The 2024 Commencement speakers are Lydia and Kate Gibson, the daughters of Linda Gibson, one of our Middle and Upper School History teachers.

Kate Gibson graduated from Carlisle School in 2000 and is a proud recipient of the Faculty Award and the Gorman T. White Award.  While at Carlisle, she played violin in the Carlisle Strings program, sang in the madrigal choir, and worked on the yearbook staff. She currently serves as Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative in the general counsel’s office to the United States Trade Representative.  Her office monitors foreign government compliance with U.S. trade agreements and pursues enforcement actions under these agreements as appropriate. She previously practiced law in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and at the law firm Covington and Burling in Washington, DC.  She was also a law clerk at U.S. federal courts in Roanoke, Virginia, and Lexington, Kentucky, and at the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague. Kate is a summa cum laude graduate of Wake Forest University, with a major in economics and a minor in music. She also holds a juris doctor and master of laws in international and comparative law from Duke University School of Law. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening and playing violin. She is married to Marc Shaller. They live in Washington, DC.

Lydia Gibson was salutatorian of Carlisle’s class of 1994. A student at the school since second grade, she played JV and varsity basketball, worked on the yearbook staff, and was editor of the literary magazine. Currently, Lydia is an associate editor at Harvard Magazine, Harvard University’s alumni magazine, where she writes in-depth features on subjects ranging from the opioid crisis to immigration to poetry to women’s basketball. She also serves as editor of the magazine’s arts coverage and supervises student writers in its undergraduate fellowship program. Lydia previously spent 10 years as an editor and writer at the University of Chicago Magazine, and before that, helped launch a start-up newspaper, the Chicago Journal, which covered the fast-changing neighborhoods near the city’s downtown. Over the years, her work has won several national awards for journalism and writing. Lydia graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and earned a second undergraduate major in English. After college, she earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where she concentrated on poetry. Two of her most important writing teachers, though, were right here at Carlisle: Peggy Ford, who taught sixth- and eighth-grade English, and Jean K. Smith, who taught English in upper school. Their classes were deeply formative. Lydia lives in Boston. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking in New England’s White Mountains, watching (and occasionally playing) ice hockey, and buying more books than she’ll ever have time to read.

We look forward to the inspiration and wisdom they will share with our graduating class of 2024!