On his 1990 Fieldston yearbook page, he is hanging upside down, surrounded by quotes and brainy friends who are profound, absurd, elliptical, enigmatic and sarcastic. At Fieldston he was a good friend. He was generous and endlessly curious about science. His generosity was once expressed in the form of a 30 million dollar contribution to his beloved Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.. While here he loved the world of high school theater. In the 100s building, in the senior corridor, he was always funny. Glen Michael de Vries, a prominent alumni of Fieldston and biomedical entrepreneur, died in a small plane crash on November 11, 2021 in Hampton Township, NJ.
The 49 year-old businessman was born on June 29, 1972 and raised on the Upper East Side, NYC. He was the son of Madeline Hooper and Alan de Vries. According to Jeff Bezos and other friends, he was “a visionary and an innovator-a true leader,” as well as very curious and charismatic. It seems to us that DeVries was not well-known to the general public. DeVries was a quiet influencer.
His biggest public splash was his space sojourn. Mr. de Vries recently flew to space on Blue Origin’s NS-18 spaceflight on October 13, 2021 with William Shanter, Planet co-founder Chris Boshuizen and Audrey Powers, a Blue Origin vice president. Being a space tourist, he wanted to raise more awareness to environmental issues and clean water access.
He enrolled at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School for high school in 1986 and graduated in 1990. As the co-founder and former co-CEO of Medidata Solutions in 1999, he helped to create a technology company that is a developer of software used in clinical trials. The Fieldston News had recently scheduled an interview with Mr. de Vries, but was unable to complete it due to his untimely death.
During his youth, he had a strong passion for computers, science and read many books about rockets, spaceships and aircrafts. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, he was such an advanced student that he would help teach chemistry class. He later pursued his interest in the sciences by attending Carnegie Mellon University and earned an undergraduate degree in molecular biology and genetics in 1994. De Vries also worked at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center as a research scientist and attended New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematics to study computer science.
In his free time, he pursued a breadth of interests, learning everything from how to speak Japanese, to playing guitar and ballroom dance. Colleagues, friends and family are shattered by the news.
Together with Larson Rose he lit my performances.