Authors

Alden S. Blodget is a mostly retired high school teacher and administrator, currently volunteering as a writing tutor at LEAP for Education (Salem, MA). He has a background in theater and was co-founder of The Gloucester Stage Company (MA). For eight years after retiring from teaching, he volunteered as a guardian ad litem, working with abused and delinquent children and adults declared incompetent to stand trial in the Rutland County (VT) family and criminal courts.

Alison Nikitopolous teaches English, Music, Theater, and a Senior Thesis course at Midland School in Los Olivos, California. Her favorite classroom moments involve observing students make discoveries on their own. When not working, she can be found working in the garden, feeding horses, reading, singing, or hiking.

Amanda Love has been teaching PE for over 20 years and was an Athletic Director in New York City and Cleveland. She played soccer at Georgetown and in Rome while teaching at St. Stephens School. Having worked extensively with Project Adventure, Amanda enjoys sprinkling "challenge by choice" into her classes at Laurel School.

Andrea Buffara is Co-Founder and COO of Gamut Education, which provides educational consulting services. She is also Co-Founder and Director of Escola Americana de Vitória (Brazil), founded in 2018.

Ann Martino is the Head of Lower School at The Ellis School, an all-girls school for girls age 3 to grade 12, in Pittsburgh, PA.

Ann V. Klotz is a reader, writer, mother, and teacher who lives in Shaker Heights, OH, where she is the Head of Laurel School, an all girls' school, K-12 with a coed pre-primary.

Ari Pinkus is a storyteller, editor, and organizer. She is a research scientist with the American Communities Project based at The George Washington University.

Bee Stribling is the Middle School Dean of Students at Moorestown Friends School and a Leadership + Design Fellow. He’s on Twitter @wmstribling

Brooke Biggar Littman is the seventh grade dean and a middle school art teacher at University School in Shaker Heights, Ohio. She goes home in the evenings to her family of five and a small menagerie of animals that have taken over the house.

5th grade Language Arts and Project teacher, Claire Koerner has been in the classroom for the past seventeen years and at Duke School for the past six.

Clare Sisisky is the Executive Director of the Global Education Benchmark Group, a nonprofit that supports its 280 member schools in 15 countries in all aspects of global education.

Dan Sturdevant is Head of School at The Oaks, an innovative Christ-centered independent school in Charlotte, NC. Raised on a boarding school campus, Dan has spent his life and career in independent schools and is passionate about student and faculty development, experiential education, and creating space for innovative learning opportunities in and out of the classroom.

David Cutler teaches history, journalism, and government at Brimmer and May, an independent PK-12 school in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Follow him on Twitter at @SpinEdu.

Deborah Offner is an adolescent psychologist in private practice outside of Boston. She currently serves as Consulting Psychologist to Beacon Academy, Worcester Academy, and The Winsor School.

Derrick Willard is the Head of Augusta Preparatory Day School which serves students from the Augusta, Georgia area. He is a career educator passionate about creating optimal learning environments within our brick and mortar school as well as creating productive virtual learning environments online.

Gabriel Lucas is a search, staffing, and strategic consultant for schools, associations, nonprofits, and other mission-aligned organizations across the country, overseeing two search services: Ed Tech Recruiting and 12M Recruiting. Lucas worked for many years as an educator and later administrator in both K-12 and higher ed. He is the co-founder of ATLIS (Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools) and continues to serve on its board. Lucas regularly presents and writes on topics including organizational structure and management, leadership development, and diversity and hiring.

Gay Cioffi was Director of Little Folks School in Washington, D. C. for 38 years. An Early Childhood specialist, Gay consults and writes a weekly blog called Little Folks Big Questions.

Ida Beth Malloy is currently the Coordinator of Civic Engagement at The Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pa. Her personal and professional lives revolve around civic engagement and community activism. She believes that people define their lives by what they do and their willingness to make sustainable change. Ida is a proud resident of the City of Trenton, NJ. She enjoys traveling, meeting new people, listening to music, and reading.

Jessica Flaxman has served as an English teacher, department chair, director of studies, and assistant head at a number of independent schools. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and a founding partner of 120 Education Consultancy.

Jill Maza is the Director of Libraries and Research and Upper School Librarian at Montclair Kimberley Academy, a PK-12 independent school in Montclair, NJ. She has served as a school librarian in both elementary and high schools in CT and NC, taught summer reading and project-based learning workshops to middle schoolers in New York City, and worked in bookselling, publishing, and public libraries. She loves exploring the intersection of creativity, curiosity, and inquiry both in school with her students and colleagues and outside with her husband and two boys.

Kathryn Beaumont Murphy is counsel at the law firm Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr, where she represents independent schools, colleges, and universities. Prior to this role, she was in-house counsel at a K-12 school and boarding school.

Kawai Lai is a designer and facilitator partnering with K-12 leaders in planning for the future with an equity lens. She is a co-author of The New Team Habits © 2020, which provides practices for leaders to build better habits for team learning, meetings, and projects. She started VizLit to unleash the visual mind of every learner, formerly served as Vice President of Innovation at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), and helped launch and grow Education Elements. Prior to her career in education, Kawai was at Deloitte Consulting. She has an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Southern Methodist University.

Dr. Kristen Ring serves as President and Head of Hutchison School, a private all-girls' school founded in Memphis in 1902. She currently serves on the boards of the Tennessee Association of Independent Schools and the English-Speaking Union Secondary School Exchange.

Laura Deisley is President and CEO of Lab Atlanta 2.0, Inc. and loves building bridges and networks of opportunity.

