Pankti Sevak, currently the Head of School at San Francisco Friends School, has devoted her professional life to fostering what she calls “the magic of school.” A graduate of Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences and a Master of Arts in Teaching, she has a broad range of teaching and administrative experiences. Pankti is a native New Yorker, who began her career teaching math and science at East Side Community High School, a progressive public school on the Lower East Side. Ten years teaching and as a dean at The Brearley School followed, where among other accomplishments, she developed, managed, and chaperoned the School’s first Travel Study Program to India. Prior to moving to the Bay Area, Pankti served as Head of Middle School at Friends Seminary for 11 years where she made significant contributions to instill a sense of equity and belonging through increasing the diversity of the professional community, encouraging equity-centered practices, and contributing to education discourse on belonging. As one of the co-leaders of the Divisional Leadership Institute of the New York State Association of Independent Schools, Pankti helped to support new Division Heads, in their first years through a year long, cohort based professional development program that created a dynamic environment to learn best practices, ask questions, share concerns, and receive quality feedback.