Dr. Noni Thomas Lopez

With 22 years of experience in independent school education, Dr. Noni Thomas Lopez is currently the Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning at Ethical Culture Fieldston School (ECFS), overseeing curriculum, instruction, and faculty development for grades Pre-K-12. This year, she holds an additional role of Interim Principal of Fieldston Lower, one of the two elementary schools at ECFS. Last September, Dr. Lopez was appointed Head of School of the Gordon School in East Providence, RI. She will begin at Gordon in July 2018.

 

Previous to her appointment at ECFS, Dr. Lopez served for five years as the Head of Middle School at The Nightingale-Bamford School, a K-12 school for girls in New York City; prior to that, she was the Middle School Director at the Calhoun School, a Nursery-12 progressive school on New York’s Upper West Side. From 2010-2013, Dr. Lopez served as a trustee for the Caedmon School, and she is currently the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Bronx Charter School for the Arts. Dr. Lopez was a member of the New York State Association of Independent Schools’ (NYSAIS) Diversity Committee for six years, working with New York independent school educators to develop workshops, conferences, and resource materials for teachers and administrators who seek assistance in furthering their schools' diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. She has presented on leadership and diversity at the National Association of Independent Schools' Annual and People of Color Conferences, the NYSAIS Emerging Leaders Institute, and the North Carolina Association of Independent Schools' Women in Leadership Conference. Dr. Lopez has consulted at universities as well as public and private schools on curriculum, DEI, and organizational leadership and provides executive coaching to educators and non-profit leaders.

 

Dr. Lopez holds a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned her M.A. in Private School Leadership at Teachers College where she was awarded a Joseph Klingenstein Fellowship. In 2016, she completed a doctorate (Ed.D) in Educational Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Dr. Lopez resides in Bronx, NY with her husband, Rodney Eric Lopez, who is the Executive Director of Dancing Classrooms, an arts not-for-profit created to cultivate essential life skills in children through the practice of social dance.