Living a Deliberate Life By Design

By Emily Magnus, Editor

Braelin Thornton P’29 believes in giving life everything she has; there’s no time allotted for coasting or doom scrolling. Instead, she runs her own wealth management firm, raises her son single-handedly, trains for triathlons, supports the Kyle Pease Foundation, snow skis, and water skis. Most recently she has taken up 29029 Everesting, events in which participants hike the equivalent height of Mt. Everest in a 36-hour challenge. While it is not a race, if you manage to climb all 29,029 feet, you earn a red hat and bragging rights. Braelin has completed six of them, as well as a similar trail event, and isn’t done yet. Along the way, she has found a remarkable community of like-minded people.

Braelin grew up in Lyme, New Hampshire, so Cardigan Mountain School was always right down the road. And while she couldn’t attend the yearlong program with her brother Hunter Holland ’09, in the summers of 1997 and 1998, prior to high school, Braelin attended Summer Session. (Later her younger brother Graeme Thornton attended Summer Session between fifth and sixth grade.) “I believe in life, everything compounds in one direction or the other,” she says. “The younger you can start, the better. If you take what happened at Cardigan those summers, that got me ahead in math and science. It launched me ahead, and then I was able to just continue that in middle school and high school and college. When I started at Goldman Sachs, things were a little bit rougher for women than they are today. I feel like that leg up really helped me.”

Braelin also remembers that Summer Session was the first time that she had met people from around the world. “It was an eye-opener for me,” she says. “Children need to understand how big the world is. I think that we can travel with our kids, but that’s taking them somewhere and putting them somewhere else. That’s not as influential as really getting to know how someone thinks and how they work day-to-day and what matters in their culture. Summer Session does a really good job creating that diverse group.” 

Summer Session, however, wasn’t all fun for Braelin. She remembers being particularly challenged in her SSAT prep class. “I was sitting in [Humann] Theatre, and we were doing tests, and I remember thinking, ‘I don’t like this. This is impossible.’ I was so frustrated. But it was also a lesson in getting through tough moments. Then comes the confidence.…Those soft lessons are important because then you go on to do something else, and you think, ‘Oh, I did that. I can do this.’ The next thing seems easier. It’s the same mental trigger.”

Buoyed by her lessons in mental toughness and self-confidence, Braelin attended Kimball Union Academy and then Alfred University, earning degrees in accounting and business administration. Braelin then went to work for Goldman Sachs and in 2009, started an MBA program at Union Graduate College. 

But despite the demanding professional and educational goals she had set for herself, she felt restless. “I played soccer in college,” she says, “and when I got out of school, it was kind of boring. There was nothing besides work. So I started doing sprint triathlons, just winging it. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I enjoyed them; it was a rush.” Ultimately, she made the jump from the sprint distance (usually spanning a half-mile swim, 12-mile bike, and 3-mile run) to the Ironman distance (a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, and 26.2-mile marathon). She competed in her first Ironman in 2013 in Lake Placid; in 2022, she ran the race a second time and cut her time by two hours.

I think a lot of people go through life and just meander. But if you set a goal and you reverse engineer it, you’ll hit it every time with a system in place. And you build that confidence.…Boarding schools, summer programs, reiterate this.

Braelin Thornton P’29, SS’97,’98

Braelin found that the same consistency and perseverance she relied on to excel in triathlons was instrumental in 2010 when she founded Thornton Wealth Management in Albany, New York. Twenty-five years later, she continues to educate her clients, helping them to create individualized and holistic financial strategic plans that allow them to live deliberate and balanced lives.  

She is also busy raising her son Reed ’29, who is now a sixth-grade boarder at Cardigan. This fall he ran the Lake Run for the first time, and Braelin cheered him on from afar. “That part’s really neat, that Reed is at Cardigan,” she says. “He knows that I was there in the summer, and he knows the backstory of it all. He said he’s going to put it all out there and give it everything he’s got. I love that. When you’re 42 and you’re a single mom and you’re paying for your son to go to Cardigan, it feels good to be able to know that every decision started back there.”

What’s next? She is looking forward to a time when she and Reed can enter an Everesting event together. “He’s seen me do an Ironman,” she says, “and he’s been out there with me on 14-hour training days.…he has seen what’s possible.” She also wants to continue her partnership with the Kyle Pease Foundation (KPF) whose mission is “to improve the lives of people with disabilities through sports and beyond.” 

“When you climb with purpose, in business or in sport, you realize the summit isn’t just about you. It’s about who you bring with you,” she explained in an interview with KPF last September. “That’s why this partnership matters.”

“I think a lot of people go through life and just meander,” she continues, “but if you set a goal and you reverse engineer it, you’ll hit it every time with a system in place. And you build that confidence. I’ve taught this to Reed; if you do what you say you’re going to do time and time and time again, your self-confidence is going to grow. Boarding schools, summer programs, reiterate this.”

This article was originally published in the fall/winter 2025-2026 issue of the Cardigan Chronicle