I am Anastasia Rigney and excited to be the Principal of ACUDEO College Protea Glen. My passion is education and I have been involved in the profession for 32 years. I started out as a teacher at Klipspruit West Senior Secondary school. Being fairly young and new to the profession it taught me a lot about teaching and forming relationships with learners and parents. In 1997 I transferred to Turffontein Primary school, first as teacher and within two years I was promoted to Principal. It was an immense challenge for me since the new school was a previous model C school and also the first truly multicultural school in the south of Johannesburg. While challenging at first I soon realized it gave me an opportunity to develop critical managerial skills which helped me to build bridges with the staff and the Gauteng Department of Education, and with parents and other stakeholders of the school. During my time at Turffontein I felt privileged that I was able to create an exchange program with the UK Education Department through the British Council and I was invited to do a Master's programme in Educational Leadership at Harvard University in the USA.