Dr. Julie Rose Kotler Snider

DISSERTATION TITLE: CHRONICLING THE STORIES OF BLACK TEACHERS WHO ARE “THE ONLY ONE” IN PREDOMINANTLY WHITE, K-12 PUBLIC SCHOOLS: A CRITICAL NARRATIVE INQUIRY

Julie Kotler Snider is currently the Director of Special Education and Support Services in the Harrison Central School District. A special educator by training for twentyfive years, Julie’s professional life has been devoted to serving students with disabilities and their families. She is the 2022 recipient of Manhattanville’s Ethel Kennedy Award for Human Rights Leadership as well as the 2021 Cornell/Human Ecology Pandemic Heroes Award.

Julie was born and raised in The Bronx. She lived in Co-Op City from birth to 14 years old and attended the public schools there, receiving a stellar and outstanding education. She moved to Larchmont in Westchester County, New York for 9th grade and attended Mamaroneck High School. She received her BS from Cornell University, majoring in Human Development and Family Studies and graduated with distinction. She entered the teaching profession immediately after graduating college, working as a Teaching Assistant at the Churchill School for students with disabilities while getting her Masters Degree in special education from Fordham University. After Churchill, she was a middle school special education teacher in Somers Central School District in Westchester County, New York. Soon thereafter, she enrolled in a doctoral program in Education Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University in 2002 and was ABD before taking a sixteenyear hiatus. In 2005, Julie became a special education administrator in the Bedford Central School District and she was there for ten years. Since 2015, Julie has been the Director of Special Education in Harrison. The loss of her mother in late 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the racial reckoning in the U.S. were the impetus for Julie returning to school to complete her doctorate via Manhattanville’s doctoral completion program. Julie lives with her two teenage children, Emily and Eli, her husband, Jordan, her cat, Sunset, and her dog, Rocky, in Briarcliff Manor, New York. She is an avid reader and walker, lover of Broadway musicals, and a “retired” nationally ranked junior tennis player.