“Be the One Who Makes the Umbrella Before the Rain Arrives”

Gregg Maloberti joined Keystone Academy in June 2025 as Dean of Admission. He had already spent a semester on campus at the time of the interview.

Before coming to Keystone, Mr. Maloberti served as Director of Admissions at several leading schools in the United States. He spent 15 years in the role at Lawrenceville School, one of the top boarding schools on the East Coast. During this period, he earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and went on to become a well-regarded author and researcher in the field of education.

Over the years, Mr. Maloberti has supported and guided Asian students seeking to study in the United States. He has also worked to introduce American educational philosophies to schools in Asia. “As my career progressed, I eventually decided to move to Asia and try to bring a Western curriculum to Asia without moving the kids, just the adults. But in both cases, something was just missing.”

What he hoped to see was an education that combines Eastern and Western teaching and learning practices without compromising national and cultural identity. When he learned more about Keystone’s educational philosophy, he felt he had found an international bilingual school where students could enjoy a truly bilingual education without any compromises, especially with regards to their cultural identity.

With his cross-cultural background and extensive admissions experience at top American boarding schools, how does Mr. Maloberti view the differences between Keystone and its American counterparts? What distinctive qualities does he see in Keystone students? What changes does he plan to introduce in admissions strategies and scholarship policies? And in an era marked by uncertainty, what kind of students does Keystone hope to cultivate?

Through the conversation, we sensed that he spoke first and foremost as an educator, sharing his views from that standpoint and consistently returning to the ideals that guide his work. In a time of uncertainty and in a season of change, the essence of education may still offer a more certain answer.

About the Speaker

Gregg Maloberti began his career as an English teacher after graduating from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and eventually moved into the admissions work. He was Dean of Admissions at several outstanding schools in the United States, including Alexander Dawson School in Colorado, Cranbrook Schools in Michigan, and Brooks School in Massachusetts. He then spent 15 years as Dean of Admission at Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, a top boarding school on the East Coast of the United States. At the same time, he received his master’s and doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and has since been a notable writer and researcher in the educational field.

Following his time at Lawrenceville, Gregg served as headmaster at two schools in Asia—at the Canadian International School of Hong Kong and then a start-up school (associated with Shattuck St. Mary’s School) in Malaysia for six years.

Gregg is joined at Keystone by his wife, Amy, who has served as a math teacher, early childhood teacher, and worked in admission offices over the years. Gregg and Amy have three grown children who were all raised and educated in American boarding schools.

This interview transcript has been edited for style and brevity.

The Journey to Keystone

You have served as admissions director at several top schools in the United States and as principal at various schools in Asia. What attracted you to join Keystone Academy?

Gregg Maloberti (GM): The reason I came to Keystone is that my whole career has been leading me to this place. I didn’t know it at the time. I began my career by trying to encourage students from Asia to come to America to study a Western curriculum.

As my career progressed, I eventually decided to move to Asia and try to bring a Western curriculum to Asia without moving the kids, just the adults. But in both cases, there were parts that were just missing. When I heard about Keystone, I was interested in this project because it promised to preserve Chinese identity, which was the part I wanted to bring to America in the first place. A true Chinese perspective is what I hoped international students would bring to American boarding schools.

Keystone has a fascinating approach that values the Chinese perspective and cultivates a sense of Chinese identity through the Chinese Thread, the Chinese language, and the Chinese National Curriculum. You end up with a student who has a balanced view of the world, can think like a Westerner, can also feel like a Chinese, and can blend these two ways of thinking into one kind of identity, one kind of sensibility.

And then, when you take our students outside their own context, they understand they are somewhere different. They know how others see them. And that’s the piece that I couldn’t get right in my career, I couldn’t bring Chinese kids to America and make it happen; likewise, I couldn’t bring American teachers to China and make it happen. But by having a school that really understands its own sense of Chinese identity and has a balanced staff between Chinese and Westerners, we have it going on here in the way that I’d always dreamed about but never was able to make happen.

