7. Preparing Future Principals for Equity-Driven Leadership with Soraya Sablo Sutton, Lizzy May, and Kyle Tana

Episode 7 Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/48fhh2ks

Equity Leadership Now! host Dr. Jabari Mahiri wears many hats including serving as the Faculty Director for Leadership Programs at the UC Berkeley School of Education. In this role, Jabari helps cultivate a diverse community of equity and justice-focused teacher, school, and system leaders. 

This episode is part one of a two-part series that features two of Leadership Programs’ flagship offerings, Principal Leadership Institute (PLI) and Leaders For Equity And Democracy (LEAD). Dr. Mahiri spoke with PLI Director and alum, Dr. Soraya Sablo Sutton, and two graduates, Lizzie May and Kyle Tana about the program and how it uniquely equips future principals to lead for equity. They discussed how PLI prepares educational leaders to confront and address systemic inequities through a blend of collaborative learning, individual support, and practical application of equity-focused principles.

Program graduates Lizzy May and Kyle Tana earned an MA and Preliminary Administrative Services Credential in just 14 months. They both agreed that this was made possible by the emotional support provided by their cohort and the presence of their professors and coaches, many of whom are scholar-practitioners. 

Lizzy, with a background in teaching and instructional coaching, highlighted the program's integration of theoretical frameworks with practical applications, including "Theater of the Oppressed" for embodied leadership. Kyle, an assistant principal, was drawn to PLI for its focus on equity and the diverse, supportive community. Both students emphasized how PLI's approach to hard conversations enhanced their leadership skills and ability to engage in challenging but necessary discussions about race and equity in education. 

Both Lizzie and Kyle shared their experiences working on the Continuous Improvement Inquiry (CII), which serves as a capstone project for students. This project is designed to help students engage with complex issues related to equity within their schools by requiring them to undertake a semester-long qualitative research project.

Applications for the next PLI cohort will open soon. What’s more, is that PLI was fortunate to be awarded a grant to subsidize tuition in collaboration with three Bay Area districts. This grant will fund PLI tuition for educators from diverse backgrounds, supporting the program’s equity-focused mission.  For the next three years, teachers and educators who work in Oakland Unified, West Contra Costa Unified, and San Francisco Unified, have the opportunity to have a significant amount of their tuition paid for, free and clear, by the state of California. 

Interested candidates are encouraged to visit the program's website for more information and to attend information sessions before the application deadline of December 3, 2024. To learn more about PLI,  click here. 

Equity Leadership Now! hosts conversations with equity-conscious leaders from pre-K through university settings who transform structures and strategies for educating students, particularly for those from historically marginalized communities.

Transcript

Preparing Future Principals for Equity-Driven
Leadership
with Soraya Sablo Sutton, Lizzy May, and Kyle Tana

Jabari Mahiri Host, Editor, and Producer
Brianna Luna Audio Editor and Production Specialist
Mayra Reyes External Relations and Production Specialist
Becca Minkoff Production Manager
Diana Garcia Communications Manager and External Relations
Audra Puchalski Communications Manager and Web Design
Jennifer Elemen Digitally Mediated Learning Coordinator
Jen Burke Graphic Designer
Robyn Ilten-Gee Editor and Media Consultant
Rian Whittle Sound Technician

Transcript
Brianna Luna 0:19
Equity Leadership Now! hosts conversations with equity-conscious leaders from Pre-K
through university settings, who transform structures and strategies for educating,
particularly for those who are marginalized. We complement the mission and goals of the
21st Century California School Leadership Academy, 21CSLA.
Housed in the Leadership Programs of Berkeley School of Education, we acknowledge our
presence on unceded Ohlone land.


