Head of School Search

Dear Wornick Community,

As we launch the search for Wornick Jewish Day School's next Head of School, the Heidrick & Struggles search firm invites you to share your perspectives through a brief community survey. 

The survey is anonymous and will take approximately 5-10 minutes to complete.

Click here to take the survey

Wornick's strength comes from the voices, experiences, and commitment of its community. Your input will help ensure that community perspectives inform the search to identify the next Head of School.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to participate. We value your insights and partnership as we look toward Wornick's future.

Warmly,
Julia Klebanov and Jesykah Forkash Sarkissian 
Search Committee Co-Chairs

Dear Wornick Community,

We are excited to launch the search for Wornick’s next permanent Head of School. We are writing to share the formation of our Head of School Search Committee.

We are very happy to introduce Julia Klebanov and Jesykah Forkash Sarkissian as Co-Chairs of our Head of School Search Committee. Julia is our presumptive incoming Board Vice-President, a current parent, and a Development Committee member. Jesykah is a trustee, leads the Board’s Nominating Committee, is a current parent, and former Co-President of the Parent Teacher Organization. Both have dedicated time and energy to sustaining Wornick Jewish Day School through their service. We are grateful they said yes.

Joining them on the committee is a respected group of lay leaders and professionals. This committee is made up of current and former Wornick parents, educators, trustees, donors, and respected leaders from across the Bay Area Jewish community. They represent a broad range of community experience as well as commitment to Wornick over its past 40 years. Each shares a belief in the value of Wornick as a thriving Jewish day school, and in the importance of its leadership.

Thank you to each of you for saying yes to this important moment in our school’s exciting trajectory!

• Julia Klebanov (Presumptive incoming Board Vice-President, current parent) and
  Jesykah Forkash Sarkissian (Trustee, current parent), Co-Chairs
• Mark Abelson (Founding trustee, alumni parent)
• Zack Bodner (President & CEO of the Oshman Family JCC, nationally recognized Jewish community leader)
• Hélène Chokron Garneau (Presumptive incoming Board President, current parent)
• Julia Galperin (Trustee, current and alumni parent)
• Yana Kalika (President & CEO of The Koum Family Foundation, alumni parent)
• Fran Lent (Former trustee, alumni parent)
• Elinor Leib-Nahum (Director, Hebrew Studies at Wornick)
• Tamar Miller (Former trustee, alumni parent)
• Cindy Rogoway (Executive Director, Hebrew Free Loan Association of San Francisco, alumni parent)
• Ofer Yizhar-Barnea (Trustee, current and alumni parent)

Julia and Jesykah will lead the committee's work and be your primary points of contact throughout this process. They and the committee will work closely with our executive search firm, Heidrick & Struggles, to lead a thoughtful and inclusive search. There will be many opportunities for input and feedback, and we hope you will share your thoughts as we work to identify and select our next Head of School. 

The first opportunity to share your input is coming soon. On Friday, June 12th at 9 am, our consultant Meghan Ashbrock from the Heidrick & Struggles search firm will be on campus to meet with Wornick parents. We hope you will join in this initial conversation. Meghan will be joined by J.J. Cutler and Elliana Sinykin on campus to meet with the Board and professionals June 11th. You can reach the committee via email at headsearch@wornickjds.org, and our consultants at WornickHOS@heidrick.com.

Thank you for your confidence in our Board and Search Committee as we undertake this important task. 

L’shalom,

Mina Bressler, Board President
Hélène Chokron Garneau, Board Vice-President

Dear Wornick Community,

We are honored to serve as Co-Chairs of the Head of School Search Committee. As parents of current students, we've had the joy of watching our children thrive at Wornick, and of experiencing the warmth of the Wornick community and culture ourselves. Our families have benefited so much from Wornick and we feel fortunate to be able to give back through service as our school embarks on the search for its next Head of School. We recognize the significant responsibility of being Search Committee Co-Chairs, and we step into this role with a strong commitment to integrity and to our community.

As Mina shared, we are part of a larger Search Committee. While the members of the Search Committee represent a broad cross-section of the Wornick and wider Jewish community, each shares a deep commitment to building a strong future for Wornick. We are very grateful for their dedication and partnership. 

