Success Stories

One of the first, and perhaps wisest, decisions our head of school search committee undertook early this year was to engage Carney, Sandoe & Associates who assigned a wonderfully gifted team of Bob Fricker and Lisa Parsons to assist us with our search. They took the time to get to know the unique culture and characteristics that define us and delivered a talented pool of highly qualified candidates for our consideration. After an extensive search and screening process, we have appointed a fantastic head. Our colleagues from Carney Sandoe remain engaged with the preparation and transition process to ensure she gets off to the best start possible.

Our 12 member search committee, which was comprised of trustees and faculty, found Lisa and Bob to be seasoned professionals with a deep understanding of independent schools and how to meet our needs. They were also a lot of fun to work with. We felt the manner in which they helped us successfully navigate our search process, particularly during this most challenging year, worth sharing with you.

My purpose in writing is to express my appreciation for your guidance and support as we navigated the search process. Regardless of the outcome, it has been an extremely valuable experience!

As I mentioned over the phone last week, I am truly grateful for the professionalism with which Carney Sandoe conducted the search, and I conveyed that to the members of the Stuart Hall search committee. It is abundantly clear why Carney Sandoe possesses such a strong reputation throughout the educational community.

Again, I am grateful for everything you’ve done to make the search process first class. I hope that you and I will stay in touch no matter which direction the search committee chooses.

Having a reliable team of seasoned professionals with practitioner experience on your side is a blessing at the best of times - never more so, than when hiring a head of school. Add to the challenge, a most demanding brief, in the midst of a global pandemic. We sure made it difficult, but Art, Ralph, John, and Deb brought trusted counsel, sound wit, and sage advice all along the way, and despite having hideous time zone differences, email responses were nearly always within the hour. Taking the time to comprehensively get to know our school, community, and needs, privileged Carney Sandoe with the knowledge and informed discernment, which along with their proven methodology, delivered a shortlist which, well, nailed it. Our school benefited greatly from our collaboration, and I know will continue to reap untold benefits stemming from our hire, perfectly matched, by our perfect search partners.

I want to take a moment to thank the three of you for your guidance, professionalism, insight, and constant vigilance as we undertook this most important undertaking. I think we had a series of good decisions in this process but the best one we had was the selection of Carney Sandoe as our search team. It got us off to a great start and an ultimately successful end! I learned a great deal through this process and I will always be grateful for the experience.

A sincere thank you for all of your support helping us with our Head of School and Principal search. Your steady hand and sage guidance were so appreciated and I want you to know that we are in a great place with our new leadership.

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.

Dear Ben, Deb, John, and Ralph,

Just want to take this moment to thank you and your colleagues for your professional guidance. The search process was arduous and demanding at times, and your support has helped to smooth out the bumps. We are grateful to have met many accomplished educational leaders whose education philosophy resonates deeply with us.

Dear Art, Ralph, David, and Deb,

We wanted to express our sincere gratitude to you for your support in our head of school search process. We knew it would not be an easy task with the extremely tight timeframe we were facing but you were able to pull through and present to us a very strong line up of final candidates that were all unique and strong in their own regard. This in turn made our decision difficult, but you were always available to support our needs and give sound advice.

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.

I can say wholeheartedly that it was terrific to partner with Sara and Greg on our recent CFOO search. They are pros — they come with background in finance and advancement, attracted a very strong candidate pool, gave very good and sage advice to me throughout the process, and also engaged the board members in very thoughtful ways.

I would highly recommend them, so much so that I am now working with another Carney Sandoe consultant in our next important search. She, too, has been great with me and our internal search committee.