In May, Menlo announced the hire of Katherine Palmer as the school’s new Creative Arts Director. Instrumental Music Teacher Leo Kitagima Geefay, who had served as the interim director for the 2024-25 school year, has handed the role to Palmer to lead the program forward.

Palmer previously served as Department Chair of Visual Arts at Francis Parker School in Chicago and held the same role at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. Most recently, she spent a sabbatical year in Japan, where she took language classes and drew creative inspiration from visiting shrines and temples.

With her educational and artistic background, Palmer is working in parallel with the new elective policies. Last year, Menlo implemented a new creative arts requirement where students in the classes of 2026, 2027 and 2028 must complete four semesters of creative arts electives throughout their time at Menlo. The Upper School Creative Arts Department has 35 art electives for students to choose from, including Art Foundations, Chamber Orchestra, Dance Foundations and Fundamentals of Photography, among others. Palmer believes this new requirement coincides perfectly with her mindset for the arts program.

Palmer plans to expand and strengthen the arts program across all grade levels at Menlo. “My goal is to create more opportunities for lots of people to join in on the arts, even those who might not traditionally identify as artists,” she said. 

With such a wide range of artistic possibilities, Palmer says she’s excited to see all the unique ways students get involved with different branches of the arts on campus. “This is such an important time for people to engage in the arts. It creates such a varied experience in all of our lives, so different from what we normally do. In 2025, when we’re all strapped to computers and our experiences are so similar, the arts offer something different, an embodied practice that thrives with self-reflection and real time awareness and intuition,” Palmer said. 

Palmer also aims to have the department staff play a vital role in the artistic recruitment on campus. “I want art educators to reach out into the rest of the community in innovative, organic ways.  And I want students to see the natural connections that bridge the arts with the rest of the world,” Palmer said. The staff will also be playing a crucial role in her overarching goal for the year: creating more alignment in the 6th through 12th grade programs throughout the whole creative arts department. 

Palmer noted the dance program’s commitment to this aspiration, with their major events throughout the year, like the dance concert, serving as a great representation of the publicity and engagement she hopes to bring to all of the art branches. “They work with athletics, and they’re aligned 6th through 12th if you look at just general philosophy. They’re a really good example of how a program can grow and get people to buy into it,” Palmer said. 

Palmer enters the program with optimism and an open mind. While she has clear goals, she said she wants to observe before making any major changes. “I don’t really want to pass judgment too soon, because it’s so early in the year. I’m excited to see how the fall rolls out, with productions, showcases and the big holiday assembly. I want to learn first, particularly from the student experience, before thinking about what needs to be cleaned up or fixed,” Palmer said. 

Senior Diya Karthik, who helps with organizing and planning arts events, as well as bringing in guest speakers that increase overall engagement in the arts, already feels that Palmer will bring excellent cohesion to the creative arts department. “She’s at this really good intersection of teaching and directing skills. She had been a teacher before, [and transitioning] into a directing role, she had innovative ideas about uplifting the student body as a whole — not just one discipline like fine arts or theater, but how to intersect all of them to make things more cohesive,” Karthik said. 

While her job title suggests that she solely supports the creative arts program, Palmer has made it her personal mission to assist the entire community. “I’m excited to be a part of offering that difference for so many reasons: mental health, growth, cultural agility and building community,” Palmer said.