Kari Ostrem Named Riverdale's Seventh Head of School
After a thorough and thoughtful search process, Riverdale Country School’s Board of Trustees and Head of School Search Committee announced in August that Karena (Kari) Ostrem has been named as Riverdale Country School’s seventh Head of School. The committee was unanimous in deciding to appoint Ms. Ostrem to succeed Dominic A.A. Randolph, who has served as Riverdale’s steadfast and devoted leader for 15 years. Even before the school year began, the Riverdale community buzzed with excitement. Although she will assume her new role at the start of the 2023-24 academic year, we were lucky to interview Ms. Ostrem to learn more about her background and vision for Riverdale.
After our initial introductions and first question, she was eager to pose a question to us. “What keeps you at Riverdale?” she asked. From that moment forward, it was clear that Ms. Ostrem was just as genuinely curious about our experiences as we were interested in hers. Her warm and friendly manner put us at ease and transformed the interview into an engaging conversation. It became obvious during our talk that Ms. Ostrem is a charismatic and passionate educator with a deep appreciation for Riverdale’s mission.
In her own high school and college years, Ms. Ostrem mainly focused on STEM courses. However, during her time as an undergraduate Engineering major at Princeton University, she realized that teaching was her real passion. This was further confirmed when she started working at The Lawrenceville School as a physics teacher and hockey coach, which she described as “pure joy.” However, she has come to realize that her background in Engineering (which also includes a Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering from Columbia University) is closely connected to educational leadership: “This idea of solving problems within constraints for people, that’s what Engineering is,” she said, “so it’s no different than school leadership: solving challenges for people within the constraints you have in your community. It fits together in my mind beautifully.”
In addition to her extensive teaching experience, Ms. Ostrem has served as the Academic Dean at The Lawrenceville School, Co-Founder of the Bronx Lab School, Director of Science for KIPP NYC, and a founding faculty member at The Island School, a program in the Bahamas focused on sustainability and science research. More recently, she was inspired to start teaching in the prison system through the Bard Prison Initiative.
However, she describes her most recent leadership position as Founding Head of School at the Haile-Manas Academy in Ethiopia as “the most amazing experience of my life.” She says that being immersed in another culture was an “incredible honor and privilege” that allowed her to question her own assumptions and realize that “there are no givens about what life is or how we should exist.” Haile-Manas’s mission—bringing students of every ethnicity together at a residential school to promote peace—is closely related to Ms. Ostrem’s philosophy about the goal of education: empowering students to “make the world a better place for everyone.” Although Haile-Manas and Riverdale are quite different in many ways, Ms. Ostrem believes that the schools are similar in terms of their “willingness to really form community and use that microcosm of community to think bigger about the world.”
Ms. Ostrem believes that Riverdale’s sense of community is one of our school’s greatest strengths. When she met with faculty members and asked them the same question she asked us—“What keeps you at Riverdale?”— ‘community’ was the word she heard most often in response. “Every school uses the word community,” she said, “but when you think about what community means, that is what Riverdale embodies.” She also believes in the integration of the mind, character, and community aspects of Riverdale’s mission, both in classes and other activities, because a balance of the three elements makes experiences “more lasting and worthwhile.” She cited an example from a pre-calculus class she is currently teaching to illustrate her own use of this integrated approach. “I could give my students random data, but instead they’re finding data about an issue they care about…. Say, [for example], the linear regression model works for infant mortality on a downward slope in Ethiopia. Except look at how it changed in 2020. What happened? What can my mind tell me about that? What does my math tell me about that? What does it mean, and what could I do about it? What’s that character aspect of it? So for me, it’s about the whole experience.”
Another thing Ms. Ostrem admires about Riverdale is that it “puts out a mission and then actually strives toward that mission…to me, that’s integrity and validity in a school. You do what you say you’re going to do. For me, that’s what Riverdale has always done.” Right now, Ms. Ostrem’s personal mission as our new Head of School is to keep an open mindset and flexible attitude. Instead of proposing a specific agenda for next year, she plans to “learn more about what is being done…and what’s working” because “context and community are the most important parts of being a school leader.” She also wants to learn about the overall student experience because, she says, “the student perspective is the most important perspective.”
Ms. Ostrem describes her leadership style by using a metaphor from her past experiences as a National Outdoor Leadership School instructor. When leading expeditions, she said, “you figure out where you are and then you say: this is where we’re going… and you put an X on [the map to mark] where you’re going. And then my job as the leader of the group is to give some guidelines… but how you get there and what choices you make are completely up to [you], the people who are doing it, right?”
As a school leader, she is equally clear about goals and the importance of mission: “I literally talk about the X in the same way, with clarity and transparency and sincerity.” Ms. Ostrem embraces and respects the fact that every student is different, and therefore will have a unique Riverdale experience. She sees her role as helping students discover “all the different paths they can take, all the different rivers, all the different views, all the different mountains…all those different places they can visit.” But she emphasizes that all those paths still lead to the same goal: ensuring that every Riverdale student has the opportunity to thrive.
Ms. Ostrem’s admiration for Riverdale stems from her prior involvement in our school community through her husband, Marshall Nicoloff, who served as Riverdale’s Director of Outdoor Education between 2014 and 2020. They have two kids, Lincoln and Luna, with whom they spend time outdoors hiking, kayaking, canoeing, and camping. They also love playing board games and solving jigsaw puzzles together. Ms. Ostrem envisions her future office at Riverdale as a potential place to host game nights. She also likes to do New York Times crossword puzzles. An avid reader, she asked about our favorite books and said that she is always seeking book recommendations because reading “opens up your world and your ability to empathize with people.” Having played varsity ice hockey in college, she also noted that sports are an important part of her life. While describing her experiences as an athlete, she added, “Often, it’s how I met people and really connected with people different from myself.”
Ms. Ostrem, who has worked at several boarding schools, says that she and her family are “super excited to be back on a campus” and to take advantage of all the opportunities campus life has to offer. She also has a special place in her heart for the Bronx, which she calls a “huge part of my story.” She has advocated for environmental justice in the South Bronx, and has been inspired by Bronx-based organizations like the Bronx River Alliance and Rocking the Boat, a youth development organization founded by a Riverdale alum that focuses on boat-building, sailing, and environmental science. Ms. Ostrem hopes to bring her passion for environmentalism to Riverdale as well. “I think we could do a lot as a school, as a community…to commit to more sustainable decision-making at Riverdale,” she says.
Ms. Ostrem’s warmth, values, vision, and desire to improve the world through education seem well-suited to Riverdale’s mission. Like Mr. Randolph, she believes in helping each student develop the character traits and sense of purpose necessary to become contributing members of the Riverdale community and the larger world. In addition, her engineer’s approach to problem-solving, her experience at a variety of schools, and her focus on student perspectives make her a uniquely effective leader. After speaking with her at length, we are excited to welcome Ms. Ostrem and her family back into the Riverdale community and to witness Riverdale’s continued growth under her leadership.
