New View EDU

Episode 87: Making How MatterWith Julie WilliamsonAvailable April 14, 2026Leadership sometimes feels like a lonely job with lots of competing tasks, but few clear guideposts. Even with the most meticulous planning, we often know conceptually what needs to happen, but falter in articulating how all the pieces will come together. Author, strategist, and consultant/coach Julie Williamson joins host Debra Wilson to talk about the challenges and opportunities of leadership, and what it means to make “how” matter in our work.Guest: Julie WilliamsonResources, Transcript, and Expanded Show NotesIn This Episode:“Changing how you lead means changing some deeply embedded habits about how you're showing up together as a leadership team. How you, as the head of the organization, how you're behaving and what you're doing in the organization to drive the strategy forward. If you're not transforming how you lead, you will not transform your organization, no matter how good the strategy is.” (7:31)“The hard things that you want to work on, whether you're a CEO or a head of school, the hard things you want to work on is how do we be in better service to our students, to our families, to our customers, whatever that looks like for you. You don't want the hard things that you're working on to be, got to go wrangle the board again, or I've got to go convince my team that this is the right direction to go. Right? That's not what you want to spend your time on. And that will cause turnovers.” (27:11)“So if a leader is feeling a real sense of anxiety or trepidation about meeting with the board in any way, in my mind, the board is failing. Because you should be creating an environment where whether it's good news or bad news, that person feels confident that they have a group of people who are there to support their success and that they are going to partner with them and hold them accountable, yes. You know, challenge them, yes, push them, yes, but make them feel small or make them feel anxious or make them feel unworthy of the role? No.” (31:53)Related Episodes: Episode 77; 67; 65; 38; 25

Episode 86: Exploring Community CollaborationsWith Guybe Slangen and Jennifer CherneyAvailable April 7, 2026As independent schools strive to ever expand their impact on their communities and the world, what creative models exist to help them achieve their public purpose? On this episode of New View EDU, host Morva McDonald invites Guybe Slangen of Horizons National to speak about the innovative summer programming the organization designs in collaboration with schools nationwide, expanding equity, access, and community spirit. They are also joined by Jennifer Cherney of the Gateway School in New York City, one of the local partners who can speak to the school experience of working with this unique model.Guests: Guybe Slangen and Jennifer CherneyResources, Transcript, and Expanded Show NotesIn This Episode:“You don't have to look far to the same headlines now, that we are still a divided nation. Opportunity is not equal for everybody. And then you put that in the context of these independent schools that are all mission driven. And every independent school, regardless of the context or the setting or the history, has, in their mission statement, some version of civic engagement, social impact, global citizenship, 21st century skills, you name it. I mean, that is what independent schools do. It's not just about educating the students while they are within the campus of that independent schools. No, you're setting them up for life, and also to be change makers in the greater community.” (12:19)“People really want to feel like they are part of the collective, that it's not just, and there is this old notion that, okay, if you're raising money for an independent school, you have people there that have deep pockets, you don't need my contribution. This is the kind of initiative that brings people to your door. Let's say I want to be able to contribute. I don't have $100,000 to give to you, but I do have something and I want to contribute. I want to be part of something.” (17:32)“We have a host of public school teachers, charter school teachers who obviously are coming into our program. They're more familiar with serving this population. Maybe they actually teach those same students during the school year. They're also seeing the benefits of this, you know, where it's smaller classrooms. There's more hands-on experience, with assistants, with literacy instructors, you know, and they're able to really kind of roll up their sleeves and focus in ways that unfortunately they just can't during the school year. So that's kind of also giving them this kind of renewed energy, renewed creativity, renewed sense of purpose.” (34:05)Related Episodes: 85; 77; 74; 73; 69; 15

