Meet Our Principal

Pablo Sierra

As a latch-key kid and a product of the Chicago Public School system it was perhaps inevitable that Pablo Sierra’s professional career would someday turn full circle in the service of under-served urban students. After leaving law school to open a small chain of frozen yogurt cafes in the late 1980s, the experience of dealing with more than 60 adolescents while running his stores awakened a new passion in Pablo – teaching.

Eight years into his teaching tenure in an embattled school in the city’s Little Village neighborhood, Pablo’s entrepreneurial appetite again stirred as he contemplated his next move. The idea was to combine world class management training and his passion for teaching and use it run a highly effective public school in Chicago. However, even with a Kellogg MBA in hand, it turned out to be bureaucratically impossible to transfer those skills into running a school.

The peculiarities of an archaic credentialing system required a type 75 certificate in order to become a principal. As fortune would have it, his principal training with New Leaders led him to an internship at Noble Street College Prep in 2003. During his first 15 minutes at Noble, Pablo came to understand that this was to be the game-changer in urban education.

Finally, Pablo’s entrepreneurial zeal and teacher/principal training became synergized as he witnessed a nascent but highly effective charter disruptor take hold. During his internship at Noble, he helped author the Noble Network expansion plan. Since then, he has founded one of the first Noble expansions – Pritzker College Prep - and has helped open a number of Noble inspired high schools in Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis, and soon, New York.