As founding director of the Board of Trustees, Noa led the establishment of the Middle Way School in 2017. She has held almost every position at the school in some form or another, from Head of School to Parking Lot Attendant to Art teacher, most recently as Dharma Curriculum Coordinator. Noa teaches a weekly dharma class to the children. As Executive Director of our sister organization Middle Way Education, she is responsible for delivering the dharma curriculum. Collaborating with key Middle Way advisors, linegae holders, educational and strategic consultants, she works to ensure the curriculum is well designed and implemented. 

 

Noa has worked for the school’s patron, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, since 2001 in a variety of roles—from personal secretary to film PA to Communications Director of Khyentse Foundation, where she helped create the foundation’s branding and chaired KF’s education steering committee for more than a decade.

 

In 2010, Rinpoche sent her to the Kingdom of Bhutan to develop education alternatives in association with the Ministry of Education, the Royal Education Council, monasteries, and a number of NGOs. She coordinated professional development and integrated curriculum design workshops for teachers while observing and participating in local classrooms. The Druk 3020 curriculum she developed in 2011 helped introduced progressive education methods and content into the monastic setting. Druk 3020 has continued to be implemented and refined at the Chokyi Gyatso Institute in Eastern Bhutan. In 2017 Rinpoche asked Noa to start a Buddhist school for children in Upstate New York.

 

Noa is also a writer and editor of creative fiction and nonfiction, included her children’s book How Do You Know What You Know (Bala Random House 2023), and has worked on Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s books, including What Makes You Not a Buddhist and The Guru Drinks Bourbon. She contributed a chapter to Global Perspectives on Spirituality in Education (Routledge, 2013) and Best Spiritual Writing 2012. She taught creative writing at Hunter College where she earned an MFA in Fiction. Her work has been published in the New York Times, The Raven, The Los Angeles Times, Tricycle, Vice, Conde Nast Traveler and Glimmer Train, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  She holds a journalism degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Masters of Science Degree in Education (MSEd) from the University of Pennsylvania.