Andrea Kassar is the 12th head of Westridge School. She joined Westridge in July 2022, arriving with more than 20 years’ experience as an administrator and faculty member at girls’ schools in New York. She is an academic thought leader with a proven passion for girls’ empowerment and leadership; student wellness; and diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice work.

Kassar was most recently the head of Upper School at The Nightingale-Bamford School in Manhattan, where she led the division through significant enrollment growth and the transition to an Advanced Courses program and worked to implement new and expanded student programs in the areas of diversity and equity, and health and wellness.
 

Prior to Nightingale-Bamford, Kassar was with The Chapin School, an all-girls school for grades K-12. There, she taught English and served in numerous administrative capacities across all three divisions of the school and on the Chapin Administrative Team. Kassar also serves as an advisor to the semester school at Chewonki in Maine, a program for high school juniors that combines academics and outdoor experiences. At Nightingale-Bamford she served as the faculty advisor for the school’s Middle Eastern student affinity group and at the request of students has also agreed to serve in a similar capacity for the Westridge MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) student affinity group.
 

She earned her undergraduate degree in English and psychology at the University of Chicago, where she was elected Phi Beta Kappa. She holds an M.A. in English and comparative literature from Columbia University and an M.A. in psychology from the New School for Social Research. She has done academic research at a psychology lab at The New School and the University of Chicago, and is a graduate of Brearley, a K-12 girls’ school in Manhattan. Learn more about Kassar and read her thoughts on girls’ empowerment, embracing the “now,” and more at www.westridge.org/blog.