We explore innovative ideas and compelling work of educational leaders at the intersection
of research, policy, and practice to realize individual social and environmental justice
because our democracy depends on it.
Jabari Mahiri 1:10
I’m Jabari Mahiri, your host for the Equity Leadership Now! Podcast. As the faculty director
for Leadership Programs at the UC Berkeley School of Education, I work with a diverse
community of equity and justice-focused teacher, school, and systems leaders.
The following is part one of a two-part series that features two of Leadership Programs
flagship offerings–Principal Leadership Institute or PLI, and Leaders For Equity And
Democracy, also known as LEAD.
Please enjoy this engaging conversation with PLI Director, Dr. Soraya Sablo Sutton, and two
program graduates, Lizzy May and Kyle Tana.
Jabari Mahiri 1:53
Let's begin with Dr. Sablo Sutton, PLI's program director. Can you introduce yourself and
tell us a little bit about who you are and how you came to this program?
Soraya Sablo Sutton 2:01
Yeah, thanks Jabari. I appreciate you inviting us to come here and talk a little bit about the
Principal Leadership Institute.
My name is Soraya Sablo Sutton. As Jabari mentioned, I'm the director of the Principal
Leadership Institute. And I feel like the PLI has always been kind of in my blood a part of
who I am. I was actually a student in PLI, way back in 2012, part of Cohort 13. After I
finished my time in PLI, I became a school-site principal at the elementary level in San
Leandro Unified, where I worked for quite some time and developed my leadership skills,
and used what I learned in PLI to apply it in the administrative capacity. Today, I work as
the director of the program, which means I handle admissions and all of the curriculum
design for the program and support of all of the instructors, and I'm actually one of the
instructors as well. So I have the wonderful pleasure of working with amazing students like
the ones who are with us here today.
Jabari Mahiri 3:07
Dr. Soraya Sablo Sutton, what makes PLI unique among leadership preparation programs?


Soraya Sablo Sutton 3:13
Well, there are so many things about the program that makes it unique.
First and foremost, we are an in-person leadership preparation program. We really place a
high value on developing a strong sense of community and collaboration among our
aspiring leaders, because we know that the job of being a school-site principal is not one
that anyone should do in isolation. So we really try to disrupt that sort of narrative of
leaders working on their own or this sort of "hero" leadership model by making sure that
our students are always working in collaboration. As a matter of fact, we have a cohort
model. So our students come into the program as one cohesive group, they take all of their
coursework together, and they support each other along the way, through collaborative
assignments and discussions. They really get to know each other on a really deep level,
which is what allows for them to kind of, push each other's practice, and practice engaging
in things like hard conversations and really deep discussions about instructional change.
Another really important thing or something that makes our program unique is our direct
focus on justice and equity. Everything that we do in our program centers around how we
can transform school systems. So, we have students who already come in with a passion
and a commitment to making change in schools, and we pride ourselves on the fact that
we're able to offer them not only the theoretical academic background to be able to help
them think more deeply and critically about the leadership moves they're making, but also
the practical tools to go out and make those changes in the school systems.
I'd say that the final piece that I think is really critical is that our students are supported
from the time they arrive until the time that they leave our program. We offer individual
leadership coaching, so every PLI student gets their own coach, and that person is a
veteran, experienced administrator who basically walks the whole journey with them while
they're in PLI, and ensures that they are provided the emotional support, the technical
support, just the every day to day support of, what it means to sort of, grow your practice
as a leader. So those are some of the some of the highlights that come to mind, Jabari.
Jabari Mahiri 5:38
On the issue of support, I know that you were instrumental in generating a significant new
source of funding from the state of California that's really gonna change the way that we're
able to support our fellow students over the next few years. Can you talk a little bit about
that?

