panel05

"Mentoring Women Leaders --: Two Successful Programs Offered by NAPSG and NCGS."

MS. RANSOME: Welcome back, everyone. We're about to start. And as other speakers have said, we love people in the middle and towards the front, but we know this is an independent-minded crowd.

My name is Whitney Ransome, and I am one of two executive directors at the National Coalition of Girls Schools, a group that represents 104 girls' private and public schools around the country. I am delighted to be part of this program today with Becky Gilmore, Burch Ford, and Kay Betts. While we don't have a poem for you, we hope to have some interesting insights to offer about two complementary but different programs for women leaders in independent schools.

The purpose of our panel really is twofold. First, Burch and I will give an overview of the two programs, the NAPSG Administrative Leadership Seminar, and then I'm going to talk briefly in an overview fashion of the coalition's Strategic Institute for Experienced Women Educators that we sponsor but had as a partner Simmons School of Management.

The other part, which in some ways is, I think, the most interesting and critical part, is that Becky and Kay each attended these two seminars, and are going to talk a bit about what lessons were learned, what they have taken back into their jobs, and make, I think, some interesting reference to the mentoring experience that they had while at the seminar, and even more importantly what's been going on since they graduated and are back on the job.

Bruce asked that instead of having someone come up and introduce each of us, that we take just a few minutes to tell a little bit about our own professional journey. When I thought about that, I was immediately reminded of Mary Catherine Bateson, who is Margaret Mead's daughter, and her book, "Composing a Life." In that, she talks a lot about careers and that the work life of women is not so much being a line but a circle, a web.

In my experience, and as I look at it, I almost see my professional life as a patchwork quilt, sometimes a crazy quilt. If any of you know anything about quilting, it's a quilt that's made up of complementary patches, but not in the same type of pattern and order that you might see in another type of quilt. That certainly is how I feel about the 30-plus years I have had in the educational field.

I'm the product of 12 years of a Quaker school, Morristown Friends School. I went to college in North Carolina, to what was then called the Women's College of the University of North Carolina, but is now UNC Greensboro. I did undergrad work in political science, went on and got a master's degree in American studies, and had a vision of my life as a college professor or politician.

Needless to say, I'm in politics day to day in my work, but I never had to run for office. And in fact, like many of us, my first job was a matter of circumstance, coincidence, and good luck. I happened to be in Puerto Rico, where my father was doing some business, and living for a while, and my first job was teaching English as a second language to Puerto Rico Junior College. Go figure. How does that figure into any of any background?

But interestingly enough, that was a stepping-stone to another job, as it often is, teaching English as a second language in an inner-city public school in Miami. I eventually got out of that field and into what was my passion, American studies and politics, and was recruited away to an all-boys' school in Miami, which ironically enough is the Ransom School for Boys, no connection to me. I was brought there to be the dean of students at 26, if you can imagine. I was one of three women on the faculty, and I'll tell you, that was an eye-opening experience in a lot of ways. Ransom School merged with the Everglades School for Girls, and I saw firsthand what can happen when a girls' institution is blended and sometimes totally engulfed by an all-boys' school. They eventually did a great job, but my years there were crucible years in terms of my appreciation and my passion for all-girls' education, which is where I went next.

I went, after being director of admissions and financial aid at this merged school, to Dana Hall, where I was admissions director for five years. During that time, I actually thought a little bit about being a head of school myself, was in two searches, but happened to be married to someone who also wanted to be a head of a school, Tom Wilcox, and he became headmaster of Concord Academy, so I took that journey as his partner and mate, and learned a lot and took a lot away from it.

During that time we had children, I decided to do some consulting, and lo and behold, in the late '80s, was hired by a core of girls' boarding school heads to do a research project for that brand-new group of girls' boarding schools, which eventually also spurred a group of girls' day schools, and has been history ever since for me.

I have been with the National Coalition of Girls' Schools since 1988, and it's not work; it is a passion. As I look back over that patchwork quilt, that crazy quilt of my life, I see that, in fact, there are bits and pieces that do belong together, and that it has been my journey to stitch them and find them and make them a whole, which it truly has been. My life at the coalition has been one exciting adventure after the next.

