Dear Carondelet Families and Friends,

It has been a busy and exciting summer at Carondelet thus far as we prepare to begin another new academic year with much hope and promise. While there remains much to be done before opening day, I wanted to share with you some exciting updates with more to come through the rest of the summer.

First of all, I am delighted to announce the appointment of Kellie Elliott as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for our school. Kellie, a Bay Area native, is an accomplished senior executive with a breadth of experience that includes operations across intercollegiate athletic departments at Stanford and Florida State, the NBA, and the 2002 Winter Olympics. In addition she holds extensive experience in development, event planning, communications and marketing. Kellie will be working directly with me and have broad responsibilities including optimizing the efficiency of our school operations and the supervision of key departments including Communications and Athletics. Throughout her career Kellie has modeled core values that are an ideal match with Carondelet's Catholic mission and principles. We are thrilled to welcome her to our community.

	Kellie Elliott, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Kellie began her work with us in mid-June, focusing heavily on preparing our athletics program to fulfill our vision of becoming a national model for educational excellence for young women - a vision that includes athletics as an extension of the academic day and the total Carondelet experience. Toward this end, Kellie will be establishing the foundation that solidifies our athletics program in its commitment to living our school mission on and off the playing field and developing strength of character, modeling outstanding citizenship and teamwork, and developing outstanding skills to compete at the highest level. Kellie is actively pursuing the hiring of athletics personnel to support this vision and will have announcements to share in the coming days and weeks.

Kellie is also overseeing the final work at the Carondelet Athletics Complex and preparing the CAC for full occupancy this fall. In this regard, I am happy to report that the CAC field turf installation has begun this week so that we may be fully operational in August.

The addition of Carondelet's first home fields, courts, and pool at the CAC is a major change for how our school operates and requires new financial and legal agreements on the shared use of facilities for athletics games and practices. This includes review and revision to our joint policies and use agreements with De La Salle High School. Our two schools, our two boards, and our legal and financial advisors are helping us navigate this new path forward as we look to preserve and strengthen the educational opportunities for both men and women on Winton Drive.

We are also excitedly moving forward with our plans to build our STEM Innovation Center on our main campus. Our design and planning team will be presenting our project to the City of Concord Planning Commission on July 18 and, if all goes well, we will be on track for a groundbreaking in late Fall 2018. I look forward to sharing the design details with you this fall as we plan for this facility to promote and support the pioneering curriculum designed by our faculty that will uniquely prepare our young women to solve "problems that matter" in college and life beyond, in keeping with the spirit of the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Finally, we eagerly await the arrival of the incoming Class of 2022 this August along with new transfer students entering across all grades. These new students bring outstanding academic qualifications and a wide variety of talents that will contribute to our community. Our school enrollment is capped by the City of Concord, meaning we cannot take all students who apply. As a result, we do have wait pools in every grade.

It will be only a few weeks before we welcome and welcome back all four of our classes and continue building the Carondelet sisterhood for which we are known. Our world needs the difference they can make as never before. Thank you for your support of them and the Catholic educational experience they are receiving at Carondelet.  Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Warmly,