Soraya Sablo Sutton 5:59
Absolutely, Jabari. I am excited to talk about this to anybody who will listen. The CTC, that's
the Commission on Teaching Credentialing in the state of California, has recently released a
new grant to support leadership preparation, and they've dedicated for the first time ever
$10 million towards supporting students to become school-site leaders. The PLI was
fortunate to be able to apply for and be awarded that grant in collaboration with three local
districts right here in the Bay Area. So what that means is that for the next three years,
teachers and educators who work in Oakland Unified, West Contra Costa Unified and San
Francisco Unified, have the opportunity to have a significant amount of their tuition paid
for, free and clear, by the state of California.
The grant is really special because it is designed to help to diversify our leader pipeline. So,
it's money specifically earmarked for teachers and educators from diverse backgrounds,
and ones who are interested in engaging in culturally-responsive leadership.
Jabari Mahiri 7:12
This is amazing news, Soraya. I really want to applaud your groundwork in making this
happen for the PLI program. I would like to apply to this program myself with free tuition,
and all the support that you just mentioned.
I know that other people who are listening to this podcast are going to be interested in
applying and I just want people to be aware that we're going to give you specific
information about that toward the very end, so, hang on. I know we've whetted your
appetite a little bit, but now the most exciting part of our conversation is with two of the
students in our program who are almost at the point of graduation. Soraya, can you
introduce our two student guests who are here?
Soraya Sablo Sutton 7:57
Absolutely. I am joined today by two members of PLI Cohort 23. As Jabari mentioned, they
are on the cusp of finishing their final semester as PLI students and so, they're taking a
little bit of time to talk with us today. The first student is Lizzy May. Lizzy May is the
Assistant Director of Instructional Practices at the Seneca Family of Agencies. Seneca is a
non-public school agency, which encompasses five different non-public schools. And Lizzy
supports teachers across all five of those schools. The second student who's with us today
is Kyle Tana. Kyle is an assistant principal, she's just finishing up her first year as an
assistant principal at the Ravenswood Unified School District. She works at Cesar Chavez

Ravenswood Middle School, which is a school that she actually used to teach at, and just
this past year when she became a PLI student, she also took on the job of assistant
principal. So welcome, Kyle and Lizzy!
Jabari Mahiri 9:03
So Lizzy Ann May and Kyle Tana, even the names are very exciting in terms of just signal of
some of the diversity that our program incorporates. I want to start with you Lizzy, what
inspired you to apply for this program?
Lizzy Ann May 9:19
Thanks, Jabari. I taught in classrooms in Chicago Public Schools for eight years, and then
moved into teacher leadership, teacher coaching there, and then moved to the Bay Area
where my leadership journey continued. But as I'm always telling Soraya, I was really just
leading based on the strength of my personality and intuition and I had no formal training
or structures to support that leadership, so I was looking for a program that was in-person,
that was really collaborative, that was progressive, innovative with professors who are
going to be hands-on. And I was really looking to develop frameworks, theoretical backing,
collaboration, and just the skills and structures to support my ongoing leadership
development, because I knew that I wanted to continue in the direction of school
leadership. And what I found in PLI was all that and more.
Part of my background is that I'm an artist. I wanted a rigorous academic program that also
had this focus on embodiment, and what it means to be an embodied leader, and a
creative leader, and someone who is in touch with their creativity and their intuition and
the very first day of PLI, we engaged in "Theater of the Oppressed" activities that put us in
conversation with our bodies, and our other cohort mates, and really unlocked this deep
understanding of why we were there together. So in PLI I found so much more than book
learning, even though the theoretical frameworks that I've gotten here, the scholars we've
read, the research we've engaged with has been unbelievable in supporting my leadership
journey, it's also those other parts of PLI that I think make this program so unique, and that
have really marked my time here.
Jabari Mahiri 11:03
Thank you, Lizzy. And Kyle, what inspired you to apply to this program?


