Founders Day 2025

President Wayne F. Lesperance Jr. requests the honor of your presence at New England College’s Founders Day Celebration.

Founders Day celebrates the College’s beginnings as a place of opportunity for veterans returning from World War II and recognizes the commitment of the founding faculty, staff, administration, and students who helped make that vision possible.

Wednesday, January 22, 2025, at 4:00 p.m.
Rosamond Page Putnam Center for the Performing Arts
Or livestream: 9858k.com/foundersdaylivestream

Keynote Speaker

Captain Lynne Blankenbeker
U.S. Navy (Ret.)

Captain (retired) Lynne Blankenbeker earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1986 from Troy State University. She earned her Juris Doctorate in 2007 from Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire. In 1986, she was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the US Air Force Nurse Corps through the Air Force ROTC Program.

Lynne spent nearly six years on active duty at various Air Force hospitals, including a seven-month tour in the Area of Operation in support of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm where she served as an obstetrics nurse, a flight nurse, and an operating room nurse.

In 2000, she affiliated with the Navy Reserve (NR) and spent the next 22 years of her career in multiple assignments and supporting combat operations spanning four deployments.

Noteworthy assignments included

• A 2003 deployment in support of Iraqi Freedom caring for wounded warriors
• Deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom from 2011–2012 in Kandahar Afghanistan
• A three-year recall to the Pentagon to serve as the healthcare policy advisor to the Chief of Navy Reserve
• A two-year recall to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery to serve as the Director for Navy Medicine Reserve Policy and Integration
• Commanding Officer of the Reserve Naval Hospital in San Diego
• Deployment aboard the USNS COMFORT in 2020 in response to the COVID crisis in New York City
• And deployment from 2021–2022 to the Joint Task Force—Guantanamo Bay, serving as the Chief Nursing Officer for medical operations in support of the law of armed conflict detainees

On November 1, 2022, she retired from the Navy Reserve after 36 years of commissioned service.

In her civilian capacity, Lynne is currently serving as the Senior Policy Advisor for Women, Peace and Security to the Chief of Naval Operations. Previous to this role, she served as the Director for Consumer Protection and a civil litigator for the Office of Legal Affairs in American Samoa from 2022–2024. She has also served as a prosecutor for the Hillsborough County Attorney’s Office and served two terms as an elected Representative in the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 2009–2012, where she was the Vice Chair of State and Federal Relations and Veteran’s Affairs and as a member of the Health and Human Services Committee. In 2011, Lynne was awarded the New Hampshire Woman of the Year award.

Lynne is authorized to wear the Legion of Merit (two awards), the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (three awards), the Air Force Commendation Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Achieving Medal, the Air Force achievement Medal, and numerous campaign and outstanding unit medals and ribbons.