What made you change your perspective and decide to come to China?

GM: In the early part of my career, I spent a lot of time bringing Chinese students to America. And it was a passion of mine. Some of the early students who were able to come over to what was then Lawrenceville.

One of them was a boy who had grown up here in Beijing. He was so earnest, hardworking, and absolutely brilliant. But he was in no way prepared for an American university.

Within a year, he figured out a lot of things. Where he was finding things difficult was that he’d never interacted with a Western faculty before. He had been to a very top school in Beijing with an entirely Chinese staff, but didn’t have the kinds of experiences kids have here at Keystone, where half or more of our secondary school teachers are Westerners. These students can figure things out, such as how to build relationships with the teachers, how to ask questions, and how to function in a classroom managed by a Western teacher.

In my research, I discovered that many students who arrived at boarding schools from different cultures took almost 2 years to reach their full potential in earning grades and participating in the classroom. That’s why a Keystone education is different: it allows our students a gradual transition from a very Chinese approach to teaching and learning to a Western one. Their confidence grows at the appropriate rate. By the time they enter our high school classrooms, they are as ready to ask questions and participate in discussions as any American kid who’s been in a private school his whole life.

These students have a quiet sense of confidence. They are confident because, frankly, they know a lot. The Chinese curriculum is rich and full of information and knowledge. By the time they have finished Grade 5, they know a lot about Chinese culture and their own language. And they are capable English speakers. So, they present as confident students.

But they have also developed analytical, thinking, research, and presentation skills. They’ve learned how to stand behind an idea and make a point. When you encounter our students, they have a presence and confidence.

Is a US high school more advantageous than Keystone for college applications?

Students face fierce competition for college applications, and some parents believe that attending high school in the US or abroad gives students an advantage in applying to top universities. With your extensive work and professional experience in the diverse cultural backgrounds in the US and Asia, what are your thoughts on this phenomenon?

GM: I think American top high schools are attractive to parents for a couple of reasons. One, I think they see it as an audition for college admission. They think, ‘Well, if my kid can be admitted to a top American boarding school, then they’re probably going to be admitted to a top college.’

The second part is that some parents really believe that if they can get their child out of China and into the US, colleges will somehow view their child differently.

I think parents think that getting their kid into an American boarding school will immediately put them at the top of the pile for the evaluation. In my experience, that doesn’t seem to happen. Having brought many Chinese students to America and watched what happens in their college admission process—[that kind of prevailing view] is not the golden ticket, and it doesn’t immediately guarantee that they will be viewed differently than their former classmates back in China.

Colleges are more sophisticated than that. They look at lots of different characteristics. Colleges have plenty of kids from Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut, where all the boarding schools are. So, they don’t need Chinese kids who look just like the rest of the boarding school kids. They want Chinese kids who bring a Chinese perspective and identity and can add something to the classroom.

What makes boarding schools in China different for Chinese students from those in the US?

GM: Boarding life for Chinese kids is very different from that of American kids. Even though the top boarding schools have a lot of geographic diversity and many students from different parts of the world, 60-70% of the students who attend those schools live less than 2 hours from their homes. That means those kids have access to their homes, and those parents have access to the schools.

Chinese parents with kids in boarding schools do not have access to their kids or those schools. They will see their kids on the parents’ weekend or on the holiday, and they will meet a teacher once or twice. But they will not see them standing on the sidelines at a soccer game. They will not meet them when picking up or dropping off their kid on a random weekend.

Chinese parents are setting their kids up for a different experience than most American boarding school students have.

The experience most American boarding school kids have is very similar to the one we present here: Keystone students deal with teachers, systems, and the school for at least 5 days a week and have support from their parents on the weekends. That really helps them balance their growth by allowing them to test their independence, organizational skills, and self-reliance.

On the weekends, their parents can tune them up, straighten them out, support and help them grow, and then send them back to us, and we try again. 

