Emily Etchells McCarren

Emily McCarren is the High School Principal at the Punahou School in Honolulu Hawaii, the largest single campus K-12 independent school in the United States.  Originally from Vermont, McCarren graduated from Colby College in Maine where she majored in Spanish and Biology, and was a two-sport athlete, captaining the alpine ski team and lacrosse team. She holds two master’s degrees: in Spanish Literature from the Saint Louis University's Madrid campus and in Educational Leadership from the Klingenstein Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is completing her Ph.D. in Educational Technology at the University of Hawai‘i, where her dissertation examines the role of teacher care on a student’s online learning experience. McCarren began her career teaching Spanish and Geometry at Swiss Semester, a program for American students in the Swiss Alps.   Next, she worked at The Thacher School in Ojai, California, where she taught, coached and served as a residential advisor for six years before joining the faculty at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2006. At Punahou, she has taught all levels of Academy Spanish and a year of biology, served as a department head of both Asian-Pacific and European Languages, and as Academy Summer School director. McCarren was appointed to lead Punahou’s Wo International Center in 2012, where she worked to broaden the global perspective of students and faculty while strengthening Punahou’s role as a global educational leader.