Spring Alumni Reception to Celebrate Brooke Hartley Moy ’07 and Teresa and Steve Engebretsen
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During Friday’s Spring Alumni Reception in the Middle School Gateway Center’s Founders Room, the Durham Academy Alumni Board will sustain its 42-year tradition of honoring alumni for outstanding contributions to the school community.
Brooke Hartley Moy ’07, the CEO and co-founder of an AI platform for businesses and developers, will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award, which has been given every year since 1983.
Steve and Teresa Engebretsen, meanwhile, will receive the Faculty and Staff Legacy Award — which has been granted annually since 2012 — for their combined 88 years of service to DA as a longtime director of athletics and longtime Middle School French teacher, respectively.
In anticipation of Friday’s ceremony, learn more about the alumni board’s trio of award recipients — and hear from Hartley Moy, Steve Engebretsen and Teresa Engebretsen on why DA means so much to them.
2025 Distinguished Alumni Award: Brooke Hartley Moy ’07
Hartley Moy is the CEO and co-founder of Infactory, an AI platform for businesses and developers that depend on accuracy. She is a seasoned leader in business development and strategic partnerships, with a career that spans pivotal roles at Google, Slack, Humane and other tech giants.
Moy holds an M.B.A. from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, earned on a full-merit scholarship for female leadership. At Infactory, her leadership is instrumental in steering the company’s strategic direction. Moy's groundbreaking foray into AI — particularly as a female leader — has been featured on CNBC, Beyond the Valley, Fortune and several other news platforms.
Since founding Infactory in June 2024, Moy has given a keynote presentation at the prestigious Web Summit in Lisbon, presented at the UC Berkeley Hackathon and was one of just 10 AI founders — out of more than 700 applications — selected to give an on-stage pitch at the renowned TechCrunch Disrupt AI event.
What DA Has Meant to Me
“There's this strange moment when you realize everyone around you is passionate about something you thought was just your thing. When I arrived at Durham Academy as a high school student, I was startled by all these people voluntarily seeking out AP classes, staying after for teacher tutorials, competing to lead clubs. I'd been carrying this quiet torch for learning, only to stumble into a whole bonfire of people doing the same.
“At first it was anxiety inducing and an identity crisis. Wasn't intellectual curiosity supposed to be my special quality? But then it became a gift. A permission slip. When everyone values learning, suddenly you're free to value it for yourself — not as a performance. And you recognize that the willingness to ask tough questions and hard things is itself a valuable skill.
“For example, in Mr. [Dave] Gould's AP Modern European History class, the essay prompts were always brutally open-ended and complex. I'd stare at them thinking, ‘How am I supposed to fit an entire historical movement into five paragraphs?’ But Mr. Gould was teaching us to embrace uncertainty and let go of perfectionism. I kept every paper I wrote from that class — not because they were perfect, but because they were evidence of me trying something that felt too hard.
“In Mr. [David] Markus' AP American History class, we'd veer off into these historical detours, like labor strikes and women's liberation movements. None of these topics would appear on any standardized test. And that's when I understood that learning isn't always about the destination. Sometimes it's about following curiosity down its winding path just to see where it leads.
“Senior year, I auditioned for No Exit. I had no idea if I could actually act, but DA had planted this ‘Why not try?’ seed in my brain. When I got the lead role, it wasn't because I was naturally talented. It was because I'd been taught that showing up matters more than being perfect.
“As any DA math teacher will tell you, I was embarrassingly bad at math. The kind of bad where you wonder if there's a fundamental wiring issue in your brain. And yet, surrounded by this ‘get comfortable with hard things’ mentality, I later chose to focus on finance in business school. Because DA taught me that you don't have to be the best at something to find value in doing it.
“What Durham Academy really gave me was a community that made excellence seem normal, not exceptional. A place where intellectual curiosity wasn't something to hide. Where risk-taking wasn't reckless but necessary. Where doing hard things wasn't something to avoid but something to move toward, with your whole heart.”
2025 Faculty & Staff Legacy Award Honorees: Steve & Teresa Engebretsen
They met, of course, at Durham Academy. It was the early 1980s. Greg Murray would spend 43 years at DA as a coach, Upper School PE teacher, Senior Challenge director — and, he claims, as the faculty member who introduced Steve Engebretsen to a Middle School French teacher named Teresa Bell. They would, after Steve’s first year at DA in 1981, become the Engebretsens. And they will, by the close of the 2024–2025 school year, have devoted a combined 88 years of service to DA.
Their shared dedication stems from the varied roles they have held over the last five decades at the school — among them, as athletic director and Middle School French teacher — but their commitment to the Durham Academy family extends far beyond these official roles. They are parents of two DA alumni — Jake '06 and Grant '11 — and the Engebretsens are part of the fabric of Durham Academy for countless students, families, alumni and colleagues.
Steve Engebretsen served as Durham Academy's director of athletics from 1991–2019 and coached varsity boys basketball for 14 years and varsity softball for 11 years. He also taught physical education in the Lower, Middle and Upper School divisions and served as assistant athletic director and an Upper School advisor over the course of his 43-year career at DA. His accolades include NC Soccer Coaches Association Athletic Director of the Year in 2013; US Lacrosse North Carolina High School Man of the Year in 2014; DA Athletic Hall of Fame inductee in 2015; the NCISAA Chuck Carter Athletic Director Award in 2018; and being the namesake of DA’s Steve Engebretsen Athletic Leadership Award, which was created in 2019.
Teresa Engebretsen has taught Middle School French since 1980. During that time, she also served as academic leader for the Middle School world languages department; as a seventh and eighth grade advisor; as seventh grade team leader; as Middle School registrar; as a JV and varsity softball coach; and developer of the Phenomenon of Language class for new DA Middle School students. Teresa coordinated the seventh grade trip to Washington, D.C., for many years and — perhaps most famously — led annual student trips to France beginning in 1987. She was honored with DA's Hershey Distinguished Faculty Award in 2013.
What DA Has Meant to Us
Steve Engebretsen: “I think it’s cool that we’re receiving this award together. Teresa came a year before I did and stayed a year longer than I did. We grew up here together: started dating, got married the summer after my first year here. It’s pretty special.”
Teresa Engebretsen: “DA has truly been a family. Maybe people get tired of hearing that because I say it so much, but it’s true. When I do my little talk at Friday’s ceremony, I’m going to talk about the relationships that this place has.”
Steve Engebretsen: “We look back, and we have really good relationships with parents: just a respectful, friendly, trusting, look-forward-to-seeing-them kind of relationship. And so when we see parents now around Durham from kids in the ’80s and ’90s, it’s fun.”
Teresa Engebretsen: “Now I’m teaching the kids of my first set of students. When I look around my classroom now, I have so many whose aunts, uncles, moms or dads are kids that I taught. And that’s pretty cool.”
Steve Engebretsen: “Our favorite thing to do is to go to one of the alumni events and see people because we know almost everyone. And it’s fun to see kids who are now 50 years old.”
Teresa Engebretsen: “Durham Academy has always put the kids first and has always done what’s best for students.”