Safe to say Jean Parvin Bordewich’s Career has run a wide spectrum. She’s a playwright, consultant and former program director at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation who also spent more than 20 years as a Congressional staff member and served as staff director of the Senate Rules Committee. Her latest move seems less a job and more a calling.

Jean, who attended Guilford and later graduated from Brown, became chair of the College’s Board of Trustees in February, barely 16 months after joining the board. Jean recently sat down to talk about the board, Guilford’s future as a liberal arts college, and how her experiences as a student at Guilford helped shape her life.

A year after joining the board you were named its chair. That’s a quick leap. What made you want to lead?

I want to help secure Guilford’s future as a Quaker-grounded liberal arts college. That’s why I became involved in fundraising for the Guilford Forward Fund several years ago and then accepted a position as a trustee. Last fall the nominating committee asked me to serve as the new chair. It’s a volunteer position that is very time-consuming and many trustees can’t make that commitment, but I can.

Take us behind the curtain. What’s the role of the board, and what will your new role look like?

The trustees are stewards of Guilford’s purpose for the long term, and that includes providing fiduciary oversight to carry out that mission. The board is responsible for governance of the College; the president and his administration are responsible for day-to-day management. My priorities for this year are to strengthen board operations, support [President] Kyle Farmbry and his team and increase the board’s engagement in fundraising. Ione Taylor ’76, a very experienced trustee who will soon retire from the board after 12 years, has done a superb job as chair, navigating the Board and the College through difficult times. I look forward to consulting with her.

You come from a long line of family members who attended Guilford. Was it always assumed you would end up at Guilford?

My family didn’t assume I would go to Guilford; it was my desire. I was always attracted to the North Carolina Quaker heritage of my mother’s family and wanted to go deeper into learning about Quaker beliefs and practices. Eventually, I became a practicing member of the Religious Society of Friends. I also had some Philadelphia and New Jersey Quakers among my father’s ancestors. With more than 20 relatives who had attended Guilford, I felt it was the right place for me. I loved the physical beauty and the experience of a small residential campus where I forged lifelong friendships and felt I was part of a community.

Guilford has experienced much change since President Farmbry arrived in 2022, and even more is coming. Do you worry those changes could jeopardize the College’s liberal arts roots?

This board — as well as most alumni and faculty — are committed to Guilford remaining a small liberal arts college that fosters close relationships and community, and remains a place where students can spend four years discovering and preparing for their purpose in life. Of course, the ways in which the liberal arts adapt in order to reflect and shape change in society evolve over time. What endures is the commitment to the essential qualities of a liberal arts education and the influence it has on one’s life.

Who had an influence on you when you were at Guilford?

Bruce Stewart ’61, who led the Richardson Fellows Program, made a huge difference in my life. Memorable faculty include Carroll Feagins, who taught by personal example and in the classroom about the deeper dimensions of Quaker faith and practice; Carter Delafield, whose composition class turned me into a writer; Anne Deagon, a poet and classics scholar who had a remarkably idiosyncratic intellect; and Paul Zopf, whose wisdom and kindness make him a trusted friend even today.

You got your start in politics at Guilford with a Congressional internship in Washington. How did the College play a role in helping you find that spark? It was not something I planned. I was interested in journalism and mathematics and ancient Greek, not politics or government particularly. Several friends from Guilford were going to Washington, D.C., for summer internships and I wanted to join them but I didn’t know what to do there. I found out decades later that Mrs. Ann Buford, who was our “dorm mother,” had recommended me for an internship with Rep. Richardson Preyer. That internship was crucial to my getting a job in the U.S. Senate after I graduated, which turned into a career.

You’ve written several plays. What can you tell us about Now’s the Time?

Now’s the Time is about the early years of Reconstruction and speaks to some of the challenges we have in our society and government today. The main character is Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, one of the most consequential members of Congress ever. Today he is either forgotten or misremembered from the grotesque and inaccurate caricature of him in the 1915 film, “Birth of a Nation,” which gave rise to the 20th century Ku Klux Klan. My current commission is a play about the election of 1876, President Rutherford B. Hayes and the electoral college. It’s scheduled to be filmed and made available with an accompanying educational curriculum by the end of this year. Both plays are part of the “Teaching The Constitution Through Theater” program of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society and StoryWorks Theater which is accessible online at no cost.

There are not a lot of Congressional staff members who can also write plays. How did Guilford help you acquire the skills to do both jobs?

I wasn’t involved in theater at Guilford and I only started writing plays decades later. But at Guilford I learned that it’s okay to try new things even if you don’t always do them well or decide not to keep doing them. In terms of skills, Carter Delafield taught me that rewriting is essential to making any composition better. She was a hard grader, known for never giving As. But if a student was willing to rewrite an assignment, she would read it again and if it improved, raise the grade. Over and over. I  was determined to get an A from her, and I did.