Kyle Tana 11:07
Yeah, I actually had first engaged with and participated in a professional learning program
through UC Berkeley that opened my eyes as a teacher to become a teacher-leader, and
then as an instructional coach. This was during the pandemic at a time that was very
isolating. That's when I first got a taste of the community that UC Berkeley and the
Graduate School of Education really provides for the participants. A few years later, our
school was transitioning our administration, and it was an opportunity for me to actually
step into becoming a site leader and becoming an assistant principal. So my mentor at the
time had told me about the Principal Leadership Institute. It was the first time that I had
heard about PLI, and thought about really getting my admin credential to become a site
leader. Coming from San Mateo County, I had looked at all of the other programs, and PLI
was actually the only program that I applied to for my admin credential, and Master's.
Also when I was looking at the website, I had never seen participants that were majority
students of color. I think for me, that was one of the biggest pieces of being able to be in
community with people and other educators in the Bay Area, that were diverse and
represent different perspectives on education. I have found throughout my time with that
cohort being such a special element, because I feel that my cohort and myself have really
bonded, but have also challenged each other to grow to be the leaders that we are meant
to be. I really think about just for myself coming from the Bay Area, now having a greater
context of the policies that aren't just on the school local level, but even more so
surrounding the Bay Area, all of the different districts as well as at a state level in California
as well. I feel very grateful for the opportunity and I think, just the first time meeting
Soraya, I felt like this was where I was meant to be in the investment with which all of the
instructors and all of the leaders including yourself, Jabari, just creates such a safe space
for us to really grow as leaders and have that critical reflection that is so essential for our
practice.
Jabari Mahiri 13:16
Thank you, Kyle and also you mentioned the idea of us challenging each other. We
challenge each other as students, our professors and instructors challenge you, but you
also challenge us. One of the things that is challenging inside of what we call a cohort
model, because you know your cohort is one of the key learning instruments, of what you
guys are able to achieve in the program. And Lizzy mentioned one aspect of the embodied
nature, you know, “Theater of the Oppressed”, the ways that we are physically engaged in
this work. Another key aspect of our PLI program, though, is the hard conversations. Can


both of you talk just briefly about how you've experienced what hard conversations are,
and how you've experienced that as a part of ways that we work to challenge each other.
Lizzy Ann May 14:01
This is a huge part of my learning and PLI. I'm a white person and a white leader in schools
that are primarily composed of people of color, both staff and students. That's been true
my whole career. So navigating my whiteness is an enormous part of what it means for me
to be an equity-focused leader and to do the least harm possible to the students and staff
that I am leading. The benefit of being in a cohort model is that you get to rub up against
other people who will call you out, who will say you're not acknowledging race in this
situation.
I remember our first summer, it was just a constant refrain, "isolate race", "isolate race",
“name it in what we're talking about.” That was so useful, because part of the culture of
whiteness is to silence conversation around race, and to pretend that certain things are
race neutral that are not, and that's hard conversations that have followed me my entire
time in PLI, is just taking off the blindfold of race neutrality, and saying no, race has to be
mentioned in this conversation, whether it's whiteness, or anything else.
For the first time at my site this year, because of my work in PLI, we disaggregated our
academic data by race, and we're able to look at, how certain are the demographics of our
students learning or not learning in our spaces and what does that mean? That's a direct
result of my cohort-mates being like Lizzy, you're being race-blind, your whiteness is
showing, like, do some reflections, some critical reflection. And Kyle, you know, was right
there the whole time. So that's an example that I can think of.
Jabari Mahiri 15:40
Thank you, Lizzy, and join in, Kyle. As a woman of color, how have you experienced one of
these aspects of our program, one of the many aspects of our program, that really gives
leaders the kinds of tools they need to operate in highly complex and yet diverse contexts
of schooling.
Kyle Tana 15:58
Yeah, Jabari, I was just smiling when you were talking about the hard conversations
because it brought me back to yours and Rebecca's class and the assignment of hard
conversations, and reading the articles and preparing to engage in writing up a script,
analyzing a hard conversation that I had had in the past, but did not go the way that I


