Dr. Paul M. Pressly served as the Savannah Country Day headmaster from 1983-2004. In honor of his longtime tenure and status as Headmaster Emeritus, the Board of Trustees unanimously voted to name the Lower School building in his honor—Pressly Hall.

Pressly is also a notable figure in the Savannah community, serving as the Director of the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance, a partnership between the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and the Ossabaw Island Foundation. He is the author of On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World (University of Georgia Press, 2013). Dr. Pressly is a former Rhodes Scholar and earned degrees from Oxford University, Harvard, and Princeton.