At a Glance: This initiative addressed an often overlooked barrier for Black students—access to protective hairstyles before school trips—by creating on-campus access to affordable braiding.

What does it look like to design for belonging in every detail?

In preparing for outdoor education trips, I began asking critical equity questions. Many of our Black students with naturally textured hair get their hair braided before trips for ease and comfort. But braiding in the Bay Area can cost $175–$400—an unacknowledged financial burden placed disproportionately on Black families.

I created a solution rooted in joy and access. I brought licensed professional braiders to campus to offer protective styling to students ahead of the trips, on a sliding scale of $0–$175. Most families opted for the free option—underscoring the very real need.

The event was filled with pride, affirmation, and community. Students felt celebrated, not singled out. Parents expressed gratitude—not just for the savings, but for the school’s willingness to design with their children in mind. Equity isn’t just about policy—it’s braided into the details.

At a Glance: Instead of one-off stay interviews, I launched a collective leadership institute for faculty of color to build connection, reflection, and growth.

How do we support faculty of color in ways that are responsive, sustaining, and strategic?

When I was asked to conduct stay interviews for faculty of color, I paused. Interviews might yield insight, but they wouldn’t create the kind of collective, systemic change we needed—at least not fast enough. We needed something that could address the root causes of why faculty of color were leaving: a lack of deep belonging, recognition, and pathways for growth.

Instead of one-on-one interviews, I created a collective space. I designed and co-facilitated a Leadership Institute designed for Colleagues of Color alongside two of my trusted peers. The Institute became a space for community-building, affirmation, and leadership development.

Our theory of change was simple: if we show our colleagues that we value their growth and insight—not just their labor—we begin to transform how they experience growth and recognition within the school’s ecosystem. The impact was immediate. Participants described feeling more connected, more empowered, and more excited to imagine long-term futures at the school.

At a Glance: During a moment of strategic transition, I used restorative listening circles to rebuild trust, shift tone, and create buy-in across the faculty.

How do we build trust in the midst of change fatigue?

As a bold new strategic direction launched, teachers began expressing overwhelm and confusion. The scope of change—while visionary—felt unmoored from daily realities. Resistance grew not from disagreement, but from fatigue.

I believed the solution wasn’t to push harder—it was to connect deeper. Drawing from restorative practices, I designed and facilitated a series of listening circles to invite teachers into honest dialogue about their hopes, fears, and lived experiences of change. The circles became spaces of reflection, storytelling, and shared meaning-making.

My theory of change was that if we deepened community connection and built trust, our colleagues would be more ready to take on the ambitious work ahead. And that’s exactly what happened. We shifted the culture from compliance to collaboration—rebuilding trust as the foundation for strategic change in service of student learning.

At a Glance: I restructured reactive equity positions into strategic, systems-facing leadership roles that anchor equity in divisional culture and pedagogy.

How can we reimagine equity roles so they shift culture rather than respond to symptoms?

I recognized that the equity and inclusion roles at the school were experiencing frequent turnover. People often described the positions as “impossible jobs”—unsustainable, overly reactive, and defined by response rather than transformation. I knew the issue wasn’t with the people in the roles, but with how the positions had historically been framed.

Rather than continuing to hire people into roles that primarily responded to downstream challenges—bias incidents, programming, conflict mediation—I led the work of redesigning the roles entirely. My theory of change was that by positioning these leaders within each division’s leadership team and charging them with leading strategic equity and inclusion efforts—alongside instructional leaders to deepen culturally responsive pedagogy—we could fundamentally shift the school’s climate.

The result was a new structure that anchors equity as a shared, strategic responsibility across the school. These divisional equity leaders are empowered as strategic partners, and the cultural shift—particularly in teaching and learning—has been palpable.

At a Glance: I led a design-thinking-based empathy process to integrate community voice into a major campus planning decision.

How do we ensure campus planning decisions reflect the lived experiences of students and teachers?

As a school prepared to open a new campus, I noticed a critical tension: the facilities plan had been drafted years earlier, before the current strategic vision—and before we had heard from the people most impacted by space decisions.

I proposed a new approach. I trained the Campus Planning Task Force in design thinking methods and guided them through an empathy-based need-finding process. Colleagues conducted interviews across the school, mapping the emotional and functional uses of space through detailed empathy maps.

The shift was transformative. Teachers and staff weren’t just being informed about decisions—they were making them. The result was a set of recommendations rooted in real community needs, advancing the school’s mission and strategic direction while honoring how space shapes belonging and learning.

At a Glance: In the wake of public racial harm, I led a structured response rooted in community repair and transparent accountability.

What does real-time accountability look like in the face of racial harm?

In 2020, amidst the racial justice uprisings after George Floyd’s murder, the school made an Instagram post intended to show solidarity. But to many alumni—particularly Black alumni—it felt performative and dismissive of their pain. Comments flooded in. Tensions ran high.

In that moment, I knew we needed to respond—not with defense, but with listening and accountability. I advised the Head of School to convene a virtual gathering for all alumni of color. We spent the first half of the meeting hearing their stories, affirming their experiences, and holding space for grief and anger. Not a dry eye in the room.

Only after that did we share what we had been doing to build a culture of belonging for current students. That order—listen first, then share—was everything. It changed the tone of our alumni relationships, demonstrated institutional accountability, and reminded all of us that repair is possible when we lead with truth and care.