Mary Kate Blaine has been selected as principal of Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School in Washington. She will assume her duties at the 212-year-old Catholic girls’ high school July 1. Blaine will be responsible for day-to-day school operations.
“We are very fortunate to have Ms. Blaine as our new principal,” said Daniel M. Kerns Jr., head of school. “I look forward to working with her as my role transitions to one more fully engaged with long-range strategic needs and planning.”
Blaine currently is chief of staff for the New York Archdiocese superintendent of schools. Before accepting her current job with the Archdiocese of New York, she was a history teacher, department chair and director of curriculum development at Notre Dame School, an all-girls Catholic high school in Manhattan where she guided faculty through a curriculum map redesign.
A summa cum laude graduate of Fordham University in New York, Blaine discovered her desire to teach by volunteering at a Catholic school in the Bronx, and after graduating, served as a community outreach coordinator, recruiting and supervising Fordham undergraduates enrolled in a new service learning initiative.
As a James Madison Memorial Foundation fellow, she earned a master’s degree in history and education from Columbia University Teachers College in New York, and a master’s in education in private school leadership through its prestigious Klingenstein Leadership Academy.
As part of a military family, Blaine grew up in several areas of the country, but at each duty station her parents sought out Catholic schools for their children. Eventually her family settled in Northern Virginia, where her siblings attended Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria. It was there that Blaine got her first taste of the Salesian spirituality that Visitation shares with the Oblates. In her spare time, Blaine enjoys distance and marathon running.