None of the American boarding schools offer the IB or a bilingual diploma. They are offering a straight-up, Western-style classical education, and many schools will either offer AP classes or tell the kids to take the AP exams on their own.

I think the first thing we’re offering that American boarding schools don’t is an IB curriculum and a bilingual diploma. The next thing is—I really can’t emphasize this enough—we are offering our students the chance to know themselves as Chinese people, as part of a proud culture with a long, rich tradition of intellectualism, thought, discovery, and a passion for learning.

When I was recruiting Chinese kids, one of the things I admired was how comprehensive their middle school education really was. A Chinese kid who had been through the eighth or ninth grade was really solid in terms of their understanding of culture, language, literature, science, and mathematics.

I knew even if the students didn’t have as much language proficiency or experience, that strength would carry them through their catch-up time with the American kids. We are just steadily building on that strength, without causing them any trauma or feelings of inadequacy.

That’s what I mean when I talk about our students standing before their teachers on two feet solid. They are ready for any questions, and they have questions of their own.

I even see it in our third graders. A few weeks ago, when Professor Jonathan H. Jiang from the California Institute of Technology was here, some of the most difficult questions came from our third graders. They hit straight forward, right at the professor, and asked him a difficult question. He hit back hard and gave them a clear answer. And they took it. He didn’t have to soften his response; he answered them like they were a full student. I just don’t see that in many schools. 

Keystone Boarding Life Program
Does “boarding school” mean “living” at school?

Many Keystone graduates have mentioned the impact of the residential program on them. How does Keystone’s residential program affect students’ character development, academic life, and future development?

GM: Boarding programs do a couple of things. One, they teach kids that they can live without their parents, which is a vital lesson for college. If kids get into college without the basic skills of waking themselves up, remembering what they need to bring to class, managing their free time, or getting along with others, they will spend the first year of college learning them.

When you go to an American college, you will see the vast majority of kids learning how to do that in their first year. The small minority of kids who attended boarding schools, whether in China or America, already know this. They are managing their time just fine. They know when it’s time to go to the library. They know when it’s time to go to the gym. They know how to ask for extra help. They also know how to get along with the teachers. They know how to deal with them outside of class.

If you spend 12 years in school and only see a teacher in a classroom, you’re not prepared to deal with a college professor because you still think, ‘It’s quite possible this teacher is really just a robot.’

But in boarding school, you see your teacher all the time: at breakfast, lunch, or dinner; with their family; or after hours to ask for extra help. They are real people.

When you’re in college and suddenly want to get extra help from your professor, it becomes easy. You just treat them the same way you treated your high school teachers. But if you’re a kid who never went to boarding school, you’re not sure how to approach this person; you consider them a stranger.

The other part is that boarding schools create a dominant culture because they are institutions. Everybody is in this environment having the same values, the same obligations, the same routines, the same rituals, and the same schedule. You get used to how things work, and that’s how college works. Boarding school kids transition smoothly.

But one of the things that boarding school creates is a sense of belonging and a sense of fitting in.

And it’s the same thing here in Keystone. Kids look around, and everybody else is mostly Chinese. We have some international kids, but most of them are like me; they have black hair, have my style, and they speak my language. That breeds a kind of confidence. You feel comfortable in your environment. You feel confident enough to take a risk and go talk to a kid who’s different from you.

For high school kids, we call this “tribalism”. They like to be in their own tribe, surrounded by people who like what they like, listen to their music, and validate their personality. That builds a kind of confidence. It’s hard if you step outside of that early. It’s hard to be very different. That’s what happens to international kids in boarding schools—they really have to have a lot of courage. It takes great strength to jump into that situation. But if you can enjoy your tribe in high school, when you get to college, you have much more confidence and the ability to step out of your own tribe much faster.

Keystone House System

Keystone’s community culture is built through a housing system. Every member—whether student, teacher, or staff—is integrated into one of five housing units named after the Chinese five elements: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth.

