Pollyanna: Melissa Mirza PD

Making the Leap:

A space for leaders of color to reflect on your next career move.

Melissa Mirza, facilitator

August 1, 2023

1-2PM ET / 10AM-11AM PT

Before the school year starts is a good time for leaders to decide if they are going to make a move for the following school year. Leaders of color need a protected space to think aloud as they make this decision. Thus this workshop is only for educators who identify as people of color and are in current leadership positions.

Some of us know we want to be heads or a member of senior leadership. Some of us aren’t happy in our current role or current school but on the fence about making a leap. Others are thinking about leaving education altogether.

Let’s come together to tap the collective wisdom of a group of established leaders of color. We will honor where we have been, making space to own our professional accomplishments as well as recognize what workplace wounds need tending to. Many workshops focus on developing a leader’s skillset but ignore the deep reflection that leadership demands of us. If we don’t give ourselves time to focus on ourselves and assess our own needs, we will get trapped in a cycle of reacting to our circumstances rather than intentionally creating the life we want and deserve to live.

In this workshop we will:

Pause, reflect, and honor by reattuning ourselves to our inner wisdom.
Map out what we want and how to get there.
Articulate our superpowers and understand how to present ourselves to search teams.
Identify our non-negotiables.
Name how to spot red flags and recognize toxic work cultures.
Meet a cohort of leaders like you that you can call on throughout the year and this search process.

Melissa Mirza has been working in education for 17 years as a teacher and administrator in preK-12 schools and at the university level. She’s led diversity, equity and belonging workshops, facilitated racial and gender affinity spaces, delivered keynote speeches and organized conferences for schools and organizations nationwide including NAIS’s People of Color Conference, C.A.I.S.’s regional conference, CATDC (Bay Area) & CATDC’s Women and Leadership Conference (where she served on the conference’s planning committee for four years), Northern California’s POCIS High School Conference, Menlo School, Prospect Sierra Elementary & Middle School, Marin Academy, San Francisco University High School, The Bay School of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, U.C. Irvine and U.C. Santa Barbara. Melissa has also served as a mentor for graduate students in the Klingenstein masters in educational leadership program at Columbia’s Teachers College. In 2016, she was A Better Chance Hero Award Recipient (National Education Non-Profit). She’s currently volunteering at her son’s preschool co-op weekly and it’s reminding her of where she got her start in pre-k and kinder programs before teaching high school English and later becoming a dean of faculty.

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Questions? Email