The 15 faculty members in the room represented nearly 250 years of teaching at Poly. They came from Lower, Middle, and Upper School and covered every subject area. Each person felt deep ties to the Poly community. Many also counted themselves as alumni, children of alumni, children of Poly faculty, and Poly parents. They had come together on a winter morning to answer a question that seemed easy enough:

“What do we want every Poly graduate to carry with them into the world?” 

The group was Poly’s Portrait of a Graduate design team. On that first day, they started a conversation that would continue for six months and eventually include hundreds of voices across both campuses and generations of the Poly community.

What a Portrait Is—and Why Poly Created One

“A Portrait of a Graduate is a shared vision of the habits, skills, and mindsets a school hopes to develop in its students,” explained Head of School Dr. Noni Thomas López in a series of late summer and fall meetings in 2025. Thomas López brought the project to Poly, joining a growing number of states, districts, and schools that have developed their own Portraits over the past decade. On its face, the Portrait names the four to six mindsets a school develops in their students, but “it’s less a checklist than a compass,” said Thomas López. “By naming who we hope our graduates become, the Portrait keeps the student at the center of decisions and allows us to plan backward from that vision—shaping how we teach, what we prioritize, and how we talk about growth.”

Guiding the process was facilitator Greg Bamford of Leadership + Design, a nonprofit founded by educators that partners with schools on change and visioning work. From the outset, the Poly design team agreed the Portrait’s qualities had to meet a high bar. They needed to be transdisciplinary, cutting across subjects rather than belonging to any one department. They needed to be aspirational, challenging students to keep getting better. They needed to be observable, so they could be coached and, over time, assessed. And they needed to be relevant at every age Poly serves, as meaningful in a Nursery classroom as in an Upper School seminar.

How We Got Here

The work began in earnest in January 2026 with two design team immersion days alongside input sessions for all employees, each taking place on both campuses. They gathered together in Memorial Chapel and the Lower School “Big Room” where faculty and staff answered a series of questions about their work and students. With ideas in mind and notes in hand, they paired with neighbors to discuss their answers, then paired again in groups of four to align on the elements that they felt represented Poly. Parents and guardians weighed in through a digital survey, Bamford led sessions with trustees, and the design team met again for a full day retreat. The goal in the early weeks was to listen widely, collecting the ideas and experiences already alive in the Poly community.

Through February and March, the raw input was sharpened into categories. Committee members interviewed colleagues to gather perspectives, drafted a first set of theme clusters, and brought them back to faculty focus groups for reaction and revision. The themes refined as people pushed on them. With the qualities coming into focus, Bamford shared what made the work at Poly distinctive:

“Your school’s rich history gave us so much to draw from, and many alumni stories to unpack. Poly offers a robust set of experiences for young people. I found myself saying again and again, ‘Poly means many’—many classes, many relationships, many identities reflecting the diversity of Brooklyn, many fields to excel in: academics, athletics, arts, service, leadership. That range is such a gift for students, but it also created an interesting challenge. How do we capture the habits, skills, and mindsets that cut across all of them?”

The Vision of Poly’s Portrait Takes Shape

By April, there was a solid draft. Again, the team solicited feedback and iterated. Bamford continued bringing in more community members, convening sessions with both alumni and students to test the vision against their own lived experience. The input of Poly students, current and past, helped to shape and add more depth to the emerging portrait.

Throughout May, the design team continued to meet in full group and smaller group sessions to review and discuss feedback from their colleagues.

Dean of Faculty Andrea Del Valle P’29, ’33 served as the design team leader. Throughout the process, she kept the Poly group on track—rallying colleagues, holding the timeline, and making sure the work had everything it needed to move forward. “I am energized by this process because, at its heart, it’s an opportunity to strengthen our culture at Poly. It draws on our greatest resource—our faculty and staff, along with the broader community who help shape our students’ experience. I was especially inspired by our student focus groups, whose insights reminded us that the Portrait isn’t only about what we hope students will become; it’s about the kind of community we build with them and for them. The Joyful Teammate, in particular, captures something essential: our shared responsibility to create a culture in which students and adults learn, contribute, and thrive together.”

Poly’s Portrait

On June 10, 2026 it was ready. Following the Class of 2026’s Commencement, Thomas López joined by design team members Harry Bernieri ’85, P’15, ’19, Phoebe Aberlin-Ruiz P’30, and Carmen Dreyer P’30, welcomed colleagues into the Memorial Chapel to reveal the Poly Portrait.

Summer Work

The reveal of the Portrait was just the beginning. The next week, Bamford returned to lead a day-long retreat where two dozen Poly academic leaders discussed how the Portrait could be used in the year ahead. The same collaborative spirit that shaped the Portrait creation turned toward a new question: how do we live this every day?  

Following the retreat, Thomas López sent faculty and staff a summer workbook—readings, videos, and podcasts—inviting them to sit with each of the six qualities over the break and consider how the Portrait might show up in their own classrooms and work. 

Emily Gardiner P’23, Poly’s Upper School deans department chair and director of college guidance, enjoyed the summer work and accompanying journal prompts. “It was powerful to connect every aspect of the Portrait to myself—my own story, challenges, goals, and values. It was an invitation to include ourselves in the project…. rather than think of it as a set of standards we impose on our students. We’re on the journey with them! And the concrete reading and media recommendations gave me so many different ways in.”

What’s Next

From here, the Portrait moves from vision to practice. Associate Head of School Dr. Cyndy Jean is excited for the next steps. “They should reflect how we’re seeing [the Portrait] live daily and how it’s shaping the entire school experience.” In fact, the Portrait asks just as much of teachers as it does of students. “Naturally, this points us toward a stronger investment in teacher advancement: targeted professional development that builds the specific skills the Portrait asks of us, ongoing coaching that helps that learning take root in real classroom practice, and clear goal-setting and evaluation processes that give us an honest way to measure growth,” Jean continued. “This work is just as much about developing our teachers as it is about developing amazing young people at Poly.”

What every Poly graduate carries into the world, it turns out, begins with what the adults in the room are willing to carry themselves.

Joyful Teammates

Special thank you to the Portrait of a Graduate design team members: Phoebe Aberlin-Ruiz P’30, Stephen Bates, Jean Belford P’24, Harry Bernieri ’85, P’15, ’19, Susie Brandmeyer P’24, ’26, ’29, Laura Beiles Coppola ’95, P’29, Shirley Dayes, Andrea Del Valle P’29, ’33, Carmen Dreyer P’30, Eman Elhenawy, Michael Gentile, Maité Iracheta P’16, Noni Thomas López, Bill McNally, Emily Prior, and Elijah Sivin.