As we launch this search process, here is what you can expect from the Committee:

• Commitment to Wornick’s Mission: Throughout the search, our Committee will anchor its process, approach, and actions in Wornick’s mission and values. We are committed to acting with integrity to ensure every step reflects Wornick’s values and prepares the school for a strong future.
• Community Engagement: The Wornick community of families, professionals, lay leaders, and donors is one of the school’s greatest strengths, and it’s important to us that each has a voice in this search. There will be several opportunities for the community to engage in this process and we look forward to hearing your input and feedback.
• Thoughtful Communication: We are committed to keeping the community informed and will share regular updates throughout the search. We will share a dedicated webpage for our search in the coming weeks and we encourage you to reach out to us at headsearch@wornickjds.org.

Soon, when we walk through the doors of our new building, we will be reminded of the strength of our community and the future that we’re building for our children and the generations of Jewish students to come. This search is the beginning of that future.

We are excited to move forward with the search as a community and greatly appreciate your partnership and support in this process. 

L’shalom,

Julia Klebanov 
Jesykah Forkash Sarkissian 

Dear Wornick Community,

We’re excited to share some important news about our school leadership for the 2026-2027 academic year. 

The Board of Trustees has been focused on identifying an interim Head of School to continue Wornick’s strong momentum while we begin the search for our next permanent Head of School. 

We are thrilled to announce that Dean Goldfein will serve as Wornick’s Interim Head of School beginning July 15, 2026. 

Dean is an accomplished and recognized Jewish day school leader in the Bay Area. He served as the founding Head of School of Contra Costa Jewish Day School before transitioning to an emeritus advisory role, supporting their own leadership transition. Over his 25 years at CCJDS, he built strong relationships with parents, professionals, faculty, and donors alike. Dean brings a deep understanding of what it takes to lead a Jewish day school successfully. He is passionate about inspiring students, building community, and blending academic excellence with strong Jewish learning and love for Israel. 

Dean also brings a unique understanding of the Bay Area Jewish day school landscape. Though he may be new to Wornick, he is very familiar with our school. He and Adam Eilath have collaborated closely through the NorCal Jewish Day School Collaborative, a network of Northern California Jewish day schools that has spent the past six years partnering in innovative ways. In addition, Dean brings expertise in school leadership as a board member of the California Association of Independent Schools and has chaired multiple accreditation teams for independent schools throughout the state. He shares our enthusiasm for Wornick’s continued success. 

We are confident that Dean’s leadership will provide continuity and thoughtful guidance during this transition period, helping us prepare for our next chapter. At the same time, the Board is actively planning for its search for Wornick’s next permanent Head of School, and we look forward to engaging our community in that process. 

While Dean’s official first day on campus will be July 15, he will begin the important work of transition immediately. He plans to spend the coming weeks getting oriented to Wornick, meeting with Adam and school professionals, and getting to know our school and community meaningfully. 

Adam will continue to be Wornick’s Head of School until July 14. We are grateful to Adam for his many contributions to Wornick and for his commitment to ensuring this smooth transition.

We know you are looking forward to meeting Dean. He will join us for the Moving Forward Ceremony on the last day of school, June 17th, and will be ready to greet us all on the first day back in August. In addition, he will be around campus throughout June, and the Board plans to offer additional opportunities to get to know him when school begins. We hope you will join us in welcoming Dean to Wornick! 

We are excited for the year ahead and remain committed to the continued strength and growth of our school. If you have any questions, please reach out to us at execboard@wornickjds.org.

L’shalom, 

Mina Bressler, Board President
Hélène Chokron Garneau, Board Vice President

I am so happy that Dean Goldfein will be serving as Wornick’s Interim Head of School next year. I have known Dean for many years, both as a colleague in the Bay Area Jewish day school community and as the Head of School of Contra Costa Jewish Day School, where my own children have attended for the past five years. 

I have seen his leadership not only from across the professional table, but as a parent. Dean is humble, personable, steady, and deeply student-centered. He puts children first, and he understands how much a school means to the families who entrust their children to it. 

Dean also understands what makes Wornick so special. He knows that our school is not only an academic institution, but a treasured Jewish community. He cares deeply about building a strong school community, Hebrew education, academic excellence, strong athletics, and developing students as thoughtful leaders. 

I am grateful that Wornick will be in such thoughtful and capable hands during this transition, and I look forward to working closely with Dean to ensure a smooth and strong handoff for the year ahead. 