I'm going to just quickly tell you a little bit about the Strategic Leadership Institute for Experienced Women Educators that we held just this last fall in November. Our hope was to do something a little bit out of the box in terms of training or offering professional development opportunities to current heads in a way that was a little bit untraditional.

Simmons is the only all-women's MBA program in the world, and obviously, it was a natural partner for us. We sponsored it, we worked hand in hand as they developed the core curriculum, but basically, they delivered the program for us. We had 33 participants. Five of them were school heads. The vast majority of the others were sort of second-level administrators with all kinds of experience. What we most were looking for was taking the business lens from a women's point of view -- all the instructors were women -- to bring that into the training and discussion in a way that isn't just on-the-job training, but rather to look at running a school, looking at being a leader from also a business point of view.

We were blessed by an E.E. Ford grant to help do this and do these panels. That's something else about our program. It's not just ending at the completion of those five days. My co-director, Meg Moulton, did a presentation at NAIS. We're hoping to take the lessons that are learned and expand them beyond just the 33 who were onsite for those three days.

We also have had great matching support from Sodexho, Carney, Sandoe, this organization, Educational Directions, and TIAA-CREF has also just joined us as a corporate sponsor, to keep the life of this program going. We do plan to repeat it in November of 2006.

There were six core areas in the program, and I have left on the back tables a description of each of them, because I don't want to spend much time on that, because really it's Becky's story that we want to hear, and Kay Betts', as well. But the first core area was called "Leading for results." And all the participants had to do what was called a 360 exercise. In other words, they were given an extensive questionnaire where they rated themselves on a whole series of benchmarks about their leadership style, their leadership skills, and then they had several people back at their schools who worked with them, who supervised them, whom they supervised, also do the same thing.

Out of that came a type of assessment of how they match up their own perception of their leadership style with those people they're working with daily, and used it at a learning experience, not as an evaluation tool, but rather to see, Here's how I'm doing in areas where I think I have great strength, and people either do or don't see me as meeting those objectives in the way that I see myself.

And at that first meaningful results program, best practices of leadership were also discussed. Another pink sheet on the back tables lists the five practices of good leadership that Simmons has worked on with another set of authors. Those five practices were really integral to the program for those next few days. I always laugh when I think about people talking about someday moving to a headship or position within a school, and their comments are, "Do you think I'm going to be liked or loved as a leader?"

I'm reminded of that wonderful story: If you want to be loved as a leader, buy a dog. And I don't think that we sought to find ways to be beloved. We sought ways to be effective, ways to mentor one another, which, again, was a very key component of these four days. Every one of the 33 people was paired together. They had a one-on-one mentor with whom they did a lot of exercises. Then there was a foursome that everyone was part of, as well, and that provided, as so often is the case, a collaborative way to learn, share, and be stimulated and to process the information that they were taking in.

The second module is called Negotiating for Leadership Success. One of the books and sources in use was called "The Shadow Negotiation: How Women Master the Hidden Agendas that Determine Bargaining Success." They went through a lot of role-playing about identifying what's the hidden agenda here. You know, we've got something listed on a piece of paper, but what else is going on around the room as I make decisions and help others reach decisions?

The third component was called, "Aligning Resources With Mission in a Nonprofit Environment." That, again, was trying to look at everything you do within your school and what you see as your strategic goal and your mission. How are you aligning your financial resources, your people resources, to support that, and are they in sync? Are you putting a lot of money in an area where you don't set things as a priority? The participants talked a lot about that within their offices.

"Building Strategic Advantage" was another component to that piece about aligning resources, again, looking at what you have within your particular institution that can be of value and put to use as you try and achieve your goals.

The fifth fascinating component was called "The Third Opinion," and I found that, along with the negotiating section, particularly interesting because what is recommended -- and Becky may or may not talk a little bit about this -- is the reality of our relying often too much on people who know us well, like us, share our opinions -- our husbands, our friends -- and how when we talk about stepping out of the box, we need to step out of the box when we seek the advice of people, and try an idea, try something out, to find someone who does not have some type of existing relationship commitment to us, whose voice and opinion can be very valuable.

Then the sixth and final segment was called "Building Brand Leadership." We heard from someone who had led Simmons School of Management through a fascinating analysis of how they were perceived as an institution, what had to change in the way of their messages, and what we in independent schools and particularly the women who were leading in independent schools can take away from that.

