New Faces on Campus
The freshmen aren't the only newcomers to Casa de Piedra.
As the School says a fond goodbye to the class of 2015 and welcomes the brighteyed class of 2019, so to do we greet new and eager faces ready to join the ranks of the faculty and staff.
Here is the roster of this year's additions to the faculty and staff directory:
Ebony Murphy-Root
Chris Thomas CdeP 2008
Chris, who graduated from Thacher in 2008, is thrilled to return to his second home here in the Ojai Valley. As assistant director of admission, he loves sharing his Thacher experience with prospective students and their families. In addition to his work in the Admission Office, Chris coaches football and basketball, and advises freshman boys. After Thacher, Chris went on to Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he studied psychology and marketing, and played basketball, football, and club lacrosse. He is passionate about the Thacher community and is eager to contribute as a member of our faculty.
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Here is the roster of this year's additions to the faculty and staff directory:
Jeff Berndt
Jeff is the director of institutional advancement and is leading the early stages of Thacher's impending capital campaign. Jeff has more than two decades of experience leading development operations at a number of organizations across the country. He spent eight years at Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, where he was associate director of the school’s campaign. Following the successful completion of that campaign, he was named director of development at the Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Massachusetts, where he also led a campaign that exceeded its goals. Jeff then joined a venture philanthropy firm named NewProfit as a managing partner. NewProfit helped scale a number of organizations including KIPP Schools, Teach for America, and Year Up to national prominence. Before joining Thacher, Jeff led the philanthropic practice at a boutique wealth management firm called Roundtable Investment Partners. Jeff and his wife, Kristin, have three children.Jael Hernández-Vasquez
Jael was born in Jarabacoa, La Vega, Dominican Republic. Not long after his birth, his mother immigrated to a burgeoning Dominican neighborhood in New York City in pursuit of economic advancement and a better education for him and his future siblings—his father would join her shortly after. They left Jael to grow up with his extended family on their farm where he helped raise animals (among them horses and burros) and cultivated crops. When he turned 11, he joined his family in New York City where he attended the nearby public middle schools and quickly learned English. His most memorable first impression of the United States was visiting his neighborhood's library for the first time. Having grown up in a town with no library, he discovered books and the wonderful worlds he journeyed to every time he picked one up. Since then he has become an avid reader and has read novels in at least 9 languages. Jael discovered and fostered his passion for languages at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He studied Mandarin Chinese, Latin and learned Ancient Greek independently. He attended School Year Abroad (SYA) Italy, where he enhanced his studies in the Classics, mastered Italian, and studied Classical Sanskrit as a year long independent project. He continued studying Mandarin Chinese, Latin and Greek at Columbia University while picking up German and Portuguese along the way. After graduating he dedicated two years to teaching English as a second language to young Haïtian immigrants in Miami through Teach for America. Wanting to pursue graduate work in the field of education, he most recently enrolled in the Penn Residency Master in Teaching program at UPenn and completed his master's thesis while teaching Latin and Spanish as a teaching fellow at Deerfield Academy. At Thacher, Jael will be teaching one section of Latin II and Spanish levels II and VI. He will also advise junior boys.
Lionel Huddlestone
Lionel was born and educated in France. He graduated with a BA from the Université de Paris X and moved to London to continue his studies. Lionel also taught French at Lagan College one of the first integrated schools in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and then joined the French program at San Diego State University. After his master’s degree, Lionel taught extensively in high schools and colleges in the San Diego area before relocating with his wife Siobain and their dog Milou in the Ventura region. Lionel will be teaching French levels II, IV, and VI.Ebony Murphy-Root
Ebony comes to Thacher from Manhattan, where she taught middle school humanities at a progressive K-12 school with no walls. After undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Connecticut, she was first a GED teacher to young parents in Springfield, Massachusetts, then spent two years as an adolescent case manager at a community-based organization near Wesleyan University serving teenagers in foster care. Subsequently, she taught literature and writing at Watkinson School, Capital Preparatory Magnet School, Capital Community College, and as a volunteer instructor for Charter Oak Cultural Center's BOTS Center for Creative Learning, which offers free classes for Hartford's homeless community. Ebony has served on the boards of The Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens, The Cove Center for Grieving Children and the Greenwich Academy Alumnae Association. In late July she completed The National Seed Project on Inclusive Curriculum New Leaders' Week in San Anselmo, a peer-led professional development program that promotes change through self-reflection and interpersonal dialogue and builds capacity for more equitable curriculum, campuses, and communities. Ebony will teach freshman and junior English, advise freshman girls, coach track, and live in the lower Handball Court with her husband, Jonathan, an avid Mets and Seahawks fan and fellow UCONN alum.
Helena Sadlak
Helena is Polish and holds a master of arts in romance philology from the University of Lodz in Poland and a master’s degree in foreign languages for business from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. These two perspectives have developed her curiosity and desire for sharing her multicultural knowledge with others. She’s fluent is Spanish, French, and Polish. For the last 12 years she has been living in different countries such as England, Spain, France, and Mexico. Traveling has helped her learn more about diverse cultures, opened her mind and enhanced her sensitivity to the needs of others and different ways of thinking. At Thacher, Helena will teach level I, III, and IV Spanish. She lives in Ojai with her husband, Eduardo, and their dog Maggie.
Chris Thomas CdeP 2008
Chris, who graduated from Thacher in 2008, is thrilled to return to his second home here in the Ojai Valley. As assistant director of admission, he loves sharing his Thacher experience with prospective students and their families. In addition to his work in the Admission Office, Chris coaches football and basketball, and advises freshman boys. After Thacher, Chris went on to Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he studied psychology and marketing, and played basketball, football, and club lacrosse. He is passionate about the Thacher community and is eager to contribute as a member of our faculty.
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