What you might not know about Aline Garcia Rubio… yet | Humans of Catlin Gabel

By Emmalyn Song, ‘22

"So I have like 65 or 70 cousins or something, we would go, oftentimes, at my grandparent's house, and there would be upwards of like 30-40 people on the regular basis. We would be there for hours, and there was just a lot of meal sharing and play." When asked about her childhood, Catlin Gabel (CGS) Head of School, Aline Garcia-Rubio, shared. 

I sat down with Garcia-Rubio to talk about her upbringing and what led her to become our Upper School Head. 

Garcia-Rubio grew up in the outskirts of Mexico City, the daughter of a doctor and a Sunday school teacher. Her environment and upbringing informed the value system she carries with her today. 

"Because I lived on the outskirts of the city, I had access to super metropolitan, cosmopolitan, urban living with some of the wealthiest people on the planet and also some of the poorest slums." 

She recalled memories of the diverse social environment she grew up in. 

"Every Wednesday afternoon of my entire childhood, I remember going to a church in which my mom taught Sunday school and my siblings, and I attended those classes and what was super cool about was that it was also on the edge on another part of the city where a wealthy part of the city and a more poor part of the city intersected and the church served both communities, and so there was a pretty healthy interaction with kids from all kinds of different backgrounds from there. And I think that was pretty influential to my value system."

The experience of learning at an intersection of wealth, prosperity and disparity translated into Garcia-Rubio's devotion to empathy and personal connection. 

"This may or may not be visible to people, but I make an effort to listen and to attend to the humans of this place. To know what people's stories are and to be compassionate in the face of people's circumstances."

Growing up surrounded by a large extended family allowed Garcia-Rubio to observe family members' values. 

"My values in my family - we were a highly ethical and moral family, where kindness was a central value and caring for each other was a central value."

She described each side of her family as distinct, commenting on her father’s side as, "Pretty intellectual, so there was a lot of talking about literature and poetry." 

When Garcia-Rubio went to her multi-generational weekend gatherings, her relatives would put her up to unusual tasks. 

"[My aunts] would say things like, ‘You have 20 minutes to put together a play with this plot, and you gotta come back and do it,’ and then we would just do it, which was pretty fun. It was a cross of performance art, intellectual challenge, playful mess altogether."

Her mother’s side is traditionally Catholic, and she incorporated principles of her mother's teachings into her value system. 

"I think of myself as a spiritual person, and I very much align my behaviors and my values with the principles of Christianity. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Mostly about being aware of other people and being compassionate, and trying to do good in the world, which is not to say that I get that perfectly all the time at all. It's more like it's an effort and something I care about."

Garcia-Rubio also strives to stay present and values genuine mindfulness. She threads this appreciation back to her paternal grandfather. 

"There are certain things that I do that are very directly informed by what I heard him say, what he modeled. To give you a specific example, he would sometimes put the equivalent of a dime in his shoe, and he put it in his shoe because he felt it, and that was a reminder to stay present and aware of where he was and who he was with. And the way that translates for me has been a curiosity about mindfulness and investigation of that, and a way of life."

Before her career in education, Garcia-Rubio studied medicine at the Universidad La Salle in Mexico City. She reminisced excitedly about her experience. 

"It was intense! I mean, studying medicine is an intense process. Those years of my life, I think it was eight years. But I wasn't doing much else besides thinking of medicine and studying medicine and doing medicine. That consumed my time, my attention. There's a part about that I loved. I like thinking scientifically, and I like the fact that it was immediately transferable to some concrete actions."

Her immigration to the United States in 2001 catalyzed her transition into education. 

"It was a combination of wanting to start a family and wanting to be present for my kids. Spending time at home with the people I loved." 

She became a teacher a couple years after immigrating and started teaching science at CGS in 2006. 

"My intention was to get my certification, but then I decided to start teaching and then soon after that, I decided to start a family and had my son, and then I was like ‘oh, this is a much better lifestyle for parenting’ and stuck with that and found satisfaction in using my mind and working with people. I found just as meaningful a purpose in teaching and education as I did in medicine."

Garcia-Rubio has been the CGS Head of Upper School since 2017. Most students know her as the de-facto person to contact regarding all things Upper-School. However, she sees her position at its best as a supportive, guiding hand. 

"I view my role as generating the conditions where people can thrive and do their best work."