{"id":30222,"date":"2026-05-20T14:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/?p=30222"},"modified":"2026-05-28T12:50:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T17:50:50","slug":"welcome-to-mpa-ms-kristina-doyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/2026\/05\/20\/welcome-to-mpa-ms-kristina-doyle\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome To MPA, Ms. Kristina Doyle!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"We are excited to share that Kristina Doyle will join Mounds Park Academy as our next director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Kristina brings a strong background in instructional coaching, student support, educational leadership, and culturally responsive practice. Most recently, she has served as a special education instructional coach in St. Louis Park Public Schools, where her work has included professional development, curriculum support, systems analysis, and partnership with faculty and school leaders to better support diverse learners. She holds a master\u2019s degree in Communicative Sciences and Disorders from New York University, an Educational Specialist degree in Educational Leadership from Minnesota State University, Mankato, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Educational Leadership. Her dissertation focus is on how the racial composition of a geographic region moderates rates of Racial Battle Fatigue and burnout among K-12 leaders of color. In addition to her work in schools, Kristina is a bilingual speech-language pathologist and experienced facilitator whose professional and academic work has consistently centered on equity, belonging, communication, and access.<\/em><\/p>\n

Throughout the search process, Kristina generated overwhelmingly positive feedback. She stood out not only for the depth of her experience but also for the thoughtfulness of her leadership philosophy and the warmth and authenticity she brought to every conversation. In sharing her vision for MPA, Kristina emphasized the importance of first listening deeply to the experiences of students, families, faculty, and staff before setting priorities or building initiatives. She spoke about the importance of trust, relationship-building, shared language, and using both community voice and institutional data to guide meaningful work. Her approach is grounded in culturally sustaining practice, restorative approaches to conflict and harm, and the belief that schools are strongest when every student feels genuinely seen, valued, and supported.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kristina will join the administrative team this summer and will partner closely with students, employees, and families across all divisions of the school. Building on the strong foundation of DEIB work already established at MPA, Kristina will help guide and deepen this work in the years ahead. We are thrilled to welcome her to the MPA community and look forward to the perspective, care, and collaborative leadership she will bring to this important role. Please get to know Kristina below!<\/em><\/p>\n

From what school\/organization are you coming?<\/strong>
\nI worked previously for St. Louis Park Public Schools.<\/p>\n

Tell us about your education and past experience.<\/strong>
\nI am a bilingual Afrolatina educator with an educational specialist degree and a soon-to-be doctorate in educational leadership focused on racial equity. I currently serve as a special education instructional coach working across early childhood through age 22, where I bring a racial equity lens to instructional practice, data disaggregation, and adult learning design. My equity work spans facilitation of Courageous Conversations, DEIB design team membership grounded in culturally relevant pedagogy, multicultural family engagement, and doctoral research on racial battle fatigue and burnout in leaders of color. I have worked with students, families, faculty, staff, and school boards\u2014translating equity values into institutional action across every level of a school community. This work has never been separate from who I am. As an Afrolatina woman who has navigated predominantly white institutions my whole life, I bring both the scholarship and the lived experience this role requires.<\/p>\n

What did you find appealing about MPA?
\n<\/strong>MPA appealed to me because the work is already named and the infrastructure is already built\u2014and that is rare. Most schools are still debating whether equity matters. MPA has moved past that conversation. The strategic plan names radical accountability as a priority; affinity groups exist for students, staff, and families; a parent DEI committee; and the board of trustees has an equity and belonging committee. That foundation tells me this community is serious about moving from aspiration to action. What drew me in further was the honesty of the plan\u2014naming not just where MPA is strong but where the gaps are. A school willing to do that is a school I want to work in. I bring a doctoral foundation in racial equity, bilingual capability, instructional coaching experience, and deep community engagement work. I know MPA is the right place to lead this work explicitly.<\/p>\n

What lasting impact do you plan to have on MPA and its students?
\n<\/strong>I want to leave MPA as a school where equity is not a program or a strategic priority\u2014it is simply how the school makes every decision. Where a student of color walks into any classroom and sees themselves reflected in what they are learning. Where a family whose first language is not English feels as central to this community as any other. Where educators of color are recruited, supported, and retained\u2014not consumed by the weight of doing this work alone. The lasting impact I want to have is structural. Not an event series that ends when I leave, but systems that outlast my tenure and keep the school accountable to its own commitments long after I am gone. And for students: I want every child who passes through MPA to know, in their bones, that they belong here.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your big dream?<\/strong>
\nMy big dream is that DEIB work makes itself unnecessary. Not because the work stops mattering, but because we build schools so structurally equitable that belonging is no longer something we have to fight for. Where the curriculum reflects every child without being asked. Where discipline data doesn’t sort by race because the conditions that produce those disparities have been dismantled. Where educators of color are retained not because of a goal on a strategic plan, but because the institution genuinely sustains them. Where families whose first language is not English, whose culture has been historically excluded, whose children have been systematically underserved\u2014walk through the door and feel, immediately, that this place was built for them too. I know that is a long horizon. I have spent my career working at the intersection of research and practice precisely because I believe structural change is possible. My doctoral research on racial battle fatigue taught me that the conditions causing harm to leaders and educators of color are institutional, which means they can be changed institutionally. My family engagement work taught me that trust, once built, compounds. Every system we fix is proof that the next one can be fixed too. That is what gets me up in the morning\u2014not the dream of a world without inequity, but the evidence, accumulated one school at a time, that we are actually moving toward it.<\/p>\n

What are you passionate about?<\/strong>
\nOutside of work, my husband and I are most alive when we are together\u2014whether that means chasing our dog Aero around the house, traveling to visit family across Illinois, Texas, and Canada, or arguing about whose teams are going to have a better season. As a household divided between Chicago and Toronto loyalties, we are passionate fans of the Bears, Blackhawks, Cubs, Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, and the MN Frost. I am deeply committed to staying connected to my ancestral roots in M\u00e9xico by keeping contact with my grandma\u2014maintaining my culture, my language, and my sense of where I come from, even when I am far from it. And, following my doctoral graduation, I am excited to add French to my languages.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a fun fact about you that our community would love to know?<\/strong>
\nI played the flute in the University of Minnesota Marching Band.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are excited to share that Kristina Doyle will join Mounds Park Academy as our next director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Kristina brings a strong background in instructional coaching, student support, educational leadership, and culturally responsive practice. Most recently, she has served as a special education instructional coach in St. Louis Park Public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":30218,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,8,28,10030,24,9,12,27,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-admission","category-all-school","category-current-families","category-deb","category-featured-posts","category-lower-school","category-middle-school","category-my-mpa-experience","category-upper-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30222"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30268,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30222\/revisions\/30268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}