Sanatha Alexis has devoted her career to promoting excellence in education. She has an unwavering dedication to helping students reach their highest potential and a strong desire to make a meaningful difference in the lives of her students and community. Whether as a mathematics teacher, director for school renewal, or in her current position as principal of Cultural Academy for the Arts and Sciences, over the past two decades she has consistently exhibited her ability to drive positive change and create a lasting impact on students, teachers, and the community. Her unwavering passion for creating a supportive and empowering learning environment has resulted in improved academic success for students. Continually pushing boundaries and inspiring others through her insights, leadership, and persistent drive for growth and improvement, Sanatha is wholeheartedly committed to fulfilling her school’s mission of providing equal access to success under an umbrella of support.
Bernardo Ascona is the founding principal of Union Square Academy for Health Sciences. He has been principal of this school for 11 years. This school was opened in 2012 as the first pharmacy technician program in New York City. It has the first dental technician program in a Manhattan public high school. The school is now adding a third program around diagnostic medicine.
Kate Burch opened Harvest Collegiate High School in 2012, which aims to offer a creative and critical, “rich and challenging” education to students across the city. An educator for over two decades, Kate was a teacher, advisor, service and college coordinator, and professional development director before becoming a principal in order to start Harvest Collegiate. Raised in New York City, she graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in History and Literature and worked as a travel writer and on community projects in the Caribbean, India, France, and through a Fulbright-Hays Education program in Ghana. The collective work of the school has been recognized as a Blackboard Awardee for being a Rising Star School of Excellence, a New York Post “Hidden Gem,” a U.S. News and World Report “Best High Schools,” has received a UFT Team Award for Excellence through Collaboration, and was featured for its innovation on NY1 video and ABC 7. Kate was also honored to receive the 2017 New York Daily News Hometown Hero Award.
Fiorella Cabrejos is a transformational leader whose body of work includes taking a school community at the brink of closure to a vibrant and thriving high school focused on strengthening college and career readiness for all scholars. Fiorella has used evidence-based practices to target and dismantle academic dependency and build agency in scholars, most recently using research to strengthen 9th grade instructional experiences with a strong emphasis on responsive reading and literacy instruction. Over the years, she has built strong collaborative teams and nurtured leadership mindsets amongst her staff. She is committed to innovation, change, and collaboration as a pathway to excellence.
Jermaine Cameron is a distinguished educational leader and the driving force behind Eagle Academy. As principal, he is renowned for his transformational leadership style, fostering an environment of collaboration and data-driven decision-making to elevate the academic and personal success of every student.
Melissa de Leon is the principal of the International High School at Lafayette in Brooklyn. She joined the leadership team as assistant principal in July 2022. Previously, Melissa served as a citywide instructional lead for the New York City Department of Education, coaching teacher teams and school leaders to improve outcomes for multilingual learners and designing literacy professional development opportunities for affinity schools. Before that, Melissa worked in a range of teaching and instructional leadership roles for over 13 years within schools in the Internationals Network. Her journey in education began in 2007 when she joined the International High School @ Prospect Heights as an ESL and social studies teacher.
Erica Doyle has been principal of Vanguard High School for five years. Previously, she was an assistant principal, literacy coach, and English Language Arts teacher at Vanguard, and consulted for both Consortium and Urban Assembly Schools as a specialist in adolescent literacy. Her experience co-founding a community-based public elementary charter school for the arts in Washington, DC and being part of the Performance Based Assessment Consortium Schools and of the Coalition of Essential Schools has grounded her in ideas of community building, creative thinking, and demonstrations of understanding through using habits of mind. Her work on the use of thinking routines to deepen students’ analytical skills and foster community was featured in the acclaimed book by Harvard Graduate School of Education researchers, Making Thinking Visible (Ritchart, et al, 2011). Erica aspires to support schools in developing and sustaining equitable educational innovation and meaningful performances of understanding for all.
Yeslan Hernandez is a dedicated and passionate educator with over 14 years of experience working exclusively in the Bronx. A licensed Spanish teacher, her passion and focus is on real-world learning and the opportunities that internships, apprenticeships, and real-world curricular projects offer underserved youth. She has been a teacher, internship coordinator, COSA, and career and college advisor and is a soon-to-be assistant principal.
Eric Lincoln has been principal at The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology since July 2023. Prior to that, he was a founding teacher and assistant principal in the same school community that serves students in grades 6-12 located in the Mott Haven community of the Bronx. He has New York State certifications in Social Studies, Bilingual Education, and as Coordinator of Work Based Learning, and he holds National Board Certification in Adolescent Social Studies. In October 2023, The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology was named one of the first US Department of Education Magnet High Schools in New York City. The school magnet theme is Career Connected Learning, and the community has developed partnerships to provide in-school experiences that prepare students to pursue their interests and equip them with the hard and soft skills to identify opportunities and confidently pursue them with successful outcomes.
Tom Mullen began his career teaching middle school math and science at Central Park East Secondary School in the late 1990s. He then worked at East Side Community High School for 15 years as a math teacher, math instructional coach, and an assistant principal. During that time, he earned his master’s degree through the Math Leadership Program at Bank Street Graduate School of Education. He also holds a Master’s of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. For the past eight years, Tom has been the principal of Leaders High School.
Bill Psoras believes that the American Dream is to pursue our talents as individuals and incentivize them in the marketplace in order to lead successful and comfortable lifestyles. As a first generation American who represents a community that is 82% bilingual, Bill’s foremost priority is identifying students’ aptitude and talents and developing them into strengths toward a focused and viable career pathway. Bill believes education should be relevant and meaningful so that students can develop their employability skills in a diverse and competitive career market. At Newtown High School, students center their experience through a career pathway major that provides them with the tools and resources to be successful in their postsecondary goals.
