David Stephen

David Stephen’s professional life straddles the worlds of education reform and architectural design. As an educator, he has 25+ years of experience partnering with some of the field’s visionaries, working with schools across the U.S. to imagine, develop, and implement innovative school programs. As a licensed architect, he has over 18 years of experience facilitating the architectural programming and design of forward-thinking school facilities. Not surprisingly, important and interesting connections happen at the intersection of these two disciplines. David speaks the “language of education” and the “language of design.” This allows him to not only translate and interpret best practices in education and design for his clients, but to assist them in fully exploring the relationship between the two.

David is founder and principal of the Boston-based educational planning firm of New Vista Design, where he devotes approximately 30% of his time helping districts develop student-centered and project-based educational practices and 70% of his time partnering with districts and architectural firms as an Educational Planner and school designer. Over the past 20 years, he has played a key role in the architectural design of over 100 new and renovated K-12 schools, 35 of them in Massachusetts. His design projects range from public, to independent, to charter schools and include: the highly acclaimed High Tech High network of schools in San Diego, CA; the Denver School of Science & Technology in Denver, CO; the Harlem Village Academy network of schools in New York, NY; the Dearborn STEM Academy in Roxbury, MA; the Da Vinci High School in Los Angeles, CA, and the Oracle Design Tech High School in Redwood City, CA.