Success Stories

I am deeply grateful to Sara Shulman and Elyse Waterhouse for helping us land our fabulous new CFOO. They took time and care to understand a great deal about our current context - successes, challenges, and future opportunities. Their inclusive approach in working not only with me but also with our business team and other school leaders enabled them to develop a nuanced understanding of skills and qualities of our ideal candidate. The portfolio of candidates they provided were stronger across the board than I could have imagined, and I particularly appreciated the diversity of the group (gender and race/ethnicity, as well as industry backgrounds). Their guidance was instrumental in shaping a process that has not only led to our successful new hire in the role but also to our people feeling valued. They were generous in sharing what they learned about us in the process, which has also helped greatly with the transition plan for our new CFOO and our operational teams. The partnership with Sara and Elyse continues to pay off. And it was fun to work with them, too!

Working with Marsha Little provided me one of the most inspiring professional development experiences of my career. Marsha’s approach to coaching allowed a space for me to actively reflect, connect with my true purpose, and learn specific strategies to grow my interviewing skills. Throughout my time with her, I learned how to fit all of the pieces of my leadership journey together to craft a narrative that was a strong reflection of my strengths and abilities. And while all of this was truly incredible and helpful, perhaps the best part of working with Marsha is to experience her unique ability to always respond with a beautifully specific question to all you have to say. Her masterful art of listening allows Marsha to get to the very heart of the matter and provides anyone who might be lucky enough to work with her the challenge of true reflection. The kind of reflection that moves you forward and wades through all of the extraneous information to unearth the beauty of who you are, what you truly want, and what you need to do to make your goals a reality. My time with her was precious and I often found myself shocked our hour would move as quickly as it did. What I have learned in our short time together will continue to support my growth in leadership far beyond my sessions with her. I am forever grateful I was able to experience this extremely special opportunity and hope many others get to do the same!

Beginning last spring, and through the winter, we had the privilege at Cathedral of working with Brandon Jacobs and Beth Dietz for our principal search. While I am certain this is the case in all schools, we believe Cathedral has a super important and unique mission, and it was critical for us to find the right leader. Thanks to Brandon and Beth, we secured a principal that we are beyond excited about. Working with both Brandon and Beth felt like working with a team, or members of our own staff. I cannot offer high enough compliments, and truly feel grateful for their guidance and leadership throughout the process.

Last week Barbara Chase and I wrapped up our year of coaching. I want to thank you for recommending her to me. She was of tremendous help to me in my first year as board chair, guiding, supporting and cheering for me. I know it sounds trite, but I honestly could not have done it without her. I used our biweekly sessions to prepare for important meetings, think through upcoming issues and strategize how to partner better with my head of school. I don't have to tell you how knowledgeable and experienced she is as a past head, and her expertise with governance and board-related issues was invaluable. I also felt that I connected meaningfully with Barbara and hope we will remain in touch in the future. She is a warm, caring individual who showed true concern for me and made time for me outside of our scheduled meetings if something came up.

Independence Mission Schools provides a transformative Catholic Education for 4,000 students in 14 schools for grades K-8 in inner city Philadelphia. Seven years after our founding, we engaged Bob Vitalo to provide an organizational assessment of our current operations - our talents and capabilities and our opportunities for improvement particularly as it related to CEO succession. Bob was terrific in this effort. He met with directors, staff, school leaders, and friends of Independence Mission Schools. Every participant was impressed with the professionalism, thoughtfulness, and wisdom that Bob brought to this effort. His report helped us clarify what was essential that we maintain and what important work needs to be done in the future. Moreover, this work helped us understand the leadership needs for our continuing success. There was unanimous agreement at the board and senior staff level that this was extremely helpful engagement.

I am the chair of the board of Montini Catholic High School, Lombard, IL. We just completed a search for our new president and I just want to tell you how helpful, how important, and what a good friend Barbara Daush has been to me, the search committee, and to our community.

