Emma Trenchard ’17 is in the middle of it all — a place she often finds herself and one in which she is quite comfortable. She was a multi-sport star and captain at Loomis Chaffee who went on to win a national title in women's lacrosse in college, then a world championship.

Now she works for Jain Global, a start-up hedge fund that has been busy raising money for a July launch.  

Emma doesn’t hedge at all when it comes to what it is like living in New York City and working in the financial world.   

“You can’t beat how fast-paced and energetic being in the city is,” Emma says. “It's very motivating being around everyone who is working hard and having fun. And I have a lot of friends from both Loomis and college here, so I have a good community.”  

Since September she has been part of the marketing and investor relations team at Jain Global. Emma certainly knows all about teamwork. And leadership. After her accomplished career at Loomis, she was part of an NCAA Division I national championship women’s lacrosse championship in 2022 at the University of North Carolina as a senior captain. Emma also was a world champion as a member of the 2022 U.S. National Women's Lacrosse Team.  

Emma earned four letters in lacrosse, basketball, and soccer, captaining each Loomis Chaffee team. Emma also was named the school’s top female athlete as a junior and senior. The little girl who grew up on campus wanting to be like the athletes she saw from a young age became one of the most accomplished in school history. Her father, Webb, is the associate head of school and an English teacher, and her mother, Michele, is associate director of Learning Access and Student Achievement and a mathematics teacher.   

The campus was Emma’s playground, the Meadows her favorite place.   

“All my memories of soccer and lacrosse are down in the Meadows,” Emma says. “I fondly remember running around and watching games there, being the ball girl for soccer games, and then playing there as a high schooler. It came full circle, and that is just a nostalgic place for me.”  

She went on to a highly successful career in lacrosse at UNC. Her parents were both outstanding college lacrosse players. Still, genes take you only so far. Emma provided the hard work, the drive, the determination. She also has a self-described “type A personality.”   

She earned a starting role in the preseason of her freshman year at UNC and started every game. She earned accolades season after season. Emma was twice a unanimous All-American as a defender, and she was a captain in her final year, when the Tar Heels won the Division I national title, defeating Boston College 12-11 to cap off a 22-0 season. That year, 2022, will always be special. She went from winning the national title at UNC to winning a world championship with the U.S. National Team as its youngest member. She then played professionally with Athletes Unlimited.   

When Emma was in her final season at North Carolina, NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) deals were starting to take hold. Each year NIL deals have become more profitable for more athletes. They came along a little late for her. Plus, as she says, she was a defender. Deals tend to go more to top offensive players.  

“As much as it would have been cool to experience that, seeing it happen with current players and the progression of younger generations coming through is meaningful to me,” Emma says. “It shows how far sports has come, and there is a long way to go with women’s sports, but it shows progress has been made.”  

She also says she had one thing in mind for that final year of eligibility — winning a national title. The team had come close, losing in the semifinals in 2019 and 2021. Much of the 2020 season was canceled because of the pandemic.  

She said winning the national title at North Carolina “felt like a culmination of my life’s efforts. All the hard work and effort put in for that moment. It's a lot. It’s not easy, and that is why not everyone wins a title. It's a lot of work and collaboration with teammates, getting through difficult times, working hard, and getting put through the ringer physically and mentally. Just a special feeling. Nothing really tops that.”  

And it all circles back to growing up on the Loomis campus and in the Windsor community. She remembers playing sports with her brother in the yard.  Playing sports with neighbors. Watching the Loomis games on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Her father coached her in soccer when she was young. Her mother helped start the Windsor youth lacrosse program.   

“All that contributed to my passion for being active and playing team sports,” Emma says, “and it was invaluable to be coached by both my parents, who have a breadth of experience across playing multiple sports.”  

As a player and captain at Loomis, she said she learned much about herself and team dynamics.   

“Interacting with a lot of people really helped develop my EQ [emotional intelligence] and social awareness and how to work with different personality types,” Emma says. “I would describe myself as type A, and not everyone you encounter necessarily gets along with a Type A person. We can come across as very dominant and confident and maybe a little harsh at times. So being around people with different styles helps you be able to empathize with them and figure out what makes them tick. Maybe it’s not saying something to someone on the field, but a conversation off the field.”  

When she got to North Carolina, she says she was well prepared, citing academic and life skills learned at Loomis.  

“Time management,” Emma says. “Being on a varsity sport and traveling on a Wednesday and having an assignment due Thursday morning: How do you manage that? And how do you manage school with being social, too? During a community free, you want to be with friends, but should you use that time to finish an assignment. It was an adjustment as a freshman [at Loomis] but something I was able to figure out during my time there.  

“Once I got to Carolina, it was much more rigorous — the time we were committing to lacrosse, in season and off season. But I felt like I was so prepared based on my experience at Loomis trying to juggle everything, and especially compared to some classmates who didn’t experience that same pace, workload, and busy schedule.”  

Her parents were part of that preparation, too, central to her home life and campus life, all intertwined.  Yet she never felt smothered. Maybe with love, but that’s it.  

 “I was lucky because my parents are awesome,” Emma says. “My friends loved my parents. The only thing they ever said is, ‘You better behave and not embarrass us,’ which I think is fair pressure to have.”  

“It was just normal,” she continues. “It was never like, ‘I don’t want to see my parents.’ I think it was special to have them nearby, and it was special for them to see me thrive. I look back at being around them only with fond memories and appreciative we got so much time together in high school.”  

Emma also played professional lacrosse last summer, but for now is concentrating on her financial career.  

“We don’t have small aspirations,” she says of the Jain Global launch. “What has helped me to excel in this role is that intrinsic motivation I found in myself at Loomis. It's the same thing. It’s not a physical thing now, more of a mental thing, but that same motivation to excel and do really well is there.”