Judges Panel

‘My truth is …’ poetry & essay competition is a Lexington, Massachusetts community based effort to highlight children’s desires, thoughts and opinions.

Our children observe the people, places and events around them very acutely. They are the best reporters of their lives. By giving the children an opportunity to share their truths with us, we are able to better understand ourselves as a community and town.

Our panel of judges include town residents from authors, civic, elected and spiritual leaders, community organizers, lifelong volunteers, parents and well wishers. They include

Lexington High School student judges (for grades 3-6):

Students from the Lexington High School Creative Writing Club and Poetry Club and others will be helping judge the submissions from the youngest grades!

Spiritual Leader:

Reverend Anne Mason is Senior Minister at First Parish, Unitarian Universalist.  As an undergraduate she studied Comparative Literature, and now she spends her time trying to express the ineffable. So with humility, she has a great appreciation for the power of language.

Business Leader:

Praveen Tipirneni is a doctor-engineer, biotech business leader and LHS parent.

Select Board Members:

Joe Pato is a research computer scientist who has worked at HP and MIT. He has and has served on more than 25 committees in town and is a current Lexington Select Board member, since 2013.

Mark Sandeen is a founder and former Chair of Sustainable Lexington Committee, co-founder and president of MassSolar, author of “All Things Sustainable” column in the Lexington Times, and a Lexington Select Board member since 2019.

School Committee Members:

Larry Freeman is a parent of Lexington public school students as well as a financial industry veteran and current School Committee member.

Deepika Sawhney is a School Committee member and Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center at the Kennedy School of Government.

Town Meeting members:

Vicki Blier a long-time Town Meeting Member and forty-year resident of Lexington. She has a degree in Journalism from Boston University.  Her two grown sons were educated in the Lexington public schools.  She is a retired small business owner.

Bridger McGaw is a leader in emergency management, public policy, critical infrastructure resilience, strategic communications, and crisis management. He served for more than 20 years in senior positions in the Clinton and Obama Administrations and Congress and leading security for a major HealthIT company.

Suzanne Lau has volunteered in the schools and community for the 14 years that she has been a resident of Lexington. She is an engineer by training and looks forward to the experience of judging in a writing competition.

Valerie Overton is a Public health specialist, author, co-founder and president of LexPride, as well as a social justice activist for 50 years.