Head of School
Kent School
Chestertown, Maryland
My journey to headship began in the high-stakes, fast-paced world of New York City advertising. Early in my career, I decoded consumer behavior, refined brand narratives, met cover girls, chose lipstick and nail polish shades, and navigated the relentless energy of Manhattan agency life.
On a train ride from New York to Baltimore, while working in brand management on a new cosmetics line, I met my future husband. After our three children were born, I changed jobs for better work-life balance, taking a marketing role in the independent school they attended. I wasn’t looking for an administrative role—I was looking for a brand I believed in.
I was perfectly content—happy, even—being a marketing and communication director. I loved the alchemy of storytelling, the art of persuasion, the strategy behind enrollment, and the thrill of a successful fundraising campaign. Over 15 years, the work evolved, eventually leading me to serve as assistant head for external relations. Then my head of school and mentor planted a seed. She urged me to consider headship and offered to send me to a leadership seminar for women. My response was immediate: Why?
At the time, I understood headship as a purely academic pursuit—pedagogy, programming, and class schedules. My mentor saw something broader: the modern independent school as a complex ecosystem, requiring not only academic excellence but visionary stewardship.
While the heart of a school is unquestionably the classroom, the vessel that protects that heart—its mission, stability, and future—is built on the external pillars I spent years mastering. Still, pursuing headship from a nontraditional path felt like a gamble. Yet I came to see my toolkit wasn’t merely relevant; it was essential. The skills I honed in boardrooms and marketing suites—strategic thinking, narrative clarity, financial fluency—are the very engines that sustain independent schools.
There is no single script for leadership. Sometimes the strongest leaders are those who learned to tell an institution’s story first—to truly understand its values, audience, and future—before they were ever asked to step into headship.
Photo by Noah Willman