That segment is one that we are taking on the road in a series of regional workshops, taking some of the Simmons faculty, as well as some of our participants, around the country so that this program will reach well beyond the 33 people who had the good fortune of being there last November.

I'd like to now turn it over to Becky Gilmore, who will share a little bit about her story and also some of the things that she found in mentoring other areas that were valuable. Becky.

MS. GILMORE: Good morning. You know, it is all about the journey, isn't it? My professional journey started in 1980, when Kiki Johnson at the Madeira School offered me a position teaching biology. I spent four very happy years there. And then in 1984 I met, by telephone, a man named Tom Wilcox, who invited me to teach biology at Concord Academy. The interesting piece about that is that my first year there, I lived on the third floor of Tom and Whitney's home, and that gave new meaning to behaving yourself, when you're on the third floor of the head's home.

But when I was at Concord, I was a faculty member of the admission committee, which I really enjoyed. I enjoyed interviewing. I enjoyed arguing for the girls and boys that I interviewed to be accepted to Concord. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't.

So when I was looking in 1987 to move south, because I was getting married to a man who lived in the D.C. area and was looking for any position at a reputable school, I decided to look wider and was lucky enough to talk with Mary Lou Leipheimer, who convinced the then head of school, Jeff Murdock, to invent a position called the associate director of admission and development.

It's the longest title I have ever had, probably the longest title I ever will have. But I enjoyed my work there, which was admissions and an introduction to publications.

The rest of my journey since then has been at Foxcroft School, and it has been a wonderful journey, and one which has taken me in a lot of different directions at the school. I have been very involved in the marketing and communications aspect of the school. I have been on what will be my second steering committee for the ten-year accreditation as of May, God willing, long-range planning master plan, all that sort of thing. It has been a wonderful place to spend most of my professional career, and I have enjoyed being there.

I now have a son who's in boarding school. I have a 12-year-old daughter who may keep me at the school for at least six years because I really would like for her to have the benefit of the wonderful education at Foxcroft. I have seen the school, in the time that I have been there, grow from 127 to 188, and that's great news. I do not take credit for it, but it feels good, being the director of admission during that time.

I have enjoyed being part of a very collaborative, wonderful administrative team with an average tenure of 18 years, and working with a wonderful and visionary head of school, Mary Lou Leipheimer, who has enough faith in the administrators to allow us to do things like go to the Strategic Leadership Institute. That was one of the highlights of my professional development at Foxcroft, and I'm happy to be able to talk about it.

It brings to mind one of the most important things I'd like to share with you as you consider having folks go to this. Three of us from Foxcroft went and that was a very important, invigorating experience to have three of us together. All of us know how professional development can be so empowering and then exhausting when you get back and realize that you can't remember anything -- much less do anything -- about what you learned. So that having colleagues with us was very important. That would be one thing that I would like to stress.

The other thing that Whitney mentioned was the importance of the leadership practices inventory. I had ten folks with whom I work rate me on ten of those best practices for leaders. It was an eye-opening experience and a very valuable one. It is a pretty unusual opportunity, and that allows it to be, at least on the surface, completely confidential, so I believe people felt that they could really be honest. I got enough people involved so that there was no chance that they would feel that I could pick them out, and of course, I didn't try.

I had people who looked at me who were my coworkers, who were direct reports to me, people who had worked with me in the past and on the edges of my profession, so that was very interesting. From that, we got a blueprint, all of us who were involved, about how we viewed ourselves, how others viewed us in the practice. I'll just give you quickly the five things. Modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart.

The exercises lead you through a process of analysis. The workshop challenged us to think about how these practices are seen in your school environment, how they're valued, how they're rewarded, whether they may be seen as negative, and in so doing, to think about the work that you do and the exposure you have which may have earned you high or low ratings on these particular practices. And then to be aware of those practices and to use them in making, if you so choose, your contributions visible within your school environment. And that was, I thought, a very good lesson to take away.

The second piece, which was so important, was working, as Whitney mentioned, with a peer mentor. I was paired with a person who held a very similar position in a school. She and I spent approximately four to six hours together over the course of that three or four days. We talked a lot about our leadership practices and the inventory, what we were going to take away from that as we went back to our schools in developing our leadership development guide and how we were going to use that, and we got to know each other well.