The housing units are not only a stage for cooperation and competition, but also a symbol of belonging. In daily activities and housing competitions, the five housing units both encourage and compete amicably, while remaining united. Together, the members of the five housing units create an open, inclusive, diverse, and harmonious Keystone community.

When I was in boarding schools, I met many older alumni from overseas. What was interesting about them is that after boarding school, college, graduate school, maybe a brief stint of working overseas, many of them had returned home, and they were really, as adults, kind of in a search or a quest for their previous identity, for a connection to their original culture. They all admitted feeling a little bit lost because they just didn’t know, experience, and appreciate some things they might have learned if they had stayed in their culture longer through high school.

There’s a weird sense of regret that they have about that. And even as adults, they are looking back and thinking, ‘I might have missed something.’ I’m very much a proponent of an international education, but I really think the later it starts, the better.

“Admissions are more of an art than a science”

What Keystone looks for in prospective students

What qualities does the Keystone Office of Admission team value most in students during the admissions process?

GM: We need students to show us a pattern of success in school, but we’re more interested in their skills and ability to get along with others. Are they showing signs of leadership, cooperation, and participation? Are they willing to take a risk? How do they react when things don’t go their way? Can they recover quickly from a disappointment, a correction, or a kind of upset in their life?

An educational consultant might know the answers to these questions and will train my child to succeed on whatever exam the school sets. But I don’t know if these consultants can train children in the skills we are evaluating, which are more about the skills learned over a lifetime and those kids learn in the safety of their own homes. How would an agent train kids to handle disappointment and recover quickly?

Parents can do that by having conversations at home and providing experiences for their children. Those can teach students the skills I just mentioned. And that’s what we’re looking for: what this child has been doing in the years before they applied to Keystone? Do they have enough courage, skills, and the desire to work hard? It’s not easy to study in two languages. Not everybody wants to do that. We need kids who are willing to go ahead and speak English, even if it’s not perfect, because that’s how you learn it—by making mistakes and getting corrected. If you don’t have the courage to do that, it’s going to be a long time before you learn.

How are these traits you shared reflected in younger children? How does the Keystone Admission team evaluate younger applicants and those with less confidence in expressing themselves? Could you share a specific example?

GM: The process of evaluating young children is maybe more of an art than it is a science.

We want to put them in their natural environment. We do two events: One, we bring them in for a chat with an admission counselor and their parents, and see how they react to that situation. We see if they are willing to talk to a stranger, and how that goes. And we’re looking to see how the family supports the child. But that session is also an opportunity for us to determine whether the family truly understands our educational program and is committed to supporting the goals we have for their child.

In the many admission committees that I have been part of over the years, occasionally, I was nicknamed the “Patron Saint of the Shy”, the one supporter on the committee who would stand up for the shy kid. Believe it or not, as a child, I was very shy. I didn’t really trust teachers and was suspicious of their motives. I didn’t know what they were going to do next. So, I would watch them carefully and try to decide if I was interested in what they wanted to do.

When I encounter a child whom many would label shy, I sometimes just take a closer look. What I discovered is just somebody who is cautious. Shyness is a bit of a catchall and is often cast as a negative trait. If you think about successful people in the world, lots of them are shy or do not seek attention. Many of them are introverted.

If you are going to explore theoretical physics, being an outgoing personality is not a requirement. Being someone who can think about something for a long time without interruption is probably the most important requirement. 

We are interested in children who can focus. More often than not, so-called shy or introverted kids are excellent students and do find a place. Maybe what they lack is the opportunity to fully develop their interest and skills, and then show others that they really do have something to give to the group.

Sometimes, parents are very nervous about thinking that there should be an objective set of criteria. They want to know what it is so they can prepare the kid. The truth is—it isn’t there.