I've had the chance to work on several previous searches in my professional life and I have to say Barbara and CS&A are among the best. I know her work with us is not done as she will be helping us with a transition process but I wanted to take this time, at the end of the week when we named our new president, to let you know how important she has been to our successful process.

Safe Passage/Camino Seguro, a PK-Grade 9 school in Guatemala City, recently had the opportunity to partner with Art Charles, John Chandler, and Theodora Konetsovska of Carney, Sandoe & Associates as we launched a search for a new executive director. Given the timing (a bit late in the season), the specific demands of the job (education combined with international social service), the geography (Guatemala), and our need for a bilingual English-Spanish speaker, we knew that our search would present challenges. Despite them all, however, Art, John, and Theodora delivered a strong and highly experienced candidate pool and expertly supported us through the entire search process. Their candidate dossiers were incredibly detailed and thoughtful, allowing our search committee to hone quickly in on those candidates of particular interest. Their invaluable support through the reference-checking process, supported again by incredibly insightful and well-prepared reports, was also a key factor in our success. The calm professionalism each of these talented consultants evinced during check-in calls always reassured us that we would achieve our goals.

Having now signed an outstanding next executive director for our organization, we are deeply grateful to Art, John, and Theodora, whose depth and range of experiences and knowledge provided us with the expertise and support we needed to move confidently through our process. Having partnered with Carney, Sandoe & Associates for countless faculty searches over the past 35 years, I can say that their retained search service is outstanding and that Art, John, and Theodora, on the international side, are experienced, thoughtful, talented, diligent, caring, and responsive professionals who go above and beyond to ensure a successful outcome for their clients.

Sara and Greg were visionary in their approach to our search process. They brought us top candidates with a range of backgrounds and strengths, and ultimately helped us secure our first choice for the position in a timely manner. They were attentive to our needs, quickly learned and understood the context of our school and team, and were consistently available to offer insights, answer questions, and give guidance. It was a seamless and successful process, and I’m excited to work with the Carney Sandoe team on our next search.

In the five years engaging with Carney, Sandoe & Associates, we can truly say that they are outstanding search consultants, both in depth and breadth. We were well supported and advised every step of the way in our search for an interim head of school and later on a permanent head.

At the outset, they spent a considerable amount of time meeting with various stakeholders to understand UWC ISAK's vision, mission, and ethos. The process left us with little doubt that they could accurately portray our school to potential candidates, both in the position description and during preliminary screening interviews. Their network of potential candidates is very broad. With short notice, our urgent search for an interim head yielded quality candidates in a space of two weeks! The permanent head search conducted later started with more than 5,000 potential candidates that were then shortlisted to a curated pool.

The candidate dossiers that were presented to the search committee were testament of their in-depth understanding of what we were looking for. Fully cognizant that board members tasked to conduct head of school searches may be doing it for the first time, Carney Sandoe provided ample training and resources at appropriate junctures. We also appreciated the healthy push backs they gave, a function of the underlying trust.

The dedication of Ben Bolté and Deb Welch was evident when meetings were sometimes conducted over several time zones, in the wee hours of dawn and even weekends. It was a partnership, and not just a “consultant/client relationship”. They wanted to see our school succeed in the long term with the right head as much as we wanted it for UWC ISAK.

We worked with Greg Britton and Sara Shulman on the daunting task of finding the right successor for a monumentally effective (22-year) CFOO. From the start, they paired reassuring confidence with incisive questions that helped us hone our aspirations and focus our recruiting strategy. They presented a dozen varied candidates and supported me and our team as we narrowed the pool to three talented finalists. In addition to the obvious advantages of time saved and nets more broadly thrown, I appreciated Greg and Sara's candor about the ways that candidate personalities might or might not fit the culture of our team and community. They are perceptive conversationalists and honest brokers. Their reference checking was particularly helpful. This is our second leadership search with CS&A. Both processes were smooth, enlightening, successful...and even fun. We are grateful.