Excitement and Welcome to our new Leaders

Dr. Sean Hamer, Brightworks incoming Head of School for 2024/25

Michlene Cotter, Brightworks incoming Assistant Head of School for 2024/25

Dear Brightworks Community,

As we reflect on the past year, we are filled with immense gratitude for your resilience, support, and commitment to our school. It is your dedication that has guided us through challenging times and positioned us for an exciting new chapter.

We are thrilled to announce the appointment of Dr. Sean Hamer as our new Head of School and Michlene Cotter as our Assistant Head of School. This dynamic leadership team brings a wealth of experience, passion, and vision to our community,  and we couldn’t be more thrilled to pair them together to lead our community in this time.

Welcoming Dr. Sean Hamer to Brightworks

Dr. Sean Hamer comes to us with over 20 years of experience as an independent school educator, leader, and parent. Most recently, he has served as Head of School at Alta Vista School in San Francisco, where he successfully led initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion, student support and wellness, innovative academic programs, and development. Dr. Sean’s leadership approach is grounded in fostering student belonging, growth, and wellness values that resonate deeply with our Brightworks ethos.

Throughout his career, Dr. Sean has demonstrated a strong commitment to creating equitable, inclusive, supportive, neuro affirming and thriving educational environments. His operational acumen and holistic, experiential approach to education, coupled with his extensive experience in strategic and community initiatives, makes him uniquely qualified to support Brightworks in pursuing long-term strategic and sustainability goals. You can read more about Dr. Sean in his bio.

Welcoming Michlene Cotter to her New Role

Michlene has been an invaluable member of our Brightworks community for the past four years, serving in various roles including collaborator, Director of Community & Belonging, and Program Director of the high school. Michlene’s leadership style is heart-centered, mindful, and relational. Her deep understanding of our community and her unwavering commitment to DEIJ have significantly enriched our school community. Her focus on building community while uplifting and amplifying marginalized voices within our experiential educational framework will continue to be a cornerstone of her work. She brings a wealth of experiential pedagogical experience, not only from her role as a collaborator, but also from her time co-founding Ka-Lo, a self-directed learning school in Oakland. She understands deeply the educational lineage of this place at a time where defining who we are and sharing it out is so vital to our success. You can read Michlene’s bio here.

Throughout this thorough and extensive search process, your feedback and continued engagement have been invaluable. Our committee spent countless hours understanding and holding our community needs while assessing  the unique skill sets of many candidates. As the field of candidates narrowed, we recognized how complementary the skill sets Dr. Sean and Michlene are, making them uniquely positioned as partners to ground our community and stabilize our processes while reaching for our collective aspirations of what this place can be at its best.

Dr. Sean’s extensive experience in school leadership, strategic planning, and operational excellence will provide the direction that Brightworks needs for longevity. His focus on systems and processes will help streamline operations and support our mission of innovative, student-driven learning grounded in antiracist, inclusive practices. He is committed to listening, learning, and working collaboratively with our community to build on our strengths and address our challenges.

Michlene’s deep connections within our community and expertise in community building will support every member of our Brightworks in feeling seen, valued, and empowered. Her deep understanding of experiential education will help us better define who we are and how we serve our community of learners. Michlene will also support telling our story in a way that inspires and motivates, and invites new families, donors, and community partners into our unique world. Her antiracist, inclusive, relational and restorative approach to leadership will help foster a nurturing environment, allowing us to continue growing and thriving together.

One beautiful learning from this process was the enormous untapped possibilities of pairing Gever and Michlene, along with our esteemed team of on-the-ground collaborators, in defining who we are as a school, with Dr. Sean’s deep expertise in place to operationalize it. Gever and Michlene are two folks radically committed to and seasoned in experiential education, who come to this work from richly varied life experiences. We see Gever's partnership with both Michlene and Dr. Sean to be invaluable to this moment and our evolution as a school community, and look forward to his active participation in both onboarding Dr. Sean about this magical place he dreamed up, partnering with Michlene and the collaborator team on clearly defining our pedagogical approach, and supporting efforts to tell our story.

With Dr. Sean and Michlene at the helm and Gever’s ongoing vision-keeping, we are confident that Brightworks will flourish as a place where community, trust, curiosity, meaningful engagement, and equity and justice are at the heart of everything we do. Their combined strengths and complementary skill sets will help us get the grounding and stability we need to reach for our wildest aspirations as we continue to evolve into the best version of what this magical Brightworks dream can be.

We invite you to join us in warmly welcoming Dr. Sean Hamer and Michlene Cotter to their new roles. We look forward to the incredible opportunities that lie ahead and to the continued growth and success of our beloved Brightworks community.

With gratitude and excitement,

The Head of School Hiring Committee

Anthony Consilio, Director of Community & Care & Committee Co-Chair
Elizabeth Rubenstein, Founding Parent
Gever Tulley, Founder
Laura Skelton, Lapis parent and Board member & Committee Chair
Liam Brennan, Obsidian student
Libby Catzalco, Staff member and badass coordinator
Linnea Munkeby Lee, Obsidian student
Mary Catherine Muñiz, Collaborator
Sam Phillips, Collaborator
Sara Sadek, Lapis parent & Committee Co-Chair