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Julie Koeninger was presented the Dartmouth Alumni Award from classmate Rick Silverman during Reunion, June 2011.


Julie, six years before you were born, President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Dartmouth College and commented, “This is what a college should look like.” You could not agree more and noted the same feeling as you stepped onto the Green in the fall of 1977.

Attracted by the access to outdoor opportunities, academics, and athletics, you immersed yourself in activities the minute you hit campus. Excelling in the classroom, you wrote an honors thesis in your English major, received a citation in sociology, and have commented on being spellbound by faculty members like Don Pease, Bill Cook and Peter Saccio. The ultimate multi-tasker, your hours outside the classroom were spent rowing crew, running cross country and track, serving as an officer at the Aquinas House, composing articles as a feature reporter for The Dartmouth, and participating in both the Green Key Society and Fire and Skoal Senior Society.

Upon graduation, you accepted a position with Cigna Corporation in Boston where you worked for two years before making a U-turn back to Hanover to attend the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration. An extraordinary career in investment banking and portfolio management followed with Citicorp, Dean Witter, and Hancock Natural Resource Group in both New York City and Boston, before forming your own consulting business for investors evaluating farmland as part of a real asset portfolio strategy.

As a cross-country runner, you have learned to pace yourself while moving forward. This determination has enabled you to take on more responsibilities than the average human specimen, which is obvious by the thousands of hours you have expended on behalf of your alma mater and fellow alumni. In fact, you have held a volunteer position in some capacity for Dartmouth College every year since 1982. These roles have included serving as class agent, treasurer, secretary, reunion treasurer, executive committee member, and reunion giving committee member for the great Class of 1981.  In addition, you have been an alumni councilor, enrollment interviewer, president of the Dartmouth Club of Greater Boston, chair of the Alumni Council’s Continuing Education Committee, and member of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine’s Editorial Board, the Association of Alumni Executive Committee, and the College Relations Group. It is exhausting to read this lengthy list, never mind actually completing these tasks. Needless to say, we are in awe of you!

Now, with such a busy career and philanthropic life, how could you possibly have any time for a personal life? Once again, the long-distance stamina must have kicked in for you have been married to Peter D’Anieri for nineteen years, and you are the very proud parents of your three sons, Andrew and twins, Matt and Thomas.  Of course, you have indoctrinated all four of these men in your life beginning with your wedding ceremony at the Aquinas House, and the reminder each year at your holiday party when your children notice that the invitation list is composed almost entirely of those Green Dartmouth alumni. Peter has been very tolerant of your Dartmouth affiliation, and even participated in the “Alumni in the Schools” program with you.

Also active within your community, you have served on the Children’s Ministries Committee and as a church school teacher at the Trinity Church; as a volunteer at Wellesley public schools; and as the co-chair of “Everyone’s Playground” to build Wellesley’s first full accessible playground, for which you were recognized with the “Townsman 10” award in 2008.

Lucille Ball once said, “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.”  Dartmouth College obviously followed this advice with you many times. We presented you with the Young Alumni Distinguished Service Award in 1992, and tonight it is our great honor to add you to the list of the select few who have also been recognized with the Dartmouth Alumni Award.