Shweta Ratra has served as the principal of Crotona International High School in the Bronx for the past nine years. Her school community is committed to ensuring that newly arrived students and their families receive equitable education and are empowered to achieve parity with native-born students in college and career readiness. Over the years, she has established multiple partnerships to provide students with career-ready skill sets through work-based learning opportunities. She has achieved this through multiple re-certifications of the state-certified CTE status of her school, adding an Education CTE track through the Future Ready Program, securing a highly competitive and coveted partnership with the Bronx Steam Center set to open in 2025, and providing schedule-embedded college courses from nationally ranked colleges through the National Equity Lab. These opportunities empower her newly arrived students as valuable multilingual assets to the nation’s workforce.
Dr. Brett L Schneider is starting his 12th year as the founding principal of Bronx Collaborative High School. Dr. Schneider was previously part of the founding team and leadership of the Institute for Collaborative Education in Manhattan. Born and raised in the north Bronx, Dr. Schneider is a 4th generation New York City public school teacher who is deeply committed to decolonizing public education. The Department of Education had named Bronx Collaborative as a showcase school around affirming student identities. As a neurodivergent school leader growing up with Autism and ADHD, Dr. Schneider engages educators and counselors in the important discussions of what it means to de-center outdated notions of engagement, compliance, and connection. As part of the second cohort of Bank Street’s Principal Innovation Fellowship, Dr. Schneider hopes to deepen and further strengthen the support teachers receive to design and execute innovative, interdisciplinary problem-based learning units that bring diverse multidisciplinary experts from the professional world in collaboration with high school students. The belief is that these experiences will model life/work balance and inspire students to see how to bring their authentic intersectional self into the world beyond the school’s doors.
Vivian Patricia Selenikas is the principal of Long Island City High School, a community high school in Astoria, New York that has been in good standing with the New York State Education Department since 2018. Previously, she was a network leader for five years in New York City Public Schools. She previously served as an educator with the New York City Department of Education since 1986, including as a successful high school principal for four years at the High School for Arts and Business in Corona, New York.. She also served as assistant principal LOTE and ESL at Long Island City High School for eight years and as a Spanish teacher at Richmond Hill High School from 1986-95. Ms. Selenikas is the creator of unique and successful World Language education programs. She is a founding member of the NYU World Languages Summer Institute and, for nine years, has been a proud presenter of the Continuing Career Teacher World Language Institute. Ms. Selenikas was responsible for supervising the Local World Language writing and administration of 22 different languages and high school professional development for the Division of Accountability, Performance and Support. She continues that advocacy work today. Ms. Selenikas has also served as a founding member of the College Board Higher Education Advisory Committee, as the New York City director of NYSAFLT from 2009-12, and currently serves on the executive board of NYCAFLT.
During her 32 years as an educator, Dr. Jennifer Shirley-Brown has served as a teacher of English Language Arts, a lead teacher, a literacy coach, an assistant principal, and a principal. She holds a degree in Teacher Education from Shortwood Teachers’ College in Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies; a Bachelor of Arts in English from Hunter College; a Master of Education; and a master’s degree in Administration and Supervision. She also obtained a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the Sage Colleges of Albany. Dr. Jennifer Shirley-Brown is currently the principal of Teachers Preparatory High School in Brooklyn.
Al Sylvia is a committed educator with over 25 years of experience as a teacher, a Big Picture Learning advisor, network coach, assistant principal, and principal. Spending the vast majority of his career in the Bronx, he is dedicated to facilitating change in our educational system to give students opportunities for better learning experiences grounded in real world work.
Suzannah Taylor is the principal of the International High School at Prospect Heights, a public school for newcomer teens in Brooklyn. A 20-year veteran educator, she has served as a teacher, coach, and school leader, and has worked across schools in district and city-wide programs in New York City Public Schools. As a school leader, she has extensive experience creating learning environments that leverage heterogeneity, value multilingualism, and promote student agency. Her earliest experiences in education included organizing indigenous language literacy programs in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. This pivotal experience as a community facilitator still informs her practice today. Suzannah firmly believes that education is a tool for liberation.
Allika Thompson has served as the principal of MAST High School for the past six years. Allika has over 25 years of experience as a pedagogue, serving as an assistant principal for 12 years and a teacher for six years in the New York City Department of Education. The core values for Allika’s school and life are legacy, equity, respect, integrity, perseverance, and love. Allika is a proud graduate of Bank Street Graduate School of Education.
Kam Waugh has been an educator in New York City Public Schools for 15 years. She has served as a special education teacher, assistant principal, and, most recently, the founding principal of Bronx Legacy High School (BXL). Rooted in equity, inclusion, anti-racism, and belonging, the BXL community strives to actively address systemic inequalities, dismantle oppressive structures, and promote inclusivity at all levels. A Bronx native, Kam has dedicated her life to positively affecting academic outcomes for students in the Bronx community. Kam is also a PhD student in the Urban Education Program at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University.
Peta-Gaye Williams is about learning and leading, being Bronx educated and a Bronx educator. She values promoting the highest ideals of educating the whole learner, focusing on skills, abilities, attitude, and ethics through a holistic, equitable lens. A continuous learner, Peta-Gaye believes in the words of Michelle Obama: “For me, BECOMING isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a better aim. I see it instead as a forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously towards a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”
