Donald Okpalugo, Grace’s Dean of Students
Media Provided by Sally P. ‘26
In September, Grace welcomed Donald Okpalugo as the inaugural Dean of Students and a 10th-grade history and philosophy teacher. Born in Manchester to Nigerian parents, Mr. Okpalugo’s story spans oceans, continents, and the United States itself.
As Dean of Students, Mr. Okpalugo organizes school-wide events, serves as the faculty advisor to the student government and the activities committee, supports Grace’s clubs program, and partners with the Parents Association to help run the internship program at the high school.
As a teenager in the United Kingdom, Mr. Okpalugo was an avid basketball player. To take his game to the next level, he applied to boarding schools in New England. He ultimately chose Deerfield for the coaches, Mr. Wong and Mr. Pitcher, and appreciated that the school did not have Saturday classes, as is common for some boarding schools.
So, in 2007, he moved to Massachusetts. “It was a huge culture shock,” he explained, “Everybody was in Vineyard Vines and Brooks Brothers and Lilly Pulitzer.”
At Deerfield, Mr. Okpalugo repeated his junior year to familiarize himself with the American school system. During his winter breaks, he explored New York City instead of returning home. The first place Mr. Okpalugo visited in the city was Queens, where he connected with a fellow Deerfield student who lived in the St. Albans neighborhood.
However, his move to Massachusetts was not his first visit to the United States. Mr. Okpalugo’s curiosity began during a chilly family trip in February of 2001. “It was actually kind of surprising that I came back [to the US],” he joked. “Considering it was February and I went to Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, the weather was atrocious.”
Although he initially came for athletics, his time at Deerfield inspired a lifelong academic journey. “I took electives in political philosophy and existentialism,” he said. “A seed was sown there that I didn’t realize at the time, but it kind of germinated later.”
Playing basketball at Deerfield, he had a major injury on the court: “I made the dunk, but I heard something pop when I jumped,” he recalled. “When I landed, it became clear that I had [injured] something.”
However, this injury did not deter Mr. Okpalugo’s passion for basketball, as he would go on to play for Pomona College in Southern California. His attraction to the Golden State was sparked by his love for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, an iconic ’90s rock band. To him, SoCal presents the best of both worlds: snow-capped mountains and sunny beaches.
Mr. Okpalugo recalled a game in his freshman year against San Diego State as his most salient memory on the court. He remembers being awed by the Division I arena: “a D-one arena where the Gatorade [cooler] actually has Gatorade in it [and] they bring you orange slices at halftime.”
During that game, he “played against Kawhi Leonard, which is kind of insane.” Leonard became an NBA All-Star and two-time champion with the San Antonio Spurs and the Toronto Raptors, and now plays for the Los Angeles Clippers. In fact, there is a photo of Mr. Okpalugo during the game “trying to dunk on [Leonard], and he blocked me.” He said proudly that this picture is “a badge of honor.”
Off the court, Mr. Okpalugo studied political science, focusing on philosophy, politics, and economics. Professor Pierre Engelbert, his academic advisor, was a major influence, having worked at the World Bank and the Brookings Institution. Englebert’s expertise enabled Mr. Okpalugo to take classes on the comparative politics of Africa and the political economy of development.
For five months in 2011, as a college junior, Mr. Okpalugo explored his interest in African politics at the University of Cape Town, working simultaneously as an intern at the South African parliament. “I got to go [there] in Cape Town every week and sit in on [parliamentary committees] and record minutes for a parliamentary monitoring group,” he explained.
While there, Mr. Okpalugo was struck by “how you could read about apartheid or the history of apartheid and who Nelson Mandela is, but there’s nothing quite like being there on the ground.” He explained that “private residences would have barbed wire, and you can sort of tell when people think they have a right to the land that they’re on, or whether they don’t.”
Mr. Okpalugo has been deeply influenced by educators, including his parents, who are also teachers. Most of all, a high school US history teacher and his college professors played a major role in his pursuit of a career in education.
