Dr. Sarah Shulkind - Principal, Middle School
Sarah Shulkind, Principal of the Middle School at Milken Community High School, has known from the beginning that education was the only career she envisioned. Her commitment to educational reform came through experience following an impressive academic background. Sarah Shulkind earned her BA in English and History from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.Ed in Teaching and Curriculum from Harvard University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. This summer, she finished her doctorate in Education Leadership at University of California, Los Angeles.
Sarah Shulkind was a founding faculty member of the Wildwood School, in Los Angeles, where she was the Middle School Coordinator. Previously, Principal Shulkind directed an integrated learning program in the West Philadelphia Public Schools, wrote policy for the United States Department of Education, worked closely with an elementary school in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Housing Projects, and taught Humanities at an inner-city Boston pilot school. In all of this work she discovered her calling as a middle school advocate and educator.
Rabbi Sara Brandes- Middle School Rabbi
Rabbi Brandes is excited to be joining the Milken community this year. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, with High Honors from Emory University, completing her B.A. in Religion and earning her Masters of Arts in Rabbincs and Rabbinic Ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She has spent several years living in Israel, as a student at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and Machon Schechter. She is also a certified yoga instructor, completing her certification at the Yoga Vidha Gurukul in Nashik, India. While at JTS, in addition to receiving academic awards in Bible, Rabbinics, Philosophy and History, Rabbi Brandes was a Neubauer Fellow and received the Bernard and Sydell Citron Scholastic Prize, recognizing her as the most outstanding student in her graduating class.
Former Director of Education at Camp Alonim of the American Jewish University and Hospital Chaplain at St. Luke's/Roosevelt Medical center, Rabbi Brandes is passionate about education, meaning-making and Jewish spirituality. She regards the opportunity to be in relationship with students, to be present for them as they grow, question and explore, as the highest privilege. She offers herself to the extended Milken community as a rabbi and spiritual counselor and looks forward to contributing to the vision and energy of Milken.
Lori Strauss - Director of Student Support
Milken’s new Director of Student Support, Lori Strauss, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from American University in Washington, D.C., and she received her Master’s in Social Welfare from the University of California, Los Angeles. Upon completion of her undergraduate studies, she worked at the American Association of University Women, which during her tenure, published a seminal report on the middle school experience of girls. This experience sparked the passion for education and gender-related issues that has guided her work ever since.
Most recently, Lori Strauss was the Director of the Center for Women and Men at the University of Southern California, where she designed MenCARE, an innovative violence prevention program funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Previously, she wrote curriculum and worked as a consultant in Los Angeles area schools on sexual harassment and bullying. Particularly interested in Jewish education, Lori has also worked for the Bureau of Jewish Education Los Angeles in the Youth Department as the Director of the LA Ulpan (Summer Israel Program) and Teen CLAL (a Jewish interdenominational leadership group). She believes in the power of individuals and that her job is to help empower the Middle School students to be their best selves.