Years ago, I admitted a student from Korea, and she was the hardest-working, most thoughtful, curious, and determined kid I had met in a long time. But one of her SAT scores was not very good. It was only a 75. For Korean parents, it should be 99. 

I said, ‘She has fire in her. She has a kind of drive that I have not seen in any of those other candidates who all have 99.’

Of course, she did wonderfully at school and made her parents very proud with her college placement. But I think that’s what parents have to count on. Most of our admission counselors have been here since the school opened. This is one of the most stable groups of staff on the whole campus. They have been choosing students slightly before when the school opened.

We know what we’re looking for, and it’s not on a list. We’re looking for this courage, curiosity, drive, and willingness to—in effect—reinvent themselves into something that they aren’t at the moment.

We want kids who are not afraid of risk and failure, who are willing to try again and not be perfectionists, and who try after failing. We want that kid who sticks with the solution until they find it.

Keystone Scholarship Program
How scholarships allow students to “see” and “feel” more people

Keystone has made adjustments to its scholarship policy. Could you please share Keystone’s scholarship policy and the thinking behind its redesign?

GM: The significant changes are trying to focus on merit as our highest value in terms of why we give a scholarship. We’re looking for students who are already succeeding in the school, or others who will join the school with the promise of success. A merit scholarship doesn’t focus on a single academic requirement; rather, it looks at all kinds of activities that students might be involved in to demonstrate that they are successful and are worthy of being acknowledged for their success.

Keystone Scholarship Programs

Founder’s Scholars

The Founders Scholarship program honors the men and women whose vision created Keystone Academy. That vision was to create a school that would prepare students to lead and serve in an ever-changing global landscape. Scholarships are granted to applicants who have distinguished themselves in both academic achievement and character and who demonstrate the potential to contribute meaningfully to the Academy community.

Junzi Scholars

The Confucian idea of the scholar-gentleman or jūnzi suggests an individual who is knowledgeable, compassionate, disciplined, and virtuous. Scholars lead others through their example and put the good of the community above personal gain. The Junzi Scholars program honors girls and boys who have demonstrated academic success and leadership skills in their previous school environments and who exhibit the qualities of a jūnzi.

Keystone Scholars

As our most competitive and distinguished scholarship, the Keystone Scholars program represents the highest level of scholarship, leadership, and service. Keystone Scholars are girls and boys who have demonstrated outstanding talent and achievement in both academic and extracurricular realms and who reflect the five Keystone shared values of compassion, justice, respect, wisdom, and honesty.

Founder’s Needs-Based Bursaries

The Founders’ Need-based Scholarship is intended to support students whose families’ financial difficulties make tuition a barrier to attendance. Families will need to provide various financial documents and may need to provide additional information upon the Scholarship Committee’s request.

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And in particular, the Keystone Scholarship Program will expand to more than one, as many as potentially five. This gives us a chance to give more kids that recognition, that what they’re doing is outstanding. Merit scholarships are an interesting way for a school to send that message that, ‘[This student] is a real standout.’ It doesn’t mean that other kids aren’t deserving of such a kind of scholarship, but it also may help other kids to understand, ‘Wow, that student who got the scholarship is a role model for me. And maybe I’m sad because I didn’t get the scholarship, but if I can learn from the student who did, I could probably be a more successful student.’

By expanding merit scholarships through the Keystone Scholars, we think we will not only help individual students but also help the whole school see a broader definition of success and give more kids recognition and a more accessible role model to follow.

Another interesting change—the one that we hope to propose—is a scholarship for a student who’s just finished middle school, including those from public middle schools. We want different kinds of students, and know  Whether they are interested in this kind of bilingual, bicultural education. 

By offering a scholarship that is pitched to a group that is completely outside our student body, we are inviting in another opportunity for students to join this school. I have used these kinds of scholarships in the past. It brings an interesting result because even many kids who are successful at the zhongkao are not that committed to the gaokao because they already know they’re good at this sort of thing.

