The High Point Legacy: Alumni Spotlight: Eugenia Sangiovanni Ventre (Class of ’99)

My Brief Bio—

After graduating from High Point in 1991, I attended Flintridge Prep and then went on to USC. There I majored in Studio Arts with a minor in Communications. I started my own business, Bacio Design & Marketing, over 10 years ago, serving 60+ independent schools and organizations across the country and growing! It is tough but rewarding to juggle around 40 open projects at any given time. I do everything from graphic design to printing to web site development. Some of my main clients include The Buckley School, Harvard-Westlake, Westridge, Poly, Viewpoint and Caltech.

I’m proud to credit the many awards and honors spanning all the way back to my high school years for allowing me to realize my ambitions: creating TedX event materials where Stephen Hawking himself spoke, becoming a member of the Forbes Business Council, receiving multiple Annual Education Advertising Gold Awards, and winning the 2002 Congressional High School Art Competition, which was awarded by Rep. Adam Schiff at the Capitol.

I currently live in Montrose with my husband David Ventre. Our son Milo is in Ms. Wiebe’s Kindergarten class, and our first son/dog Pitri, a 10-year-old Minpin mix, rounds out the family. I continue to draw and paint in my free time as my own form of meditation and a mental break from work. For the last couple of years, I have been drawing caricatures, which recently became a coffee table book (see https://www.instagram.com/eo.and.friends/). Ziplining through mountain tops in Cape Town, South Africa; climbing a volcano in the middle of the night to catch the sunrise in Bali, Indonesia; riding an old Cadillac in Havana, Cuba; and finally, seeing the Northern Lights in Iceland are highlights of my many travels. Now, as a family, we continue to travel all over the world. Being an immigrant from Argentina myself, one of my greatest joys is seeing the world through Milo’s eyes.

My High Point Experience—

I started High Point in fifth grade, and from the first day, I can recall feeling so at ease. I still talk often to two classmates—Caroline Ting and Shari Quan—who initially welcomed me on the first day of Mrs. Ann Zeiss’s class. Even though I have not been back to official or unofficial class reunions, I recall the times we used to go to Ranchero Restaurant for our own mini reunions. We would always find a couple of classmates working there after graduation. I was sad to hear it had closed, as we all shared some great memories.

Because I work with independent schools, it has been super fun using my expertise in the field to work alongside Cheryl Stern to create admissions and Annual Giving materials for High Point. It is gratifying for me to help out in any way I can and give back to the place that started my love of all things art in Mrs. Sandi Brune’s class.

My Personal Observations and Reflections—

A special moment happened just last year while on our school tour for Milo. I saw Mr. Jaime Mejia and immediately ran over to greet him. He yelled out, “Soccer Star!”, remembering me from all those years ago. We actually went right over to the library to pick out my yearbook and go through my old soccer photos together. It truly felt like no time had passed at all. This is how I knew I wanted Milo to go to High Point—to have teachers who will remember him years after he has graduated.

Mrs. Brune also holds a special piece of my heart, when thinking about my time at High Point. I adored drawing, and she really helped me realize and cultivate this passion. I always looked forward to her class. To this day I am still drawing and painting and using art in my career, so it really all stemmed from there.

High Point created an environment where we truly strove to do our best, but we never felt a competition with each other. Our class was especially close and developed into lifelong friendships. One of my best friends at HPA recently started a company with my husband, and I still keep in close contact with a lot of other classmates. There is a sense of family that has lasted all these years.

I remember our graduation day clearly because we were all a mess, crying hysterically. Looking back it has become a humorous memory because in every photo our parents tried to take of us, we just looked disheveled with red, teary faces. We were all worried about missing each other terribly through high school. But a large majority of us ended up at the same high school, so it wasn’t as tragic as we had made it out to be. I still chuckle even writing this. I recently attended an HPA classmate’s wedding: Carolyn Ting’s nuptials were officiated by Shari Quan, and the table was decorated with photos of us from our time at High Point. It was truly a full circle moment.