Savannah Strong

Meet our new director of social justice and equity

What drew you to this role?

As a classroom teacher at my previous school, I found myself asking more and more questions about how to create a class community in which all of my students could thrive. That was grounded in my own experience as a Black girl growing up in predominantly white and wealthy spaces in Connecticut. I always felt like an outsider. I had to contort and change in order to fit in, in order to accomplish what I thought belonging was. And it worked: by a lot of external metrics, I had a lot of success as a student. But there was an aspect of myself that was constantly wearing a mask.

When I got to college, I began to engage in a process of deep identity work. I began to come into a racial consciousness. That process was messy and hard: I didn’t feel as though I had a community or a framework to map what I was feeling on the inside onto.

It is so important that every single student feels that they are not only celebrated and affirmed, but also that they have the support they need, to understand who they are, in all of their beauty and complexity, so that we can create a school community in which every student could thrive.

What do you see as the importance of DEI work at Nueva? I see DEI work as deeply empowering. This holds true even for folks who hold a lot of power, who move through the world with different types of privilege. It’s important for us to recognize where we hold power and to understand our ability to leverage that power to make a more just and equitable world. The work of DEI at Nueva needs to be held by the collective.

What values inform your work? Belonging is a big one. Belonging means showing up in all of your beauty, complexity, and diversity, knowing that this is a space for you where you will be celebrated and affirmed.

Community and justice, too—recognizing that our lived experience is impacted by our history and that our history has created unequal opportunity. We so often get mired in what is, and we start from this place of trying to fix what is. For me, instead, the first step is actually to dream expansively of what can be, and then to decide collectively how we get there.

I don’t know if in my life I’ll ever see the world that I dream of. But giving myself

Quick Facts

Favorite book to gift: Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands

Favorite travel destination: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Song that gets you on the dance floor: “Dance to the Music” by Sly and the Family Stone Person, place, or thing that brings you joy: My apartment on Sunday morning, a cup of black coffee, and Miles Davis.

Favorite rule to break: “No white after labor day.” the space to dream radically, in and of itself, is a liberatory practice that allows me to continue to do the work.

Hidden talent: I’ve got some pipes.

Your hero: The late, great bell hooks.

Last “supper” (i.e. favorite meal): I’ve recently made the decision to start becoming a vegan. But that aside: my mother’s spaghetti carbonara.

What do you hope to achieve in this role? Part of creating and sustaining a community in which everyone belongs is creating spaces in which everyone feels that they can exhale, that they can be in community with each other and just experience joy and celebration. So the JEDI team (b Garcia, Shelby Divan, Matthew Oakland, and I) has been expanding our affinity spaces across the community.

That said, my deepest goal is for every single community member to be able to celebrate themselves and to be celebrated by the folks around them. [N]

As part of its renewed commitment to social justice and equity, Nueva sent an unprecedented 17 educators to the National Association of Independent Schools People of Color Conference (POCC) in San Antonio, TX, where they participated in seminars and workshops on topics relevant to people of color in independent schools. Upper school teachers Pearl Bauer and Gretchen Kellough also presented “Belonging on our Bookshelves: An elementary and high school collaboration.” (This collaboration was featured in the Spring/ Summer 2022 issue of Nueva Magazine.)

Nueva also sent six upper school students to the Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC), a multiracial, multicultural gathering of upper school student leaders from across the U.S. and abroad. SDLC focuses on self-reflecting, forming allies, and building community. We invite you to read some reflections from students who traveled to Texas for this moving experience.