Alum Returns to Campus

Hannah Bloch ’80 returned to the Seven Hills Upper School as the last member of this year’s Alumni Speaker Series, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the merger that created The Seven Hills School.

Bloch is the lead digital editor for NPR’s international desk, overseeing NPR correspondents and freelance journalists around the world. She visited Shauna Whelan’s creative writing class and Kyla Morgan Young’s U.S. history class to explain how her journey took her from Seven Hills to all over the world as a foreign correspondent and science reporter for National Geographic and NPR.

In her keynote speech at the all-school meeting in The Schiff Center, Bloch explained how her interest in writing was sparked by her junior English teacher Susan Marrs and that the international presence at Seven Hills opened her eyes to other parts of the world.

“There is way more that holds us together than what separates us. It is easy to assume the worst of people you don’t understand and whose lives are very different than our own. We should not assume the worst of those we don’t know and don’t understand. Journalism plays a key role in helping people rethink their assumptions,” Bloch said.