“Bishop’s Was the Exact Right Fit”
“One of the things I love about Bishop’s is that our vision statement is in the form of a question,” says Juli Oh Browne. “How do our students learn and grow best?” For her, this point of inquiry also serves as the guiding principle of the Lead with Purpose campaign, for which she’s a co-chair. “Our priorities in the campaign are intentional with that in mind. Every funding goal leads back to our fundamental question.”
As the parent of three Bishop’s alumni, Lila ’20, Eli ’23, and Ian ’25, Oh Browne remembers their time at the School as beneficial for the whole family. “Bishop’s was the exact right fit for each of my children, even though each is very different from their siblings,” she explains. “They wouldn’t be who they are without Bishop’s as a transformative experience. The School also provided me and my husband, Matt, with a parent community on top of all of that. It really touched all our lives.”
“Bishop’s was the exact right fit for each of my children, even though each is very different from their siblings.”
Oh Browne, who is a lawyer by training, first began volunteering at Stanford, her alma mater, when her children were young. (She’s a recipient of the Stanford Medal, which honors volunteers for decades of distinguished service, and she currently serves as national chair of The Stanford Fund.) Eventually Oh Browne began giving her time to her children’s preschool, learning an enormous amount about governance and fundraising in the process. Her first involvement with Bishop’s was working on the annual fund, now called The Bishop’s Fund.
Over the thirteen years her children spent at the School, Oh Browne took on many roles including board member, chair of the advancement committee, and co-chair for the annual gala supporting financial aid. To her, it made perfect sense that she would then be a co-chair of the Lead with Purpose campaign. “For an organization to be successful, we need to be all in,” she notes. “So participation to me has always been as important as the final dollar amount raised. Participation is an indicator of how vested people are in any organization.”
Looking ahead, she’s confident that Bishop’s will continue to answer its guiding question in new, expansive ways, just as it always has. “When you have three children, you span a bigger time horizon at a school,” she says. “Bishop’s was always a great school, but I have seen it continue to get even better over the years. It’s not a place that will rest on its laurels. It’s always asking ‘How can we best serve our students? What about our faculty and staff? How do we make sure that this experience is accessible to everyone?’ Because in the end, it’s the people who make Bishop’s special.”