The primary focus of this Strategic Leadership Institute was to develop a group of peers and others with whom you can interact, and to help you get those people in place. It really was very helpful in doing that, because you need the wisdom and the perspective of others. The whole Institute was sprinkled with ways to find them, ways that you can benefit and develop from mentoring.

So we were paired with someone, we had our foursomes, we did a lot of small-group work where we would work on projects and then come back and report to the group, and share.

I can't overemphasize the importance of the fabulous faculty who was there to listen to us, to react to us as individuals, as groups, and to help us move through the curriculum in very interesting ways.

The second thing that I took away from this leadership institute was the development of a network of people to work with. You need to work on that network, which will help you think outside your position within a school, think outside your school, think outside the box in general. That was very beneficial.

Another thing Whitney mentioned that we did was to talk about the very important third opinion as an absolutely crucial component of leadership in this day and age because there is so much more to know, there's so much less time to learn it, there's so much pressure to act and make decisions quickly and to move quickly that leaders in general must always be at their peak performance, which is hard unless when you're working on your own. So Dr. Joni, who was speaking with us about this, after having done this sort of work with people and studying leaders, gave us a road map for developing what she called the third opinion, or the group of people who help you in the ways you need to have support as a leader. She called it the inner circle or the leadership circle. She helped us to understand that it's about drawing on the people around you, but also drawing on the external relationships that you develop.

So you have your opinion, the first opinion, the second opinion, which is the advice and feedback from the key people within your organization, and your extended teams there; and then the third-opinion folks, who are the person or the people that you turn to with your most confidential questions, your most risky decisions, the uncertainties of your institutions, so that they can test your ideas, tear them apart, and tell you things that you may not want to hear. Because this type of person is a person with whom you have developed a long-term relationship, a person in whom you have personal trust, in whose expertise you have trust. But one of the other things that this person has is the ability to hold your structural trust, which is a term used to describe someone who has vested interest, no ulterior motives, no fear in telling you the truth. And so you can really trust that this person will give you what you need to hear.

There were so many more interesting things that came out of the book, "The Third Opinion." I would recommend, if you want some not-so-light reading -- it's pretty intense -- that you pick it up.

She went on to say that the inner circle is very much ultimately about building relationships and building trust, but the thing that you must also do, as you do with all of the members of your inner circle, whether they're the internal or the external ones, is that you constantly explore your comfort zone with them, to make sure that you are not getting too comfortable with each other in the long-term relationship, and that you're not playing yesterday's game in today's world, as Dr. Joni said.

So in summary, what I took from the Strategic Leadership Institute is to send a group from your school, go with them, work on goals you bring home with you, a leadership goal and a plan for working on improving practices, collaborate with the group of people you will meet there, and use that to help you think outside your position and your box. Thank you. (Applause.)

MS. FORD: Good morning again. I will say, by way of following Whitney and Becky, that the program that they're talking about is really a terrific one, and I will make one more pitch for my school. One of the things that made it so attractive to me, and the reason I sent three of our senior administrators to this program, as well, is that the acting dean of the School of Management at Simmons College is an ancient, and she was one of the ones who crafted this program.

I will talk very briefly about my own bio in relation to this subject. There's certainly not time, alas, to go through my extensive history by virtue of when it all began. But in terms of what we're talking about today, where it really began for me, I was working at Groton School as the school counselor. My background at that point was mental health. We were living in Concord Academy, where my husband was a teacher. We had two boys who were in elementary school, and that was the context.

The reason I think that's important is that I think whenever we're talking about women in leadership, that's a factor that has to be taken into account. I don't really want to quote Larry Summers, but the proverbial 80-hour week is something that is a factor that must always be taken into account.

My job at Groton, besides working with individual girls and boys in a mental health context, as well as in groups, was also teaching psychology and teaching ethics, doing a lot of consultation with faculty, and also a lot of administration consultation and a really wonderfully mutually very respectful relationship with Bill Polk, who was a wonderful leader.

