Welcome faculty, staff, students, and friends. It is official—we have turned the corner on summer and September is here. It is time to begin—the 2023-2024 school year has arrived. 

Our seniors have been waiting for this year for a long time. On this day—the first day of school—in September 2011—you were walking into your day of Kindergarten. Can you envision it? Your teachers, new friends, heading outside for recess. There was an impossibly far off date on the calendar then that was your graduation year. Well it has arrived. Think of all you have accomplished. It is your year. It is your time, Class of 2024.

I have also been waiting for this school year to arrive, having been named Westover’s next head of school this last October. Since I first visited campus, I have imagined this day. I am so proud and honored to join the Westover community as your Head of School.

And it has been a busy summer—from Taylor Swift (let's hear it from those Swifties out there) to Beyonce (let's hear it for Queen B) to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, women have taken center stage. And can’t you feel it? The joy, creativity, the electricity of what it looks like when women’s voices and our stories fill the collective conscience. And yet you know this. It is familiar. You have seen it before, and your teachers have too because we live it every day here at Westover. We know what a place looks like that elevates, illuminates, and amplifies a girls-centered world. 

And our theme for this school year is just that - Illuminate. Together we can brighten our community and the world with light, with creativity and curiosity, music and stories, hope and justice. We can solve big problems and make a positive impact. We know that your voice matters, and the world is a better place when your ideas, spirit, and ferocity help us move beyond our past to a brighter future.  

Illuminate as a theme for this school year ties to our history and traditions, while calling on us to look to the future. We have been trailblazers at Westover from the start. We stand on the shoulders of Mary Hillard and Theodate Pope Riddle who together imagined this building at a time when women interested in studying architecture were denied admission to any and all graduate programs. 

Theodate became one of the first licensed architects in the United States not by attending university, but instead by making her way through finding people who would teach her and learning the rest on her own.  And look at what she built.  Together Theodate and Mary imagined a world bigger and brighter than the one before them.  And while it was Theodate whose spark created this place, it was Mary’s vision for education and the transformative power of teaching and learning that filled the hallways and classrooms at Westover.  And one-hundred-and-fourteen years later your teachers carry-on Mary Hillard’s vision, building on a legacy of forward-focused education, providing you with the knowledge and skills—to think, to do, to be. 

And as I step into Westover today, I have observed the following:

We are a small and MIGHTY community where student leadership takes center stage. With eight student heads of school, spirit heads, affinity groups, athletics, arts, service learning, global partnerships, WISE, Invest in Girls, and the Rasin Center—I see students stepping-up and stepping-in to lead the way.

Westover faculty and staff care deeply about our students. There is a quality to this care, centered around you the student, that defines this critical relationship at the center of our school. Your teachers are here to share their joy and passion for learning as well as to ensure you find your spark and your purpose. They are all-in, invested in you with their time, talent and overwhelmingly with their hearts.

The world— now more than ever—needs the voices and bold leadership of intelligent and compassionate women. We are at a complex time in our world’s history, full of contradictions and polarization, and we need you to step into the arena. As your head of school, I understand the privilege of what it means for each of you to receive a Westover education. And with this privilege, comes responsibility—to give back, to think critically, to question, and to create a life that centers contribution to the greater good.

It is this incredible combination of 

• student voice;
• faculty purpose ;
• and our mission — to empower young women to lead lives of consequence

that will set us on our path this year.  

Amanda Gorman, poet and activist, is another strong example of a voice that illuminates joy, creativity, and electricity. Appointed the first National Youth Poet Laureate, her words have resonated long after she wrote them down. You may already know them, a call to action for your generation. She declared, 

“There is always light, 

if only we're brave enough to see it. 

If only we're brave enough to be it.” 

-Amanda Gorman-