LeadTeam Summit

Sarah Dugan, Founder
Teach, Learn, Thrive

As a school leader, you wear many hats. Yet, the "instructional leader" hat remains one of the most critical and challenging, especially when balancing the necessity of supervision with the desire to empower faculty. We will explore how to maximize the impact of your limited time with faculty by using specific coaching mindsets and skills that foster teacher agency and reduce dependency on administrative problem-solving.

This session directly addresses the tension between the "boss" role and the "coach" role. Leaders will learn to navigate the critical distinction between Coaching (building capacity) and Consulting (providing solutions), gaining clarity on when to strategically deploy each mode. Through practical scenarios and a live coaching demonstration, we will share tools such as high-impact questions and neutrality techniques—that turn brief hallway interactions or office meetings into opportunities for professional growth. You will leave better equipped to hold space for teacher expertise while maintaining the high standards and accountability your role requires.

Dick Ewing, Leadership & Team Coach | Governance Advisor
RTE Global

Independent and international school boards are under growing pressure to make high-quality decisions quickly, navigate increasing stakeholder complexity, and provide strategic leadership, not just oversight. Yet even highly committed trustees can find themselves operating as a collection of individuals rather than as a cohesive governance team. This Masterclass reframes governance as teamwork: helping boards move beyond compliance to build trust, shared purpose, and a disciplined approach to working together in service of the mission.

Drawing on systemic team coaching, classic research on what makes ‘real teams’ effective, and the presenter’s experience as a head of school and board advisor, this session will provide participants with practical tools for strengthening board culture and performance. The session features discussion-based governance case vignettes that surface typical board tensions; a simple Ten-Point Board Check-Up; a Board Charter exercise that clarifies what trustees need from each other; and a basic framework for clarifying purpose, expectations, and results over time. The emphasis is on helping boards become more intentional, generative, and resilient as teams. When boards function as real teams, they make better decisions, support their heads of school more effectively, and create greater long-term impact.

Paula Apostolou, Founder & Organizational Alignment Consultant | Leadership Coach
Recentered Coaching and Consulting

School leaders are navigating constant demands, competing priorities, and increasing expectations—often without systems that truly support sustainable leadership. Over time, this reactive pace can fragment attention, contribute to decision fatigue, and limit a leader’s ability to focus on what matters most.

This interactive workshop invites school leaders to examine how their current planning and decision-making habits either support or undermine their effectiveness. Participants will explore a practical leadership planning framework designed to align daily responsibilities with strategic priorities, reduce cognitive overload, and support more intentional leadership. 

Through guided reflection, discussion, and hands-on application, leaders will develop a personalized planning system they can immediately use to strengthen focus, improve follow-through, and lead with greater clarity and purpose within their unique school contexts.

Garet Libbey, Leadership Coach & Consultant
Garet Libbey Consulting

As leaders step into the start of a new school year, they are immediately called on to show up - in opening meetings, high-stakes conversations, community-facing moments, and daily interactions that set the tone for culture and professionalism. The term “executive presence” is often used to describe these moments, yet it is frequently ill-defined and can unintentionally reinforce bias toward certain communication styles, identities, and norms. In this session, we name that tension directly and reframe presence not as performance or personality, but as alignment between who you are, how you lead, and what others experience. This interactive master class explores leadership presence as both an internal and external practice - one that can be understood, developed, and intentionally strengthened. 

Through reflection, discussion, and applied tools, participants will identify their own gifts and challenges related to presence, and will leave better prepared to model clarity, care, and professionalism as they establish expectations, relationships, and culture at the outset of the school year.

Laurie Ehrlich, Co-Founder & Marketing Strategist
Thrive Hive

Small class sizes, rigorous academics, warm community…have you recently used one or more of these features to promote your school?

Given the sheer amount of noise and everyday stressors that overtake the attention of donors and parents everywhere, your messaging, and accompanying marketing and communications, must be succinct, yet information-rich, and differentiated, yet flexible enough for your target audience(s).

In this session we will address:

• Capturing usable feedback from current parents, alumni, faculty, donors, students, and other constituencies

• Clarifying features vs. benefits, and amplifying the latter

• Identifying value propositions for various school audiences while maintaining a consistent overall message

• Creating short- and long-form content that captures the essence of your school and prompts constituents to take an action

• Compiling an integrated and sustainable marketing plan where all channels work in concert

Leave with an understanding of how your school is actually different from the one down the street...and why parents should care.

J.P. Watson, Senior Managing Director
Mike Vachow, Senior Managing Director
The Gowan Group

Institutional Alignment—The Secret Sauce for Strategic Success is an experience-rich masterclass designed for private school leaders seeking strategic clarity, cohesion, and momentum. Guided by The Gowan Group’s consultants, participants will move step-by-step through a comprehensive, integrated approach to institutional strategy—beginning with deep institutional research and extending through mission review and revision, strategic planning, and intentional implementation strategies. The session demonstrates how disciplined research and intentional listening create the foundation for informed decision-making, priority setting, and long-term sustainability.

Participants will explore how aligned institutions translate vision into action through clear strategic priorities, defined initiatives, and executable action plans that include timelines, accountability, and financial implications. The masterclass emphasizes the power and leverage of alignment across mission, enrollment, fundraising, finances, and marketing—showing how schools that operate from a shared framework move from reactive survival to proactive thriving. Through practical tools, examples, and frameworks, leaders will learn how to unify their community around a compelling institutional narrative and a shared path forward.

Brooke Carroll, Consultant
Acies Strategies

We all know that leading a school is stressful. The multitude of demands on a leader’s time, cognitive load, and emotional bandwidth is immense.

Most people can handle their stress over time by employing various coping and self-care strategies.

However, for some, these strategies lose their efficacy, and stress expands into something much bigger: Burnout.

Burnout is a result of extended stress due to a variety of factors. “If the stress feels never-ending and comes with feelings of emptiness, apathy, and hopelessness, it may be indicative of burnout,” (Psychology Today).

Burnout can result in mental and physical health challenges, a lack of motivation, withdrawal, and other negative responses. Therefore, it is important to manage burnout- preferably before it becomes acute.

There are several practices that school leaders can take when they are on the road to burnout; the first is to recognize that they are experiencing more than just typical work stress.

In this workshop, we will discuss how to distinguish stress from burnout and strategies for managing both. Participants will be invited to engage in specific stress-reducing activities, and there will be opportunities for participants to share their own successes and strategies.

We will discuss how school leaders can monitor the stress levels of their employees and help to mitigate burnout in others. Participants will leave with ideas and practices they can implement immediately to help manage their work and avoid burnout.