Leadership Spotlight: Christina Kim, Maryvale’s Assistant Head of School for Strategic Initiatives
Maryvale’s almost 80-year approach to educating young women to lead includes surrounding students with role models of leadership.
New to the Maryvale community in 2024-2025 is Christina Kim, Assistant Head of School for Strategic Initiatives. She brings 24 years of experience as a classroom teacher, learning specialist, clinical social worker, and school administrator and a passion for the power of authentic leadership.
This summer, Ms. Kim will complete her Ed.D. in Education on Educational Entrepreneur Leadership from Johns Hopkins University School of Education. She has a B.S. from New York University, M.Ed. and M.S.W. through Bank Street College of Education and Columbia University School of Social Work, and a M.Ed. for School Leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University. A past Fulbright Scholar and licensed social worker, Ms. Kim presents frequently at national and international educational conferences.
What follows are Ms. Kim’s reflections on the impact of educational entrepreneurial leadership, the importance of wellness to leaders and the communities they support, and what inspires her about Maryvale’s intentional approach to leadership education.
Johns Hopkins School of Education's leadership program really spoke to me. It tackles what Hopkins calls ‘complex, wicked problems’ in education by finding different, newer perspectives to combat issues that really impact students today. I’ve worked with students, families, and teachers in New York, California, and Maryland.I have seen the importance of supporting the whole child to meet academic and social-emotional needs through systems and programming. Best practices are constantly changing.
I come with the approach that the playbook is flexible. Being authentic, building personal connections, and really seeing and hearing the needs of a school to then create innovative solutions is my joy. When complicated, systemic issues arise, I like analyzing them and working in collaboration with different departments, leaders, and constituent groups to bring about change.
My doctoral dissertation is a case study on how data informed a school-wide community's well-being. I was Gilman’s director of wellness coming in right out of COVID when teacher burnout was high and student mental health were big concerns—a good example of a complex, wicked problem. In 2021 and again in 2023, I used the Authentic Connections well-being data survey for students, teachers, and parents to make data-driven decisions about how to support and scaffold interventions and programming. Data literacy needs to be part of the process of data sharing, understanding how to unpack unhappy findings, dissemination of information, and how to have conversations so everyone understands the information that's relevant to them. Over two years, we saw significant improvement in every constituent group in their mental health indicators and the level of burnout decreased as a school by holding every group accountable to what they said they would try to do.
The Mitchell Leadership Institute definitely drew me to Maryvale. The Mitchell Leadership Institute really speaks to my own leadership journey as a female school leader and in the ways that we can really help empower girls to think about leadership. Everyone can be a leader and learn the skill sets early on to bring their strengths and develop the areas they need to grow and to be a leader.
To be an entrepreneurial leader requires one to be authentic and connect with different people. Entrepreneurial leaders have a vision for transformative leadership that everyone can grow and change, including institutions and systems. Leading others to that vision requires having a collaborative mindset. It also requires that the leader is comfortable stepping into uncharted territory without clearly defined ways of doing things. Being entrepreneurial is being flexible and working with people to gather the data, design programs that truly fit the community, and then assess the programs to bring about sustainable change.
The premise of my dissertation is that healthy adults equal healthy students. There is a direct relationship and correlation between the way adults handle stress, emotional regulation, and how they express their feelings and the way that students handle these emotions. This drives all that I do. At Maryvale, I am leading the charge to bring our wonderful wellness champions and programs under the same umbrella. Our new wellness committee of teachers and staff, called Maryvale Wellness, streamlines the different wellness programming and employee benefits through HR. We publish a monthly newsletter, created a wellness online portal, and offer new initiatives to build relationships because social wellness is important. We’ve created wellness walks, provided breakfast for our teachers and staff with funds from our HR insurance group, and did a service activity before winter break. Teachers and staff gathered to make goody bags for our parents with a prayer and a hand-written note for each parent. We’ve brought in a massage therapist, a financial consultant, and are encouraging teacher-initiated ways for creative connections. Our drama teacher, Deirdre McAllister, led a series of drama therapy/creative storytelling for us to share more about ourselves, which went really well.
Wellness is especially important for female leaders who tend to have a lot on their plate. I love being in an all-girls school and seeing how we really promote and support each other, build community, and help female leaders grow. I believe that the leaders in an all-girls school need to develop the disciplines and habits of taking care of themselves, being kind to themselves, and understanding the different pillars of wellness, whether it's physical wellness, social wellness, financial wellness, or emotional wellness. Each is important for self-care so that we can better be available and lead from our best selves wherever we are.
By co-leading Maryvale’s first-ever, all-school Leadership Day of Service, I helped empower student voices, ideas, and leadership. It was exciting to highlight the collaborative work between the students and employees to make sure it was truly an all-school event. My first year has been getting to know and support students by attending student affinity groups and student clubs so that they know who I am and what my role is.
I want each girl to know that God created them with a special purpose and designed them with leadership skills. The faculty and staff are not here just to teach or run programs–though that’s very important—we are here to help each girl discover her leadership skills and support her in her leadership journey. Every adult at Maryvale has the job of helping every student grow as the person and leader she is called to be.
