LIGHT Awards Welcomes Pirette McKamey

Intrepid Philanthropy Foundation is delighted to welcome Pirette McKamey to our LIGHT Awards Leadership Team. Pirette serves as our Community Coordinator Consultant, a new role in our organization. In this capacity, she will manage our relationship with active LIGHT Awards teams, help to build engagement with our alumni network, and broaden the program’s impact. Pirette McKamey is a seasoned and passionate educator, who just concluded a 33 year career with San Francisco Unified School District. As a long-time high school educator and administrator, Pirette will be a valued thought partner to both our teacher awardees and to Intrepid.

Pirette’s outstanding contributions in the classroom are featured in the book Mission High: One School, How Experts tried to Fail it, and the Students and Teachers who Made it Triumph. In the chapter profiling her work at Mission High School in San Francisco, here’s one of our favorite quotes:

“At the center of growth as a teacher is self-reflection,” McKamey says. “It means developing habits of mind and specialized skills to look at student work every day and ask: What did I intend to do today? What did my students do? Did it work? If not, how can I change to improve?”

Karen Leshner, President of Intrepid Philanthropy, shared:

“I’m so honored to have Pirette join our LIGHT Awards team in this next chapter of her professional life. Pirette’s background as a high school teacher and administrator gives her both classroom and system-level understanding of our work. Her warm, thoughtful presence will add support and encouragement to the LIGHT educators throughout their project journeys.”