Episode 85: Securing Legacy Through EndowmentWith George SuttlesAvailable March 31, 2026In a time of constant uncertainty, planning for the future of a school community can feel like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Big picture strategy and mission dominate our aspirations, but it’s the day-to-day tactical decisions that carry immediate weight. George Suttles of the Commonfund Institute joins New View EDU guest host and NAIS Vice President of Strategy, Ann Snyder, to share his insights on how financial planning can seamlessly blend the aspirational and the practical, securing the future legacies of our schools through careful stewardship of resources.Guest: George SuttlesResources, Transcript, and Expanded Show NotesIn This Episode:“I'd also be remiss if I didn't, if we didn't have this conversation in the context of the times we're in, right? And so I think a lot of institutions and independent schools aren't shielded from this, are navigating uncertainty and turbulence, both persistent and emergent. And so when I say that, I mean, you know, independent schools have been trying to wrap their arms around persistent challenges that we've been having conversations about for years.” (8:11)“Don't make the mistake of siloing the endowment management work with the finance committee or the investment committee without including other school leadership, right? So you mentioned the advancement office, you know, the fundraising development team, they should have a strategic seat at the table, right? Because think about it, they're going to be one of, if not, they're going to be one of, if not the most important, lever or partner that you need to engage with to grow the endowment, right? Because we're going to invest this pool of capital for long-term growth and the markets are going to do what they do, but you're also going to need to equip the advancement team with information and narrative storytelling capability around what possibilities the endowment is going to create for the institution.” (20:05)“So when I think about endowment building sparking a culture of philanthropy, I immediately began to think about, right, it's about legacy. It's about securing the future of an institution we all care about. And that can be connected to legacy planning as it pertains to bequests and other vehicles. So I was like, right. Like if you're not having those legacy gift conversations already, that actually might be a nice entree into beginning to have them.” (36:04)Related Episodes: 74; 57; 38; 20; 9

Episode 83: Mattering LIVE Episode With Jennifer WallaceAvailable January 22, 2026What if we could unlock the secret to a life of deep connection and purpose? That’s the premise of Jennifer Wallace’s new book, Mattering. In this special live edition of New View EDU, recorded on January 15, 2026, Jennifer shares everything she has learned about the importance of mattering with NAIS President Debra Wilson.Guest: Jennifer WallaceResources, Transcript, and Expanded Show NotesIn This Episode:“Researchers who study it say that after the drive for food and shelter, it is the drive, the motivation to matter, that shapes human behavior for better or for worse. So when we feel like we matter, we show up fully, we engage, we connect, we contribute. When we are made to feel like we don't matter, we can either turn against ourselves, become anxious, depressed, turn to substances to try to alleviate the pain, or lash out in anger, right? Road rage, online attacks, political extremes, these are desperate attempts to say, oh, I don't matter? I'll show you I matter.” (10:03)“Something like 70% of the workforce, employees are reporting feeling disengaged. The way I view disengagement through the lens of mattering is that when we feel, as individual workers, like we don't matter, for whatever reason that is, it's a painful feeling. It releases these painful neurochemicals in our brains, and to stop that, if we don't feel like we have a voice or agency, to stop it, is to disengage. That's the coping strategy that we employ.” (16:40)“And so what I argue in the book to leaders, again, not just school leaders, to anybody, is that mattering at work is critical. If we want to support, if we know that children's resilience rests on the resilience of the adults in their lives, and we know that adults spend the majority of their waking hours in the workplace. If we can go and make adults feel like they matter at work, that is how we can bring caregivers and parents home to their kids as their best selves, sturdy adults, so that they could act as the first responders to those kids' struggles. You cannot do it if you are constantly beaten down at your job. You cannot show up as your best self.” (52:19)Related Episodes: 79; 78; 77; 72; 60; 54; 51

Episode 82: The New Dream SchoolsWith Jeff SelingoAvailable November 18, 2025What is a “Dream School?” Almost since the college admissions process began, students have had ideas about where they dream they’ll end up after high school, and increasingly, those “dream schools” have existed on a very short list of what we think of as prestigious, name-brand institutions. But what if we’re wrong about that list? What if everything we think we know about the factors that make a college great has been misguided? Higher education expert Jeff Selingo joins host Debra Wilson for a frank discussion of what needs to change in our approach to college admissions, and his new book, Dream School.Guest: Jeff SelingoResources, Transcript, and Expanded Show NotesIn This Episode:“I want to bring back some normalcy to high school so that not everything is about, not everything you do is about getting into college and into the right college, that you're doing things because you want to challenge yourself. You enjoy them, you want to try new things out…There's so much pressure around me to apply to a certain set of schools, and I wanna change that conversation.” (6:08)“The November 1 deadlines, the October 15th deadlines now, even earlier deadlines, has just moved up the entire college search process now really into the junior year. And then now what used to happen in the junior year is happening in the sophomore year. So you're not even getting through half of high school without really thinking about college.” (11:33)“I mean, the big unknown here, Debra, is the role of AI in the job market. What are the jobs of the future really going to be and what are they going to need? What are the skill sets they're going to need? It was pretty certain over the last 10 years that we've seen, one of the reasons why liberal arts colleges have kind of gone out of favor is because we've seen a huge shift in majors to the business and STEM because parents thought that's where the jobs were…Now parents are asking, huh, what is the, now what's the next major? And by the way, maybe this brings the liberal arts back into vogue and maybe the liberal arts institutions with their ability to have a mix of problem solving and communication and critical thinking and bring in hands-on learning to that, that might bring them back in a way that we didn't quite expect.” (34:14)Related Episodes: 76; 74; 63; 44; 36; 29; 22

