Staff
After graduating from Williams in 2013, Evan interned at the highly reputed publishing house Farrar Straus & Giroux. He then went on to get an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida where he then spent 3 years as an adjunct professor and tutor. At Baret, Evan distills our global program and its people into the ever growing and galloping sentences that you read about us. Education: Williams College (BA), University of Florida (MFA) Languages: English Birthplace: Springfield, Massachusetts Lived In: USA and Florida (which he considers to be its own country)
as a traveler, he is willing to do anything to see the sights: for example, he once went to Ibiza for one day to see Calvin Harris perform. This kind of love of the journey is what Baret is all about, and we know Viraj’s expertise as an educator will bring great dividends to our Recruitment team. Education: New York University, BS Languages: English, Hindi, Punjabi Birthplace: New Delhi, India Lived In: India, United States Special book: Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets , JK Rowling
Luckily Ma Jing is an avid meditator, and was able to accept this disappointment with aplomb. A marathon and trail runner, as well as a boxer, she also won’t hesitate to challenge you to a deadlift competition. She’s always willing to try new things and believes in living in the present, and as Baret is all about trying new things, she fits right in with our ethos and culture. Education: National University of Singapore, MSc; Communication University of China, BA Languages: Mandarin, English, Japanese Birthplace: Xinjiang, China Lived In: China, United Kingdom, Singapore Special Book: The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life’s Perfection , Michael A. Singer
For sanity, she’s a strength and fitness buff, owning Downtown Gym. She’s a top- shelf gardener, hands deep in the dirt. Education: Knox Union Vocational-Technical Languages: English Birthplace: Knoxville Lived in: United States Special Book: The Education of a Gardener , Russell Page
EVAN GRILLON SENIOR CONTENT WRITER BASED: NEW YORK CITY Evan’s desk drawers (like himself) are capacious and full of potential: it’s where three versions of his novel live. To be in conversation with Evan is a calming, creative, and cultured experience. He brings the care of the 650 person small town of Windsor, Massachusetts where he grew up, the empathetic listening he learned as a crisis counselor for Alachua County during the pandemic, the philosophy he read at Williams, and the voice of Peter Griffin from Family Guy . Evan used to play the baritone saxophone, and you can tell—his sensitivity and sensibility play out musically on the page. His writing has been mentioned in the New York Times; he was an author’s must read at Pocket in 2023, and his fiction, criticism, and personal essays are in places like the Los Angeles Review of Books, Southern Humanities Review, and the media newsletter Dirt.
VIRAJ BAKLIWAL RECRUITMENT ASSOCIATE BASED: NEW YORK CITY Viraj, a recent graduate of NYU and teacher at Success Academy Charter Schools, is the youngest member of Baret’s global team, bringing a special, youthful perspective to Baret’s Global team. Having made the Dean’s List at NYU, focusing on psychology, finance, and marketing, he has a prestigious academic track record, and impressive internships at KPMG Global Services where he contributed to M&A projects as well as data analysis. His background, warmth, and expertise will be an enormous asset to our recruitment team. Viraj’s roots with Baret go all the way back to high school, where our very own Head of Global Recruitment, Farhad Anklesaria, was his ACT prep tutor. Viraj claims to have nearly perfect recall for birthdays (a 95% success rate!), so feel free to test him on that, as many of us are skeptical. He can also recite the lyrics to most post- millenium Bollywood, and
MA JING MARKETING AND ENROLLMENT MANAGER FOR CHINA BASED: BEIJING Ma Jing brings almost a decade of experience in mass media and digital communication to Baret. With extensive experience as an anchor woman and producer for the Beijing Finance Channel, she will spearhead our social media strategy in China. Like all of us at Baret, she is passionate about education and its role in changing the minds of young people. Her background in television, as well as her master’s degree in entrepreneurship management, will make her a valuable addition to our recruitment team. Ma Jing’s first response to learning about the Baret Scholars program was that she wanted to join the program–not as a member of the Global Team, but as a student. Baret’s President, Li Jing, reluctantly had to inform Ma Jing that she was a little too old for the program.
KRISTAL SHIPE, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT BASED: KNOXVILLE
An old saying goes: “the front-line troops are always in favor of retreat.” Not so with Kristal Shipe. For 38 years she has not just held the line but run to the problem, any problem she has been asked to tackle. She does so with a patience and charm that belies her immense capacities. In 1983, she joined Whittle Communications (then called 13-30), a rapidly rising media endeavor with team members scattered across 7 buildings in Knoxville. Two years later she became the EA of Chris Whittle, and for nearly 4 decades hence, she has helped make possible the 5 media and educational endeavors he founded. Though in later years not based where the companies were, during the annoying days of dial-up, she could have patented the concept of virtual work. Her home base in Knoxville is not an outpost of, but an inbox for the leadership teams she has helped coordinate.
viraj.bakliwal@baretscholars.org
Special Book: Under the Volcano , Malcolm Lowry
evan.grillon@baretscholars.org
jing.ma@baretscholars.org
146 BARET SCHOLARS
147 THE BARET TEAM & ADVISORS
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