Dr. Linda Nathan

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Linda Nathan, Ed.D. is the first executive director of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship, which fosters and mobilizes creative, arts-immersed schools, where students are making and doing, teachers are asking how and why, and schools are engaged in their community.

As an experienced leader in education, Nathan actively mentors teachers and principals, and consults nationally and internationally on issues of educational reform, leadership and teaching with a commitment to equity, and the critical role of arts and creativity in schools. Nathan also serves on numerous nonprofit boards both locally and nationally, and is a published author. Her widely praised book The Hardest Questions Aren’t on the Test, about teaching and leadership in urban schools, was published in 2009 in both English and Spanish. Her new book, When Grit Isn’t Enough, will be released by Beacon Press in October of 2017.

Nathan was also the founding headmaster of the Boston Arts Academy, Boston’s first public high school for the visual and performing arts, and the co-director of Fenway High School, one of the first pilot schools in the Boston Public Schools. She began her teaching career in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and then came to Boston to work as a bilingual middle school teacher.

She holds a Doctor of Education degree from Harvard University, a Master’s degrees from Emerson College and Antioch University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley.