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A journey of enlightenment leads to Shelter Island

Stephen Gessner at home with his canine companions.

Stephen Gessner has been involved for almost all his adultprofessional life in the field of education, both nationally andinternationally, which made him an obvious choice to fill the seaton the Shelter Island School Board. He ran unopposed and waselected last spring.

As the only board member who has never had one of his ownchildren attend the school, he nonetheless finds himself listenedto, with respect, and feels quite welcome. “I think we have aterrific board. It has a nice diversity of interests andbackgrounds.”

“When I first got here I started paying attention to the schooland school business. Actually my wife was on the School BudgetCommittee for a number of years. When the opening on the boardoccurred, I was urged to run by a number of people and I said Iwould.

“I think it’s an important task, an obligation almost, you’renot paid for it. It takes more time than I had thought it would.I’m really a great believer in volunteer work. I think it’s one ofthe special things about this Island, that people volunteer in somany ways and it’s one of the things I cherish about this place -the commitment to the Island that people have. And they show itthrough things like … Bliss Morehead’s poetry readings and MaryDwyer’s after school [reading] program. I’ve been involved in bothof those and it’s been very exciting.”

He was born and raised in New York City, where his father taughtfilm at NYU, had in fact founded the film program there. He went toelementary school in the city but then to the George School, aQuaker Boarding School in Pennsylvania for high school and then toSwarthmore College.

After graduation, he began to teach, thus becoming the fourthgeneration of teachers in his family, returning to work at theboarding school he’d attended, teaching English, drama and history,as well as doing some administrative work. This latter involvementled him to a post at Bennington College.

When he found himself doing a fair amount of counseling withstudents, he realized he had no training. He attended theUniversity of Chicago and earned his doctorate in psychology there.Although he found clinical work interesting, his next position wasas assistant director of the University of Chicago Lab School,which is one of the leading private schools in the country.

He went on to head a school in Maryland, then a Quaker school inWashington D.C. “We were the Avis of Quaker education,” he laughed.”We worked harder at Sandy Spring, but always in the shadow ofSidwell Friends,” where the Obama children attend school.

At the time, he had just married his current wife, KathleenMinder, who was working at Johns Hopkins as an administrator. “Sothat was a wonderful experience, a lot of hard work, transforming aschool that was struggling: we added an elementary school; builtnew buildings; increased student enrollment substantially over afive-year period.”

He then served as program director at Johns Hopkins for theCenter for Talented Youth, and went on to the Goldman SachsFoundation in New York as senior program officer, intrigued by the$125 million they had received to start the program. Kathleen wasalso working in New York, so “It became very nice to be backtogether.”

“I had gotten to the point, though, that I wanted some morehands-on experience,” so he became the president of the SummerInstitute for the Gifted, located in Stamford, Connecticut.

He then became involved in international education. “Thinkingabout the journey I’ve been on, there always seems to me a kind oflogic to it, inspired by new challenges or new opportunities butwith a thread of education, working with particularly bright kids,at either the university or the pre-collegiate level and aninterest in administration that’s been there for a long time,trying to impact a larger population, rather than just aclassroom.”

He’s visited India, China, Singapore and many other countries,looking for partners, coordinating programs, establishing linkagesto universities for study abroad programs, recruiting students tocome to domestic programs and more.

Most recently, he’s begun a non-profit institution, called theCouncil for American Culture and Education. Its mission is tocoordinate exchanges between American organizations and foreigncountries at the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels.

Now he works from home, living full time on the Island.”Kathleen is the executive director of the Southampton Fresh AirHome, a camp for physically challenged children. She’s been therefor 10 years, and it’s been a terrific experience for everyonethere. They have a tremendous board with lots of resources. Veryexciting.”

He has one daughter from his first marriage, Jennifer, living inParis, on leave from a management company, since giving birth toLuke, now 1 1/2, and expecting again this January. “So she’s prettybusy.”

The first time he came to Shelter Island was in 1964, as acollege student, having found a job working in a film that was shothere, called “The Wedding Party.” After that first experience here,he really didn’t look back. Then 10 years ago, while living in NewYork, he and his wife decided to take a weekend jaunt out to theEast End.

“We weren’t even really sure where we were going, north, east,whatever. We got to Riverhead and had to make the fateful choice,right or left. I said, “‹”Let’s go left,’ I had somevague memory of having been here. Then we got to Greenport, noreservations. There was no space available, but actually, we had aguide book so we called the Olde Country Inn, called them up andthey had a cancellation, so we spent the night there. The nextmorning, we wandered around and said, “‹”Gee, this isreally great, let’s rent a house here.'” And the rest, as they say,is history.