A New Hand on the Gavel

“I knew about boarding school from books and movies,” recalls Celeste Mellet ’94 P’27 ’30, mentioning 1989’s Dead Poets Society, in which Robin Williams portrays a new teacher who inspires his students through a love of poetry and his unorthodox methods. Although the film appealed to the
young middle-schooler, it still was not a clarion call.  “I love that movie, but I never really thought about going to boarding school.”

So, the fact that Mellet did enroll at Lawrenceville just a year later is not to be taken for granted. It altered not just her history, but that of the School, too. For Mellet, it became a place to fully realize herself, a launch pad for a natural leader. For Lawrenceville, her choice sparked a relationship that reached its apogee when Mellet become the first woman named president of its Board of Trustees in 2025.

Mellet entered the School as a Second Former with a stubborn determination to show she would take a back seat to no one. “I was very ambitious and determined,” says Mellet, the eldest of seven siblings who were all born in the space of eight and a half years, including five brothers. Her resolve was fueled, at least in part, by her father, Oliver Mellet P’94 ’95, a conventional man who was raised in a large French Catholic family before heading his own.

“To me, he seemed to have a perception that boys were better. He doesn’t believe that, but I had a real chip on my shoulder,” she says. “I was like, I’m smart. I’m as good as my brothers. I’m going to go to Harvard…”

Mellet aspired to law and a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court, but from her family’s part of Northeastern Pennsylvania, the path was unclear. Going away to school seemed unattainable simply because of the cost — at least until a fortuitous conversation with a neighbor whose daughter attended Lawrenceville.

“My parents chatted with her parents and found out that schools like Lawrenceville have financial aid,” she recalls. Mellet was always active in trying to help her parents with their large family — “lots of oldest-daughter stuff” — but bolstered by this fresh information, her parents told her, “You need to go and be your own person.” Together, they applied to Lawrenceville and to St. Andrew’s School in Delaware — site of the fictional Welton Academy in Dead Poets Society.

“I loved both,” Mellet says. “I didn’t know where to go.”

In the end, Lawrenceville was the more affordable choice. Mellet says that although their resources were limited, “my parents provided for us really well. We were very well-educated. We knew what was out there, and no one told me I couldn’t. And I was like, I’m doing this.”

* * *

Holly Burks Becker H’98 P’06 ’09 ’12 came to Lawrenceville in 1985 to help plan for the transition of the School to coeducation in the fall of 1987. Today, Becker is the director of college counseling, where she has been working since her arrival, but at the time, part of the transition planning also had her in Admission to help identify the kind of girls they thought would be able to walk into a challenging situation and thrive.

“We need to look for people who are competitive or probably sporty,” she recalls of the assignment, “but strong women — strong girls — who can handle this because it’s going to be hard.”

In Mellet, who was admitted in just the fourth enrollment cycle to include girls, the School found someone who intended to throw herself into the experience wholly.

“And she totally did,” Becker says. “You could just tell she was always going after every possible opportunity to contribute and grow here.”

The list of co-curriculars attributed to Mellet in the 1994 Olla Podrida (for which she was the clubs and features editor) is astonishingly full, even by the standards of a tenacious Lawrentian: Head Ropes Course Instructor, Lower School prefect, president of the Young Democrats, and earning a Major L in both field hockey and ice hockey are just the headlines. It is a list that paints the picture not only of a versatile and talented student, but one with the chops to lead.

“I think I came in as a leader because I have so many siblings,” Mellet says, “but it was in different environments that I really started to step into that.”

All the while, Mellet was also absorbing everything inside the classroom, Stanley House, and elsewhere, developing a strong sense of self. She admits her confidence initially took a hit among some peers with regard to money — “there were kids who were really nasty about it,” she recalls — but the lessons of her parents were bracing.

“[My father] wanted us to be confident that just because we were there on financial aid, we deserve to be there just as much as anybody,” recalls her brother, Oliver Mellet ’95, who joined Celeste at Lawrenceville after her first year, “and that we shouldn’t feel like we had to defer to people just because they had wealth.”

She was also nurtured through the athletic mentorship she received.

“Holly Becker was my field hockey coach. I was a goalie, and whenever a ball would go by me, I would apologize,” Mellet says. “And it drove her nuts.”

Becker would fire a series of tennis balls at her as quickly as possible, with the directive: Just block the ball. Stop apologizing.

“It’s a common thing with goalies, right?” Becker says. “But Celeste is such a perfectionist and such a driver that she would want to stop every single ball. The only way you improve your skills is to have it be almost untenable, to have so much going by you.”

