With the start of the 2024-25 school year, Pinewood will welcome new Head of School Eve Kulbieda, who comes from nearby Castilleja School. Kulbieda will replace current Head of Upper Campus Gabriel Lemmon.

At Castilleja, Kulbieda served as Dean of Students, handling student relationships and serving the Class of 2025 as an advisor. She also focused on implementing academic and social support systems for students in her previous role.

“At Castilleja, I have refined much clearer support structures for kids in crisis — academic, social and emotional things,” Kulbieda said. “Now we have really clear and robust processes.”   

Before teaching at Castilleja, Kulbieda worked as a dean of students and math teacher at Menlo School. Prior to this, she worked on the East Coast to build an athletics-focused school from the ground up.

“I was working on almost, you know, a startup on the East Coast,” Kulbieda said. “The owner of the Philadelphia Union, the professional soccer team in Philadelphia, contacted me to open a school for elite soccer athletes.”

In Philadelphia, Kulbieda curated the curriculum to fit typical academic standards as well as the NCAA recruiting standards required of an athletic school.

 “I think that it was a challenge to quickly learn a new culture and at the same time, implement the educational systems that were aligned to the new culture,” Kulbieda said. “It was a quick learning curve.”

Before moving to Philadelphia, according to Kulbieda, she pursued teaching from a young age. She took her first teaching job as a physical education teacher at a Title I school in Tasmania, Australia, where she grew up, and soon became a math teacher.

“I always knew I was going to be a teacher,” Kulbieda said. “I used to teach my teddy bears when I was a little girl, and I was one of those people that just always knew what they wanted to do.”

From Australia, Kulbieda moved to Germany for six years where she taught physical education at an international school in Frankfurt. She became Dean of Students and got her first taste of administrative work.

“It was so much fun,” Kulbieda said. “I loved that school so much. I had the best time. The students were phenomenal. The student leaders were just so incredibly mature. They had so much agency and a great work ethic.”

While she was in Germany, Kulbieda taught in an international school, but still made efforts to learn the language and culture. According to Kulbieda, this helped her understand the students and their values.

“Students in Germany were really resilient in their approach to adjusting to change,” Kulbieda said. “They have a lot of change, resilience is what I would say. And so in that way, they were pretty robust.”