Baruti Kafele
Principal and Award-Winning Author
A highly-regarded educator in New Jersey for over twenty years, Principal Baruti Kafele distinguished himself as a master teacher and a transformational school leader.
As an elementary school teacher in East Orange, NJ, he was selected as the East Orange School District and Essex County Public Schools Teacher of the Year, he was a New Jersey State Teacher of the Year finalist, and a recipient of the New Jersey Education Association Award of Excellence.
As a middle and high school principal, Principal Kafele led the turnaround of four different New Jersey urban schools, including "The Mighty" Newark Tech, which went from a low-performing school in need of improvement to national recognition, which included U.S. News and World Report Magazine recognizing it three times as one of America's best high schools.
One of the most sought-after school leadership experts in America, Principal Kafele is impacting America’s schools! He has delivered over two thousand conference and program keynotes, professional development workshops, parenting seminars and student assemblies over his 32 years of public speaking. An expert in the area of “attitude transformation,” Principal Kafele is the leading authority for providing effective classroom and school leadership strategies toward closing what he coined, the "Attitude Gap.” He is also the author of nine books which include his national best-sellers, Closing the Attitude Gap, Motivating Black Males, The Principal 50 and The Teacher 50. His 9th book is hot off the presses entitled, Is My School a Better School BECAUSE I Lead It? His next book, So You Want to Be a Principal? LET’S TALK! will be released in 2019.
Principal Kafele is the recipient of over 150 educational, professional and community awards which include the prestigious Milken National Educator Award, the National Alliance of Black School Educators Hall of Fame Award, induction into the East Orange, New Jersey Hall of Fame, and the City of Dickinson, Texas proclaiming February 8, 1998 as Baruti Kafele Day.