Middle School New Faculty

Shanel Daines, 6th Grade History, completed the Anthropology program at UC Berkeley and then began her career in the digital marketing world, helping to grow the businesses of various bustling tech companies in Silicon Valley. After a number of years, she says “the trajectory of my career goals shifted toward a more passionate focus on education and our youth.” She went on to complete the California credential and earn a master’s in teaching at the University of Southern California. Prior to joining Menlo, she worked at Summit Public Schools’ Shasta campus in Daly City, teaching 9th Grade Modern World History and mentoring a group of 20 students through graduation. Outside of the classroom, she enjoys traveling, cooking, and spending time with her family.

Jacob Davis, Middle School Counselor, earned an MA from Azusa Pacific and then spent six years working as an at-risk behavior specialist in Southern California. Ready for a new adventure, he then moved to Monterrey, Mexico, to work as a counselor at an American private school. Most recently, Jacob spent the past four years at an independent school in Seattle counseling and facilitating social-emotional learning programming in the middle and upper schools. He says he is excited to be back in his native state and to make Menlo and the Bay Area his new home. Jacob enjoys travel photography, long hikes, and connecting with family and friends.

Sean Hyland, Middle School Visual Arts, graduated from the New York Academy of Art with an MFA in painting. He then jointly pursued his studio practice as well as his passion for teaching. A Bay Area native, he taught private lessons locally before becoming a middle school art teacher at Crystal Springs Uplands School. After teaching there part-time for four years, he decided to commit to his passion for teaching full-time by joining Menlo. He says “it will be a pleasure to share my knowledge of art-making, and its various practices, with the students at Menlo.” An oil painter with an extensive amount of training in figure drawing, portraiture, and anatomy, Sean’s work has been shown in New York, Tokyo, San Francisco, and Portland. Beyond art, he loves watching movies, going on walks, and spending time with his wife and one-year-old son.

Kanako Sumi, 6th Grade English, taught middle school for five years in Southern California near Temecula, before moving to the Bay Area to teach at a middle school in Mountain View. She received her undergraduate degree and teaching credential from Pepperdine University and a master’s degree in English from UC Irvine. She has been involved as a dance coach and a drama club mentor at previous schools. Kanako says she is excited to be a part of the Menlo community and looks forward to the new adventures ahead. In her free time, she loves to travel, play board games, watch movies, and try new hobbies. This year, she is learning to play the piano and hopes to learn to throw pottery in the future. 

  Upper School New Faculty

Zach Blickensderfer, Upper School Math and Computer Science, comes to Menlo after completing a two-year master’s and teaching residency through the University of Pennsylvania. He previously taught upper school mathematics at an independent school north of Chicago while conducting research exploring what classrooms and curricula can learn from extracurricular activities. Zach grew up in Southern California and went on to major in computer science at Yale University, where his studies focused on the intersection of mathematics and computer science. The son of a kindergarten teacher and a firm believer in the value of a liberal arts education, he also completed coursework in English, history, philosophy, art, and education. Zach has been singing since he could speak. In college, he performed with the Yale Alley Cats, Whiffenpoofs, and Glee Club, and in Chicago, he sang tenor with the Chicago Chorale and Wicker Park Choral Singers. He also enjoys puzzles of all forms, donates blood three times a year, and proudly support the Los Angeles Dodgers (go blue).

Rachel Blumenthal, Upper School English, comes to Menlo from the midwest, where she lived for over a decade. Raised in Atlanta, she completed her doctoral work in Chicago. While living there, she taught at Northwestern University, Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and the Odyssey Project of Illinois Humanities. After graduate school, she taught English at Indiana University Kokomo for five years before relocating to the west coast to join the Menlo community. She says she is “passionate about making literature accessible to all audiences… and has an abiding commitment to creating public spaces for thought and dialogue.” When not in the classroom, you can find her writing, hiking, sampling fabulous local restaurants, and playing with her Siberian cat.

Jay Bush, Upper School English, grew up in Bermuda before attending boarding school at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts before heading to Georgetown University. He explored a wide variety of subjects in college but ultimately earned a degree in literature. Inspired by his amazing teachers in high school and college, he pursued education after graduating from Georgetown. Jay taught English for five years at Canterbury School in Connecticut, where he also served as a dorm parent and coached swimming and crew. He then went on to complete a master’s degree in private school leadership through Columbia University’s Klingenstein Center at Teachers College. Jay says, “The classroom is my favorite place to be, but outside of school, I look for opportunities to escape from technology by hiking, traveling, and getting lost in a good novel. Having grown up on an island, I also enjoy activities that involves being in or on the water.”

Joel Colom-Mena, Upper School Spanish, joins Menlo having taught Spanish for more than 10 years at Northwestern University where his courses included Spanish, Literature of the Human Rights in Latin America, advanced writing and History of Contemporary Spain. As a university educator and scholar, Joel’s vast research interests include the secularization of religious figures-hermits and religious practices in peninsular life; the influence of monastic rules in Spain’s culture and politics; and the role of ‘gender’ in Spain’s Golden Age theater and the ‘Teatro de Calderón’. While in grad school, he also spent two months in Sana’a, Yemen, learning about Arabic and Islamic cultures, which he says both have had a great impact on Spain’s cultural and intellectual diversity. Beyond the classroom, Joel, who grew up in Spain, is an avid traveler. He’s visited 78 countries (and counting) greatly enjoys submerging himself in other cultures. 

