Today, we are honored to profile Maureen Israel, Executive Director, Bullis Charter School in Los Altos, California.
Maureen Israel grew up in Michigan and experienced what she describes as a “very sheltered” Midwestern upbringing that also planted the seeds for what would become a lifelong conviction: Where a child goes to school matters, and parents should have a major say in that decision.
Maureen is the Executive Director of Bullis Charter School, which serves TK-8 students across its two campuses in Los Altos, California. During her childhood, her parents deliberately decided to send her to school across town rather than the one across the street. She didn’t fully understand it at the time.
“Looking back, I recognize why they made that decision,” she said. “They wanted what was best for their kids, so even growing up, I was very aware that school choice was a thing.”
A Midwest Kid Who Needed a Shock and Awe Move
Maureen attended the University of Notre Dame, earning a bachelor’s degree in English and psychology. Though she was initially interested in pursuing clinical psychology, Maureen wasn’t quite ready for grad school and was trying to decide what to do next.
The through line of her undergraduate years, Maureen said, had been working with kids and in underserved communities. She began looking for jobs in education across the country and was offered a teaching fellow position in Brooklyn. At the same time, Maureen also traveled to Texas to interview with KIPP and Yes Prep, which operated as a single charter.
Although Maureen’s visit to Texas didn’t immediately result in a job offer, the interview process with the charter school left an indelible impression.
“I was so compelled by the work they were doing, I knew that’s where I wanted to be,” said Maureen.
When she got the offer, she didn’t hesitate. The conviction that had been forming her whole life now had a home.
The School on the Other Side of the Tracks
Maureen joined YES Prep as a founding member of their third school, which was also the first campus situated in a predominantly Black community. The hours were punishing and the work relentless, but she loved it.
“I was leaving for work at 5 in the morning and working until midnight,” she says. “It was a grind, but I loved every second of it. It was just such a great community.”
After teaching 7th grade for several years, Maureen pursued a Master’s in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Maureen had been doing about a year of what she calls “clock-watching work” for the government/nonprofit sector when she got a call from a former colleague in Texas that a job was waiting for her and she needed to come back.
From 2010 to 2020, Maureen was a high school principal and later director within YES Prep as her focus broadened beyond academics to community integration.
That school occupied a forgotten stretch of the city, cut off from easy access to public transit and health care. The community had been overlooked, and Maureen’s response was to make the school impossible to overlook.
Maureen and her team brought a healthcare clinic into the building and launched food bank operations.
“We could work our butts off in the classrooms with kids, but we needed to figure out how we could be part of a community,” said Maureen.
Two decades into her career, one thing has stayed constant is the relationships that continue to inspire her. Her earliest students are now in their 30s. Some are teachers now. Some have kids.
“I even got to hire one of my former students,” she said. “That just makes my heart warm.”
That sense of connection remains central to her motivation.
“I’m really proud of that core of community and connection,” she said. “Really seeing kids through, and families through, and knowing them deeply.”
“Choice Matters. Kids Matter.”
When COVID brought Maureen’s time at YES Prep to a close, a very different opportunity found her: relocating to Silicon Valley to lead Bullis Charter School.
Her first instinct was to say no.
“I’m not the right person for that role,” she told the people who pitched it to her. “I just haven’t worked in these spaces.”
What changed her mind was the thing that has always done so. The population and zip codes may have been different, but Maureen’s conviction remained the same.
“Choice matters,” she said. “I think that’s at the core of the work I do. Kids matter.”
She joined Bullis as superintendent at the height of disruption. She and three new principals stepped into leadership roles without ever meeting the staff in person.
“We led with logistics for a year and a half,” she said. “We didn’t get to lead with relationships.”
Rebuilding that human connection has become central to her leadership.
A Global Community Inside One School
At Bullis, Maureen’s core question takes on a new and powerful dimension.
Bullis is an international community, with over 27 home languages spoken among families. Many students are the first in their families to attend school in the US, often bringing diverse expectations based on their home countries.
“We have such a really interesting, diverse subset of different cultural representations of families,” Maureen said.
That diversity shows up in the wide range of backgrounds, stories, and lived experiences that students and parents bring with them each day. For Maureen and her team, the work is not just about recognizing diversity but actively elevating it.
“How do we elevate and tell those stories and celebrate and honor all those unique angles, perspectives, traditions, cultures that our students bring that make us stronger as a community?” Maureen asked.
That work, according to Maureen, requires intentionally creating space for new voices and experiences to be heard and ensures every student and family feels seen. In addition to its student body, Bullis provides an integrated foreign language program as part of its whole-child education approach, emphasizing both academic growth and global awareness.
“If we’re really thinking about developing global citizens, what a cool like microcosm we have here,” said Maureen. “We have such a unique opportunity to really be curious and learn more about each other.”
What It Looks Like to Choose Everyone
Taking over an established institution after a career spent building and growing schools from the ground up required a different kind of patience.
Maureen’s instinct to move fast had to be tempered, and her new mantra became, “Get it right, not get it quick.”
Regardless of where she’s been throughout her career, Maureen has carried the same question through every classroom and every community: Are we actually choosing these kids back?
At Bullis, that means serving families who are navigating higher education and the college-going process for the first time. It also means building relationships with care, both within the community and with the staff at Bullis.
“How do we show up in ways that are intentional and authentic for teammates and families?” she said.
The communities she has served have looked nothing alike. Food deserts and well-resourced suburbs. Historically overlooked neighborhoods and one of the most affluent zip codes in California. But the belief underneath the work has never shifted: that every child deserves a school that has genuinely chosen them and keeps choosing them every day.
Choice matters. Kids matter.
For Maureen, that’s never been a tagline. It’s always been the whole point.