The Path November 2024

The Starfish Thrower

Mark Dimas ’98 Helped Found a Website That Has Helped Hundreds of Millions of People Turn Their Voices into Real Change

By Ted Alcorn ’01

The tide has gone out, stranding thousands of starfish on the shore, and a person walking along the beach is tossing them back into the water. “What are you doing?” asks a passerby, “You’re never going to make a difference.” The starfish thrower bends down to pick up another creature and replies, “It made a difference to that one.”

It’s a familiar parable, even in land-locked New Mexico where Mark Dimas ’98 grew up, and one of his mom’s favorite explanations of her commitment to helping others. She fostered and eventually adopted medically fragile children, and Mark’s stepdad helped people with physical and mental disabilities get jobs. But as a kid, Mark didn’t see himself as any kind of activist.

His family lived in the International District, and he credited his fifth-grade teacher at Hawthorne Elementary for encouraging him to apply to the Academy, even though full tuition was beyond his household’s means. Accepted and offered financial aid, he would often take the city bus to school, a solitary student crossing the length of the city on the trip up Wyoming Boulevard.

Academy students who had attended Manzano Day School together arrived with a circle of familiar faces, but no one, to Mark’s recollection, came from Hawthorne. “It took a little bit of time — but I don’t remember it being too difficult to make at least a couple friends.” The schoolwork was daunting, too. “Out of my entire academic career, I feel like sixth grade was probably my hardest year, in terms of the adjustment to the expectations that were there.”

His interests proliferated. He joined the wrestling team, played clarinet and bass clarinet in band, and built sets for school plays. He got close with his German teacher Jim Carrell, who he helped during free periods as part of a work-study program the school required of financial aid recipients at that time. And he thrived in Don Smith’s advanced calculus classes, eventually matriculating at Stanford with aspirations to study math.

But the Bay Area in the late 1990s was a hotbed of computer science and, after taking a couple courses, he switched majors. At a campus job fair his sophomore year, the dot-com boom was apparent, as companies offered summer interns free housing, cars, and other crazy perks. By his graduation, however, the bubble had burst. He landed a job at a software company, but within a few years was tiring of it when his college classmate Ben Rattray came to him with an idea for “harnessing social activism and the internet in a way to enable people to make change.”

They split the work, Ben developing the business and Mark building the website, which allowed users to create and promote petitions to advance social causes. The company, Change.org, had its ups and downs, but Mark knew it was gathering traction when, still in the depths of the financial crisis, a 22-year-old started a petition to denounce a new fee Bank of America was imposing on customers with debit cards. By the time the petition drew 300,000 co-signers, the bank had reversed the decision. Those little signatures, like the starfish Dimas’s mom spoke about, were adding up.

Today the website has 500 million users across 196 countries, and has been instrumental in nearly every social movement you can think of, raising awareness and focusing attention on decision makers.

Names on a page only go so far, Mark acknowledged, particularly with politics as polarized as they are today. But conversations that seem impossible at the national level are often easier when shrunken to a local concern — saving a senior center from closure, helping a nearby school, or even protecting a community member from deportation. As divisive as the immigration debate can be, “when people say, ‘this is my neighbor who's going to get kicked out; we know their family and their kids go to school with our kids,’ other people are much more supportive.”

To shine a light on the transformative power of tuition assistance, Alumni Council member Ted Alcorn '01 is telling the stories of alumni who were grateful recipients during their Academy years.

A Warm Welcome at Admission Open House

Albuquerque Academy’s Admission Open House welcomed hundreds of families for a day of exploration and discovery. Through a mix of self-guided and student-led tours, parents and prospective students explored our lively campus, vibrant community, impressive facilities, and diverse academic offerings. Our visitors:

• Enjoyed lively performances featuring guitar, band, chorus, strings, and dance
• Visited academic departments, where guests saw classrooms in action and connected with teachers
• Learned about student life, from clubs and organizations to college guidance, health services, and community service programs
• Gained an inside look at family involvement through the Albuquerque Academy Parents’ Association and parent councils
• Received self-guided and guided tours of inspiring spaces, such as the Simms Center for the Performing Arts, Common Grounds Café, the Bookstore, Simms Library, and the Science Building
• Got insider perspectives from Academy students, giving visitors a true sense of Charger life
• Learned about our admission process and tuition assistance options

We are proud of our school and our mission, and we are honored to be recognized by Niche as the #1 Private High School in the Albuquerque area and #1 STEM school in New Mexico.

If you know a student who would be a great fit for the Academy, please encourage them to learn more.

Ramo Lecture Series Welcomes Distinguished Law Expert

Through the support of the Ramo Lecture Series, students had the opportunity to hear from Jeffrey S. Sutton, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, who shared insights from his distinguished career in law and his experiences with the U.S. Supreme Court through presentations to all grades, attended two history classes, and had lunch with students.

He assumed his role as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in May 2021. As Chief Judge, he oversees administrative operations for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and chairs the Sixth Circuit Judicial Council, ensuring the efficient functioning of the court and adherence to federal regulations and policies. Appointed to the Sixth Circuit by President George W. Bush in 2003, Chief Judge Sutton has chambers in Columbus, Ohio, and is the 18th judge to hold this position within the court.

A highly regarded legal scholar and practitioner, Chief Judge Sutton has argued 12 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous cases in state supreme courts and federal appellate courts. He served as Ohio’s State Solicitor and has taught as an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, as well as a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School. Known for his work on state constitutional law and federalism, he has published several books and articles, including Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions. He has also chaired key judicial committees and serves on the American Law Institute Council.

Considered to be more conservative than previous guests invited to be part of this series, Chief Judge Sutton was intentionally chosen to offer a different perspective.

About the Ramo Lecture on the U.S. Constitution and the Responsibilities of American Citizenship

The lecture series, established by Albuquerque lawyer Roberta Cooper Ramo, the first female president of the American Bar Association and the American Law Institute, is funded by a gift in honor of Cooper Ramo from the ECMC Group, a family of companies that provide financial tools and services, nonprofit career education, and job placement services to help students succeed and achieve their academic and professional goals.