Lauren Amicone - Founding Principal │ Influential Women

About Lauren

Lauren Amicone serves as the founding principal of Cedar Rapids Prep, a middle and high school in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She began this role after being recruited to help realize the school's vision of serving students in grades 6 through 12 with a focus on joy, excellence, and collaborative partnerships between families and educators. With 12 years of experience in education, Amicone started her career in Kansas City as an elementary classroom teacher. She progressed to dean of instruction in a middle school, then vice principal, and later became a turnaround principal at Garfield Elementary in Kansas City, Missouri. During her four years there, she aligned the school community around values of growth, ownership, achievement, and teamwork, resulting in improved academic outcomes that removed the school from Missouri's list of low-performing institutions. Amicone fell into the field after college when she took a teaching position in a high-need school and discovered her passion for addressing educational inequities and expanding opportunities for students.

Ten minutes with Lauren

01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

I think you need to be, like, really grounded in, like, who you are and what you believe in, and so for me, it's providing, like, equitable opportunities for all students, and so that's sort of driven all of the work. Finding those gaps where, like, the system we have isn't setting students up for success, and sort of rocking the boat a little bit, right? I deeply believe that all students should have access to a high-quality education, regardless of income, background, etc, and so that sort of then tracks the different schools and environments that I have been interested in working at, but I think everyone in education, or if you're looking to go into the field, like, that passion really has to drive your work, because it's not easy work, but it is really.