wanted to go because I did not have the skills, helped me, in a way, heal my own ability to
engage in these conversations.
And as a teacher, I found myself often closing the door inside my classroom and not
engaging in the hard conversations because of my positionality. And understanding that as
a school leader, I'm in service to the families, to the students and the community and
ensuring that teachers and every adult that is on campus are not engaging in equity
detours that would impact the student experience.
And so being able to practice hard conversations and being able to read the literature as
well as directly apply it to my own contexts and being able to practice with my PLI cohorts,
really helps me build the confidence to engage in hard conversations that I'm currently
having, as I do evaluations and supervising teachers, to having hard conversations after I'm
in classrooms, and I'm noticing certain teaching moves that need to be changed for the
experience of the students. Now I'm able to have them and I think, the experience of the
hard conversations not only gave me the confidence, but even the skills to be able to trust
that, when I sit with my values, and I know that I'm doing what's good for the students and
the community, that those are the conversations that actually make it easier to have. And
I'm able to engage in those conversations where there may be a lot of resistance, but when
I'm able to stand my ground and I think through PLI I've really been able to solidify what are
my values. What do I believe in in the quality equitable education that is culturally
responsive for all students.
18:02 [break]
Soraya Sablo Sutton 18:41
So one of the things that we really value in our program is helping leaders to develop an
inquiry stance. We believe that in order for leaders to be effective, they have to continually
ask questions about, Is what I'm doing working? Is it working for all students? And how can
we do this better?
So we have our students engage in a semester-long research project, where they are
tasked with gathering a group of adults together, figuring out a problem of practice that is
centered around an equity issue, and then figuring out what to do about it. So they are
students through this process, learn research skills, it's a qualitative research study. They
learn how to collect data, how to analyze the data, they also learn facilitation skills, because
a big part of being a leader is helping to shift adult practice. So, it's not enough for the


leader to understand how to, you know, deliver strong instruction, or how to analyze data,
the important part about being a strong leader is being able to bring other people along. So
the CII project, the Continuous Improvement Inquiry, is the perfect opportunity for our PLI
students to really get in there, get their hands dirty, if you will, and experience what it's like
to engage with other adults who are trying to make a change at school in service of equity.
I'm sure Lizzy and Kyle will share that it's a difficult process. It's a long process. And it's
messy, right. But our hope is that after engaging in a CII project, PLI students leave our
program with additional skills that they can then apply to their practice for years to come.
Jabari Mahiri 20:35
So Kyle, imagine that you're in the airport and on your way to get on a plane to go to
Seattle, the doors are about to close in two minutes. You see a person who is a colleague of
yours, and they heard that you were about to graduate from the PLI program. They also
heard that you've done this amazing continuous improvement inquiry, and they just said,
could you just tell me what the essence of that is? I mean, I really want to know what you
were researching, and your continuous improvement inquiry. And you’re like, I know I gotta
get on the plane in two minutes, but I'm gonna give you a burst of what this is about,
because I'm really excited about my work.
Kyle Tana 21:13
Okay, I will keep it quick to get on that plane, Jabari.
So, my CII, my inquiry question was, how does high quality adult learning impact the
student experience and sense of belonging? And so, my problem of practice came directly
from our students, from quantitative data of our school climate surveys where students
expressed from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year, a more negative feeling
of being on campus with supportive relationships, engagement, sense of belonging and
school climate having all decreased.
And so, I wanted to see how the impact when you work with the teachers and the adults,
and you focus on mindset, as well as focus on intentional planning for teachers, how does
that impact the student experience? So I focused the first part on critical reflection. And as
Lizzy mentioned earlier, it was the first time that as a school site and having worked with
our ILT, we isolated race, and we started talking about the data. What we found with the
data was also that our Black student experience was the most negative across the board.
And so we really took a deep listening stance. We held fishbowl conversations, listening
sessions with our Black Student Union to really understand the student experience. And as


