School Leadership

Head of School Alixe Callen

Alixe Callen became St. George’s 12th Head of School on July 1, 2017. A highly regarded educator with a track record of advancing secondary school education, Ms. Callen holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Brown University, as well as a master’s degree and doctorate from Harvard.

First and foremost, Ms. Callen is an ardent and enthusiastic champion of students and teachers. In collaboration with our Curriculum Review Committee, she oversaw a forward-thinking redesign of the St. George’s curriculum. Academic departments have been reorganized into just five — Connected Learning, Humanities, Language and Culture Studies, STEM, and Visual & Performing Arts — to further encourage interdisciplinary learning and thinking, as well as to better reflect the skills needed for our students to succeed in college and beyond. Wishing to cull from the vast knowledge of our most veteran faculty members, Ms. Callen has formed the Senior Teaching Cadre, which meets monthly to discuss the craft of teaching. In 2018, Ms. Callen separated our teaching and learning centers into two distinct entities — The Merck Center for Teaching and the Horton Center for Learning — in order to better serve our teachers and students.

Also among Ms. Callen’s signature initiatives has been an emphasis on community building. With student leaders, she has devised programs and initiatives that encourage equity and inclusion, mutual respect and support, and collaborative learning among St. George’s community members.
Ms. Callen has also leaned wholeheartedly into a dynamic plan to ensure the beauty and integrity of the St. George’s campus.

In her first year, with trustee support, she helped lead fundraising efforts to construct two new turf athletic fields, Later, she helped to secure donor support for the full renovation and restoration of Memorial Schoolhouse, which reopened in the fall of 2020. With the completion of a Campus Master Plan in 2020, the school is now undertaking a number of building projects, including a new Wellness Center, which is set to open in Fall 2022.

Ms. Callen continues to guide St. George’s with the school’s mission always in mind. As such, one of her highest priorities is to ensure that students from all backgrounds be given opportunities to find and to develop their own particular talents and to find ways to serve others, with the hope that as graduates they will continue to be forces for kindness and positive change in the world at large.

Prior to her appointment here at St. George’s, Ms. Callen served as the upper school director at Lakeside School in Seattle, as the principal at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in Acton, Massachusetts, and as an assistant principal at Needham High School in Needham, Massachusetts.

She is an avid reader (preferring books over e-readers), and is almost always in the middle of one fiction and one nonfiction book. She and her husband Ace have two sons — Zander, a recent graduate of Middlebury College, and Miles, a member of the St. George’s Class of 2021 who now attends the University of Rhode Island.

Associate Heads of School

Elizabeth Bickford

Associate Head of School for Faculty and School Affairs, English Teacher

Elizabeth “Beezie” Bickford currently serves as the Associate Head for Faculty and School Affairs. In addition, she teaches one section of English. Bickford came to St. George’s in the fall of 1990, a decade plus after graduating from Middlesex School. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Brown University and her M.A.T. in English Education from Tufts University. She loves to read, sail, garden, cook, and generally enjoy the great outdoors.

Mervan Osborne

Associate Head of School for Student Life

Mervan Osborne, a member of the St. George’s class of 1986, began his tenure as Associate Head for Student Life in 2018. He is the current Helen Porter Dyke Chair for the Support of Students. As a founding faculty member and Head of School at Boston’s Beacon Academy, Osborne helped provide hundreds of Boston-area students with a challenging yearlong academic program in preparation for application to New England independent high schools. For 11 years prior to Beacon, Osborne taught English and drama courses, led diversity initiatives, and coached football, basketball, and baseball at Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also served as a resident tutor for “A Better Chance” in Massachusetts and was a member of “Teach for America’s” founding corps in Compton, California. From 2011-2015, he served on the Cambridge School Committee. He holds a master of fine arts degree in film production from Boston University, completed graduate coursework in education at Lesley University, and holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Trinity College.