Andrea S. Zayas

Andrea is the Founding Principal of La Cima, an independent public charter K- 5 school in Brooklyn, NY, established in 2007. La Cima is in its fourth year of operation, and currently serves 315 scholars from kindergarten through grade four. The mission of La Cima is to develop students who have the intellectual capacity, social capital and emotional strength of character to attain academic and life-long success, and act as effective change-makers in their communities.

The founders sought to establish and sustain an institution that will provide positive evidence of the impact of social and political change grounded in the accomplishments and contributions of its graduates.

Andrea began her work in education as a school start-up manager for LearnNow, a management organization that partnered with local community-based organizations to build community-based charter schools. She managed several school start-ups in the Bronx, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Philadelphia. She also served as an elementary arts and literacy teacher and out of school time program director in NYC public charter schools, combining standards-based approaches and artistic methods to achieve extraordinary results. Before launching LaCima, Andrea served as Director of Accountability and Oversight for the Office of New Schools at the NYC Department of Education.

Andrea earned her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University – Douglass College, in Visual Arts and an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Arts, Administration, Planning and Social Policy. She serves on the Advisory Board of Partners for Developing Futures, a social venture investment fund that primarily invests in the start-up of high-potential charter schools and school networks founded and/or directed by leaders of color. Andrea lives, and works in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn with her 8 year old daughter, a founding scholar at La Cima.