Choosing a New Path: Deborah Fryer '81, from Latinist to Filmmaker and Business Coach
By Becca Gillis
If Deborah Fryer (’81)’s professional and academic journeys demonstrate one thing, it’s the transformative power of stories—the ones we read, the ones we share with others, and the ones we tell ourselves.
Among the first stories to capture Deborah’s attention were works by the likes of Ovid and Virgil, encountered and voraciously devoured in her Commonwealth Latin classes with Polly Chatfield. “I can still see her and hear her as we’re reading the Metamorphoses,” Deborah recalls. “I remember us weeping over how beautiful the language was.”
A self-described “free spirit” in those days, Deborah followed her love of Classics wherever it might take her, from a six-month program on a Greek island working as a weaver’s apprentice to an eventual master’s degree in Latin and Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature. Shortly before completing her Ph.D., she attended a conference on women in media, where she encountered a lecture on Aristophanes’s Lysistrata and the power of women to change outcomes—and in the span of one weekend, everything changed. “After this conference, I thought, ‘I want to do more than teach Classics. There must be something more that I can be doing.’”
Deborah sought advice from the conference’s organizer, who encouraged her to go home and journal about her dreams for the future. One such dream: “I wanted to be a reporter for National Geographic,” Deborah says. “I wanted to travel the world, tell stories, take pictures, meet people.” Though not National Geographic, a series of connections soon led Deborah to NOVA and FRONTLINE at WGBH in Boston, kickstarting a twenty-year career as a filmmaker. “I wanted to be known, I wanted to be heard, I wanted to feel like I had something valuable to say,” Deborah recalls. After going on to create films with programs like Discovery and American Experience, Deborah founded her own production company, Lila Films, in 2004.
Fast forward a couple decades in the filmmaking industry, and Deborah once again felt the pull to do something more, frustrated by the instability of her career. “I felt amazing and like I was contributing something of value when I was on a project,” she says. “And then the project would end, and I wouldn’t have any money.” Yearning for “real respect” and “real income,” Deborah pivoted to the medical field, completing a post-baccalaureate pre-medical degree.
Her days in the anatomy lab taught her different lessons than she expected, however. While examining a heart that had suffered cardiac arrest, just one day after losing her father to the same ailment, Deborah says the sight of the unbalanced organ opened her eyes to the bigger picture of her life: “I could see that I had been running my business completely counter to the laws of nature. I wasn’t giving and receiving. I was doing a lot of pro bono work at the time, because I didn’t feel comfortable receiving money. I was pulling all nighters because I didn’t know how to say no. I was supporting, but I wasn't letting myself be supported.”
Deborah quickly realized the importance of mindset to one’s physical health—or, as she puts it, “the story [a patient] tells about themselves.” Intent on helping other women overcome their own mental barriers to success and wellbeing, Deborah jumped fields for the third time, creating a program called “The Anatomy of Money.” The program tackles “how we think about thinking,” offering women different somatic techniques and metacognition work to “get the mind and body on the same team.” Deborah has also recently incorporated creativity work, such as painting, to help participants employ both their minds and bodies to understand the patterns of their subconscious.
Despite the winding path her career has taken, Deborah recognizes a clear throughline from her graduate studies to each type of work she’s engaged with since. “I can see a direct thread from Ovid and the themes of our human potential to translate and transform and shapeshift throughout our lives,” she says. “Everything led to this moment.”
Becca Gillis is the Communications Coordinator at Commonwealth School. This originally appeared as part of an article in the winter 2025 edition of CM, Commonwealth's alumni/ae magazine.