Alumni Awards to Honor Brendan Bradley ’01 and Robert Wilson
By Leslie Traba
7-minute read
At the 43rd Durham Academy Spring Alumni Reception, the Alumni Board will honor Brendan Bradley ’01 — the multi-hyphenate actor-storyteller-filmmaker-digital content pioneer — as DA’s Distinguished Alumni Award recipient and Robert Wilson — former Middle School dean of students and beloved math teacher — as the Faculty and Staff Legacy Award recipient.
They will be recognized by their peers and colleagues on Friday, April 24, at 5:30 p.m.
2026 Distinguished Alumni Award Honoree: Brendan Bradley ’01
Brendan Andolsek Bradley ’01 is a multidisciplinary actor and creative pioneer whose work spans live stage performance, film and television, AAA video games, digital media and immersive experiences. His career bridges work both inside major institutions and independently, building narrative systems rooted in a belief that entertainment shouldn’t just serve as a form of escapism, but should also serve as a way to engage with it.
Out of all of his impressive creative pursuits and successes, Bradley is probably best known as an actor in a wide variety of roles ranging from a stint as "The Staples Guy” — serving for three years as the company’s international spokesperson in over 50 commercials — to acting alongside Dolly Parton in her 2022 Christmas special. With over 100 IMDb credits and more than 50 million online views, he has been recognized by South by Southwest, the Producers Guild of America, and the VR Awards for blending compelling character work with technological innovation. Brendan trained at The Royal Academy in London, The Groundlings and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Some of his most significant work has been creating supportive storytelling tools to support acting and the acting community. Bradley earned a B.F.A. from Tisch, where he later founded The Innovation Lab to integrate interactive technology into performing arts curriculum. The credited course and collaborative incubator explores the intersection of emerging technology, live performance and collaborative creation.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bradley shared free tools and tutorials for creators trapped at home and fostered community within the theatre-technology industry via his 5th Wall Forum podcast. He has earned recognition as a pioneer in live virtual reality (VR) events and performance, most notably via his Future Stages and OnBoard platforms. Bradley’s VR play, Jettison, was a finalist for the Producers Guild of America’s Innovation Award, and he has performed both virtually and in-person at festivals and venues around the world.
In addition to his creative output, Bradley has long been an advocate for artists and creative labor. He served as a lead strike captain during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA labor movement, from which his now-iconic pineapple hat entered the Smithsonian Institution’s collection. His work also includes long-term mentorship and education initiatives, as well as international speaking engagements focused on equity, authorship and the evolving future of storytelling.
The Alumni Board is thrilled to present the Distinguished Alumni Award to Brendan Bradley ’01 for his accomplished on-screen career and for the leadership he has shown as an innovator and champion of the creative community. Beyond his acting career, Brendan has pioneered the use of technology in live performance, helping artists adapt and create new work across rapidly changing creative landscapes, particularly helping to pioneer virtual theater during the pandemic. He has also been a consistent voice for creative labor, standing up for artists’ rights during moments of collective action and exemplifying what it means to live a moral, happy, and productive life.” – Maggie McPherson Weir ’01, Durham Academy Alumni Board member
Durham Academy roots: Bradley consistently points to the seeds for his innovative, creative “the show must go on” roots as being firmly planted at DA. During his sophomore year, the Upper School fall play was canceled due to renovations of Kenan Auditorium. Bradley found and student-produced that year’s show, The Mousetrap, and secured an alternative performance venue on Duke’s campus. Bradley’s brother, Nick ’05, and sister, Kendall ’07, are also DA alumni.
2026 Faculty & Staff Legacy Award Honoree: Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson is another multi-hyphenate, having served in a variety of roles over the course of his 35 years at DA Middle School. During his tenure — stretching from 1990 to 2025 — he brought an empathetic, encouraging approach to roles including math teacher, class advisor, club sponsor, task force chair, team leader, and the Middle School’s first-ever Dean of Students. Wilson was honored with the F. Robertson Hershey Distinguished Faculty Award in 2000.
The DA Alumni Board’s qualifications for the Faculty & Staff Legacy Award read like a checklist for Wilson’s extensive teaching, mentoring and administrative career, all of it spent with Middle School-aged students. “Understanding,” “extremely encouraging” and “patient” are words his former students used in their sixth grade hero book projects to describe Wilson — keepsakes that he counts among his proudest professional honors.
Wilson demonstrated empathy and understanding early on — putting his college career on pause to work as a counselor at a wilderness school for 12- to 14-year-olds who had been expelled from their state school system or had criminal convictions. Gaining that eye-opening perspective laid the groundwork for Wilson to advise and counsel future middle school students through some of their most difficult or disappointing experiences.
The year before he arrived at DA, when he taught at Holton Middle School, Wilson was honored as Durham Public Schools Teacher of the Year. He went on to help generations of DA Middle School students tackle algebra. A lifelong, avid angler, he supported student passions while serving as the Middle School’s club coordinator — launching clubs to inspire future fishers, bird watchers, sports fans and more.
In the 1998 Evergreen yearbook dedication, Middle Schoolers recognized Wilson for making them feel seen and heard, both inside and outside of the classroom, where Wilson spent “hours listening to us, let us hang out in his classroom when we didn’t have anywhere else to go, took us on fishing trips, and made us think about people and places far from our own lives.” Wilson also modeled lifelong learning for his students. In 2007, he earned a Master of School Administration from UNC-Chapel Hill as a Brenda B. Brodie Sabbatical recipient.
In a 2016 faculty profile, Wilson reflected on his own school years, saying “I’ve never been a great rule follower” and “I wasn’t that good a student, particularly when I got to high school.” During his 10-year tenure as the Middle School’s dean of students, those experiences proved to be uniquely valuable as he handled discipline issues and counseled students in need of extra support. “I remember being a kid … I remember how much I revered a relationship with an adult that I actually felt was listening to me and had some understanding of who I was or how I was feeling,” he said at the time. “In terms of treating other people the way I’d like to be treated, I listen very carefully to kids, and I can empathize with most of whatever they have to deal with or to say, their ideas and thoughts.”
The DA Alumni Board is proud to present the Faculty and Staff Legacy Award to Robert Wilson. Generations of alumni fondly remember math with Mr. Wilson for his kindness, humor and welcoming classroom where no question was “stupid.” Beyond teaching math, he served as a fifth grade advisor and later dean of students, making a lasting impact on the DA community. From his love of fishing to his memorable triangle angles quiz, Mr. Wilson made learning fun and the DA experience unforgettable."– David Peters ’13, Durham Academy Alumni Board President
A DA introduction by way of Germany: While teaching at Holton Middle School in Durham in 1989, Wilson was one of 15 teachers from local public and independent schools chosen to participate in the German American Teacher Exchange. Durham Academy served as the host school for the program, which sent Durham teachers to Germany for six weeks of summer travel and brought German teachers to Durham for six weeks in the spring. The program marked the first time Wilson had been to Europe, and it’s how he was introduced to Durham Academy and Jim Speir (then assistant head of school), who hired Wilson as a fifth grade math teacher and advisor the following year. He quickly became part of the fabric of Durham Academy, and DA is woven into the fabric of Wilson and his family. His son, Ian, graduated from DA in 2018.