With gratitude, 

Adam

 

To the Wornick Jewish Day School Community,

I am excited and honored to serve as interim Head of School of Wornick Jewish Day School. I know Wornick through my work at the Contra Costa Jewish Day School (CCJDS). Together we’ve traveled, done joint programming, and I’ve enjoyed strong collegial connections. I have always felt a shared commitment to building Jewish day schools of integrity that produce scholars and mensches who connect deeply to Israel. 

After a quarter century as Head of School at CCJDS,  I was considering ways to help schools in periods of transition. Joining Wornick for the year ahead provides a great opportunity to do just that. The school’s academic, community, and financial foundations are strong. I am looking forward to working with the Senior Leadership Team, Professionals, Board of Trustees, and parents to serve the students and families fulfilling Wornick’s clear and important mission: to develop socially and academically prepared students, fostering them to be engaged leaders committed to a life steeped in Jewish ethics and values.

I am eager to get to know the school community through visits while school is still in session and then officially in July to help get the school ready for a great 2026-27 school year. I was heartened to see how school leadership worked quickly to set in place a transition year plan and I am excited to work with the Board and Senior Leadership Team to maintain and grow the school and to help secure an outstanding Head of School to start in the summer of 2027. 

Lastly, a brief introduction to me. My childhood was in San Francisco, most of my adult life has been in the East Bay where I met Tamira Elul, my wife, and we raised our three children. Tamira is a Biophysics professor who works at Touro University in Vallejo teaching medical students and doing research. I am a 49ers, Warriors, and Giants fan and like hiking, films, friends, travel, and spending a lot of time with Wonderdog Dottie, our Aussie Mini Shepherd. I look forward to meeting and getting to know you soon and through the year ahead.

Sincerely,

Dean Goldfein

Dear Wornick Community,

I’m writing to share that I’ve made the difficult decision to leave Wornick at the end of this school year. Over the past few months, it has become increasingly clear to me that I need to move closer to my family. That clarity, however, has come with real consternation and weight, and this has not been an easy decision to arrive at.

Over the past several years, both events in the world and experiences within my own family have sharpened my awareness of how precious time is. What may once have felt like a meaningful desire to be closer to family has, in this moment, taken on a greater sense of urgency. After seven years at Wornick and sixteen years in the Bay Area, I feel a strong pull to be closer to my parents, my sister, and her family, who will be relocating to South Florida in the coming months. When I first arrived at Wornick, my family was in a very different stage of life. Over these years, as our family has grown and changed, the importance of being closer to my parents and sister has moved from something I hoped for to something I now feel is necessary. As Kohelet teaches, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven” (לַכֹּל זְמָן, וְעֵת לְכָל חֵפֶץ תַּחַת הַשָּׁמָיִם). Choosing to remain far from my family would mean continuing to miss ordinary, meaningful moments, Shabbat dinners, time with my parents as they grow older, and the chance for my children to be more deeply rooted in their extended family. I don’t want to keep postponing that.

At the same time, it feels like so much of our work here is still unfolding. With the completion of the new facility, a growing endowment, and an extraordinary team of educators, trustees, parents, and students, I would have been grateful to continue building together for many more years. There is more I had hoped to see through.

Early on in my life, I made a decision that I wanted to work in Jewish day schools. Some of my happiest and most formative experiences as a child took place in those classrooms, and since my early twenties I have had the privilege of building my professional life in schools like this one. It will feel very strange, and honestly very sad, to begin next fall not walking into a school each day, and especially not into Wornick.

I am incredibly proud of what we have built together. Over the past seven years, Wornick has grown stronger in every way. Our financial foundation is solid, our faculty is more experienced and stable than ever, and our new facility reflects a shared vision and a community that believes deeply in its school. Next year, we will welcome more students than we have this year, marking our seventh consecutive year of enrollment growth, a rare and meaningful achievement in the world of Jewish day schools. Wornick is strong, it is thriving, and it is well positioned to attract outstanding leadership for its next chapter.

As I move on, I will carry the daily life of this school with me. Sitting on the floor of the Ulam Gadol with students during Tefillah, stopping by classrooms and hearing the pride in a child’s voice as they share what they wrote, built, or discovered, and watching how comfortable our students are with their teachers, those moments define this place. This is more than a school or a community, it is a place where being human feels natural, supported, and deeply valued.

