Changing School Leaders
By John O. Harney
Comings and Goings …
Karen DuBois-Walton
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont named New Haven Housing Authority President Karen DuBois-Walton to chair the Connecticut State Board of Education. DuBois-Walton, the former chief of staff for John DeStefano Jr., New Haven’s longest-serving mayor, will succeed Allan Taylor.
Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius announced she will step down at the end of the school year. She was chosen in 2019 to lead New England’s largest school district. The Boston School Committee had recently extended her contract to June 2024.
Sacred Heart University hired Michaela Rome to be its new vice provost for institutional effectiveness. She has served as associate provost at New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury and associate provost for institutional effectiveness and accreditation at The New School in New York City.
In addition, she was the assistant vice provost for assessment and evaluation at New York University and assistant provost for institutional research and effectiveness at Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y.
Bryant University named Sacred Heart University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Rupendra Paliwal to be the new provost and chief academic officer at the Smithfield, R.I. college.
During 17 years at Sacred Heart, Paliwal also served as vice president for strategic planning, special assistant to the president for strategic planning, and interim dean and associate dean of the Jack Welch College of Business and Technology. Before Sacred Heart, he was senior officer at the National Stock Exchange of India.
Berklee College of Music named Kaitlin Passafaro, who was director of intergovernmental relations under former Boston mayors Martin J. Walsh and Kim Janey, as its new vice president of community and government relations.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu named Elevate Boston Foundation Executive Director Frank Farrow to head the city’s new Office for Black Male Advancement.
Boston Chief of Health and Human Services Marty Martinez was named CEO of Reach Out and Read, a national literacy group that provides than 4.2 million children with 6.4 million books annually through 40,000 pediatric care providers.
Human genome researcher Eric Lander resigned as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and science adviser to President Joe Biden, after an investigation, found evidence he mistreated his staff. The founding director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Lander served as science advisor in both the Obama and Biden administrations.