Episode 81: How AI Changes Everything and NothingWith Peter NilssonAvailable November 11, 2025Right now, it may feel as though AI has changed everything about education. It has, says Peter Nilsson – but it has also changed nothing. That’s the paradox at the core of his forthcoming co-authored book, Irreplaceable: How AI Changes Everything and Nothing about Teaching and Learning. He sits down with host Morva McDonald to share what has actually changed, what hasn’t, and how his work using technology to bolster innovation in education has led him to this place.Guest: Peter NilssonResources, Transcript, and Expanded Show NotesIn This Episode:“Unlike medicine and unlike law, education is diverse in the way that it is applied in different classrooms. There isn't only one way to teach the Great Gatsby. There isn't only one way to teach Beloved. In fact, every classroom should be different in the way that it engages it because every classroom has different students. So while knowledge on Wikipedia compiles everybody's contributions to the page on physics compiled to one page, curriculum does the opposite. Curriculum doesn't compile. It disaggregates. It diversifies.” (5:22)“It's impossible to expect every teacher, every school, even to be able to develop the wisest, most effective responses to every change. That's just not how innovation happens. What happens is people all across networks figure out small little things. And the more those small little things can share across the network, the more any individual node on the network can have the most comprehensive, high quality, effective response to that thing.” (16:52)“Students now can do more, so much more than they ever could do before. Every student having something like this vision of an AI tutor is a game changer for so many reasons. But nonetheless, students will still need time. They will still need help. They will still need practice. They will still struggle to ask the right question. They will still come in confused about something. They will still need teachers to help them build confidence. Everything is changing in terms of how we do this on a human, individual level where we're interacting with a machine that is more and more like a human, but nothing is changing in that the messiness of our own human learning remains.” (22:31)Related Episodes: 71, 69, 68, 49, 45, 31

In this episode from NAIS podcast Member Voices, Jackie Wolking speaks with Autumn Adkins Graves, head of St. Anne's-Belfield School (VA). In their conversation, Graves shares the importance of curiosity in the age of artificial intelligence, and how her school created a portrait of a graduate with a futurist lens. She also talks about change management and how we affirm what's working well to move things along and how we have to stop trying to control tech or dismiss it. New View EDU will return next week with a new episode on How AI Changes Everything and Nothing, with guest Peter Nilsson. Related Resources:Member Voices PodcastAI Resources for Schools and EducatorsRecent Episodes of New View EDU

Episode 80: The Future of InclusionWith Kenji YoshinoAvailable October 28, 2025In this time of rapidly evolving law and opinion around terms like diversity, equity, and inclusion, what is the work of school leaders who believe in building stronger, more connected, more inclusive communities? Legal scholar and author Kenji Yoshino is the author of a forthcoming book called How Equality Wins: A New Vision for an Inclusive America. He joins host Morva McDonald to talk about the legal precedents of the past, the shifting culture of the present, and the strategies that can secure the future of equitable practice.Guests: Kenji YoshinoResources, Transcript, and Expanded Show NotesIn This Episode:“I think lawyers are actually terrible at lots of things, but we're actually rather good at saying, yes, we disagree, but you're not my enemy, right? You're my debate opponent, and you're actually my friend on the other side. And so let's actually behave as if, let's carry ourselves in that way and let the best ideas win.”“I think that the younger generation has a greater understanding not of who they are, but, or not just of who they are, but also the skills that are going to be needed for us to survive, much less thrive, in a multicultural society that is much more global, much more diverse. And so the capacity to speak across difference, to work across difference, to bond across difference is going to be a critical skill for us going forward. And that's the set of skills that are embodied within DEI.”“So the question I always ask is like, it's really easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment and to get blown back and forth as the pendulum swings back and forth, right? But rather than doing that, like just sit in your values and think five years from now, who will I want to have been in this moment when everyone was telling me like cave or do this or do that? Like what is the kind of values based decision that I can make here that will make me proud of myself five years from now, rather than proud of myself tomorrow or proud of myself next week?”Related Episodes: 77; 66; 64; 62; 37; 30; 17; 7