From the time she was in second grade, Alana Rifkin Gelnick knew that she wanted to be a teacher. She says that for years her younger brother was her only pupil.

Since then she has been a teacher, administrator and now she is an educational consultant, working with schools, teachers and parents on curriculum, leadership, coaching and product development. Always an innovator, her hope – through everything that she does – is to find new ways to help kids grow and become the best versions of themselves.

While studying education at Bank Street, she thought that her dream was to eventually open up a school. If asked what type of school, she would have described a school committed to each child. When she completed her studies in 2008 and was working as an assistant teacher at SAR Academy in Riverdale, New York, she realized that the school she had been thinking about creating already existed. She spent 18 years at SAR, first as an assistant teacher, then as a literary specialist and finally as associate principal of the Early Learning Center. She was working there in 2021 when she won the Pomegranate Prize, and left in August 2024.

She credits Marcia Jacobowitz, the former head of the Early Learning Center, who encouraged Gelnick to take on the job of assistant principal when she retired.

At SAR, she says that they worked to make sure that everything they were doing with the children was based in constructivist theory. Underlying Gelnick’s vision is the need to really listen to children, to validate their feelings and learn by doing.

“Kids learn by doing. Even a 2-year old learns by doing. Each child is capable. We should be fostering independence from a young age.”

She says that she saw that in action every day, as almost 300 young students climbed up three flights of stairs with their backpacks, making choices about what they wanted to do with teachers as guides.

“We would try to have the children observe, reflect and ask questions – in that way they help to co-construct the curriculum. And we would always weave in Jewish identity, Jewish thought and Jewish practice.”

She is amazed by the spiritual lives of children, and feels that if educators and parents could help kids to continue to experience the ways they think of God and Torah in early childhood, “the world would be a better place.”

“Our job is to harness that, to create opportunities that are memorable, so that they can access them again when they get older,” she says. “That feeling is like magic – if you can cultivate it, it doesn’t go away. We really tried to do that at SAR, and I think we were successful.”

“Educational leadership at SAR gave me both a front row seat and a backstage pass, to observe what was working, and to reimagine what wasn’t. It pushed me to ask, ‘Are we truly meeting kids’ needs in our Modern Orthodox settings, and what does it look like when we do?’”

She recalls a conversation with the family of a 4 year old who didn’t fit in. She and her colleagues didn’t want to consider telling the family that the child couldn’t be at the school, so they created an integrated special education kindergarten in the school.

“I have since learned a lot and can guide people through what can be a very difficult time for parents, to find the right fit for their child,” she says. This is among many things she is very passionate about.

“My time at SAR was a gift,” she says. “I learned to impact a community and really create change. But it was time to move on and, I hope, impact more people.”

The company she founded, where she serves as CEO, is Dreamearly, a name that describes her. “I’m a dreamer,” she says. “And an executor. I’m an early adapter, early innovator, early riser. I do things early, to help kids more broadly.”

The company’s stated mission is “To help people help kids.” She explains that Dreamearly works to empower teachers, leaders and parents, through innovative, individualized coaching and the development of educational plans and materials to help kids succeed.

In her coaching, she is particularly interested in working with people who are early in their educational journey. She is also studying toward her doctorate in American Jewish education . This year, through Dreamerly, she launched a jacket for kids with a magnetic closure (“it closes with a click, just like that”) instead of buttons or zippers to foster independence. It starts at size 2!

A mother of three who lives with her family in Great Neck, New York, where she grew up, she’s also interested in writing and developing children’s books, and hopes to integrate that into Dreamerly. She’s now working on a paper that she hopes to publish on the depiction of Modern Orthodox life in picture books. And she hosts a podcast, Stream of Dreamearly; she recently interviewed Ilana Ruskay-Kidd about the Shefa School as well as Jonathan Schmidt Chapman, a fellow Pomegranate Prize recipient, to “provide tangible takeaways about things to do to make a difference in the lives of children.”

She applied the funds from the Pomegranate Prize toward coaching – in public speaking and in leadership. She worked with Kerry Sheldon, whom she had met at Covenant Foundation retreats. They established measurable goals, she says, which set her up for success.

She explains that her confidence to go out on her own – to leave something that she loved and was good at — and start her own company came through the work she did with the Prize money.

“I never would have taken the plunge without the Covenant Foundation. This idea of constantly growing and striving to create more and better was instilled in me through the Prize.”

In conversation, she repeatedly says that she feels blessed. Is she still thinking about starting her own school?

“I once thought the only way to make change was to build something from the ground up. Now I believe in something more expansive: meeting people where they are, offering tools and insight, and helping them transform the spaces they already inhabit.”