an ILT (Instructional Leadership Team), we decided that we really needed to engage in
professional learning for our teachers to understand the student experience.
And we had teachers reflect on their own positionalities and identities and how that
transcends into the classrooms. From there, when we focus on mindset, we also found that
with that engagement had gone down across the board. And so, Khalifa (2020) describes
disengagement as students not engaging in instructional practices, because they feel as if
they are not affirmed in the classroom. And so, we began engaging in a results-oriented
cycle of inquiry, and with our department teams, thinking about building the professional
capacity of our department leads, having them engaged with their teams in calibration, find
one to two engagement strategies to try and then really begin to see, is this changing,
which we're going to see actually next week, when we give our end of the year climate
survey to see if all of the impact on us pivoting our professional learning, would actually
impact the student experience inside the classroom as well as outside. So it's ongoing
work, but I think that just the fact that we've engaged in cycles of inquiry and have isolated
race is something that is pretty phenomenal when I think about the past few years at our
school site.
Jabari Mahiri 23:46
It is phenomenal. It's fascinating. I think you did miss your plane, though, but Lizzy let me
provide a little scenario for you. So, you bump into the deputy superintendent in your
district, and the person who is in charge of providing professional development for all of
the teachers in the district, they tell you, Lizzy, I'm so glad, you know, I bumped into you
because the person that we were bringing in for professional development is stuck on a
plane on the way to Seattle, or they missed a plane going to Seattle. And we need to have a
fill in. I heard about your continuous improvement project. Can you give me enough of an
insight into that to see if we can use any of that in professional development for our
teachers in the district?
Lizzy Ann May 24:34
Absolutely! What an opportunity Kyle has given me by missing her plane. Um, Soraya said, I
work at nonpublic schools, which means that the students that are in my schools all have
disabilities and have IEPs. And most of them 84% of them are non-white. And also around
11% of them are queer/genderqueer/non-binary. And that means that many of my
students are existing at the intersection of so many marginalized or invisibilized identities,
and that school systems have treated them accordingly. So looking at critical race
feminism, which says, you know, Black girls are given narratives of who they're supposed to

10

be. And then at every point in their school day, they have to either choose to accept or
resist those narratives of who they are, which is an exhausting endeavor, and then layering
DisCrit on top of that, like, okay, what does it mean, if they also have a disability? What does
it mean, if they're also queer? How are we as adults responding to affirming and
celebrating those multiple identities rather than punishing behavior that looks outside of
the norm or non compliant?
So my question for my CII was, how can arts integrated learning serve as a replacement for
restrictive discipline? I was just wondering if we provided more opportunities for youth
expression for them to tell us who they are in their manifold identities, would this not be a
regulating tool that would then decrease the need for restrictive discipline at my sites. So I
offered a lot of professional development for adults at the nonpublic schools around art
making and reflection and the social emotional layers of art making, the academic
integrations possible with art making, and how this could serve as a tool for our students to
really be celebrated in their identities, and therefore decrease the amount of discipline that
we're using at our nonpublic schools. Am I hired?
Jabari Mahiri 26:35
You are hired and you're gonna be given a really big consulting fee to actualize this as an
implementation.
Jabari Mahiri 26:43
So colleagues, how difficult is it to make it through this intense year and a half program or
less than a year and a half, while you're also working full time, Soraya, can you give us a
little bit of insight in terms of how the planning for this is taking place.
Soraya Sablo Sutton 27:05
I'll say the majority of our cohort of PLI students are full-time working teachers. And so,
every day they get up and they go into their classrooms, and they teach their students, and
then they come to PLI class in the evening and on weekends. So that schedule in itself is
rather intense. What we do to make it not only integrated and seamless for the students,
but to actually make it sustainable, is that the assignments that the students are asked to
complete, are directly connected to work that they're doing at their site.
So for instance, in the fall, they complete a discipline analysis assignment, where they are
tasked with learning more about how discipline is implemented at their school site, so that
way, they can better understand how they're working with their students in their


