We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Reanna Ursin will join our community as MSON’s next Executive Director, beginning July 1, 2022. An educator, scholar, and diversity, equity, and inclusion practitioner, Reanna comes to MSON from the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the past five years, she has also participated and held facilitation roles in both the Student and Professional Learning programs at Global Online Academy. She brings the leadership skills, creativity, energy, and teaching and learning experience to guide MSON into its next decade.
Reanna will succeed Claire Goldsmith, who has been involved in MSON since its launch in 2013 and became its first full-time Executive Director in 2016.
“We are excited to have Reanna taking the reins of MSON in July” said Doug Lagarde, MSON’s Steering Committee Chair and Head at Severn School. “She rose to the top of a very strong group of candidates and will serve MSON well as we continue to mature as an organization.”
Reanna shared, “I’m delighted to join the MSON community! I was immediately drawn to the emphasis on building connections across independent schools and leveraging the power of online learning for the benefit of students. It’s a testament to the vision and talent of consortium members that MSON so quickly established itself as a leader in the field, and I’m excited to see what we can accomplish next.”
Reanna, who loves to travel and cannot wait to visit our 28 member schools, is eager to participate in our June MSON Annual Workshop in Nashville and hopes to meet some of the Heads of School at the Malone Stanford Conference.
More about Reanna:
At the Westminster Schools, Reanna held the Hawkins Family Professorship for Excellence in English and has taught across the department, facilitating curricular review and leading professional development. Her DEI work involves expanding and diversifying the school’s candidate pool for the Governor’s Honors Program and, most recently, working with the Science department to identify best practices for increasing diversity and belonging. She has led teacher workshops for several national independent school groups. Earlier in her career, she was Assistant Professor in the English department at McDaniel College in Maryland, where she also coordinated an assessment of student engagement for a consortium of Mid-Atlantic colleges. She holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and a B.A. in English from Xavier University of Louisiana, where she was a Beinecke Scholar.