Sujata Ganpule, Upper School Math, grew up in the Bay Area and attended Cornell University where she completed a BA in mathematics and participated in the undergraduate teaching program. With the goal of becoming a teacher, she returned to the Bay Area to earn a master’s in secondary math education at UC Berkeley. She then taught for four years at Envision Schools, a charter school organization, and went on to teach at College Prep in Oakland. During five years of teaching in California, she participated in the Knowles Teacher Initiative, a program that supports early-career high school mathematics and science teachers. In 2010 she moved to the east coast where she taught high school math for eight years at the Friends School of Baltimore. She is happy to be returning to California along with her husband and 4-year-old son and is excited to reconnect with family and friends.

Oscar King, Upper School English, spent the last seven years in Los Angeles before relocating to the Bay Area in 2019. While he began his college career studying mathematics, he was captivated by courses in creative writing and fairy tales and eventually made the leap from STEM to liberal arts. He earned a BA and an MA in English from Loyola Marymount University, where he went on to teach courses ranging from fairy tales and classical mythology to Jesuit rhetoric and argument to an upper division seminar in East Asian Pop Culture, which included both K-pop and anime. He has also worked in real estate, medical billing, nonprofits, and publishing houses, but says teaching has consistently proven to hold his heart. When he is not in the classroom or in his office, he is likely playing cards with his fiancée, trying to solve some funky new riddle, or reading first drafts to his dachshund, Montgomery.

Kristen Jurgens, College Counselor(interim), earned a BA in English and communications from UNC-Chapel Hill, before moving to Boston where she worked for 13 years in university admissions, first for Tufts and then for Boston College. She moved to the Bay Area in 2006 to work at Sacred Heart Preparatory, first as a college counselor and most recently as the Director of College Counseling. She retired from that role in 2018 to raise her newborn son, and says she is “thrilled to join the team at Menlo to assist in covering Natalie Ford’s maternity leave.” She enjoys reading, cooking, sewing, exploring the Bay Area, playing with her son, and along with her husband, learning how to parent (all tips welcome).

John Norris, Academic Support/Learning Lab, grew up in Atlanta, GA, but has called California home for the last 16 years. He found his passion for teaching immediately after graduating from Stanford (BS, Biomechanical Engineering) and has spent his entire career as a teacher, which he says is “the best profession there is.” John comes to Menlo after more than a decade spent running a private tutoring company in Silicon Valley, where he taught private SAT, ACT, and AP level math and science classes to students from Menlo, Sacred Heart, Paly, Gunn, and more. In his spare time, John can be found trying to sing or golf, studying French, or learning something else new.

Lena Pressesky, Upper School English, was born and raised in Menlo Park, where she attended the Peninsula School, Hillview Middle School, and Menlo-Atherton High School. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from UC Davis, she tried her hand at a number of different jobs—waiting tables, retail, journalism, copywriting, tutoring—before earning her credential and returning to M-A to teach. She says, “although I was an M-A bear for years, I’m ready to trade in my claws and be knighted by Menlo!” She loves teaching English because she gets to share literature with young people and laugh every day. When not teaching, she likes to go for runs, drink coffee, and watch scary movies with her boyfriend and cat.

Elias Solano, Upper School History, is a native of Los Angeles. He earned both a BA and an MA in history from UCLA and hopes to pursue his PhD, with a focus on areas of Medieval Europe, at some point in the future. Before coming to Menlo, Elias taught history for over five years at Saint Benedict School in Montebello where he also developed a history curriculum for the entire school. He has also coached cross country and track and field and has experience teaching drama as an elective and leading theater productions. Elias enjoys traveling—and has traveled to over 30 countries within the span of 6 continents—as well as exploring the Bay Area, hiking, reading, writing, running, and hanging out with friends and family.

Abby Tieck, Upper School History, grew up along the Missouri River in Iowa. With dreams of becoming an opera singer, she ventured to the “land of 10,000 lakes” to earn a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Bachelor of Music in vocal performance at Minnesota State. After graduation, she worked in a corporate sales position in Chicago before beginning her journey to the classroom. She earned a Masters in Education in 2012 from DePaul University, and while in Chicago, she taught World History and Political Science at a small charter high school. Since moving to the Bay Area in 2017, Abby has taught AP US History and US History at a charter high school in Richmond. For fun, she enjoys reading large books, binge-watching Netflix, travel of all kinds, spending time with her family and vocal cat, and pursuing the perfect gluten-free cupcake.

All School Staff

Vanessa Ortega, Admissions, was born in El Salvador and came to the U.S. in the early 1980s. After graduating with a BA in Sociology from Mills College, she began her independent school career at Live Oak School in San Francisco. Vanessa has worked in independent school admissions in the Bay Area for over 15 years and says her primary focus in admissions has been making an independent school education accessible to underrepresented communities in the Bay Area. Most recently, she was the Associate Director of Admission/Financial Aid and the Coordinator of the Connections and Advising Program for Ninth Graders at the College Preparatory School in Oakland. In her free time, she oversees a Junior Church program at her church, enjoys long-distance running with her husband, and adding funky socks to her ever-growing sock collection.

Roger Zamora ’04, Admissions and Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, is back at Menlo after a brief departure last spring. He will continue his work as Associate Director in Menlo’s admission department while also joining the School’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion team as the Associate Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Family Support. Roger has previously worked as the Development and Communications Manager for Summit Public Schools and as the Director of Operations for Summit Preparatory Charter High School. An alum of A Better Chance and College Track, Roger was the first graduate to join College Track’s National Board of Directors in 2015. He has also worked with various education non-profit organizations to promote personal and academic success for youth growing up in socio-economically disadvantaged communities. An alum of St. Mary’s College of California, Roger is also a Latino Board Leadership Academy Fellow for the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley. In his spare time, Roger enjoys cooking, rooting on Bay Area sports teams, and traveling with his wife, Denisse.