Karen Lassey

“I try to empower students who have a unique way of looking at a problem to speak up and help one another.”
Whether it’s coordinating Exeter’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic or mapping out a math solution, Assistant Principal Karen Lassey P’14, P’16 is a problem-solver. “I love systems and operations,” she says. They are skills she learned as an engineer in the U. S. Army more than 25 years ago and influence how she tackles challenges today.
For the better part of the past year, under the leadership of Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08, Lassey has managed Exeter’s response to the pandemic, collaborating with colleagues from across campus. “We had to rethink almost every aspect of the student experience (and our support operations) through the lens of health and safety,” she says. “We had to think about what’s core to the Exeter experience. The biggest pieces to re-imagine were dorm living and dining but even creating spaces for day students, we had to work through how to maintain community when there are students both on and off-campus.”
The school’s greatest success over the past year, Lassey believes, has been responding quickly to meet the pandemic’s ever-changing conditions. “We were responsive to input from students and adults on campus and pivoted when necessary, reshaping our plans almost continuously,” she says. “We are a school that plans very carefully and deliberately, usually within fixed parameters, and this required a greater level of responsiveness and flexibility, with the same expectation of input from multiple constituencies. We all share a commitment to providing the best support to our students. That shared value and commitment allowed us to achieve what we did this fall, through incredibly hard work, high standards and thoughtfulness.”