2011 Young Alumni Award

As a Beloit College student, Fatima Quander was highly engaged in campus life. An Orientation Leader, Resident Assistant, and McNair Scholar, she was also an active member of Black Students United, Voces Latinas, The International Club, The Alliance, and the theater department. But her involvement extended beyond campus, too, a fact she attributes to her Beloit education. “It was at Beloit,” she says, “where I fully understood the importance of being involved and contributing to the well-being of your greater community.”

Fatima interned at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., after graduating from Beloit, and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Actors Studio Drama School at The New School University in New York City. She continued the pattern of service she set at Beloit throughout graduate school and even when she returned to Washington, D.C., to begin her professional career.

Fatima is committed to inspiring the next generation of theater artists, and though she acts for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, she also works with the Young Playwrights’ Theater, a program that teaches students of all ages, grades, and backgrounds how to express themselves through the art of playwriting. Fatima has dedicated herself to empowering and inspiring the school children of the D.C. area by performing in the plays they write, consequently demonstrating the importance of their unique stories and experiences. She takes pride in helping these students find their individual voices. Though she regularly performs professionally, Fatima always finds herself drawn back into the world of Young Playwrights’ Theater where she can, in her own words, “immediately impact a student’s life.” Outside of Young Playwrights’ Theater, Fatima has worked with a number of theater companies, and is currently playing Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun at Everyman Theatre Company in Baltimore, Md.

For her tireless dedication to all of the communities in which she is involved, the Beloit College Alumni Association is pleased to present Fatima Quander with the Young Alumni Award .