I also carry a deep admiration for the parents in this community. So often, my role has placed me in the most difficult and consequential conversations. And yet, time and again, I have left those moments with a profound respect for how deeply our parents care, how fiercely they advocate for their children, and how seriously they take the responsibility of raising them. This is a community of remarkable families, and it has been a privilege to walk alongside you.

As we look ahead, I have complete confidence in our Board of Trustees and Senior Leadership Team. They care deeply about this school, they are thoughtful and committed, and they will approach this transition with the seriousness it deserves. I encourage our community to place its trust in them, to trust the process, and to give them the time and space to make the right decisions for Wornick’s future.

I want to leave the school with one hope. That we continue to place students at the center of our work in a real and consistent way. They are the reason we are here, and they carry our future. If we do this well, they will surpass us, see more clearly than we do, and build something even stronger than what we have begun.

Finally, I want to say thank you. Thank you for trusting me with your children, your school, and your partnership. I stepped into this role at the age of 30 with a great deal of confidence, but I was quickly humbled by the enormity of the responsibility. I have learned a tremendous amount over these years, shaped in no small part by this community. What I experienced, again and again, was a culture of honesty, care, and deep investment in one another. I have witnessed moments of real joy and moments of real loss, and it is the fullness of those experiences, lived together, that makes this community so meaningful.

The past seven years have been filled with both joy and challenge, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to serve this community. For the next chapter, I plan to step away from the role of Head of School and focus my work on the formation of educators, thinking seriously about how we recruit, develop, and support outstanding teachers for the years ahead.

Thank you for the trust you have placed in me, and for the partnership we have built together.

L’shalom,

Adam

Dear Wornick Community,  

When the Board began its search that brought Adam Eilath to Wornick, we could not have imagined all that our community would experience together in the years that followed. Since joining Wornick in 2019, Adam has led our school through a changing world with thoughtfulness, resilience, and a deep commitment to our mission as a Jewish day school.

Over the last seven years, our community has navigated an unprecedented pandemic, the events and aftermath of October 7th, and an alarming rise in antisemitism. Remarkably, in the face of these challenges, Wornick has become even stronger. We leaned into joyful and proud Jewish practice, strengthened our connections to one another, gathered to celebrate, and to grieve. All the while, we have continued to build an enduring school for this generation and for the many future generations to come.

Today, Wornick is a strong and thriving Jewish institution with an exciting future ahead. Under Adam's leadership, our school has experienced seven years of sustained enrollment growth, a culture of excellence in our professional staff and academic programs, and a sense of community and belonging among our families. We have also launched a successful comprehensive fundraising  campaign, Reconstructing Our Future, to support construction of our new building as well as significant growth of our Fund for the Future, which will serve as an endowment to support our mission for years to come. When our community enters our inspiring new building in August, we will be part of creating Wornick's future together.

While we are sad to see Adam go, we are so grateful for his leadership and vision. Adam will partner with the Board in the coming months as we navigate the transition to the next chapter for our school, and will continue to lead Wornick through the remainder of this academic year. We look forward to recognizing his leadership and contributions in the months ahead.

Our Board of Trustees is energized and committed to stewarding the school through this transition and beyond, and we are already planning for next steps. In the coming weeks, we will appoint a seasoned Interim Head of School to ensure steady leadership and operational continuity. At the same time, we are preparing to launch a national search for Wornick's next permanent Head of School, with the goal of hiring an excellent leader to carry on Wornick's mission to begin in the summer of 2027. We will provide regular updates throughout the coming year and share ways for you to be involved during the process. Wornick's incredible professional team remains dedicated to our school's mission, and we are so grateful for the work they do every day to educate and care for our students.

Our priority is a thoughtful and inclusive process that supports strong leadership for Wornick both for the short-term transition and for the long-term future of our school. We are embarking on this transition from a place of strength, opportunity and identity, and these principles will guide us throughout the next year.

We invite parents to join us for an informal coffee with the Board of Trustees on Thursday, April 16 from 7:45-8:30 am, in the area near the portables, followed by an all-school Tefillah on Shalom Field, or Friday, April 17 from 2-2:45 pm before pickup near the portables.

Because of the partnership among Adam, the Board of Trustees, the Senior Leadership Team, our dedicated professionals, families, and generous donors, Wornick continues to thrive. We are grateful for the foundation Adam has helped build and look forward to working together as a community as we create our next chapter together.

If you have any questions, please reach out to us at execboard@wornickjds.org.

L'shalom,

Mina Bressler
President, Wornick Board of Trustees