Mike Gwaltney

Guiding Schools Through Academic Renewal and Cultural Transformation

Mike Gwaltney brings a powerful combination of hands-on school leadership experience and systemic strategy to his work with private-independent schools. Grounded in the conviction that sustainable transformation requires both strategic clarity and deep attention to culture, Mike helps schools build mission-aligned academic models, foster reflective teacher growth, and navigate critical inflection points.

Areas of Focus

• Academic leadership and departmental leadership
• Strategic academic planning and curriculum design
• Faculty culture, student culture, and instructional leadership
• Faculty growth and evaluation frameworks
• Online and blended learning program design
• Strategic planning and long-term financial sustainability

Proven Track Record in Academic Innovation

Mike has spent more than 36 years in education and 28 years in academic leadership, leading at every level of an independent school’s academic structure. From department chair and division head to principal, associate head, and school head, he has guided schools through major instructional and cultural shifts. This includes helping multiple schools move beyond Advanced Placement programs toward student-centered, inquiry-driven academic models.

Beyond academics, Mike's experience as a school head provides a practitioner's grounding in organizational leadership, board engagement, and the financial sustainability questions that define long-term school health. Most recently, he completed a two year-stint  as Head of School at Bellevue Children's Academy, where he provided stability, predictability, and support for faculty members during a period of renewal and transition.

Mike returned to Independent School Management full-time in August 2026 as a Senior Consultant. He first joined ISM in 2013 as Summer Institute faculty and served five years as a full-time consultant, continuously staying active as an adjunct consultant.

He leads ISM’s Summer Institute workshop "Chairing Your Department," facilitates customized leadership workshops, and is the co-developer and co-author of ISM’s Transformative Teacher Growth & Evaluation Framework.

For more than two decades, Mike has shaped project-based and student-centered learning across private-independent schools, with his work featured in Edutopia, The New York Times, KQED MindShift, and PRI's The World. A sought-after speaker nationally and internationally, Mike has presented extensively on project-based learning, instructional leadership, and faculty evaluation.

Mike has been named Most Inspirational Teacher six times by the Mayor of Los Angeles.