In my seventh year, I had a telephone call from the wife of someone I had worked for right after my husband and I had first gotten married. We were living in Boston, he was a conscientious objector, I was finishing undergrad school at nighttime, and working at Peter Bent Brigham in two housing projects in community medicine, a program run by a wonderful English physician. His wife called me to say that her school was looking for a new head, and they were looking for someone who was a leader with a soul. And I thought that was so complimentary, but I did think, Why is she calling me? So it was very curious to me, and I said, gosh, I wasn't sure that that really made sense, but she said, "Will you just have dinner with me and my former roommate, who is now president of the board at this girls' boarding school?"

So we had dinner, it was all very pleasant, and I enjoyed it enormously. She said, "Would you come to New York and meet with the search committee and also meet with our consultant, our headhunter?"

So my first meeting was with the consultant. I think that the process has become a little more sophisticated since then. My instructions were to go to the Wellesley Inn. I drove up and down Route 9, and I finally realized the Wellesley Inn was this motel, and the room number was on the second floor with the outside stairs up. It couldn't be in someone's living room. Anyway, I walked in, there was one very nice comfortable chair, and there was this huge bed. Needless to say, I sat in the chair. (Laughter.)

We had this very cordial conversation, and I recognized fully that I was an unconventional candidate, to say the least, that my resume was certainly not what might have been considered the norm, but in any case, after our conversation, I submitted the samples of writing and all the rest of it. He didn't really think this was going to be a good match, which I didn't find remotely surprising, but I did find the whole process pretty interesting.

Then I went to New York, because I had been invited to meet with the search committee. That was enormously enjoyable and interesting and provocative. Then I was invited to come to the school with two other finalists to spend a couple of days there. Again, I found it all absolutely intriguing. I got a letter a few days later from the chair of the search committee saying that "You were everyone's favorite, but we just thought we couldn't hire you as head of school because you had no administrative experience."

Well, that seemed absolutely a given, but I thought it was very nice that they had included me in this process. But as I began to think about it, the more I thought, well, if other people can see that potential, perhaps that's something I really ought to think about.

Anyway, I continued my job at Groton. I went to the first NAPSG seminar for women, which I'm going to talk about in a little bit. That was in 1985. I found that enormously interesting, and I decided that while continuing my work at Groton, I would enroll in the doctoral program at Harvard in educational administration, which I did.

I won't tell you what my speed limit was going out Route 2 between Cambridge and Groton, Massachusetts. But nonetheless I was only pulled over one time by a policeman who asked me why I was blinking my lights at the oncoming traffic, and I explained to him that I knew that I had just passed a police car. He seemed stunned. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. And I said, "Is there something wrong with that?"

He said, "Well, police officers don't like that, ma'am. Most people usually say, 'Well, there must have been some electrical problem.'"

The following year there was an opening for the dean of students at Milton Academy. Those of you who know Milton know it's a big school. It's in Milton, but it's virtually an urban school, a very, very exciting school, and it's very challenging administratively. The history is that when the two schools came together, there was both a head of the boys' upper school and head of the girls' upper school. One became the head of school; the other became the dean of students. So it was a role that had a vast range of responsibilities, very challenging, very interesting. That was a terrific experience.

I was there for five years. While I was there, I had begun to appear on some search lists, and again that was always a very instructive process, but besides trying to find a match between me personally and a school, there were always family issues to be weighed, about the two sons, about my husband, who had very patiently come to Noble & Greenough when I went to Milton. I didn't know this at the time, but they're traditional rivals. So Brian would always stand with me at the end-of-season games, screaming for Noble, so I was trying to explain to my Milton colleagues that really he's a very nice person, but that's his duty, too.

Then in 1993 I became the head at Miss Porter's, and this is my twelfth year. In terms of mentorship -- and I know that that's really the major theme of what we're talking about -- I don't think that there were ever any real intentional mentors that I had. There were certainly some accidental ones, and one of the things we want to talk about this morning is of it not being left up to chance but being something that we all consciously and carefully and intentionally think about.

Probably the key person was this former employer's wife who called me and said, "You are a leader, and you ought to be thinking about that, and we've been thinking about that." And that was really probably the key turning point for me.

Let me tell you just a little bit about the NAPSG program, which, as I said, started in 1985. I think it's a terrific program. My understanding is historically that it was started because the original character of this group was to be attendant to the needs of girls and young women, and that there was a feeling that there were not enough women in administration in all of these schools, and this would be one way of coming at that.

