It was 1962. Thirteen-year-old Nancie Cooper MFA '04, co-chair of The Campaign for Sarah Lawrence, sat in the back row of a packed high school auditorium in North Reading, Massachusetts, watching her brother perform in the musical Li'l Abner. "I had never seen anything so wonderful in my life," Cooper recalls. "The whole world opened up. I didn't know such things existed."
Years later, when she was 50, she was struck by the realization that she might be halfway through her life. Is there anything I haven't done that I really want to do? she wondered. Though she had built a successful career in financial services, the answer was yes. She wanted to study theatre.
"When I got to Sarah Lawrence," Cooper says, "I realized I'd truly picked something I loved. What could be better than being creative every day?"
Continue reading this article in the Fall 2015 online issue of Sarah Lawrence magazine