SMALL SCHOOL SERIES

Stay tuned for 2026-27 series information!

2025-26 SMALL SCHOOL SERIES

FIVE VIRTUAL Programs, ONE price, open to all school community members
COST: $150 per school
AUDIENCE: Small School Leadership and all others interested. Open only to schools with 200 or fewer students.

PROGRAM ONE: Challenges in Law and Governance Facing Small Independent Schools
Presenter: Pete Commons and associates
Thursday, October 30, 2-3pm
Audience: HOS, Associate/Assistant HOS
Small schools face unique leadership, governance, and financial challenges, especially as boards and Heads strive to balance financial sustainability with mission and community. This session will explore how disciplined preparation can help manage governance challenges before they materialize and will provide actionable advice on how to respond to legal challenges.

Meet the Presenters:
Peter T. Commons, Commons & Commons LLP
Pete leads the firm’s independent schools practice and has represented independent schools as general counsel for nearly two decades. He has negotiated hundreds of contracts for heads of school on behalf of both schools and individual leaders, providing strategic counsel on leadership and governance. Pete speaks regularly to heads of school, board members, and school groups on governance, compensation, and contract issues, drawing on his extensive experience counseling heads and schools, and weaving in lessons learned from practicing in the areas of estate planning and real estate, and serving as institutional fiduciary counsel.

Pete earned his law degree from Temple University and graduated from Middlebury College.

Karen L. Wolfe, Commons & Commons LLP
Karen brings over two decades of legal experience to the team, focusing on estate planning, executive compensation, and nonprofit representation. She has worked extensively with independent schools on administrative and compensation issues and has a strong background in litigation involving schools, employment, Trust, and probate matters.

Karen earned her law degree from Temple University, where she received the Nat N. Wolfsohn Memorial Award in Real Property. She also holds a B.A. from Stockton University. Karen is an active member of the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Rules Committee and the Life Planning Network.

Joseph A. Pecora, Commons & Commons LLP
Joe practices in the areas of real estate/property law, estate planning and administration, executive compensation, and independent schools. Joe is an experienced litigator and has assisted clients with matters involving employment, governance, contract disputes, tangled title, landlord/tenant issues, and construction defects. Joe also has extensive experience with Pennsylvania’s Abandoned and Blighted Property Conservatorship Act (also known as Act 135).

Joe received his law degree from Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law and is a proud alumnus of both Villanova University and St. Joseph’s Preparatory School. Before joining Commons & Commons, Joe worked as an associate attorney at a boutique real estate firm where he handled both transactional and litigation matters. Before entering private practice, Joseph was a law clerk to the Honorable Idee C. Fox, President Judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

PROGRAM TWO: Seize the Data: How to Gauge Marketing + Communications Success
Presenter: Laurie Ehrlich of Elevate
Thursday, November 20, 10-11:15am
Audience: HOS, Associate/Assistant HOS, Advancement/Development Directors and Staff, Communications & Marketing Staff
The Power of Unique Content: Centering Your Website in Your Engagement Strategy. Social media, website, and email metrics speak volumes about your school's identity, perceptions, and where it stands alongside other schools. It can answer big questions including (but not limited to):
 • Is our social media content resonating with our target audience(s)?
 • Are website users engaging in a multiple-page journey?
 • Are we converting students and donors from our welcome series/drip campaigns?
 • Do we have strong calls to action across platforms?

This information cannot only guide future strategy and direction (e.g. where your targets live digitally, what areas of the website need the most improvement, do you need to work on messaging), but it will also help narrow your focus when combing through what seems like endless data points!

During this session, we will hone in on top-line analytics, what they mean, and what to do with a treasure trove of information.

Meet the Presenter: Laurie Ehrlich
Utilizing over two decades of expertise in digital strategy, content creation, and social media, Laurie builds sustainable and measurable marketing programs for independent schools and camps. She is a creative thinker who is passionate about driving results through key account marketing approaches to elevate awareness and sustain brand loyalty. Laurie founded Elevate Marketing Strategy in 2021 after 7 1/2 years as the head of marketing at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md. She is a frequent conference presenter including AISAP, EMA, Prizmah, AIMS, Niche and others.


PROGRAM THREE: Nurturing Community Wellbeing and Connection
Presenter: Alan Brown, Founder Learning to Thrive
Thursday, January 8, 10-11:15am
Audience: Anyone connected to school community wellbeing
Independent schools — especially small ones — ask a lot of their people. Faculty, staff, and administrators routinely juggle multiple roles, and doing this against the backdrop of increasingly polarized and unpredictable world events can feel exhausting for many. As school leaders, it can feel like an extra dimension has been added to our role, as a new generation of faculty is raising expectations around mental health and work-life balance, pushing us to lead differently than when many of us came up.

In this session, we’ll explore what it means to lead in ways that truly care for adults, not just students, and attend to the real wellbeing needs of our school communities — including faculty, staff, administrators, and ourselves. We’ll consider what we can learn from the ways we support students, and how we might use that as an anchor to create a culture of care — not just “carewashing” or one-off initiatives, but a way of working together that feels sustainable and joyful, even if also busy.

Together, we’ll explore ways to embed care into the structures we already have, so we and our colleagues can live and work in a system that supports wellbeing, connection, and ease.

Meet the Presenter: Alan Brown, Founder Learning to Thrive
Alan Brown is a resilience educator who works with schools, organizations, and families to foster cultures of connection and wellbeing. Diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome in sixth grade, Alan has dedicated his career to understanding and addressing extreme nervous system states.

