Welcoming Tim Lyons
Our Lady of the Pillar is thrilled to welcome Tim Lyons as our upcoming headmaster!
Mr. Lyons has nearly twenty years of experience in teaching, school leadership, and non-profit executive management. He has dedicated his life to helping school students, teachers, and boards. From 2002 to 2005, he was an early pioneer at Canyon Heights Academy, serving as a middle school classroom teacher and fundraiser. This Catholic, lay-run PreK-8 school is approved in the Diocese of San Jose. During his tenure, the school grew from 38 to 295 students, with parents from 37 countries. From 2009 to 2019, he served at CHA as the Director of Campus Ministry, substitute teacher, Director of Institutional Advancement, and a member of the Board of Directors. In 2015, he was awarded the school’s Founder’s Award for his role in advancing the school’s institutional viability and internal culture. His specialization in school leadership lies in developing active engagement and high morale in communities with shared core values and root beliefs.
After his time at Canyon Heights Academy, Mr. Lyons worked in the corporate world for The Table Group. There, he assisted Patrick Lencioni at their home office in helping corporations and non-profits achieve success through healthy teamwork and strategic clarity. In Nashville, TN, he founded his own consulting and coaching practice, called Smart & Healthy Schools, and Lyons Coaching and Consulting, to help schools and businesses cultivate cultures of high morale, employee engagement, and success.
Mr. Lyons is a graduate of the Trivium School (high school) in Lancaster, MA. Founded in 1979, the Trivium is considered a pioneer school in the revitalization of classical education in the United States. He holds a Licentiate in Philosophy from Regina Apostolorum University in Rome and an M.A. in Education from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. His capstone project focused on achieving exceptional morale in 8th-grade classes.
Mr. Lyons grew up in Portland, Maine, but has spent his adult life living in Rome, the Bay Area, and most recently in Nashville. He finds inspiration in his Catholic faith, his family and friends, nature, travel, learning, and podcasts, as well as in meeting new people and being supportive of families.
I feel strongly that OLPA will flourish with the community of founders and families that God has called to it.
Since my first visit to HMB in 2003, I have sensed that Half Moon Bay is a very special place that lacks one beautiful thing: a joyfully Catholic classical school. I am grateful to become a part of that mission that the Board and Mr. Wilkinson have responded to with so much vision. Thank you to those of you for trusting them in the early stages of OLPA's life, I am excited to meet you all
“On behalf of the entire board, Juliette and I are thrilled and proud to welcome Mr. Tim Lyons as Our Lady of the Pillar Academy’s headmaster beginning in the 2024-25 academic year. Juliette and I have known his family and him for over 30 years. Juliette first met them at a Catholic classical liberal arts high school in Massachusetts. In the past 20+ years Mr. Lyons has been a leader in Northern California Catholic grade school teaching, ministry, fundraising and administration. He brings with him, not only his vast experience in academia, his study of theology and philosophy, his masters in school administration from Notre Dame, but also a rich network of educational leaders in the Bay Area, a stellar reputation and most endearing, an unmatched enthusiasm for the mission of Our Lady of the Pillar Academy; to build abundant lives through Catholic classical education. ”