It was originally designed, as I understand it, to be every other year in various locales. The first time that I went, it was at Garrison Forest, and for the last five years I have been the host at Miss Porter's School in Farmington. The participants are all women, the faculty are all women heads of school. We have a variety of ranges of schools, a variety of styles of leadership, and it really is of sitting heads, over a three-day period over a whole weekend, working and talking with aspiring heads of schools about dimensions of leadership.

Some of the participants are people who have a clear, immediate interest in becoming a head of school. Some are those who think they would like to be a head of school down the road. And some are really there because they just want to demystify what the process of running a school is about, if it is possible to do that.

The program components include leadership styles, including women in authority; they include the search process, boards of trustees, school culture, building an administrative team, building a budget, the dimensions of finance, fundraising, development, and balancing the multiple constituencies.

Another piece of it is that there are mentoring sessions that are set up for each of the participants to meet individually with each of the members of the faculty to look at resumes, to talk about what people are thinking about, really to get individual counsel on where people are in their professional development, and where the various heads of school think their next steps might be, some of the connections and contacts that they might make in moving forward.

We have a very extensive evaluation form that we ask people to fill out at the end. The reviews have invariably been extremely positive and I think it's partly because it really is very targeted for and with women.

One of the things that has always been the most popular is the Saturday night segment after dinner, which is called "Public and Private Personae." In that particular part of it, each of the faculty members, each head of school, talks about her own journey and how she came to be where she is, an abbreviated form of which you have just heard. Because it is so candid and so honest, it's invariably hilariously funny, and people have amazing, fascinating stories to tell. One of the factors throughout is: How can I take this on? Is the timing right? What impact is it going to have on other members of my family, whether it's a spouse or whether it is children? Timing is such a key piece of this.

It reminded me that when I first went to the NAPSG seminar in 1985, I was struck by two things beyond the content, which was all wonderful. One was that as each woman told her story, each faculty member who was then a head of school, she talked about someone having invited her to pursue this process. Somebody said to her, "You know, I think you'd be good at this, there's this opening and you really ought to think about it." Or, "I, as the head of school, now have an opening and I'd like you to take this. You may not see yourself as the right person for it, but I do see you for this."

And I thought that was very interesting. They were not saying, "Oh, I started out to be a head of school, and it was just a matter of time until I found the right thing." That was one thing.

The other thing I was struck by was that at the time -- and I think this is clearly a change -- all the women on the faculty were either single or divorced. The message to me at the time was, well, clearly, this is a very difficult job to do if you have a mate and young children who are living at home.

The seminar is enormously satisfying, certainly for all of us as faculty members on it, and this changes from year to year. Incidentally, if there are any of you who are interested in being part of this, women heads of school, please let me know that, because there's no lock on who participates. It's a matter of whom we know, whom we have worked with, and who is available and interested in spending a weekend doing this, and taking on one or several of these topics, making a presentation. Sometimes it's pretty didactic, sometimes it's pretty interactive.

When we began, the goal was 30 participants. The first time it was in Farmington in 2000 -- and I think this had been fairly characteristic -- up until about the week before the seminar, the registrations were open and it was filled by then. In 2002, the goal of 30 participants was met before the previous school year ended. We were able to get 40 beds. That's always in the fall, so it's prime for color season. We were able to expand it a little bit, but then we had a waiting list of 20. And we thought that was pretty interesting.

So the next year we decided, instead of every other year, to have one the next year, this time in the Midwest, and Pam Clark hosted that, at her school in St. Paul, and we had about 25 people.

Then the next year we decided again to continue doing it every year, and that was this past fall. Again we had 40 people, and we had a waiting list of 20 other women who wanted to do that.

The NAPSG Council is going to be voting on a recommendation that next year we have two, one on the West Coast that Bodie is going to be leading, and again another one in Farmington on the East Coast. So there's clearly a demonstrated need, a demonstrated interest. The efficacy of it has been addressed in what people have had to say about it, but it's also interesting to note that since this program began, in 1985, there are 27 participants who have since become heads of school.