Laura Vantine is a lifelong learner and educator who has supported students, families and teachers in independent schools for more than 25 years. She is passionate about bringing people together across cultures and continents, and believes wholeheartedly in the power of people to serve the greater good.

Lauren Calig is the Director of Multicultural Curriculum at Laurel School.

Lauren Huddleston is a doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College and a middle school English teacher at Hutchison School in Memphis.

Laurie Gruhn is Head of Lower School and the Assistant Head of School at the Browning School, a school for boys in New York City. She has worked there for the past 22 years. Next year, she will join the Gateway School, a K-8 School in New York City, as Head of School. She lives with her 14-year-old daughter and their rescue dog, Marcie. Both mother and daughter can often be found obsessing over jigsaw puzzles.

Linda Flaga, PhD, is Psychologist at Cranbrook Schools in Michigan.

Liza Garonzik works at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta and is the founder of R.E.A.L. Discussion.

Mark Crotty is executive director of the Northwest Association of Independent Schools.

Dr. Melinda Bihn leads French American International School in San Francisco, where she also serves on the Board of Directors of the California Association of Independent Schools.

Michael Brosnan is an independent writer and editor with a particular interest in education and social change. His latest book of poetry, “The Sovereignty of the Accidental,” was published by Harbor Mountain Press.

Miranda Orbach teaches at the Chapin School in New York, New York, and is a certified Wilson Dyslexia Practitioner. Miranda is a fierce advocate for all girls’ education.

Nancy Mugele is the Head of Kent School in Chestertown, MD. She is the Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Association of Independent Maryland and DC Schools, and a member of the Board of Directors of Horizons of Kent and Queen Anne's.

Dr. Nicole Brittingham Furlonge is professor and director of the Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership at Teachers College Columbia University. A 20-year veteran of Independent Schools, she enjoys reading and writing, cooking for family and friends, watching a good movie or broadway show, listening to music, and hiking rural and urban terrains with her partner, Nigel (also an educator), and their three children.

Pankti Sevak, currently the Head of Middle School at Friends Seminary in New York, has devoted her professional life to fostering the magic of school. In all she does, Pankti strives to balance evolutionary transformation with staying true to history and mission.

Paris McLean is the Head of Lower School at Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart. An independent school educator for 16 years, Paris has led student centered initiatives, faculty development and sponsorship, along with institutional advancement. Paris is also an associate of 120 Education Consultancy.

Rachel Kaelberer Mattson is an 8th grade Social Sciences teacher at Hutchison School in Memphis, TN, where she directs the 8th grade seminar and Middle School capstone projects.

Rob Dunn is an English and writing instructor at Revolution School and a freelance writer for StrXur.com. He lives in Philadelphia.

Sally Taylor is a musician and the founder of Consenses, a multidisciplinary, artistic collaboration that brings artists together from around the world by asking them to interpret one another’s artwork, in the vein of a game of 'Telephone,' and express it in their own mediums. Sally, in collaboration with Harvard School of Education graduate students, has created a multidisciplinary, SEL curriculum that enables students to find empathy and tolerance for others' perspectives by "listening" to one another, not through words, but through various art forms.

Samantha Simpson teaches English at Winsor School and at the Kenyon Young Writers Program.

Sarah Barton Thomas is Upper Elementary Division Head at Trinity School in Atlanta, Georgia. Her career pursuits have taken her from the elementary music classroom, to the computer lab, the opera world, to the principal’s desk. She was inspired to be a teacher and principal by Mr. Bruce (her elementary principal) and Mrs. Sobel (her middle school history teacher). She enjoys running; singing; reading multiple books at a time; and snuggling with Atticus and Toby, her rescue pups. Her most prolific writing comes in the form of 280 characters at @teach2connect.

Sarah Cooper teaches 8th grade U.S. history and is the Assistant Head for Academic Life at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Canada, California. She is the author of Creating Citizens: Teaching Civics and Current Events in the History Classroom (Routledge 2017), and all of her recent writing can be found at sarahjcooper.com

Sarah Neidhoefer is the Director of The Plumb Line Institute, focused on mission alignment, spirituality and personal student growth programming. A mother of four teens, she is currently co-teaching 4th and 7th grades at Stone Bridge School, a Waldorf-inspired public charter in Napa, CA.

Stephen J. Valentine teaches at Montclair Kimberley Academy in New Jersey, thinks at www.refreshingwednesday.com, edits Klingbrief, and writes all over.

Susanna A. Jones is the Head of School for the Holton-Arms School, a girls’ day school for grades 3-12 in Bethesda, MD. She also currently serves as Vice-President of the Board of One Schoolhouse and is a member of the Board of the Association of Independent Maryland and D.C. Schools.

Tom McManus has been working in education for over 25 years and most recently was the founding Head of Mission at Revolution School in Philadelphia. In July, 2020 Tom will become Head of School at Montgomery School in Chester Springs, PA.

Varghese is a math teacher at heart who finds joy in searching for efficiency. In addition to seventeen years wearing multiple hats on boarding school campuses, he is a Co-Director of the Klingenstein Summer Institute for Early Career Teachers.

Wendy L. Hill, Ph.D. is Head of School at The Agnes Irwin School, an all girls’ independent school in Rosemont, Pennsylvania. www.agnesirwin.org. She is the Rappolt Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience at Lafayette College, and member of The Forum of Executive Women, Philadelphia.

Wendy Lichtman is the Math Intervention Specialist at MetWest High School in Oakland, California. She’s also a writer and has published both personal essays and young adult fiction. Her most recent book is Secrets, Lies and Algebra.