Sean Hamer

Sean Hamer is currently the Head of Alta Vista School, a K-8 school in San Francisco. Dr. Hamer believes “education is a process that empowers individuals with the resources to experience a life of understanding, promise, and options.” Before his arrival on the west coast, Dr. Hamer served as Head of Middle School at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, PA, and Friends Academy in North Dartmouth, MA, and was a Trustee for Breakthrough SummerbridgePhiladelphia. His passion for the natural and physical sciences was rooted in his elementary experiences in Montessori school, sleep-away summer camps, computer programming experiences in middle school, and concurrent formative experiences at the three-summer (MS)2 program at Phillips Andover Academy and year-round school experiences at Brooklyn Technical Highschool. These experiences directed Dr. Hamer toward engineering; however, he discovered a passion for working with children during his college study as an engineering student, which led to a career shift to work in human and social services. This time included working with abused children, transitional living programs for teens, mentally challenged adults, parent counseling, and behavior management programs for school-aged children. After spending a decade counseling and administering child and adult residential treatment facilities and cultural exchange programs, he decided to return to the sciences and support children’s growth in formal school settings. Dr. Hamer enjoys time with his wife Terri, daughter Nala, and son Sekou, a Germantown Friends School alum and freshman theater major at Howard University and enjoys interests that extend to personal development, entrepreneurship, hot yoga, martial arts, film, cooking, and writing.