Pre-Conference Workshop Options
Member Price: $175.00 Each
Non-Member Price: $325.00 Each
Option #1: Good Governance Practices
Date and Time: September 16 | 9:00am-11:45am | Breakfast Included (7:30am-8:45am)
Audience: New Board Members, New Heads of School, Experienced Board Member (refresher)
Level: Beginning, Entry Level
Presenter: Dr. Robin Heslip
The success of a private, independent international school depends on good governance. This is more crucial than ever for fostering accountability, transparency, and stakeholder trust within school communities. These sessions will focus on the basic roles and responsibilities of the Head of School and Board in governing effectively and responsibly and in carrying forward the school’s mission and goals.
Areas of focus include:
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Board Roles and Responsibilities
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Board Fiduciary Responsibilities
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Board Operations
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Board and Head of School Accountability (Evaluations)
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Setting Board Goals and Head of School Goals
Option #2: Strategic & Human Dimensions of Advanced Governance
Date and Time: September 16 | 1:00pm-3:45pm | Lunch Included (11:45am-1:00pm)
Audience: Experienced Board Members, Heads of School
Level: Advanced
Presenter: Dr. Robin Heslip
This two-part learning experience is designed for experienced boards and Heads of School ready to move beyond operational oversight toward high-impact governance. The first portion will explore how mature boards practice strategic stewardship through generative thinking, meaningful dashboards, future-focused risk management, and emerging AI governance.
The second part shifts to the human dimension of governance, focusing on sustaining a high-trust Head–Board partnership, strengthening Head appraisal and leadership stability, and building a diverse, self-renewing trustee pipeline. Participants will engage in facilitated discussion and peer sharing throughout both sessions.
Heads and Boards attending this session should bring questions, ideas, and examples of their effective practices to share in small groups.
Participants will:
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Examine how boards can move beyond oversight to generative, future-focused governance
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Identify the most meaningful indicators of institutional health and strategic risk
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Explore emerging approaches to AI governance at the board level
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Strengthen strategies for building high-trust Head–Board relationships
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Reimagine Head of School appraisal as a growth-oriented and inclusive process
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Learn practical approaches to recruiting, mentoring, and sustaining a diverse trustee pipeline
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Discover tools for ongoing board self-assessment and renewal
Main Conference Workshops
Included in Main Conference Price
From Silos to Synergy - Integrated Strategic Thinking
School Presenter: FDR, Lima, Peru | Patricia Marshall & Anita Bitar
This session presents a compelling case study of how Colegio Roosevelt, The American School of Lima, reimagined its strategic planning model from a siloed, committee-driven structure to an integrated accountability system grounded in shared ownership and alignment. Previously organized around separate strategic objectives with independent committees and annual reporting cycles, the school shifted to a dynamic model centered on three interconnected pillars activated through an annual theme that aligns goals across the Board, leadership, divisions, and departments. Central to this transformation was the evolution of governance: the Board of Trustees moved from an approval role to active co-creation, establishing a strategic subcommittee and aligning its own annual objectives to the plan, while a long-standing Core Planning Team was redesigned into a nimble Strategic Advisory Collaborative that meets regularly and represents diverse stakeholder voices. Led jointly by the Superintendent and Board Chair, this session will explore how governance structures, role clarity, and intentional alignment can move strategy from static documentation to lived practice.
Participants will:
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Engage in reflection and practical application, leaving with actionable tools to strengthen board-superintendent partnership, increase coherence across their organizations, and lead strategic thinking as an ongoing, integrated process.
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Diagnose the limitations of siloed strategic planning models and identify how fragmented structures (separate committees, independent goals, and annual reporting cycles) impact alignment and effectiveness within their own schools.
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Describe the key elements of an integrated accountability system, including interconnected pillars, annual thematic focus, and vertically aligned goals across the Board, leadership, divisions, and departments.
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Examine the evolving role of the Board of Trustees from approval to co-creation, including the use of strategic subcommittees, aligned board goals, and strengthened partnership with the Superintendent.
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Apply practical governance structures and strategies—such as advisory collaboratives, annual theme alignment, and role clarity—to move strategic planning from a static document to a dynamic, lived process within their organization.
The AI-ducation Problem
Presenter: Dr. Eric Mazur
Artificial intelligence has arrived in the classroom, and it is not a teaching assistant—it is a tectonic disruption. AI can draft essays, solve problem sets, and mimic human feedback faster and cheaper than any instructor. But if students outsource their thinking to machines, what’s left of education? The danger isn’t that AI will make students cheat; it’s that it will make them stop learning. When the hard work, friction, and “aha!” moments disappear, so too does the growth that education is meant to foster.
The real crisis isn’t technological—it’s motivational. Why study if a bot can do the work for you? Why work out if you can send a robot to the gym? AI is exposing the uncomfortable truth that our schools have long failed to sustain students’ intrinsic drive to learn. If we don’t confront this, universities risk becoming irrelevant. The AI-ducation problem is a wake-up call: education must re-center on human motivation, social learning, and the kinds of intellectual struggle and human skills that no machine can replace.
Governing Beyond the Map: What Boards Must See to Plan for the Future of Their Students
Presenter: Dr. Ulcca Joshi Hansen
Every board governs from a map: a set of inherited assumptions about what school is for, what success looks like, and how change happens. Those maps feel like solid ground, until the terrain shifts beneath them. With AI, demographic and economic change, and declining trust in traditional credentials reshaping the world our students will inherit, the real risk isn't governing badly. It's governing well by a map that no longer matches reality. In this interactive 75-minute workshop, heads and trustees work together to bring their board's invisible assumptions to the surface, pressure-test them against the forces actually redrawing the future, and develop a shared language for leading through change with less fear and more agency. Boards leave not with someone else's answers, but with a clear-eyed view of their own map, and the questions they most need to bring back to their own table.
Participants will:
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A clear view of the assumptions currently driving their board's decisions, including the ones no one usually says out loud;
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A shared way to pressure-test those assumptions against the forces reshaping education;
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Language for talking about the future with more agency and less fear; and
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Concrete questions to bring back to their own board table.