When Burnaby school district superintendent Gina Niccoli-Moen got her first job as a vice-principal at Cariboo Hill Secondary in the 1990s, her daughter Alexa was just 11 months old.
A first-time mom, caring for a toddler with exceptional needs, Niccoli-Moen says she was worried she might not be seen as leadership material.
"There weren't a lot of people in leadership that had young children at that time," she says, "Would I be seen as being able to do the job? If people knew about the challenges that she had, would they think that I could manage everything?"
Then someone said something to her that gives her goosebumps to this day: "Tell your story. You reach people by who you are and your unique experiences."
"It truly impacted me and how I wanted to lead, like who I was," she says.
On March 31, Niccoli-Moen will retire after nine years in the school district's top job, and it's clear her story and who she is has shaped the leader she has become.
"Superintendent Niccoli-Moen's heart and the empathy that comes from it represent who she is to this board and to past boards," school board chair Bill Brassington said at her last public meeting this month. "This board has borne witness to her leadership; her leadership is about service; it's about making a positive impact and about leaving things better than how she found them."
The student
Niccoli-Moen says she likes to joke with new hires that she's been in the school district for 50 years.
Of course, the joke only works if you know she's only 57.
She first landed in School District No. 41 halfway through Grade 1 in the mid-1970s.
Arriving at Westridge Elementary from East Vancouver, one of her earliest memories was shock at a certain barbarism when it came to hot dog day in the suburbs.
"I remember my teacher at the time said that we couldn't have chocolate milk because it wasn't healthy," she says. "And I thought, where the heck did we move that we can't have chocolate milk?"
Niccoli-Moen remembers the "open classroom" (an experimental design in which walls separating classrooms were removed to promote movement between classes) was in vogue at Westridge at the time.
She was "chatty," she says, but a good student, who loved reading and writing.
Cleaning out her office this week, she came across a book her Grade 1 teacher Mrs. G. Minten gave her for winning the class's independent reading contest.
Later, Nancy Drew books became a favourite.
"I had the whole series," she says.
Niccoli-Moen would graduate from Burnaby North Secondary in 1984, but when she started there, Grade 8, 9 and 10 students still attended Kensington Junior in the "South Building."
Her family lived across the street, but that doesn't mean she and her three sisters were always on time for school.
Being late for class, however, was about the only shenanigans Niccoli-Moen would admit to as a teenager at 1980s Burnaby North.
And if those walls could talk, they'll be coming down soon, too.
One of Niccoli-Moen's last official acts as superintendent was to open the new Burnaby North earlier this year.
It'll be nostalgic to see the old building come down, she says, but she was heartened seeing current North students enjoying the new one.
"They're just so pumped about the whole thing, the new school and taking the lead, creating new memories," she says.
The teacher
Niccoli-Moen doesn't remember the exact moment she decided she wanted to be a teacher, but it was sometime during her English degree at UBC.
Her parents had certainly driven home the importance of education, she says.
They came to Canada from Italy as kids, and her father was the first in his family to get a chance at a university education, eventually retiring as an elementary school principal in the Vancouver school district.
Her mom had always wanted to go to university but never got the chance.
"Education for them was opportunity," Niccoli-Moen says.
She also remembers helping her dad and a family friend who was a teacher set up their classrooms.
"All of those memories I think really influenced me," she says.
Niccoli-Moen's first job out of university was at Burnaby South in September 1990.
She would teach there for six years before moving to Burnaby North as department head.
"I loved my time with students," she says.
Since announcing her retirement, Niccoli-Moen says some of those students she taught more than two decades ago have reached out to wish her well.
The principal
From the very beginning, Niccoli-Moen said she liked "bringing people together."
Early in her teaching career that included working with student government and helping organize grad activities.
It was Sharon Cutcliffe, the Burnaby South principal who hired her as a teacher, who first pointed out the direction that impulse might take her, telling her she should be a vice-principal someday.
"She saw something in me and believed in me from the very start. Of course at that time you don't even think about it," Niccoli-Moen says.
To hear her tell it, Niccoli-Moen's path as an administrator was marked by mentors – including Sheila Rooney, the district's first female superintendent – tapping her on the shoulder, encouraging her to take on new leadership opportunities.
She went back to school, SFU, to get her master's in administrative leadership and loved it, she says.
Looking back, she says leadership has always been a passion, dating back as far as her childhood, perhaps, as the second oldest in a family of four girls.
"My sisters might call it bossy; I’m not sure," she says with a laugh.
And what advice would she give someone thinking of following in her footsteps?
"I always say 'Do what sings to you,'" she says. "Do what you love, and if you have the opportunity and gift to do that, then you will love you work."
The Superintendent
Niccoli-Moen, then a deputy superintendent, took over the district's top job on Feb. 1, 2015 after the sudden departure of Kevin Kaardal, who had served in the role for two years.
Did she ever imagine, back when she was at Westridge Elementary, that she'd be superintendent one day?
"No," she says with a laugh. "I probably didn't even know what that was at the time."
Her way of explaining the role to kids has been to say she is like a "giant principal" of the whole district – though some youngsters' impression that a superintendent is some kind of super hero sounds more fun.
Each step of Niccoli-Moen's career has taken her farther from the classroom, and she says she has missed working directly with students, but the trade-off has been the chance to make things better for 26,000 students every year instead of a few hundred.
"Your vantage point changes, but you're equally passionate about it, and you're always close to the people, at least for me," she says.
It was talking about "the people" that brought tears to Niccoli-Moen's eyes when she gave her final public farewell to trustees at their school board meeting this month.
"I truly have loved every role that I have held in the Burnaby school district," she said. "That didn't mean that there weren't difficult days, and some days it was much easier to feel joy than other days, but I loved it nonetheless, and the reason that I loved it so deeply was because of the people in my journey, and that includes so many of the students."
As superintendent, Niccoli-Moen says her biggest challenge and the thing she is most proud of are one and the same: the district's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
She says school and district staff did "anything and everything" to support students and "find a path forward."
Having to go back and ask them to dig even deeper as the waves of the pandemic kept coming was the hardest thing she ever had to do as superintendent, she says.
And now?
When asked what her plans are after retirement, Niccoli-Moen says she doesn't have any.
She could have skimmed over the question, focused vaguely on how excited she is about her next steps "whatever they might be."
And she is excited, she says.
But leaving it at that would have meant leaving out a part of her story, that collection of "unique experiences" that have shaped her as a person and a leader.
The truth is, she says, she doesn't have plans because the retirement she is about to step into is not the one she imagined for herself – because her daughter will not be in it.
"I always thought that I would be a caregiver to her forever, so I think I thought in retirement I would have more time to spend with her and we would be lifelong companions," Niccoli-Moen says.
That future changed with Alexa’s death in 2016.
"Life happens to everybody," Niccoli-Moen says.
Thinking of just how quickly the last 34 years of her life have flown by was one thing that got her thinking about early-ish retirement, she says.
And there was another thing, too.
"I wanted to leave as I entered the profession, with a full heart," she says.
She's done that, she says, and is looking forward now to the next thing that sings to her.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on X/Twitter @CorNaylor
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