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 Heather Miller- Middle School Rabbi
Rabbi Heather Ellen Miller was born and raised in Los Angeles, and first gained a deep appreciation and respect for lifelong learning and the full array of Jewish diversity here, as a student, at Milken Community High School of Stephen Wise Temple. She attended Wellesley College and earned her B.A. in two areas: Peace and Justice Studies with a focus in Jewish History, and Africana Studies. Afterwards, she worked at Harvard Business School, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and The Liberty Hill Foundation before attending rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). During her years at HUC-JIR, Rabbi Miller augmented her studies by providing relief work after Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi, serving as Chaplain at UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, and serving as Student Rabbi for the Hebrew Association of the Deaf in New York City and Temple Sinai of Bergen County in Tenafly, NJ. After ordination, Rabbi Miller served as a congregational rabbi at Temple Beth El of South Orange County and enjoyed teaching informally as well as in the classroom. She enthusiastically has become active in building the Milken sense of community as Middle School Rabbi, and bringing the lessons and ideas she learned abroad into the Milken classroom as a member of the Jewish Studies faculty.
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.