A head of school from an Oakland, California private school, the second of four finalists in the GDS head of school search, addressed the high school body on Oct. 7. She led an assembly during which she emphasized the importance of inclusivity and student expression.
The candidate has worked in education for 19 years. She previously served as a head of school in another San Francisco Bay Area school for three years. Additionally, she has held high-ranking policy and admissions positions at a Massachusetts boarding school, a San Francisco private high school and a Chicago K-12 independent school. The candidate has served an average tenure of about 3.5 years at each private school.
The Bit is publishing neither the candidate’s name nor the name of her current school because she said knowledge of her visit to GDS in her current school’s broader community is limited, and that public information about her candidacy might cause harm to her work. Barring a few individuals on her school’s board of trustees, the students and teachers with whom she currently works are not aware that she is being considered for the position at GDS.
The candidate plans to remain at her current school if she does not get the GDS head of school position. The GDS position is the only new job she is currently seeking.
Of the sixteen students the Bit interviewed for this article, nine said they did not think she should be the next head of school. Four said they believed she was the best prospect for the position, and three said that they did not have enough understanding of the candidate to reach a conclusion. Multiple students did not want her to be head of school because of her short tenures in other places.
“A lot of people are worried that she won’t stay long,” freshman Eliana Elias said. “She’s been at five schools in the last 15 years. That’s a concern.”
The candidate told the Bit that her path to leading schools has been non-traditional. The candidate worked as both a lawyer and consultant prior to working in education. Additionally, in the assembly, she said she has previously moved schools to accommodate her family and switched jobs in order to pay off student loans.
The candidate repeatedly referred to her goal to cultivate a community based upon acceptance of people of all identities. “My grandpa was a baptist preacher,” she said during the assembly. “I grew up in the eighties in San Francisco, so there was a huge AIDS crisis. He got kicked out of his church because he did not close the door to anyone.”
“Personally, she was my favorite candidate,” sophomore Will Jacobus said. “I think she was more extroverted and down-to-earth. I felt like the other ones were a lot more stern, too set on something they wanted to do and not trying to experiment.”
The candidate has an B.A. in Women’s Studies from Harvard University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Prior to going into education, she worked as a commercial real estate attorney in San Francisco and later in Chicago. Separately, she spent a year in Chicago as a management consultant for a consulting firm known as McKinsey & Co.
“My mom was a city planner in San Francisco, and my dad was a commercial real estate developer, so that was sort of the family business,” the candidate said during the assembly. She explained that she didn’t find much passion in real estate law, so she then switched to education.
The candidate encouraged students to express their individuality and adhere to their morals. “At the end of the day, all you have is who you are as a person,” she said. “Stay true to yourself, and if you’re doing things in a way that you feel is right, then it doesn’t matter what happens.”
“I think she was pretty interesting,” sophomore Ariel Amosu said. “I thought she was friendly with the students, so that’s one key thing I would see in a head of school.”
The candidate told the Bit she also wants to establish good relationships with GDS faculty members. She said her job is to support teachers and not to tell them how to teach. The candidate has never served as a full-time teacher but said she has sustained good relationships with teachers throughout her career.
During the assembly, freshman Matthew Cheeks also asked the candidate about what she thought of the high school phone ban. “It sounds like there were a lot of conversations that were happening beforehand,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like a ban in that you’re not able to bring them to school, and there’s a lot of research about what things our phones do. So I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”
The candidate said that the administration at her current school has entertained the idea of giving seniors full freedom with their phones. “They’re going to need to exercise that when they get to college,” the candidate said. “I do think especially for kids, it’s just hard to start conversations when you’re looking at a screen.”
Senior Teresa Dean, a managing editor of the Bit, asked the candidate at the assembly whether she would exercise authority over what the Bit could publish. “My gut would be to leave it alone,” she said. “There’s still a couple of exceptions, such as something slanderous or libelous. Also, would it incite violence? Those are the criteria in California, so I hold those.”
California law protects private and public school newspapers from censorship as long as the published content is not obscene or libelous, and as long as the content does not incite present lawless action or substantial disruption. Those protections for private school newspapers are not in place in D.C., but the candidate said she would still uphold those standards at GDS if she were head of school.
In a 2023 issue of her school’s seasonal magazine, a profile of the candidate included a section about a friendship the candidate established early on with Victoria Jueds, the third of GDS’ four head of school candidates. In an interview with the Bit, the Oakland candidate declined to comment on her and Jueds’ relationship. Jueds wrote to the Bit that the candidate has been “one of my dearest friends in the world for over a quarter of a century! I am the proud godmother of her oldest child and a big fan of everything she is and everything she does.”
The third and fourth candidates addressed the high school on Thursday, Oct. 9 and Friday, Oct. 17, respectively. The head of school search committee will recommend a candidate to the Board by early November. In an email to the Bit, search committee co-chair Donald Saelinger said the committee will share the Board’s decision with the GDS community as soon as possible, although they do not know how long it will take for the Board to reach a decision.
At the end of the assembly, senior Oliver Wolin asked the candidate if she would sing a song because she had mentioned that she was a singer. Without much hesitation, the candidate began to sing the Beatles’ 1965 hit song “Yesterday.” Some students joined in the singing, some waved their hands back and forth, and nearly the whole student body gave the candidate a loud round of cheers and applause when she finished singing.