Letter from Steven and Doris

To all our alumni and friends of LAS,

We are excited to be in this new phase at LAS following the recent purchase and renovation of The Grand Hotel, now the Belle Epoque. While refurbishment is still ongoing, it is now the home and academic centre for our IB students and what a difference it has made to the School. The new facilities are outstanding and while we are in a building of a past era, the educational facilities are 21st century. We are very proud of what we have and the students and faculty are thriving in the new environment.

A few years ago the School was restructured and is now under the ownership of a Swiss federal foundation, the Foundation for the Advancement of International Education. The management still rests with the family but it permits the School to raise funds and award scholarships to deserving students who may not otherwise have been able to attend LAS.

We are delighted that our eldest son Marc-Frédéric is now head of school and with his direction we have made a real commitment to Development and Alumni Relations. We have welcomed Mr. Ian McLean as Director of Development and Alumni Relations. He is very experienced in schools all over the world and is supported by Melati Cattanach, an alumnus of 2001. The office will invite you to help locate other LAS alumni, join the fun at reunion events throughout the world, meet with LAS staff when they travel to your areas, and, in general, help build the alumni spirit. And yes, we do hope that you can support our ongoing plans and exciting vision. Opportunities will be available through the Annual Fund to help build our scholarship provision for deserving students or help make a small project a reality. We will greatly value your support. Which brings me to the next topic, the impact these scholarships have on deserving students…

A few years ago, the valedictorian of the Class of '05, Pavlo Kononenko from the Ukraine, was on full scholarship. His record was so outstanding that he was flown to the US with all expenses paid to be interviewed by several top ten universities. He finally chose Harvard, where he was offered a full tuition scholarship. Pavlo is truly a LAS success story! This year we have 34 students receiving scholarships, over 800,000 SFrs. Last year our first full scholarship student from Afghanistan, Zubaida Akbar. Zubaida was recommended to us by the US Embassy in Kabul after having worked with Ms. Katherine Kiviat, a Newsweek photo-journalist, on a book on the life of women in Afghanistan. With your help, we may be able to admit more ‘Pavlo's' or ‘Zubaida's' and bring this wonderful special dimension to the school.

We would like to thank you for continuing to be a member of the LAS family. We feel blessed to have several thousand LAS children in over seventy countries in the world. We hope you left with a better sense of what we mean when we speak of global “citizen leaders”. It is our hope that you continue to lead our world as global citizens and that you find success in all your endeavors.

Warmest regards,
K. Steven and Doris Ott

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