“Goddamnit, You’ve Gotta Be Kind”: Sara Jane Ho ‘03 Addresses the Academy

By ALLEGRA LAI, JINMIN LEE and LILY RAMPE

    On Tuesday, Sept. 10, as the first guest speaker of the year, entrepreneur and Exeter alumna Sara Jane Ho ‘03 addressed the Academy at assembly. After her self-reflective speech describing her experience at Exeter and sitting in on English and History classes, Ho held a Q&A session in the Elting room and gave her signature to students who picked up her book Mind Your Manners.

    After growing up in Hong Kong, Ho arrived at Exeter as a new lower, graduating in the class of ‘03 and enrolling in Georgetown University and Harvard Business School. Ho founded Institute Sarita in 2013, a finishing school teaching etiquette in Beijing, and starred in Mind Your Manners, a Netflix series offering advice on manners. In 2015, the New York Times featured her as an important figure teaching the new Chinese “Superrich.”

    Although many students initially anticipated her speech to talk about entrepreneurship and success in business, Ho surprised the audience by discussing her Exeter experience, outlining the challenges she faced and lessons she learned during her three years at the Academy. Ho spoke about the struggles she encountered when she first came to Exeter, including imposed beauty standards and her complicated relationship with her parents. Ho mentioned the difficulties she faced when her parents almost went through a divorce during her time at Exeter, as well as the relatable challenges posed by teenage insecurities at Exeter, such as finding someone to sit with at Elm Street Dining Hall. Toward the end of her speech, Ho mentioned her classmate, friend, and mentor—Flora—who, even at the age of 14, showed Ho the importance of just being kind.

    “I wrote the script on the Sunday night before the speech,” Ho recalled in an interview with The Exonian, “and I was really stumped about what to write and what to say. Usually, I do a lot of career sharing and I’m used to “Preparing the speech by opening up my memories moved me emotionally,” continued Ho. “I took the train to Exeter from New York, and Nikki, a driver for the Academy, picked me up. I asked her if I could rehearse my talk, although I hadn’t delivered the script to anyone yet. She said yes, and, at the end of the drive, she looked back and was bawling. I was also in tears and choking up.”

    Most students found Ho’s speech refreshing and relatable. “She was captivating,” said upper Rebecca Nguyen. “I liked how she reflected on her Exeter experience with honesty, including how she sometimes struggled during her formative years. It validated me because I’m also an international student from Asia and my parents are very similar to hers; she was very inspirational.”

    “I wrote the script on the Sunday night before the speech,” Ho recalled in an interview with The Exonian, “and I was really stumped about what to write and what to say. Usually, I do a lot of career sharing and I’m used to talking about my career. I think that’s actually what the Exeter administration might have expected from me. However, I talked about my memories at Exeter because I didn’t want to write about anything except for what’s very personal to me.”

    Ho shared how emotional this speech was for her and the level of connection she hoped to reach with current Exonians. “When I dig back for those memories, it was really personal, and I just thought, ‘I don’t want to write about anything except for what’s very personal. I don’t want to talk about my career. I don’t want to talk about the kids who are the brightest and the best.’ I thought that I just wanted to write from my heart about what my experience was like.”

    “Ho was amazing; she had a good mix of comedy and honesty, which is sometimes rare at assemblies. Life can be hard and lonely at Exeter, but you make great friends along the way,” senior Beverly Oleka said.

    Prep Cooper Meadville also enjoyed Ho’s humor, citing a joke that Ho cracked about her friend’s suggestion that she date Meta CEO and alumnus Mark Zuckerberg, which she rejected. “This was my first ever assembly, and it was a great opener. My favorite part was tying everyone in, such as Mark Zuckerberg. That made the speech really engaging.”

    Upper Sam Altman added, “this assembly was one that all Exonians had to hear. Although speeches about successes are interesting, the best assemblies are those that are emotionally impactful, like this one. In the daily life of an Exonian, it is the speeches that reflect upon the Exeter experience that hit home. Ho talked about the many ways she struggled, and I could relate to her point about having a reliable friend. I want to also emphasize the importance of having a caring friend like Flora; one can’t go through Exeter alone. Ho didn’t shy away from talking about her teenage insecurities, which many Exonians can feel deep down.”

    Ho shared that she found speaking to the assembly rewarding. “One of the students came up to me during my lunch and said, ‘Do you feel that you’ve come full circle now because you’re a success and you’ve been invited back to speak?’ And I said, ‘No, I feel that coming full circle and doing this talk has forced me to grapple with my feelings, some of which are complicated.’ The experience of being here now and coming here has healed me enough to share it, to unburden it. A lot of those things I had never told anybody.”

    After the Q&A lunch, Ho sat in on Instructor in English Mercy Carbonell’s class, which she had once been a part of during her first year at Exeter. “Ms. Carbonell had them go around, introduce themselves to me, and also say what about my speech resonated with them. There were kids who said the part where my parents were fighting really resonated. I just feel so empathetic towards them because I know what they’re going through.”

    “There was also a girl who said that she resonated with the part where I struggled with my weight,” Ho added. “I just felt like I shared a very disjointed bunch of memories but you realize that actually everybody can connect or relate to some of them. I am able to give you guys something. A very vulnerable part of myself, but in the hope that it can help you guys.”

    In her final remarks, Ho emphasized that Exonians can overcome Exeter’s challenges through acts of care and kindness. Any Exonian, like Flora, could be an important figure to another. Sharing Flora’s senior yearbook quote (and Kurt Vonnegut), Ho concluded, “Goddammit, you’ve gotta be kind.”