After graduating from Pomona in 2013, Mr. Okpalugo became a history teacher and worked in admissions at the Thacher School, a boarding school in Ojai, California. Thacher is an “idyllic community” that afforded Mr. Okpalugo the opportunity to cut his teeth as a teacher.
In addition to teaching, Mr. Okpalugo coached tennis and basketball and was the co-founder of the school’s Global Citizenship and Ethics Program. At Thacher, he credits the chair of the History Department with mentoring him, meeting regularly to discuss pedagogy and teaching styles. As he explained, “My passion is experiential learning, particularly when it pertains to African history.” To share his expertise, Mr. Okpalugo created courses at Thacher that explored the continent’s history.
The 2016 election of Donald Trump was a watershed moment for Mr. Okpalugo. He felt a sense of detachment in a moment of national importance and decided that he wanted to live and work in a less secluded community. To him, “it felt like the country was kind of crumbling around me.” Mr. Okpalugo, a British citizen, was directly affected by the new administration’s immigration policies, unable to attend his grandmother’s funeral in the United Kingdom because he could not leave the country.
So, in 2017, Mr. Okpalugo crossed the country, moving to New York City for a job at The Dalton School on the Upper East Side.
For Mr. Okpalugo, Dalton fused both professional and personal development. He jokes that he doesn’t know if “I would’ve been good in New York City as an undergrad when I had no money and just the distractions.” He explains that he was attracted to Dalton because of the “academic excellence, the rigor, and the robust support for faculty professional development.”
At Dalton, like at Thacher, Mr. Okpalugo created his own elective classes, including “The Black Radical Tradition” and “Sports and Society.” The former examined the history of radical thought and action across the African diaspora, while the latter used sports as a vehicle to examine topics such as masculinity, nationalism, fascism, and gender access.
To enrich “Sports and Society,” Mr. Okpalugo invited parents who held major positions in national sports leagues, such as the deputy commissioner of the MLS and the chief administrative officer of the NFL. While at Dalton, Mr. Okpalugo also pursued his master’s degree at Columbia, where he was in the same cohort as two fellow Grace faculty members: Mr. Tom James, Assistant Head of the High School, and Ms. Caitlin Hickerson, Dean of the Class of 2026.
In 2019, as part of the “Year of Return,” marking the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans being brought to British North America, Mr. Okpalugo travelled to Ghana with a group of Dalton students. “I would plan a trip for free,” he said, illustrating his deep love of experiential learning. For him, this trip stands out as a seminal moment in both his career and personal life, as it was the first time on the continent for most of his students and chaperones. In retrospect, it was also only two months before the pandemic.
As he began transitioning to Grace from Dalton, Mr. Okpalugo wanted to combine his two interests in the educational field: administrative work and classroom teaching. At Dalton, he wasn’t able to pursue those passions simultaneously. “Don’t get me wrong, I do love a spreadsheet,” he said. “But what really gets me up in the morning is the chance to introduce my students to a longtime passion of mine, like philosophy.”
In October 2025, Mr. Okpalugo accompanied a group of Grace students to Bard College for the Hannah Arendt Conference, which explores topics surrounding philosophy. Prior to joining Grace, Mr. Okpalugo had accompanied Dalton students to the conference and pitched bringing a group of Grace students when he became Dean of Students.
Considering his change from the Upper East Side to NoHo, Mr. Okpalugo feels there is a different vibe downtown. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it is, laughing, “I don’t know if laid back’s the right way to say it because I think people are still super intense and driven here.”
From a fourth-floor classroom, Mr. Okpalugo reflected on his first two months at Grace. “I’m just trying to get out and visit as many classes and as many advisories as possible,” he explained of his second-semester goals. “Part of my approach, I think, needs to be understanding what has come before me.”
Wilson U. ’27 is a staff writer for The Grace Gazette.