“It’s a really valuable skill, to know how to ask a good question and think critically. That was something that I really took with me from Anacapa and could be translated in so many different ways.”

Heather graduated from Anacapa in 2008 and then went to UCLA. At UCLA, Heather studied International Development. She traveled throughout South America after college, and then worked in social services for a year here in Santa Barbara. For the past two years she has worked for Child Hope International, a non-profit that cares for children and families in Haiti. She is now the US Director for Child Hope International and lives here in Santa Barbara with her husband and dog. Heather credits Anacapa for sparking her love of adventure and the outdoors.

“Going to San Francisco and Boston and camping all over the place and do things that you can only do when you have 60 kids that can fit on two buses.”

“We got to do so many things here that you could never do in a large scale environment.”

“Anacapa is really the place that defined who I am now more than any other part of my life.” 

Brookes graduated from Anacapa in 2008. After Anacapa, Brookes went on to the University of Pennsylvania where he majored in History and minored in Math. While a student at Anacapa, Brookes says he was very involved in one of Anacapa’s student programs—the Cabin leader program. He describes it as both challenging and inspiring. Today, Brookes is using the quantitative analysis skills he first honed here to help shape political campaigns. He has just accepted Berkeley for law school.

“When I was here I was really encouraged to try everything around me; do all sorts of different things and take on all sorts of different leadership roles, and I think that has continued throughout my whole life.”

“Anacapa encouraged me to be involved in politics. I was really involved with an organization called Junior State of America, and I became a leader in that. I don’t think that would have happened if I hadn’t been here.”

“I always knew I wanted to do theater. I was taking dance classes five days a week, I was taking voice lessons off campus, I got to be a sixth grade camp counselor, I got to volunteer at the Transition Center, and I coached cheer leading briefly. Anacapa gives you the opportunity to participate in the community.”

Samantha graduated from Anacapa in 2003. She left Santa Barbara to attend York New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where she studied Musical Theater. Samantha had always loved reading and writing, or any subject that allowed her to think creatively. Even in her upper school physics class, she was given the opportunity to exercise her creative abilities by producing a video series called “Physics with Friends.” Now, Samantha helps others discover their creative talents as Art Director of the Out of the Box Theater Company, a non-profit theatre production company that brings edgy, lesser-known contemporary musicals to Santa Barbara featuring primarily local talent… and she also bakes cupcakes and has a cupcake catering business.

“I always had a lot of firm opinions and I was always very creative. And the thing is I could see that if I had gone to a different school then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable enough to ask those questions that I had. And I could feel that even in elementary school you didn’t have the freedom and the flexibility to think creatively.”

“Anacapa allowed me to think creatively and bring those talents which I realized were talents, to Anacapa.”

“Anacapa really prepared me academically for UCLA even though UCLA has classes that are four times larger than this school. I was probably one of the only ones in engineering who got better grades than I did at Anacapa.”

Connor graduated from Anacapa in 2011 and went on to attend UCLA. There he studied computer science, which was also his main area interest. While at Anacapa, Connor was inspired by the Anacapa Near Space Exploration Club. The Club challenged him greatly. One of the projects they completed included getting a balloon and capsule to fly 90,000 feet into the air, which required great perseverance and focus. After successfully completing the project, Connor learned that with hard work you can accomplish great things. Connor currently works as a software engineer at AppFolio, a quickly growing software company.

“We wrote code for property management software. So we had to do a lot of work in small groups and team and I feel like Anacapa prepared me for that really well. Especially with things like the Synthesis Unit where we had to work teams on our product. So having that experience was great and they hired me full time after I graduated.”