DEREK PIERCE

Derek helped found two great Maine high schools and served as a principal, instructional leader, changemaker and teacher for over 30 years. He retired from the principalship of Portland’s Casco Bay High School in 2024 after 19 years. He is now beginning a new chapter as an educational consultant. He believes deeply in the kind of education that takes place at the Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership, where students expand their sense of what is possible for themselves and their world by tackling real, vital projects.

Derek earned a BA from Brown in Political Science and an Ed. M from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He completed his principal certifcation work at USM. Derek’s wife Anja summered on Hurricane Island when she was a little girl. Anja’s father was a Hurricane Island Outward Bound Instructor and her mother chronicled her early 1970’s Outward Bound solo on a neighboring island in Ms. Magazine. Derek now spends several weeks on neighboring Vinalhaven each summer with his family.