Pankti Sevak
Pankti Sevak, currently the Head of School at San Francisco Friends School, has devoted her professional life to fostering what she calls “the magic of school.” A graduate of Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences and a Master of Arts in Teaching, she has a broad range of teaching and administrative experiences. Pankti is a native New Yorker, who began her career teaching math and science at East Side Community High School, a progressive public school on the Lower East Side. Ten years teaching and as a dean at The Brearley School followed, where among other accomplishments, she developed, managed, and chaperoned the School’s first Travel Study Program to India. Prior to moving to the Bay Area, Pankti served as Head of Middle School at Friends Seminary for 11 years where she made significant contributions to instill a sense of equity and belonging through increasing the diversity of the professional community, encouraging equity-centered practices, and contributing to education discourse on belonging. As one of the co-leaders of the Divisional Leadership Institute of the New York State Association of Independent Schools, Pankti helped to support new Division Heads, in their first years through a year long, cohort based professional development program that created a dynamic environment to learn best practices, ask questions, share concerns, and receive quality feedback.
Pankti is drawn to Drew for its unique mission and commitment to progressive education, helping teenagers to know themselves deeply while engaging in intellectual and creative pursuit.
Pankti grew up in Queens, NY, with parents who immigrated to the United States from India. She spent many summers in Mumbai, connecting with extended family. Her commitment to diversity and a sense of belonging come from her own experiences growing up as a first generation child of immigrants and experiencing schools through this lens. She is fluent in Gujarati and conversant in Hindi and Spanish.
Pankti, along with her wife, Dr. Josie Rodberg, and their two children Anjali and Mira Sevak-Rodberg, have loved this new phase of their lives in the Bay Area. The Sevak-Rodberg family
loves being close to the ocean—the Indian Ocean by Mumbai; the Atlantic Ocean on Outer Cape Cod, and now the Pacific Ocean by their new home, San Francisco.
Drew knows and believes in teenagers. We engage each student in a process of intellectual discovery to develop an individual voice, the confidence to express it, and the empathy to understand its impact.
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