In addition to more than 15 years in schools as a classroom teacher and administrator, Alan's work is informed by his experience as a mindfulness teacher trainer with Mindful Schools, an LGBTQ+ youth crisis counselor with The Trevor Project, and a support group leader with the Tourette Association of America. He has also collaborated with leading hospitals like MassGeneral and Johns Hopkins on clinical trials exploring mindfulness as a mental health intervention.

Alan blends evidence-based practices with compassion to help people navigate the complexity of our times with greater balance, joy, and ease.

PROGRAM FOUR: Small but Mighty: Navigating Governance Challenges in Small Schools
Presenter: Lynn Wendell
Thursday, January 22, 12-1pm
Audience: Heads, Board members, Business Officers, Development Staff, Admissions
Governing a small independent school often requires board members to wear many hats—sometimes stepping closer to operations than they would in a larger school. This interactive session will explore the unique governance challenges small schools face, including limited administrative capacity, overlapping roles, and fundraising or enrollment demands. Through real-world scenarios, small group discussions, and shared problem-solving, participants will identify strategies that uphold healthy governance while meeting their school’s evolving needs. Come prepared to share, reflect, and leave with practical tools tailored for small but mighty institutions.

Meet the Presenter: Lynn Wendell, Consultant to Independent School Boards
A favorite of Independent Schoosl Associations, Lynn Wendell has consulted at more than 80 independent schools and nonprofits. Her work focuses on governance, board facilitation, and strategic planning. She was a trustee at three independent schools and a Board Chair at San Francisco University High School (CA). Lynn is a past member of the California Association of Independent School (CAIS) trustee committee and has presented at many CAIS annual conferences and workshops. She is also on the Independent School Chairperson Association (ISCA) board, co-chairing the Program Committee and serving on the Executive Committee. In addition, she has served on other non-profit boards, board committees, and advisory councils. Lynn lives in San Francisco with her husband, Peter. She is a mom of six and a grandmother of six. Lynn graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in English Literature.

PROGRAM FIVE: Guiding Small Schools Through Complexity: Actionable Insights for Financial and Organizational Sustainability
Presenters: Ari Betof and Sadie Albertyn, Mission + Data
February 10, 2026, 1-2:15pm
Audience: HOS, Senior Leadership, Board members
Serving as a senior leader or trustee of a small independent school is rewarding, hard, and sometimes disorienting. This work – best done in partnership with one another – becomes even more demanding in an increasingly dynamic landscape and with the headwinds of growing budget deficits, declining enrollment, compounding operational expenses, and increasingly high expectations from families. This session is designed to be an insightful journey at the intersection of theory and practice exploring how schools move from viability through stability towards long-term financial and organizational sustainability.

It is intended to be both illustrative and actionable. We will discuss:
 • Building shared understanding between senior leaders, the head of school, and trustees
 • Optimizing organizational capacity
 • Utilizing mission-driven, community-centered, data-informed decision making practices
 • Leveraging financial modeling
 • Avoiding common pitfalls hampering strategic progress
 • Assessing structural budget deficits, potential areas of under-investment, and expectations of expense control
 • Differentiating between a productive loss and an unproductive loss
 • Addressing challenges of holding confidential (and potentially scary) financial information paired with the desire for transparency
 • Navigating the intersection of reality and perception in leading organizational change and seeding institutional progress

Meet the Presenters: Ari Betof, EdD, Co-Founder and Partner, Mission + Data
Ari Betof, EdD, MBA is co-founder and partner at Mission + Data and a leading expert on independent school financial sustainability and organizational stewardship. A sought-after keynote speaker and advisor, Ari has worked with over 100 independent schools and membership associations across the country and around the world as a strategy consultant. He was the lead author of Enrollment Management Association’s 2025 flagship report, An Independent School Education: Family Perceptions of Value and Affordability as well as co-creator of the 2020 webinar Independent Schools on the Brink hosted by 33 membership associations and attended by nearly 2,000 trustees, heads of school, and leadership team members. He has made significant contributions to the field through influential research, book chapters, articles, interviews, and podcasts. Ari works at the intersection of theory and practice, drawing on his extensive leadership experience in roles including as a trustee, head of school, chief advancement officer, director of enrollment management, director of strategic planning, and faculty member. He has taught in University of Pennsylvania’s PennGSE Mid-Career Doctoral Program and Master’s Program in Educational Leadership, served on the faculty of the NAIS School Leadership Institute, and mentored emerging leaders through Harvard University’s School Leadership Program and Cornell University’s Executive MBA Mentor Program. Ari earned his doctorate with distinction from the University of Pennsylvania, where his research focused on the financial and organizational sustainability of independent schools. He also holds a MBA with distinction from Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and undergraduate degrees from the Guilford College Honors Program in physics and mathematics.

Sadie Albertyn, Senior Organizational Effectiveness Strategist, Mission + Data
Sadie Albertyn is Mission & Data’s Senior Organizational Effectiveness Strategist, combining her expertise in finance, education leadership, and student-centered program design. Early in her career, Sadie worked as an Associate Client Advisor at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest institutional hedge fund, helping explain the firm’s complex portfolio strategies to employee-elected investment committees for municipal and state-level retirement systems. Wanting to return to the classroom, Sadie shifted to independent schools gaining over 15 years of experience as a teacher, department chair, dean, and division head. She has experience in both day and boarding schools within the U.S. and abroad. Sadie now uses her finance and leadership background to support schools in operationalizing strategic initiatives. Sadie also serves on the Board of Trustees for a K-8 school for students with language-based learning differences. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Barnard College and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts.


All programs will take place via ZOOM. Live participation is requested, but all programs will be recorded and shared to view asynchronously.