I would like to add is that what we all need to do as leaders in our respective schools is to look around us and to identify the people we think have the qualities to become successful heads of school. They may not yet have the experience that's needed, although certainly some may well have, but my bias is that clearly one needs to have the appropriate kind of background in terms of understanding of schools, experience with schools, love of education, love of a given discipline, and certainly administrative experience, but also people we've identified as being strategic thinkers, being creative, having tremendous stamina -- physical stamina, for starters, but also emotional, ethical, social, spiritual stamina -- because a lot of the things that we teach in the seminar are things that can be taught.

And then we have to mentor them. I think we have to give them permission to either try to grow and expand their roles in our schools, perhaps in small ways, but perhaps in dramatic ways, and then otherwise to encourage them to participate in programs like both the NAPSG one, NCGS, and the Simmons College one, so that they can continue to see themselves as leaders. It's important that we do this because they may not identify themselves and they may simply not have the opportunity for someone to call their attention to those tremendous strengths.

I would like to stop there and invite one of our past participants who was already in the search process, and it was a matter of minutes, and that's virtually what happened. Kay Betts is going to talk a little bit about her experience.

MS. BETTS: Good morning. It's always a pleasure to stand in front of a group of educators, and it's very hard to follow Burch because I am very new at this.

I would like to thank Bruce for inviting me to be a part of this, and I'd like to thank many of you who know my name before I know yours who have come up to me to congratulate me on my appointment. I'm beginning July 1 to be head of school at Episcopal in Baton Rouge, so my fame precedes me to this group.

I was actually involved in two searches when I attended the NAPSG workshop, and so my time there was spent actually trying to go underground, because a faculty member from one of the search committees was at the workshop. I tend to be outspoken in workshops, and this time, I was trying to be very careful about what I said.

One of the most valuable things to me was the mentoring meeting. I met with Blair, and I was having covert meetings with many of the leaders, because one of the searches had asked me to get back to them for information on my compensation package. I had no idea what to ask for, and because the search committee member was at the workshop, I was whispering, "Tell me what I need to ask for. I don't know."

I'm not sure I asked for enough.

MS. RANSOME: That's a given.

MS. BETTS: But I did get a job about ten days after I attended the workshop, and so I'm happy for NAPSG to take credit for that, and I want to thank you all for making me famous. I appreciate that.

My personal story: I won't say a lot about that. I was actually in the same category as Burch. I was not officially mentored by anyone. If you look on a mentor as something like a GPS system that gets you to the right place at the right time, I didn't really have that sort of opportunity.

My first contact with educational leadership was when I was a little girl and I would play school in the garage in the summer. I always wanted to be the teacher, and I would marshal the children in the neighborhood in there. I don't know what they were thinking of, but they went, and they would sit in the garage.

My favorite part of that was the grade book. Now, I think that probably was good preparation for academic administration, although at the time my mother took me aside and told me I was not being very nice. And I have a feeling that that probably influenced me more than I'd like to think at this point. I got very much interested in being nice, and not so much interested in the grade book.

I started in education by accident. I was hired to be the secretary to the president of a small college. I did that for two years, and during that time I was congratulated for being a great proofreader and I was chastised for getting into the bad habit of being five minutes late. I still remember that, and so these days, when I have to get onto a teacher for being late, I hope that that teacher hears me in the same way I heard him. I have never been late since. It was a good lesson to learn.

After two years doing that, he promoted me to the position of registrar. Now, this was a long time ago. This was 30 years ago. And at that time I was responsible for actually keeping track of the grades by hand, figuring out GPAs by hand. Some of you are nodding. You remember those days. Sending out transcripts, arranging schedules, meeting with students. Arranging the master schedule was a wonderful administrative experience. And I had promised the president that I would do that for four years, and at the end of the four-year period, I had just given birth to my first child, and so I stepped down from that position, hoping that I would be able to be a full-time mom.

That was not the case. The director of the children's program at that college -- it was an art college -- decided suddenly to leave her job and the president asked me to take her position. I was very much interested in child development, and so I actually took over a fairly large program that enabled me to work on weekends and in the summers just at the time when my husband could take care of our family. By this time, we had two children during that period.

I wrote grants, I supervised faculty, I did publicity, and I spoke publicly. It was wonderful administrative experience. And I got very much interested in developmental stages both for children and for adults.

