2023 Outstanding Alumni Award: Ann-Tyler Konradi '86
“Stand forth for truth and right”
We’ve gleefully sung these words from our St. Andrew’s Fight Song, but our 2023 Outstanding Alumni Award winner put them into action when it mattered most.
We’ve gleefully sung these words from our St. Andrew’s Fight Song, but our 2023 Outstanding Alumni Award winner put them into action when it mattered most.
Ann-Tyler Choate Konradi is a member of our Middle School class of 1986. She went on to study at Rhodes College, traveled and studied abroad throughout the Eastern European region. After she and her husband, Brian, graduated, they lived in Russia for many years, where they both mastered the language.
In February 2022, Ann-Tyler and her family watched the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. They knew immediately that they had to do something. Their fluency in Russian became a driving force in their desire to help, as many Ukrainians also speak the language. The Konradi family, including Ann-Tyler’s niece and Upper School English teacher, Anna Konradi, and Middle School history teacher, alum and Ann-Tyler’s cousin, Barton Ballard ‘81, booked tickets to the region to help refugees in need during Spring Break.
Ann-Tyler and her family flew to Vilnius, Lithuania, rented an RV and drove over 9 hours to Przemysl, Poland.
What they found was a small town overwhelmed with tens of thousands of refugees coming from Lviv, mostly women and children, crossing the border, with no place to go, no food to eat, and a language barrier between Ukrainians and Poles.
Not wanting to take away from precious local resources, the seven of them slept in the RV for 10 days while they spread out to help. Ann-Tyler quickly got a copy of the train schedule, and as trains would enter the station, she would help with directing refugees to resources and trains to places like Warsaw, Berlin, and other cities in the region. She and Brian used their Russian skills to facilitate conversations, arrange individual transportation, carry luggage for exhausted refugees and reconnect families that had been separated. In all of the despair, Ann-Tyler still gets emotional thinking of all of the people who accepted strangers into their homes.
While some members of the family spent time working with people at the border, Barton spent his time volunteering with World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that is “first to the frontlines, providing meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises.” Additionally, Ann-Tyler and her family launched a Go Fund Me, raising $85,000 for the World Central Kitchen.
Ann-Tyler and her husband live in Wimberly, and own The Yurtopian Hill Country Resort. They’ve continued to impact the lives of displaced Ukrainians, providing long-term employment through their business.
The Konradi’s trip to the Ukrainian border was hard work, and what they witnessed was heartbreaking. Ann-Tyler has a servant’s heart, and her swift call to action where it was so needed changed so many lives. For her, it was personal. And as for the words we sing in our fight song, those words were written decades before, by Ann-Tyler’s parents. It is no surprise that she has lived her life with a servant’s heart, standing up for what is right, and continuing to support this refugee population. We are so honored to celebrate Ann-Tyler Konradi with the Outstanding Alumni Award, and are proud to call her a member of the St. Andrew’s Alumni Association.
