Battle named GPS Distinguished Alumna

Betsy Lee Battle was named the 2012 Distinguished Alumna of Girls Preparatory School during the school's recent Alumnae Weekend.

The Distinguished Alumna Award is based on a graduate's professional achievement, service in her church and community, and her commitment to GPS.

Battle is chief investment officer and founding partner of Lone Peak Partners Management in New York City. A member of the GPS class of 1972, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in journalism.

After serving as vice president for Bankers Trust, Citicorp and J.P. Morgan, Battle was managing director of EIM (USA) Inc. and director of manager selection and member of the management committee for Soros Fund Management.

In 2008, she founded her own hedge fund, Lone Peak Partners, and raised almost $70 million in capital during its first year of operation.

The honoree is an accomplished horsewoman and community volunteer. She has served on the board of North Carolina Outward Bound School, the President's Council for Peconic Land Trust and on the endowment committee of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in East Hampton, N.Y.

• Recipients of the Margaret Rawlings Lupton Award of Excellence were named during the weekend. Women chosen for this honor have made significant impacts in their communities through professional and/or voluntary activities.

Lupton Award winners were Dr. Heidi Lary Kar, Dr. Pamela M. Kato and Marshall Persinger.

Kar is a psychology specialist in violence prevention and is the trauma and substance use disorders post-doctoral fellow at San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

An award-winning researcher, she has been recognized by the Melissa Institute of Violence Prevention, the Gates Foundation and USAID. She has traveled extensively to study violence as it relates to victims of HIV/AIDS and to develop stigma-reduction intervention programs.

Kato is a psychologist and senior research specialist at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. She has developed 3-D collaborative technology for use in health care and created several award-winning health games to enhance communication within her field.

This use of video games for nonentertainment purposes, such as a biofeedback game to teach medical residents about patient safety, has made her a sought-after international consultant and lecturer.

She has served on the advisory board of Games for Health Europe and the editorial board of IGI Global.

Persinger, president of Fresh Produce, a television, film and documentary production company in Los Angeles, began her career in New York under the mentorship of Academy Award-winning producer/director Jonathan Demme while working on the film "The Silence of the Lambs."

She has been named one of Variety's Top 10 International Producers To Watch and currently co-chairs the Independent Producers Committee.

Persinger was executive producer of the first four seasons of Lifetime's "Army Wives." She is the executive in charge of the Sundance Channel's first scripted series, "Rectify," which will air in 2013. Other projects have included Showtime's "Wild Iris," USA Film's "Cherry Falls," and "Still Breathing," a romantic comedy starring Brendan Fraser and Celeste Holm.

• Courtney Poole Brunetz was inducted into the GPS Athletic Hall of Fame for her achievements in soccer. After playing for GPS, she continued her soccer career at Rhodes College, where she was All-SCAC, on the All-South Region team, and was named captain.

After receiving her master's in sports and leisure commerce from the University of Memphis, she began working with TSSAA as coordinator of student services and now is marketing director.

• Ann Parks McAllister of Pinehurst, N.C., was the recipient of the Love of GPS Award. Under her leadership, her class of 1962 raised a significant Reunion Legacy Gift for the school to establish an endowment for need-based financial aid.

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