Meet the New Faculty & Staff for 2023-2024

 

Forms C, B, & A art teacher Ms. Jen Lombardo comes to St. Albans from the National Presbyterian School, where she taught Grades 1 and 4, in addition to coaching girls’ lacrosse and soccer. Ms. Lombardo, whose works have been showcased in exhibitions across the country, brings her signature vibrant, colorful approach to artwork to the classroom. A graduate of Rutgers University with an M.A. in elementary education from American University, Ms. Lombardo has a vast background in art education, retail, and management. She will also be coaching at St. Albans.

Returning to St. Albans is Mr. Kyle Money, a former Penn Fellow who taught English here from 2019-21. Mr. Money will be returning to the English Department as an Upper School English teacher, a member of the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Team, and as a coach. In the years between his stints at St. Albans, Mr. Money taught English at Georgetown Day School, where he was awarded a summer funding grant to redesign their seventh and eighth grade English curriculum. He also served as a Middle School dean, coordinating efforts to improve students’ study-skill development and grow student affinity groups, identity-based clubs, and cultural showcases. He received a B.S. from Vanderbilt University and an M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Patrick Moneyang comes to St. Albans as a Lower and Upper School French teacher. Holding his Ph.D. in romance languages from the University of Oregon, Dr. Moneyang brings more than a decade of collegiate and secondary school teaching experience to St. Albans. With a rich background in research focused on popular culture in Africa and its diasporas, he received two graduate research awards from the University of Oregon. He taught French most recently at Pacific Lutheran University and St. Paul’s School for Girls in Baltimore.

Mr. Todd Peyton joined St. Albans during the 2022-23 school year as our application and data administrator. A graduate of Texas Tech University with an M.B.A. from the University of Phoenix, Mr. Peyton has fifteen years of experience in education, including nearly a decade of classroom teaching—for which he earned Teacher of the Year recognition twice. Having most recently served as database manager at the Lexington School, he is well-versed in Blackbaud products which host both our external website and MySTA. He’s already been a valuable asset to the team, and we look forward to introducing him to more of the community this year.

 

The school’s forty-second writer-in-residence, Ms. Julia Pike, comes to St. Albans following a year teaching English at Stanbridge Academy in San Mateo, Calif. A summa cum laude graduate of Amherst College, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, Ms. Pike holds her master of fine arts degree from Boston University, where she focused primarily on fiction-writing. Her work has been recognized and awarded more than a dozen times, and she was most recently named the St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award for Literature. Her work, ranging from short stories, to poetry, to creative nonfiction essays, has been published seven times across the world, including most-recently in the international fiction-focused Joyland Magazine.

 

Manish Rajbhandari joined us in May as lead accountant, responsible for managing accounts payable and processing invoice payments; accounting for all development and endowment activity; reconciling all subledgers, and accounting for construction in progress/fixed assets and bank reconciliations. Manish has more than fourteen years of experience in accounting and payroll in the health care industry and other profit and non-profit organizations. He earned his M.B.A. with a concentration in accounting from Maharishi University of Management in Iowa and a master’s degree in finance from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. For many of us, Manish is not a new face as he formerly worked as a payroll professional at the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation.

A familiar face for many students, Ms. María Roche joins St. Albans as the Upper School administrative assistant, following more than two years of serving as a classroom and exam proctor at the school. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Ms. Roche brings more than two decades of program management and operations experience to St. Albans. She received her B.A. in communications with class honors from the University of Michigan. For a decade, she worked as a technical director and post-production editor for Univision and Galavision in Miami, Fla., where she produced live national news and sports shows and directed live news briefs.

Mr. Jeffrey R. Sunderland ’99 returns to his alma mater to teach Form II math. A lawyer by training, Mr. Sunderland earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia and owned and operated restaurants across the D.C. region before transitioning to education in 2022, receiving his teaching license while teaching math, geometry, probability, and statistics at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Va. A collegiate swimmer at Amherst College, where he received his B.A., and a three-sport athlete at St. Albans, Mr. Sunderland will also assist with swimming and other coaching duties.

Mr. James Washington will teach Form I English, following stints with Partners in Learning LLC, where he administered individualized learning plans for fifth through tenth graders, the Maret School, where he taught humanities for three years, and St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H, where he was a resident teaching fellow in the humanities, served as an academic advisor, and designed and taught a new course in Black Music, Religion, and American Society. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, Mr. Washington received his B.A. from Haverford College. Mr. Washington brings a deep background in community organizing, activism, and racial justice advocacy both in and out of the classroom, with a focus on issues such as mass incarceration and voter registration. He will also be coaching in the Lower School.

Ms. Jan Wager joins St. Albans as the executive assistant to the headmaster. She comes to the school with more than fifteen years of experience as a C-Suite level executive assistant, most recently with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center in D.C. Holding a J.D. from Northern Kentucky University and a B.A. in journalism from the University of Kentucky, Ms. Wager most recently was the special assistant to the executive vice president and chief counsel at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center. She is a licensed notary public in both the District of Columbia and Virginia.

Ms. Jeanette Whitman-Lee began her professional career as an educator, serving for eleven years as an elementary and middle school classroom teacher in the parochial school system in Connecticut. She has spent the last twenty-two years in human resources in nonprofit and professional associations. She received her B.A. in English from Eastern Connecticut State University and her M.B.A. from Quantic School of Business and Technology in D.C. She has served on numerous boards and is currently serving as head of government affairs for the Anne Arundel County Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management.