The foundations of her professional success, Mellet believes, were built around the Harkness table, with its insistence on critical-thinking skills. “Asking questions is the most important skill in all of the jobs I have had,” she says, unequivocally.

Mellet mentions many teachers who helped hone her varied interests, including Kate Mittnacht H’90 ’91 P’03 (“just her energy about literature”), Nancy Thomas H’99 ’01 P’04 ’07 (“I love math anyway, but with her, it’s just so exciting”), and the late Marty Doggett H’76 ’79 ’82 ’86 ’87 ’88 ’92 ’98 P’00, former dean of students who also taught Advanced Placement economics.

“I fell in love what I thought was economics, but it was actually him,” she says of the classroom atmosphere Doggett cultivated. “Then I majored in economics and I thought, Why did I do that? It turns out I was chasing the excitement of economics that I had with him.”

Around her, Mellet was making an impression, too.

“She had the respect of her teachers. She was well liked in her peer group. She just seemed like kind of a natural leader,” her brother Oliver recalls. “People paid attention when she spoke. She wasn’t assertive of leadership, but people respected her and so when she decided that she wanted to say something about a topic, they tended to listen to her.”

Becker, who as her coach helped Mellet grapple with the fact that no goalie is perfect, also wrote her letter of recommendation as a member of the College Counseling staff. She included a harrowing description of the Ropes Course, detailing the maturity and leadership required of its head instructors to psychologically support participants as they dangle and leap from perches and ropes 40 feet above ground, and concluded: “Believe me, those instructors hold the end of a very real ‘lifeline’ and there is no one I’d rather have at the other end of my rope than Celeste.”

* * *

“When I started on the board, [Trustee Emeritus] Glenn Hutchins ’73 said to me — and this is literally after the first morning — ‘You will be the first female board president,’” recalls Mellet, who was appointed to Lawrenceville’s Board of Trustees in 2014. “And I thought, all right. But I couldn’t have imagined it at the time, just absorbing all the things that are happening, being able to connect the dots and how do you drive that.”

By the time she joined the board, Mellet had been shaped by the arc of her professional life, absorbing crucial lessons about the business of business. She never did go to Harvard. She didn’t even apply, actually. Princeton won her over, and that is where she decided her future was on Wall Street. Mellet has thrived at every stage of her career, propelled by a thirst to keep learning, whether through experience or observation. Amid the 2008 financial crisis, she grew “antsy” even after attaining ranked-analyst status, beset by the feeling that she wasn’t learning anymore.

“All the money that drove the growth in that space dried up,” she says. “It’s not interesting without growth because that drives change.”

At Morgan Stanley, where she headed investor relations, Mellet watched what leaders did as the economy plunged into a deep recession, a time she considers the most consequential point of her career.

“I really was amazed by seeing, in crisis, how people differentiated themselves,” she recalls, “and a lot of it was how they treated those around them.”

Mellet also absorbed another valuable lesson for tough times: “You have to pick the least bad option,” she says. “That is something people don’t really get — that by not deciding, you’re deciding.”

Being named treasurer of Morgan Stanley opened her path to chief financial officer roles, which she has held at Fannie Mae, at investment-banking firm Evercore, and now at Humana, a leading health insurance and healthcare services company. Not unlike Lawrenceville, it is a mission-driven environment that Mellet embraces fully. Since being appointed to the board, Mellet has seen highs and lows that in some ways mimic those of the financial industry during her career. After serving as vice president under Jonathan G. Weiss ’75, she felt the weight of ascending to the presidency, both in terms of responsibility and history as the first woman to hold the gavel at the School.

“I did feel like one of the reasons I should take it is because I would be the first, and it’s time,” she says. “I needed to do it, because the way I think, you have to move up. Are you ready? When else would there be the first woman?”

Mellet enjoyed the benefit of serving under what she calls Weiss’ “inclusive leadership,” and it’s a trait she shares.

“In the role, I am like Jon — very inclusive. I want a lot of opinions,” she says. “Although at some point, it’s ‘gavel down.’

Ultimately, leadership is leadership, and Mellet knows that the eyes of the School are always on the board president — no matter who it is.

“Because I have spent so much time in male-dominated situations, I don’t think about how I’m the only woman,” she explains of the gravity that comes with the role. “But I do operate differently. I do speak up. I was raised to do that. There have been some amazing board presidents and it is daunting, but I think that should be the case for anyone.”