And they wonder, ‘What else could I train myself to do? What opportunity might I be missing if I just pursue the exam track?’  That’s why we would like to present this opportunity to a different group of kids and see how they respond.

Our other scholarships will feature appreciation for the qualities we are looking for in our students. These help them to recognize that we think they show great promise, and we want to recognize that.

We are giving scholarships to send a clear message to our students about what we think success looks like.

We are sending this message to our newly admitted students to let you know that we believe you have the characteristics to be successful at the school and to add to the composition and diversity of our class.

We’re not in a kind of transactional relationship with our scholarship kids. Our scholarships represent, in a very meaningful way, our school’s shared values and the behaviors, attitudes, and skills that will make them successful.

How should schools help students with issues that are yet to happen?

Some parents feel anxious about their children’s development, especially in today’s global landscape. What core competencies will young people of today need in the future? How does Keystone cultivate students’ ability to cope with uncertainty?

GM: Parents always worry about the future because that’s the one thing they can’t control. Nobody can really control the future. And you want your child to be successful in the future.

I think the solution is to give them an education that prepares them for uncertainty and for making difficult choices—maybe compassionate ones sometimes. There will be times when you have to choose between two things, and maybe neither of them is very good, but one of them is going to be better than the other. It may not be the most profitable or popular, but maybe you have to choose it because it’s the most ethical or honest.  

This is what we’re doing at Keystone. We are giving students opportunities to investigate these kinds of decisions. Take, for instance, the Transdisciplinary Studies in Engineering Technology (TSET) program. One of the things that sets our technology program apart from others is that we’re asking students to consider ethical questions about the technology they are dreaming of. ‘What will be the impact on humans, on the environment, on animals, and are those acceptable outcomes?’ 

Most of the time, when people think about technology, they ask, ‘How can we lower the cost of production?’ ‘How can we reduce labor?’ ‘How can we increase profit?’ ‘How can we make it faster, cheaper, or better?’ But they aren’t thinking about how this affects culture, people’s lives, or people’s sense of purpose. If we let technology take care of everything we do, what do we need humans for?

Lots of futurists like to make us worry about this, that we’re somehow replacing ourselves. But we’re asking our students to think about that in Grade 6 and 9 presently, not once they’re fully educated and out in the world, and suddenly confronted with it.

We’re actually making them think about this as children, so that this value is deep in their identity and consciousness.

We seem to be in a space that is just uncertain. There are changes in the geopolitical arrangements, the trade routes, and the global economy. But the answer for parents is not to send their child(ren) to a school that guarantees a test score, but to a school that teaches them the skills and the courage to deal with uncertainty.

If our students are going to go out and change the world and be part of making decisions about what happens next, they need a bilingual education at a minimum. They need to understand different cultures and needs. They need to have a sense of compassion and appreciation for the decisions that they are making.

If I’m in my futurist moment and saying, ‘What does the next ten years look like? What kind of jobs will our graduates have?’ Our graduates will be out there in the world negotiating these new relationships, setting up new trade routes, cross-training people in legal, medical, and financial fields, or helping to manage the flow of people, money, and resources.

The best preparation for that is an IB education, a bilingual and a bicultural education. Students educated in these concepts will be the ones who are comfortable in those situations. They will be the ones who can lean into unfamiliar situations and have the confidence to make the best arrangements for their company, government, or whoever they’re representing. They’re not going to be traumatized by where they’re sent and what they have to do. They will know who they are and have the skills to make things happen.

If our kids are going to be successful, they will not be the ones who can adapt to change. They will be the ones who can anticipate and see before change happens. They will have the solution ready by the time the rest of the people figure out what’s going on around them.

You want to be the umbrella maker who figures out how it works before it starts raining. That’s what we want our kids to be able to do: to look at the situation and say, ‘Something is about the change. We need a new solution. Let’s figure out what it is. Let’s go and get it made and let’s be ready before the market knows it, wants it, or needs it.’