McCurdy-Sprague Trustee Ken Okoth '01 knows well what it means to give back. The Kenya native who came to St. Lawrence University on a scholarship has spent the past several years helping orphaned children in Kenya have a better life.

"A scholarship enabled me to come to St. Lawrence," says Okoth, an Upper School history teacher at the Potomac School, a K-12 independent school in McLean, VA. "That changed my life. I arrived on campus in 1997 with a suitcase filled with my cleanest clothes and $800 in cash that I had received from my friends and relatives in Kenya." The first African on the University's Board of Trustees, Okoth regularly returns home, not only to visit family, but also to continue his work an ambassador for the Red Rose School, a grass-roots initiative assisting children in Nairobi.

"In my time at St. Lawrence," Okoth says, "I was fully engaged as a singer, a writer and in exploring the life of my mind and interest in world affairs. St. Lawrence was that kind of special place where I was allowed to become anything I wanted to be.” That kind of opportunity is what he hopes the Red Rose School brings to its children.

Okoth majored in German with concentrations in European studies and English writing; he also studied in Austria and Denmark through St. Lawrence's international and intercultural studies program. He was elected to the national academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa; sang with the University Chorus, the Laurentian Singers, and the Singing Saints; was a staff writer for The Hill News; interned in University communications; was a teaching assistant for German and Swahili; and was a writing mentor in the First-Year Program.

Okoth has also been an adjunct instructor at Georgetown University and a teacher at the Friends School of Baltimore. He holds a master's degree from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.