Bart Griffith is President of Shady Side Academy, a PK-12 independent day and boarding school in Pittsburgh founded in 1883. Bart is only the second alumnus in Shady Side’s history to lead the school.
Prior to Shady Side, Griffith was the assistant head of Gilman School, an independent K-12 day school for boys in Baltimore, Md., from 2015 to 2019. There, he oversaw academic affairs and led the Gilman’s participation in a number of innovative programs, including Global Online Academy (GOA) and the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC). Additionally, he established Gilman’s 2019 Strategic Plan as part of a six-member Board Strategic Planning Committee and chaired its 2018 Association of Independent Maryland and DC Schools (AIMS) self-study and accreditation.
From 2017-2019, Griffith also served as a dean and faculty member of the Penn GSE Independent School Teaching Residency, providing programmatic leadership for a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and 10 of the country’s leading independent schools. The program supports early-career educators through theory and practice, enabling them to receive a master’s degree in education from Penn, complete a two-year fellowship at a partner school, and develop as future program leaders in independent schools.
Prior to Gilman, Griffith held a variety of positions over 15 years at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta. And from 2013 to 2015, he designed and directed Atlanta 2.0: The Urban Design Fellowship, a three-week summer collaborative between Westminster and the Lovett School that challenged students to consider the impact of land use, public space and urban design on Atlanta’s community and economy. The program won a Stephen P. Robinson Collaboration Grant from the Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS) in 2015.
Griffith was named a STAR Teacher by the Professional Association for Georgia Educators in 2000, received a Merrill Award for Teaching Excellence from the Westminster Schools in 2002, and recognized by the Stanford University Teacher Tribute Initiative for “Excellence in Teaching” in 2011. The students at Westminster dedicated the school’s yearbook to him in 2004.
He is a member of the advisory board of The Glasgow Group, which provides professional development for independent school educators in the areas of leadership, cultural competency and strategic initiatives. He also serves on the board of The Beckwith Institute, an organization dedicated to improving clinical outcomes by empowering clinicians, researchers, and patients to explore innovations that introduce new ways of improving health care.
Griffith is a native of the Pittsburgh area, having grown up in both Squirrel Hill and Fox Chapel.
