Meet Dr. Ron Sutton '08

Spending a few moments listening to or reading the story of Lake Forest Academy alumnus Ronald Sutton ’08 leaves the listener, the reader better for the experience.

As a man in only his late 20s, Ron’s biography to date ought to be the first short story in a collected-works anthology. That may prove to be the case, but the depth of his self-awareness and drive to follow through on traveling, indeed paving, the path he saw in his youth for his adult self make his first three decades more of a nuanced, detailed first act in what promises to be an epic tale.

Growing up in Waukegan, Ron was the only child in a single-parent home where his mother instilled the value of education because she hadn’t attended college and wanted to ensure her son did. The public elementary school student and voracious reader with many friends remembers one truly significant difference between him and his peers. “Most of my friends had no idea what they wanted to do when they ‘grew up,’” he says. “Me, on the other hand, I had a plan.

“I always told people I was going to be a physician. I knew I was going to college, and somehow I was going to practice medicine.”

Then, as now, the storyteller was getting ahead of himself.

When Ron was in middle school, a seed planted by a student at Lake Forest College, where Ron’s mom worked, serendipitously germinated through Ron’s involvement with “A Better Chance,” a not-for-profit organization that strives to send students from under-resourced backgrounds to independent schools across the nation. That led him to Lake Forest Academy.

He lived in Atlass Dormitory for four years, ran cross-country, participated in three musicals, traveled to New York City with the choir, served as peer leader and master key, and, most notably, took classes that truly challenged him for the first time in his life.

“My high school experience was significantly different than that of my friends who attended our local high school,” Ron says. “LFA exposed me to diversity—from socioeconomic status to knowing people literally from all over the world. The resources at LFA were innumerable. Waukegan has some diversity, but it tends to be homogenous.”

As with most teens, Ron’s high school years included some growth through disappointment. “Becoming comfortable in my own skin was challenging,” he remembers. “My first roommate and I were not compatible at all; it was a very difficult time. I wanted to leave and maybe become a day student, but the dorm parents were supportive and I became roommates with another student who I still keep in touch with now.”

“I was fortunate enough to have friends and teachers/mentors who were always there to talk and give great advice. LFA taught me that I might not always be the best at something, but with hard work and dedication I can achieve anything. I don’t think at any point at LFA I ever felt doubted; instead I had a few people who cheered for me.”

It’s fascinating that more than a decade later, Ron effortlessly ticks off LFA’s four pillars of scholarship, citizenship, character, and responsibility with unabashed pride in how the Academy instilled (or further drove home) their importance to a life well lived. “I truly gained another family in LFA,” he says. “In retrospect I wouldn’t change anything about my experience. The Academy pushed me to achieve greatness and not to accept no as a possibility. LFA was truly the launching pad to the career I’m about to start, and it equipped me to be able to compete with the best of the best.”

Ron is now completing his M.D. at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The Dartmouth College alumnus (BA degree in psychological and brain sciences) also earned a master’s degree in medical science from Hampton University in Virginia and participated in a research study at Atlanta’s Emory University on deep brain stimulation for epilepsy and depression.

Upon his May 2019 graduation from VCU, Ron will enter a Residency in Psychiatry at Icahn SOM Beth Israel Hospital (Mt. Sinai), New York, NY. But for all he’s accomplished since the spring of 2008, Ron easily brings his mind’s eye back to that time at LFA.

“Graduation day wasn’t just for me, but for my entire family,” Ron says. “I was the first male on my mother’s side to complete high school. I was proud of what I was able to accomplish while there; but it was also bittersweet. On one hand I was excited to embark on the next chapter of my life at Dartmouth, while on the other I was sad to be leaving my LFA family. LFA was my second home.”

Now on the cusp of his full-time medical career, Ron champions the Academy’s continued inclusivity focus and the effort to build an endowed scholarship for students from Waukegan and North Chicago. “Knowing the demographics of both towns, I’m pretty sure that this scholarship would be life-changing for someone who is coming from a disadvantaged background. Students from these communities may live in the suburbs of Chicago or the North Shore area, but may not always benefit from the resources these areas possess. Many of these students may live similar lives as someone from the inner city of Chicago. ”

He says that while benefactors chiefly see the upside for student-recipients of scholarships, Ron intimately knows the significantly greater depth when a success story is written from a place where achievement is not assumed. “Not only could this scholarship change the trajectory of an individual’s life, it has the potential to change a family’s future,” he says. “Graduating from LFA was not just my accomplishment but also my mother’s, my grandparents’, and my community’s.”

And looking ahead, “My hopes for LFA,” he says, “are to simply continue to ensure a safe place for young people to express their ideas and beliefs; to nurture and challenge students to become the best versions of themselves; to appreciate the power of diversity; to give people who may be the underdog of society the chance to flourish and shine. This scholarship would give someone the opportunity to pursue his or her dreams of potentially becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a CEO or just about anything.”

It certainly isn’t lost on this man with a plan that the adage, To whom much is given, much is expected, applies to him. Fortunately, Ron seems to take that in stride, based on the tender instruction from his first teacher. “I may never be able to repay the LFA community for all it has done for my life,” he says. “But I do plan to reach back someday to help some black or brown girl or boy who simply just wants their dreams to come true. My mother has always told me, ‘Don’t become too big that you forget where you come from. And make sure you come back and take someone else with you.’”