At the end of that period of time, I was invited to become a part-time faculty member at St. Mary's School, and Tom Southard is here in the audience. I worked for Tom for many years, and I took that job because I wanted to ease children over the developmental stage of being too nervous about doing their work, the types of things that you heard about this morning.

I think that's important, because that was a bridging experience to wanting to work with adults. I began to realize that many adults seemed frozen in their development, particularly teachers. And so through the generosity of St. Mary's, I was able to go to graduate school in Bank Street in New York. Not entirely their generosity. I did take out student loans. But it was great to have that actual other incentive.

I then went back into administration and have had two jobs, as academic dean in Catholic schools. No one ever took me aside and said, "You should be a head of school." I had to give myself permission to do that. That's been an interesting journey for me, to tell myself that I was ready to do this.

One of the things that I needed to do was wait for my children to grow up. My daughter now is a junior at Emory, and those of you who work in girls' schools and work with seniors will understand when I say it took me a year to get over her senior year of high school. I was physically and mentally exhausted. It was very important. But she now is my most ardent supporter, and I feel that in a way she mentors me, particularly with my wardrobe, telling me exactly what I need to wear whenever I go out to interview.

The NAPSG workshop was very good for me in some unusual ways. One of them was the mentoring meetings that we were able to have individually with sitting heads of school. I was also most impressed with the pre-conference material. You receive complete resumes from the heads of school who participate. You also receive philosophy statements. That was very impressive for me, to be able to read in resume form the passage of other leaders.

Another meaningful thing was the "Public and Private Personae." It made a difference in my decision to work in Baton Rouge, because Baton Rouge is quite close to New Orleans, which means that I can actually get out of town if I need to. When Burch told the story of not wanting to go to the beauty shop to have her hair fixed, I realized, I have to go to the beauty shop to have my hair fixed. So I can go to New Orleans to go to the beauty shop, if I need to. That made a big difference to me.

It was a wonderful workshop. I was clueless during a lot of it because I was facing these two intensive interviews. They were literally the next week. I was the finalist in two searches. So I was facing those three days. Receiving the advice from the committee that "The last person standing receives the job" was very important to me, and I made sure that I did not drink liquor at any of the interviews. That was important, too.

The last thing I'd like to say is, being in this lovely spot has reminded me of the movie "The Mask of Zorro." I don't know if any of you remember that. But there's a line in that movie. Anthony Hopkins turns to Antonio Banderas and says, "When the pupil is ready, the master will appear."

And I have to say that the offers of help that I received from this group have been incredible. I do count on you now to be my mentors, to be the mentors that I did not have before. I will need help. I think I know what I'm doing. Maybe I know too much. But I know that I need you. Thank you. (Applause.)

MS. RANSOME: As you can see, the participants really told the true story of the benefits of these two seminars.

Are there any questions that people want to ask at this point? We've got some information on the back tables about details and anything that we can help you with.

And on one final note, listening to your story, Kay, about being told that you weren't being very nice, the other comment that I had running through my mind as we got ready for this is that well-behaved women don't make history. I'm just thinking, this is just what we want you to be doing: Making history for your schools and other places.

MR. GALBRAITH: We are in the middle of a wonderful conference. It's the best one I have ever planned. (Laughter and Applause.) I have one regret, and that is that this session is too short. These women have done a wonderful job because it's summarized and it gives us our marching orders, if you will, about mentoring and the great importance of that. Each of us has someone like that who's touched us and now we're going to do it again for other people. We are so proud of all of you and so in awe of the ancients in our midst. We love what you're doing, too. Thank you to the panel. (Applause.)

It's very important that you get a yellow evaluation form. They're here today and tomorrow. And tomorrow we've been requested to move the schedule up half an hour. That will help some people with some travel plans. So the first two events will be a half hour earlier, just as they have been today. So breakfast is 7:30 to 8:30, and the session will start at 8:30, rather than 9:00.

When I was in the graduate school of education, one time the professor said, "How many would like to have a final exam?"

And I remember how we jumped on the one person that raised his hand. He was really in bad trouble, because none of us wanted to have one. There was a football player in the class and he said, "Perhaps, Dr. Anderson, we could have an optional final exam." And the one boy took the exam and the rest of us didn't.

Therefore, how many would like to dress up for dinner tonight?: It will be very informal at dinner tonight. Have a nice afternoon.