Webb $2,561,658, surpassing our goal by 14% and last year’s total by 4.5%. Webb still boasts the nation’s leading alumni participation rate with 72% of alumni providing support. Thank you!

Many of our alumni embraced the call for action during the Campaign for Webb by increasing their giving, which formed the foundation for the success of this historic Campaign. Our challenge will be to maintain and grow this level of giving for future WAF years.

You can have a big impact on the future of our fundraising success and Webb’s financial well-being by:

Maximizing your current giving levels – The WAF average gift is $3,190 and the median gift is $720. Perhaps these are goals you can strive for or comfortably exceed, depending on your circumstances.

Giving as early in the giving years as possible – this allows everyone involved in this effort to spend more time cultivating alumni that either don’t give regularly or have not yet given at all.

Serving as an ambassador for the WAF and Webb – Help your fellow Class Agents by encouraging classmates to maximize their giving and to give as early in the giving year as possible. Sharing your giving strategies (monthly giving, gifts of stock, gifts leveraging donor advised funds,
charitable distributions from your IRA, etc.) may inspire a new gift or new giving levels from your peers!

I can’t thank the Class Agents, Group Leaders, and the Development Office enough for the work they do and for the generous gifts they contribute. The success of the WAF truly is a team effort! Thank you!

By Alana Duerr ’08

Strong, smart, witty, self-deprecating, kind, thoughtful, caring, hardworking, thrifty, creative—these are the first adjectives that come to mind when I think of Jo. Like all of us in our class, I have many fond memories of Jo, and words do not describe our collective heartbreak when we found out that her life had unexpectedly ended this summer after a very brief battle with cancer.

Given Webb’s small class sizes, each person leaves an indelible mark on his or her class, and the Class of 2008 is no exception. Jo was the girls’ girl who could keep up with the guys and put them in their place when needed. She was quick with a quippy (and often self-deprecating) joke and a laugh. She was also smart and driven, and she and her thesis partner won the Lewis Nixon Memorial Prize at graduation.

Jo not only had an impact on our class but on all of Webb while we were on campus. Jo loved music, played piano, and graced the Webb Family Singers with her voice over her four years at Webb, and she also served as the social chair for at least two years. She came up with party themes and always selflessly lent a hand to help people find clothes, make clothes, go thrift store shopping, and do the girls’ (and sometimes the boys’) hair and makeup.

After Webb, Jo moved to Ft. Lauderdale. She was the first person in our class to endeavor to earn a professional engineers’ license, and, of course, she passed. In the midst of her professional success at Murray and Associates, she met her husband Mark. They had their first daughter, Kelsey, in 2016, and their second daughter, Colleen, in 2018. She was a loving and devoted wife and mother. In early 2019, they relocated from the Fort Lauderdale area to Houston.

Jo’s Memorial Service was held on August 3, 2019, outside Houston, attended by friends, family, and over twenty Webb alumni. There were lots of hugs and tears, but also a lot of laughter as we remembered all of the wonderful times with her.

Jo is the first Webb Alumna to leave this earth, and we can all agree that it was far too soon. If you have any pictures or memories of Jo that you’d like to share with Mark, their girls, or her family, please send them to me at moc.liamg@renxeojgnirebmemer. A college savings account has been set up for Jo’s girls, and if anyone is interested in supporting them, please click below.