SPRINGFIELD — When Wall Street hedge fund executive Angelene Huang was asked if she could help turn around the failing Springfield Commonwealth Academy, she agreed to take a look at the property on Ames Hill Drive. The college preparatory school educates children in grades 6-12.
“I got a call asking me to run the school,” she told Reminder Publishing. “I wanted to try and become successful. I knew I could do this. It makes me feel fulfilled, because if you can turn around something that was nearly shut down and broken and make it popular again, you feel good that you helped the students.”
When she came to Springfield to see SCA, Huang said she was nearing the end of a one-year contract to lead the New York Military Academy as its president. Her profile on LinkedIn states, she was charged “with a mission of turning around a 133-year-old military school.”
Huang declared “mission accomplished” by the end of her first year in charge of finance, recruiting, engineering and discipline — saving the academy from being shut down, according to her LinkedIn page.
“I was able to change quite a few students’ lives. About 10 students almost got kicked out, and I kept them. I didn’t allow anybody to be kicked out. I asked all the teachers to give them another chance, and I became their mentor,” she said.
Visiting Springfield
Once Huang strolled the campus and saw the potential of SCA, she not only agreed to help rescue the international boarding and day school — she joined investors and bought it earlier this year and has been named its president. Huang is now bringing on a leadership team, fortifying the staff of instructors and aggressively recruiting students.
The SCA leader is hoping to enroll 120 students before fall classes begin. She said she’s within a couple dozen students of achieving that goal. While students come from around the world, she said there are only two from Western Massachusetts. She’s hoping to boost that number in the coming years.
The SCA campus, formerly known as the MacDuffie School, has its roots beginning in the early 1900s. In June 2011, the campus was devastated by a rare EF3 tornado. After that natural disaster, MacDuffie relocated, and the Springfield campus was acquired by a local businessman who launched SCA. In 2018, the school was purchased by a Chinese investor, but the pandemic decimated enrollment and the campus fell into disrepair.
“Our new investors share our commitment to excellence and are providing the resources needed to enhance our programs and facilities, ensuring that SCA continues to prepare students for the challenges of higher education and beyond,” said Huang.
Impoverished as a child
Huang said she was born and raised in a poor Chinese town. She said has overcome unspecified trauma, surviving and ultimately earning environmental engineering degrees from the elite Tsinghua University in Beijing and Iowa State University. She is also degreed in computer science, finance and strategy, with diplomas from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Yale School of Management.
Huang has held executive positions, sat on boards of directors and been treasurer of a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund. Because of the help she has gotten to overcome her near impossible start to life, she is now intensely focused on aiding others.
“I like to help build the community. Education is very important to the next generation, so my mission is to help build it. Education changed my life. Without many people’s support through my journey, I wouldn’t have dreamed to go to Yale or work on Wall Street. But all those dreams came true because a lot of people gave me support,” she said.
Huang has ambitious plans to renovate the 60-year-old campus library, introducing new technology and turning it into modern space that can host seminars, workshops and conferences. Other key enhancements include purchasing an historic home to expand student housing, launching an online school, boosting summer learning programs while adding cutting edge technology and social-emotional learning classes.
Huang has been laser focused on designing a broad strategic plan for the school, but she is also immersed in every detail of relaunching the academy—from working with a plumber to fix leaky pipes, to overseeing building restoration and updating decorations
“People tell me how beautiful it is, but they don’t know how much sweat and tears I put behind it. I’ve gotten people to donate furniture and paintings. I even went to a yard sale and got a five-dollar vase,” she said.
SCA boasts a student-teacher ratio of 6 to 1 and states 95% of graduates attend four-year colleges.
Huang said she’s been approached by other investors who want to sink millions of dollars into the school, but she’s told them she’s not interested in accepting their money and having to return quick profits. She wants to reinvest in the school, with the goal of making SCA the leading private co-educational college preparatory school in the United States.
“I do have a lot of investors trying to see me. I don’t want to take people’s money. They want me to sell the school and double my money. I don’t think education is for making money. It’s to make people and the community sustainable,” she said. “You have to be brave. You have to take risks. I’m willing to do that for this school.”
