Bill McCarthy is the Head of Preschool and Lower School at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York. He is an experienced educator and leader who has spent over twenty years working in independent and public schools and organizations. His previous role at Packer was Director of Learning Support for Pre-K-12th Grade in which he oversaw academic and social-emotional support for all students at the school. In addition to his experience as an educational leader, Bill has worked as an instructional coach, speech-language pathologist, learning specialist, social worker, and professional developer. He holds a Master’s degree from New York University in Social Work and an additional Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology from Emerson College. Bill also has completed post-graduate leadership training and certificate programs from Harvard Graduate School of Education and is a graduate of NAIS’s Fellowship for Aspiring School Heads program.

Bill is a passionate advocate for creating intentional and meaningful opportunities for social-emotional learning along with equity, inclusion, and social justice within school communities. His work is centered on ensuring that these essential domains are interconnected within a student’s experience at school in order to foster healthy identity development, positive social relationships, and a growth mindset to reach one’s full potential.

IFSEL’s deep commitment and work in the area of social-emotional learning are what drew Bill to take part in IFSEL’s summer institute where he gained a great appreciation for how the IFSEL model addresses social-emotional learning in a dynamic and interconnected way. After establishing an ongoing partnership with IFSEL for his school, Bill quickly recognized the impact of having a shared framework for social-emotional learning among school professionals and how this has resulted in his students having a more established sense of self and a greater understanding of others.