Letters in Leadership From MCW to AGP In the office of Head of School Allison Gaines Pell P’23, P’25, there’s a photo of Mary C. Wheeler on one of the windowsills. The picture shows Miss Wheeler as a young woman, years before she would found the school that now bears her name. Still, in looking at Miss Wheeler’s expression — she’s smiling slightly as she glances somewhere or to someone out of the frame — it’s easy to see the spirit of determination that would drive her artistic and educational vision forward later in life. I asked Ms. Gaines Pell (who also goes by Allison and AGP at school) about the photo when we talked in her office shortly before Spring Break. There were only a few months left in her time as head of school after eight years, and the photo brought back memories from shortly before she started. “I’ve told this story many times, but I remember when Jacky Beshar [P’14], trustee and chair of the search committee, sent me the biography of Mary Wheeler in the mail shortly after I accepted the position,” said Allison. Back in 2017, when she received the biography, she and her family were getting ready to move to Wheeler and Providence from New York. She had already been the founder and founding principal of Arts & Letters, a public school in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, and just prior to coming to Wheeler, she led the Blue School in Manhattan, a pre-k through 8th-grade school that was founded in 2006. As a reminder of New York, there’s a photo of the Statue of Liberty shrouded in fog on her office windowsill, right next to the Mary C. Wheeler photo. It was a gift from Cindy Sipkin ’72, whose interest in photography started at Wheeler. She became close with Allison over the course of her headship, as Wheeler brought them together.
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NOW & THEN SPRING 2025
By Max Pearlstein