Faculty, Staff, and Trustee Achievements
Associate Head of School Christina Kyong has been appointed Head of School at the Madeira School of Washington, D.C. Christina arrived at Wildwood in July 2020, immediately stepping in to be the school’s Lead Pandemic Coordinator while also overseeing Wildwood’s curricular and co-curricular program. With this new position, Christina continues Wildwood’s legacy of preparing associate heads for the next level of leadership, serving as Heads of Schools at other independent schools across the country.
Trustee Cynthia Patton has joined the Board of Trustees for the Legal Defense Fund (LDF). Cynthia currently serves as general counsel at Verily Life Sciences. Last year, she was named by Savoy magazine as one of the Most Influential Black Lawyers of 2022.
Director of Upper School Dr. Joanie Banks-Hunt was a featured panelist at the Society of Women Engineers national conference, WE22. A female trailblazer in the field of engineering, Dr. Banks-Hunt discussed how the industry has evolved since the 1970s and the current state of women in engineering.
Upper school science teacher Christine Wheaton spent the summer exploring ecology and conservation efforts in Belize, thanks to Wildwood’s Research Exploration and Advancement Program (REAP). In the process, she collected data on manatee and hawksbill turtle nesting sites, researched the country’s West African cultural legacy, and explored the second largest barrier reef in the world–all to inform her work with Wildwood’s Environmental Science and Biology students.
Fulbright Distinguished Award winner and middle school math teacher Dr. Sabrina Goldberg published her research of the Finnish education system in the Journal of Global Education and Research. Sabrina studied the targeted authentic student-centered learning continuums and phenomenon-based learning present in Finnish education.
Music teacher Itai Disraeli’s Grammy Award-winning band Opium Moon released a new song in support of Iranian women. He and fellow Wildwood music teacher Hagai Izraeli recently signed a record contract with jazz label Ropeadope with their band Maetar.
Student Successes
Javon D. ‘23 was named a Posse Scholar by the Posse Foundation, a national nonprofit organization that partners with select colleges and universities in the United States to provide student scholarships and leadership training. He will be attending Pepperdine University this fall with a full tuition scholarship.
Billie M. ‘23 and Mila B. ‘23 were selected for the L.A. Phil’s Nancy & Barry Sanders Composition Fellowship Program. The program is for high school students with an interest in classical composition and offers a broad education and opportunities to have their compositions performed by professional musicians. Wildwood is currently the only school with two students enrolled in the program.
Fellow senior Allyson S. ‘23 spent her summer working in the lab of The Ellison Institute of Transformative Medicine (EITM) as a Junior Fellow. Part of her research was to determine possible treatment for mock tumor samples. This fall, she was invited back to EITM to speak about her experience in the program.
Haiden B. ‘23 received a Gold Key award in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, a national art and writing competition. Her winning artwork was recently featured in the Wildwood gallery.
Theo U.-N. ‘25 has broken three Wildwood School records in cross-country and track-and-field this year, including his own!
Do you know of a Wolf Making Waves? Let us know! Share your news with news@wildwood.org to be included in the next Wolves Making Waves!
- Spring 2023
