Cardinal Ritter helped shape her. Now she shapes it

hen Tamiko Armstead first heard about Cardinal Ritter College Prep, she didn’t know such a place existed.

Her parents were determined to send their children to Catholic schools, but Armstead’s experience in predominantly white Catholic elementary schools left her frustrated.

“It was an environment that expected me to assimilate without letting me be my true female self,” Armstead recalled.

That changed after two Cardinal Ritter representatives came to “High School Night” at her elementary school to tell students about their predominantly Black Catholic high school. When Armstead came home, she told her parents, “I absolutely have to go there!”

She did. And it changed her life.

“It was the first time in my educational experience I felt at home. I felt like it was a place made for me,” Armstead said.

Decades later, Armstead returned to the school that had given her that sense of belonging — this time to lead it.

Since becoming president and CEO of Cardinal Ritter in 2014, Armstead has doubled enrollment, overseen major improvements to the school’s 17-acre campus and expanded its science, technology, arts and health and wellness programming. The school reports that its graduates have an 82% college persistence rate, compared with 73% nationally.

Armstead will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award during the St. Louis American Foundation’s 39th annual Salute to Excellence in Education Scholarship & Awards Gala on Oct. 17 at the St. Louis Union Station Hotel.

Armstead was quick to credit Cardinal Ritter’s success to the people around her.

“I haven’t made it this great institution all by myself. I’m not the teacher, I’m not the principal, I’m not the coach,” Armstead said. “Those are the people who make the magic happen.”

Cardinal Ritter’s longtime board chairman, Joe Conran, describes her as a leader who cares about the school’s more than 400 students as if they were her own.

“She leads by example,” Conran said, crediting Armstead and the people around her with creating a culture that produces well-rounded and successful young people.

What makes Armstead’s accomplishments in education even more noteworthy is that she returned to Cardinal Ritter after spending 19 years in the business world as an executive with the St. Louis-based financial services firm Edward Jones.

But Armstead acknowledges there were what she calls “divine” indicators along the way that seemed to predict where her life was headed.

At age 7, Armstead, who grew up with two older brothers, asked her parents not to buy her any girl dolls for Christmas. She insisted on a boy doll, telling them, “When I grow up, I’m only going to have sons.”

Today, she and her husband, William, have five boys.

Another prediction came to fruition years later at Wilberforce University, where Armstead blossomed, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science, national and international business internships and other academic accolades.

In June 1994, she was crowned Miss Wilberforce. During the competition, a panel of judges asked the candidates where they saw themselves in 20 years.

“I see myself running a school,” she told the audience.

Twenty years later, to the month, she accepted the invitation to lead Cardinal Ritter.

By then, Armstead had spent nearly two decades at Edward Jones and earned an MBA from Washington University. Although she had never run a school, she said her business experience prepared her for the challenge.

“I knew I had to get enrollment up; do some work on our strategic plan, build our brand and I knew I had to fundraise,” Armstead recalled. She had already led large departments and spent 17 of her 19 years at Edward Jones in leadership roles.

She also carried over a guiding principle from the time she spent at the company.

“Edward Jones’ motto is to ‘put the client first.’ So, I said, ‘that’s the same for us at Ritter, put the kids first.’ We put the mission first in everything we do.”

Dr. Pamela Hamilton, Cardinal Ritter’s assistant principal, said that focus is evident throughout the school.

“Every planning session, every meeting, everything is predicated on uplifting and celebrating our children,” Hamilton said. “When everyone else talks negatively about our children, she’s always trying to find ways to empower them.”

Bob Virgil,  a former dean of Washington University’s Olin School of Business and general partner at Edward Jones, credits Armstead with breathing “life and vitality” into Cardinal Ritter.

“Through her leadership, she’s shown that there can be excellence in secondary education … as long as there is commitment to excellence and to stewarding wisely and carefully limited resources,” Virgil said.

That commitment includes bringing more Black men into the school.

In 2022, Armstead led a strategic campaign to recruit more Black male teachers. Today, about 40% of Cardinal Ritter’s faculty and staff are Black men, compared with about 2% of teachers nationally.

“We now have a Black male in every subject — science, math, social studies, arts, music, you name it — and I’m just so proud of that,” Armstead said.

Her belief in the importance of Black male involvement with young people goes back to her late father, who started Organized Men Against Juvenile Crime, a nonprofit that worked with police and public schools to reduce gun-related violence.

“I have been so blessed to have been surrounded by strong Black men from high school to college to even Edward Jones,” Armstead said. “I know a Black boy can get something irreplaceable from an adult Black male.”

Her father’s work came “full circle” in 2021, she said, when she partnered with the Urban League to start Movement Not Moment, a student-led nonviolence initiative born after the murder of Cardinal Ritter student Isis Mahr.

Last year, Armstead received the President’s Award from the National Catholic Educational Association for contributions and leadership in Catholic education.

Looking back, Armstead said she had no idea that the predictions, experiences and connections in her life would lead her back to Cardinal Ritter — the school where she first felt at home — and ultimately to its leadership.

“I didn’t know but God knew.”

Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.

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