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Head of School Bryn Roberts Announces Retirement After an extraordinary 16-year tenure as St. Paul Academy and Summit School’s Head of School, Bryn S. Roberts will retire at the end of the 2021-22 school year. Roberts’ retirement was announced to the community in April 2021 by Board of Trustees President Tim Welsh. Roberts, who has served as SPA’s Head of School since 2006, will be succeeded by Dr. Luis Ottley, who was announced as SPA’s next Head of School in October 2021 after an international search conducted by the nine-member Board of Trustees Head of School Search Committee.
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Few educators and school leaders have enjoyed the opportunities and support that I have received throughout my tenure as the Head of School at SPA, for which I am deeply grateful. – Bryn Roberts, Head of School
“Each of us in the SPA community has benefited from the wise, caring, and thoughtful leadership Bryn has provided for so many years,” Welsh says. “It has been one of the great privileges of my life to work alongside such an inspiring leader.” Welsh and Board member Tim O’Brien ’77 were the co-chairs of the Board of Trustees Search Committee, which oversaw the search for Roberts’ successor. Search Committee members also included Lit Field ’75, Libby Hlavka, Anne Hooley, David Kansas ’85, Varun Kharbanda ’92, Phil McKoy, and Chip Pearson; the Board partnered with search firm Carney Sandoe & Associates (CSA) in identifying the school’s next leader. “It has been a marvelous experience and an honor to lead SPA, and I know that this is the right time for me to step away and for the school to embrace new leadership,” Roberts says, noting that his retirement date was set several years ago and prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. His successor, Dr. Ottley, will join the SPA community over the summer of 2022 after concluding his tenure as Head of School at St. Martin’s Episcopal School, a private day school in suburban Atlanta. In his thirty-year career in independent schooling, Dr. Ottley has also served as Head of School at Marin Horizon School in Mill Valley, 4
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CA; led Middle Schools in New York and Seattle; and held multiple administrative, classroom, and coaching roles at independent schools in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Dr. Ottley holds a B.S. from Allegheny College (PA), a M.B.A. from Johns Hopkins University (MD), and an Ed.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently working towards a Master of Divinity degree from Dr. Luis Ottley Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CA). Roberts is looking forward to his final months at SPA and working closely with Ottley to ensure a smooth leadership transition. “Few educators and school leaders have enjoyed the opportunities and support that I have received throughout my tenure as the Head of School at SPA, for which I am deeply grateful,” says Roberts. “I hope that we will be beyond the worst of the pandemic and thus able to focus on renewing the expansive bonds of our community and envisioning the next stage of this remarkable school’s evolution.”
