Next week we will farewell our longest standing employee, Cathy Kaiserman. Cathy began at The King David School in 1989 and has devoted the last 35 years of her life to giving her all for the achievements of our school, her colleagues and our students.

Over her time at our school there is barely an area of our operations that Cathy has not positively impacted. She has been a tremendous support to every principal in King David’s history and has served alongside Norman Rothman, Zvi Civins, David Zyngier, Margaret Taft, Ashley Latchford, Michele Bernshaw and me. 

I believe that one of the secrets around Cathy’s extraordinary longevity in her career at our school has been through her constant capacity to reinvent herself. Over her time, she has selflessly stepped into the breach to take on whatever challenge best met the needs of the School. This has allowed her to develop mastery of different operational areas of our school and has fed her capacity to be such a wonderful support to so many of her colleagues as she has been able to offer specific advice based on her skills and experience.

She has been our Registrar, Personal Assistant to the Principal, Acting Business Manager, our inaugural HR Manager and Risk and Compliance Officer.

Cathy helped facilitate the growth of our school from a fledgling primary school to our current ELC to Year 12 offering. In order to manage this growth our school needed a significant professionalisation of our systems and processes. This had to be balanced by someone who also deeply understood our school and the way that our decision making and culture needed to be community minded and always focused on maintaining supportive and warm relationships.

Cathy has been able to reach an equilibrium that balances these sometimes competing motivations.  She has led with both the brain and the heart.

In doing so, she has garnered the respect, admiration and love of her colleagues. She has always been the special, trusted colleague that so many people go to for support.

Cathy also raised her kids at the School and has had her grandson attend too. She has made lifelong friends here.

In my period as Principal, Cathy has just been the most amazing confidante, coach and support. When the worst has been happening she has been so calming, thorough and methodical. This has helped us to get through any challenges, step-by-step. Her cheeky sense of humour, self-deprecation and gentle teasing helped make up the soundtrack of the good times too.

Cathy is just someone you want in your corner and in your life.

As a mark of gratitude to Cathy, the School has initiated the Cathy Kaiserman Award for Service to the King David School that will be conferred for the first time at the upcoming Presentation Evening.

I hope that our school community recognises that we have been just so lucky to have Cathy, to learn from her and to enjoy her friendship. We wish her the best retirement.