Bruce Libonn
Trustee
Bruce grew up in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, and attended public schools there. He earned a BA in Government from the College of William and Mary and worked in costume as a tour guide in Colonial Williamsburg. He learned of Waldorf education while on a post-graduation backpacking trip through Europe. He attended the teacher training program of the Garden City Waldorf Institute, also receiving an MA in Elementary Education from Adelphi University. This was a life-transforming year in many ways, and he met his future wife, Jula, while there. She went to the Garden City Waldorf School from grade 1-12 and was a Handwork teacher at the school.
Bruce began his teaching career at the Washington Waldorf School, taking a class from grade 4 through grade 8 and another class from grade 1 through grade 5. Bruce, Jula, and their two children, Alisa and David, then moved to northwestern Connecticut, where Bruce held a variety of teaching and administrative positions in Lower, Middle, and Upper Division at The Master’s School, West Simsbury. He finished his 21 years there as Interim Head of School.
Jula and Bruce moved to Nashville in 2005 when he was appointed Lower School Head at Ensworth, from which he retired in 2020, concluding a 46-year career in education. Bruce serves as vice-president of an initiative to open the Music City Children’s Museum, tutors a Ukrainian refugee through the Nashville Adult Literacy Council, and rocks preemies as a volunteer in the NICU at Centennial Hospital.
Bruce and Jula are primary caregivers for their two Nashville-born grandchildren, Nora, age 8, and Trip, age 6, who live around the corner. Bruce attends St. Bartholomew’s Church, where he serves as a Lay Eucharistic Minister, and he sings with the Nashville Community Choir and the Vanderbilt OLLI Choir. Bruce enjoys traveling, reading, and working on family history and genealogy. He loves being a grandfather and, as the saying goes, thinks, “If I’d known it was this much fun, I’d have done it first.”
