Jill Lundberg: It’s A Project

Jill Lundberg knows a project when she sees one.  After all, professionally she is a project manager. But one of the projects she is working on at the moment has nothing to do with her job.  The project is the annual safe graduation party for Valley Regional High School seniors. But she says the same skills are relevant.

“I am applying the tools that are in my toolbox,” she says.

Graduation is not until June, but for the all-night SafeGrad party to go smoothly, plans have to be made well in advance, and funds must be raised to ensure the evening creates the memories that are key to the whole experience.

Still, the party fulfills a larger purpose than one last evening of fun.  It is also about, as the name SafeGrad promises, keeping young people safe on a special night.

There is no alcohol; there is no driving around celebrating. The location of the party is kept secret until busses with the graduates arrive at the party venue.

“The idea is to see they get home safely.  They leave on a bus; they come home on a bus,” Jill says.

Chris Pagliuco, chair of this year’s SafeGrad committee echoes her sentiments. One of his daughters will graduate in 2025, the other in 2027.

“We need to be proactive in providing meaningful and safe social events for the kids at this time of profound transition in their lives,” he notes.

Jill has already been in charge of one of the fundraisers for the occasion.  For $40, seniors paint their own designs on their individual parking spaces.  The designs have to be approved in advance by the school and the SafeGrad committee.

Seniors who do not have parking spaces are not excluded.  They can paint a spot occupied by a junior. And there is financial assistance for students who cannot afford the painting fee.

“We want all seniors to be able to participate,” Jill says.

Paying for materials varies from year to year.  This year, according to Jill, Essex Hardware donated painting equipment like brushes, stir sticks, and tape, and the SafeGrad committee paid for the paint, which the hardware store sold at what Jill describes as “a significant discount.”

The money from the parking space painting is used for the large pictures of graduates that are placed in prominent areas in the Deep River, Essex, and Chester as graduation approaches.

Some of the funds the SafeGrad committee raises are set aside as seed money to give to the safe graduation party for next year’s graduates. The parents of this year’s seniors, in fact, need some special help from the parents of underclassmen. They need those parents to volunteer to help at this year’s event rather than have the adolescent-cringing situation of seniors’ parents chaperoning their own graduates.

Jill, whose son Jake Marmelstein is graduating this year, has lived in Essex for over 20 years, all of them working at Pfizer. She is a senior director managing clinical trials of drugs.

She trained as a clinical geneticist, a field she decided on after hearing a lecture on the subject in her senior year at Assumption College.

“I knew that’s what I wanted to be,” Jill recalls but there was a problem.

She needed to take courses required for the field that were not a part of her original program of study. She extended her college stay as a non-traditional student to acquire the background she needed for graduate study and, ultimately, her master’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh.

Her clinical trials have often involved drugs related to immunology and inflammation. Though she has two decades at Pfizer, she says even newbies at the company refer to the president, Albert Bourla, who led the company through the development of the COVID-19 vaccine informally.

“Everybody calls him Albert,” she says.

Jill has travelled extensively both for work and for pleasure. For Pfizer, she has been in places like India, Egypt, and Dubai for clinical trials. On vacation, she and Jake, a history buff, most recently did a tour in Europe of World War I and World War II battle sites. Her vacations have taken her throughout Europe and, as she puts it, to “three million Caribbean islands.”

The SafeGrad committee is not her first involvement with Valley Regional High School. She has been vice president of the booster club for the crew team with which she became involved because Jake is a rower.

“Crew is an amazing sport,” she says, “and it can be so instrumental for young athletes who have not found a sport in which they thrived.”

As she looks forward to the continued planning by the SafeGrad committee, Jill points out the event affords benefits not only for students for parents who know their children will be safe at the party.

“Now parents can relax, and celebrate their kids’ graduation,” she says. “You know they say it takes a village, and this is what this is all about.”

Valley Regional High School safe graduation party has a Venmo account for contributions: @Valleysafegraduation