classroom, or whatever position they're holding. And then they can also work towards
trying to make shifts and improve that discipline system.
So that's kind of the teacher perspective, but we have two guests here today, who weren't
working as classroom teachers while they were in PLI. They had other roles. So maybe,
Kyle, maybe do you want to start by talking about how PLI impacted or informed your work
as a first year Assistant Principal?
Kyle Tana 28:21
I think it is a balance of being an administrator as well as being in the program, but I have
to say it provides me with the on the ground experience that I needed to be more informed
and to really be able to engage in school leadership in an in an equity focus, social justice
manner with which really centers the community and the students.
I think it's really thinking about PLI as having your community of people outside to be there
as your cheerleaders as you're going through it. I think just knowing that it's 14 months
helps. I think as we're almost to the end, I can't even imagine, I think back and how much
I've grown since last summer to now and it really is one of the years that I've grown the
most personally and professionally. I have to attest that to PLI. I also think as tiring as it was
going from work from 7:30 to 3:30 and then driving up to Berkeley, every single time that I
got to Berkeley, it's being in community with my cohort that really made it enjoyable and
knew that we were all in it together, and provided me the space outside of my work to help
me reflect on things that were happening that I could talk about, because they weren't at
my school site. So I feel like really the cohort helped me get through the year, but also, how
the program is organized supported me in my first year as an administrator.
Lizzy Ann May 29:49
Yeah, I think it is demanding to have a full time role and then be in this program. However,
there's no doubt that I was way better at my job this year because of the learning that was
happening in PLI. That was immediately translatable into my job and what Kyle saying, the
Cohort model has another aspect to it, which is emotional support, and the presence of the
professors as scholar practitioners is equally important in that. Anytime that I went through
something extremely difficult at work, it was something that one of my professors had
been through and could coach me through and could talk me through it, and helped me
apply what I was learning to the difficult situation I was facing. So yeah, I think I told myself,
I could do anything for 14 months. And it's true, the length of the program makes it

feasible, even if it is demanding. And there's a lot of emotional support in place that helped
me get through it.
Jabari Mahiri 30:48
We also want to move to a close in this episode by asking Soraya by asking you first to give
us first a bit of summary of what you're hearing in relationship to our students who are
about to graduate, relative to what that means to you as the director of the program for its
effectiveness, and also close us out by, talking about some of the key considerations for
people who are listening to this program relative to deadlines for applying, additional
resources that they can go to like our website, etc. Soraya, close out, gives us a call to
action.
Soraya Sablo Sutton 31:25
Thank you, Jabari. And thank you, Lizzy and Kyle, you know, sitting here, it's so rewarding to
hear students talk about the elements of our program that are so key, right, this is what we
hope they walk away with. Knowing that Kyle and Lizzy are about to graduate just warms
my heart because I know they're leaving our program as leaders who are ready to embody
the critical values of PLI. They understand the importance of collaboration, they have the
tools with them to engage in hard conversations that will push their staff and themselves to
be reflective, and to continually improve their practice.
When I talk with alumni in the field, often they tell me the hardest thing about their jobs as
leaders is actually getting other adults to shift, and it takes skill, it takes finesse, it takes
nuance. It takes really understanding how school systems work.
And so, Lizzy and Kyle are just two examples of students who have really benefited from
PLI’s signature pedagogy around engagement, around hard conversations. The arts
integration piece, which we didn't even talk about, but I know has been a huge, huge, huge
bit of learning for these students in this cohort. It's just, it's an incredible experience. I
speak from the perspective as a director, from the perspective as a former student, and
from the perspective of someone who is really excited to welcome in many future cohorts
into the fold in the near future.
The applications for the Principal Leadership Institute open in September, usually the
middle of September, and they're due on December 1. So it's a really easy deadline to
remember, we only admit one cohort per year. So if you were listening at the beginning of
the podcast, and you heard me mention the incredible funding opportunities that are


available, you want to act now because that funding is limited, and it expires in 2027. So for
the next three cohorts, we have the opportunity to provide an incredible amount of
financial support that actually will remove some really big barriers for folks who want to
enroll in this program.
So please visit our website, you can find us at principals.berkeley.edu You'll see that we'll
have information sessions, both virtually and in-person starting in September, and going all
the way up through the admissions application deadline. You can always reach out to me
directly, my emails on the website. We would really, really love to welcome you into the PLI
family in the near future, if you're interested.
Jabari Mahiri 34:20
Soraya Sablo Sutton, Kyle Tana, Lizzy Ann May, thank you so much for this conversation
about the Principal Leadership Institute on our podcast, Equity Leadership Now!
Brianna Luna 34:42
Our podcast team includes Jabari Mahiri, Brianna Luna, Mayra Reyes, Becca Minkoff, Diana
Garcia, Audra Puchalski, Jennifer Elemen, Jen Burke, Robyn Ilten-Gee, and Rian Whittle.