THE DIGITAL REPOSITORY FOR THE BLACK EXPERIENCE
"I Am The Master Of My Fate: I Am The Captain Of My Soul."
Education administrator Randall Dunn was born on January 10, 1965 in Kingston, Jamaica to his mother, Yourland Depass. Dunn moved with his family to the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, where he received a scholarship from the A Better Chance program to attend the Milton Academy, a boarding school in Milton, Massachusetts. Upon graduating in 1983, Dunn earned his B.A. degree in psychology from Brown University in 1987, and his M.Ed. in human development and psychology from Harvard University in 1992.
Dunn began his career as a teaching intern at Potomac School in McLean, Virginia in 1987, later becoming a full-time teacher. He also taught at Runkle Elementary School in Brookline, Massachusetts from 1992 to 1993, when he was then hired as the director of multicultural enrollment and services at Concord Academy. Dunn went on to head the upper school at Derby Academy in Hingham, Massachusetts, and worked as middle school senior master at the Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland from 1997 to 2004. From there, Dunn headed the Roeper School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan until 2011, when Dunn became the first African American head of school at the Latin School of Chicago. Under his leadership, the Latin School of Chicago launched Uptown Partnership, and enrolled in the Global Online Academy program. In 2017, the Latin School of Chicago bought the historic Lurie Mansion, and Dunn began supervising the lower schools’ transition to this facility.
In 2008, Dunn was one of forty-five alumni honored by A Better Chance. Dunn was selected as a 2010 fellow in the Klingenstein Program for Visiting Heads of Schools at Columbia University’s Teachers College. He also served as co-chair of the National Advisory Board of the Principals’ Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and was a trustee at the National Association of Independent Schools, a trustee of “High Jump,” a board member of the National Network of Schools in Partnership, and a board member of the Mastery Transcript Consortium. He served on the board of directors of the Norwood School in Bethesda, the Association of Independent Maryland Schools, and the Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington.
Dunn and his wife, Elizabeth Hopkins Dunn, have two daughters, Hunter Hopkins and Chase Demetreou.
Randall Dunn was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on February 22, 2018.