Nico Victorino (EdD ’20) Named 2026 Steinhardt Ascending Champion

Nico Victorino (EdD ’20, Educational Leadership) has been named 2026’s Ascending Champion as part of this year’s cohort of Spirit of Steinhardt Alumni Award winners. He has built a career around academic excellence, belonging, and the belief that every student deserves the opportunity to thrive.

Victorino has been principal of PS 150 in Lower Manhattan since 2021. Here, he has led a remarkable transformation at the school, tripling enrollment while strengthening academic achievement, deepening partnerships with families, and cultivating a joyful school culture where students and educators can grow. 

In 2024, Victorino’s leadership earned national recognition when he received the Terrel H. Bell Award for Outstanding School Leadership from the US Department of Education. 

“I feel very honored to be recognized for my contributions to education,” says Victorino. “Coming from NYU Steinhardt, this award is big and quite important to me.”

Victorino’s path to education was unexpected. As an undergraduate studying political science on a pre-law track, he imagined becoming a lawyer. That changed after he began working the summer after his sophomore year at the Educational Arts Team’s Camp Liberty in his hometown of Jersey City, where he discovered a passion for working with young people. 

“That was the first time I had ever worked with kids, and I fell in love with it immediately,” says Victorino. “The day before my junior year of college, I went to the Registrar and dropped all my political science and pre-law classes and changed my major to elementary education. I knew I wanted to work with kids, I wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to work in schools, and there was no looking back from then on.”

Since then, Victorino has served as a teacher, special education coordinator, assistant principal, middle school director, and principal. He has also remained connected to the Educational Arts Team, now serving on its board.

In Steinhardt’s Educational Leadership program, Victorino found a doctoral degree that aligned closely with his interests and career. He was drawn to faculty whose research examined race, identity, systems, and educational inequities, including Noël S. Anderson, clinical professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies; Luis A. Rodriguez, associate professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies; and Lisette Nieves, distinguished clinical professor of Administration, Leadership, and Technology. Victorino’s dissertation examined the experiences of Asian American educational leaders and how race, identity, and representation shape opportunities.

“My time at Steinhardt taught me to look at every decision I have to make with multiple lenses and different perspectives,” says Victorino. “That mindset is my guiding principle at PS 150. No matter who I’m meeting with—teachers, families, students, or Department of Education leaders—it all comes back to the same question: What is best for the kids?”

Victorino is continuing to bring that spirit of inquiry and forward momentum to his work. Beginning in October, he will join the prestigious Cahn Fellowship, a national cohort of school principals focused on addressing school-level challenges through research, collaboration, and professional learning.

For Victorino, however, leadership is ultimately about the students who walk through his school’s doors. He hopes they leave PS 150 curious and conscientious, willing to question the world around them, and equipped with the skills to change what they believe should be different.

And while the Ascending Champion honor may point toward what comes next, Victorino is grateful for where he is today.

“NYU Steinhardt gave me the legitimacy, the curiosity, and the bravery to say hard things out loud,” he says. “I feel very fulfilled and happy and content right now, and whether I see how much impact I can make at a bigger level or I stay as a principal until I retire, I think both paths would make for a very good life.”