Kevin Warenda, Director of IT Services at The Hotchkiss School, joins the pod to discuss the intersection of business acumen and technical leadership. Learn how Kevin utilizes Agile methodology to manage complex financial system migrations and the construction of a data warehouse for institutional research while maintaining organizational continuity amidst senior leadership churn.

1. The Hotchkiss School
2. Center for Institutional Research in Independent Schools (CIRIS)
3. Veracross, school information systems
4. National Business Officers Association (NBOA)
5. The Oregon Trail
6. Asana, project management tool)
7. The Tech Whisperers Podcast

Dan, welcome to Talking technology with ATLIS,

the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

special guests from the Independent School community,

and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

And now please welcome your host. Christina Lewellen,

Hello everyone, and welcome back to

talking technology with ATLIS. I'm Christina Lewellen, the

President and CEO of the Association of technology

leaders in independent schools.

And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Jersey.

And I'm Hiram Cuevas, the Director of

Information Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher

school in Richmond, Virginia.

Hello, gentlemen. How's everybody

today doing? Well, yeah, I'm a little

tired of winter. Yeah. I think I'm over it. You

know that when you sign up for a subscription and you're just

like, yeah, I want to unsubscribe and you can't, I

just can't seem to unsubscribe till winter.

Yeah, yeah, that's what's going on. For

sure. In Virginia, we are still surrounded by snow. Crete, is

what they say. Oh, 100% in Jersey, it's crazy. Well, this

is a time of year where I am starting to get on the road

quite a bit with different industry events, and so earlier

this week, I was in Houston, Texas, with Prisma, which is

heads of Jewish schools. And at the end of this week, I'm with

the international coalition of girls schools in Maryland, and

then heading into all sorts of state and regional groups, NAIS,

NBOA, it is spring conference season for independent schools.

And I've been out and about talking about AI. I think a lot

of schools are still all over the map in terms of where their

progress is, and it's surprising to me, because the room is

getting more and more split. I always start by saying, you

know, point to one side of the room if you're all in on AI,

point to the other side of the room if you want nothing to do

with it, and there is still big gaps. You know, people are all

over the spectrum and just not quite sure where to land on all

this stuff. So I've been living with it and spending a lot of

time with school leaders on the road.

I just spoke with our NJ AIS trustee enrichment

day, and the topic was AI, and it was just very interesting

when you gage the room and you see where people are with it at

this point, a lot of focus that people have had in schools has

been on what's happening in the classroom. Yeah. And one of the

things that we kind of spent some time talking with that

group, and I'm continually banging that drum here, is, how

are we talking about it? How we doing? PD, around it, around the

operational aspects of school, because I think so many people

are focused on it from that cheating standpoint, which is

100% should be in focus. But there are other pieces of it as

well that I think are equally as concerning, and people need to

be whether they believe in it or not. They need to be bought in

because it's real and it's not going anywhere.

And we recently did a faculty and staff PD on

AI, and we highlighted our exemplar teachers. But what

really caught the attention of the group was I asked one of my

students who's doing a capstone project on AI in education, and

he gave a presentation on how students are using AI, and that

just captivated the audience, I bet, and they were just like,

wow. A, this is really, really impressive. And B, he was able

to articulate not only why he was using it and what the future

looks like, but how he's hoping the school will recognize the

need for us to continue to go down this path. He did a

marvelous job.

Awesome. I love seeing the kids get

involved in that. Well, let's bring in our guests to chat with

us, because I'm sure that there is a lot of ground for us to

cover, both on AI and tons of other topics. Today, we're super

excited to have ATLIS member extraordinaire, just a smiley,

happy person that I always love engaging with, and also has a

competitive streak, I think too. Kevin warenda from the hotchka

school, you are the director of IT services at your school. You

are also very quick to point out that you were the second human

ever to register for the T list I was so that's where I'm

saying. You're a smiley guy, and there's a little competitive

streak going on. Kevin, thanks for joining us. Appreciate you

being here.

Yeah, it's an honor and pleasure to be

invited. So thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

You are number two to sign up for the T

list. You jumped in nice and early.

Yes, and as Peter will confirm, I was actually the

first to sit for the exam, but at the time, he numbered the

certifications based on when you applied. So Ellie Wenzel beat me

out, but that's fine ally, and I have a good history. She

actually welcomed me to ATLIS back in 2015 when I first

joined. My outgoing head of school actually left to become

the head of school, the school she was at, so we had a little

bit of a connection there. So happy to follow in ATLIS

footsteps anytime.

But you did beat her to the punch on sitting

for the exam based on when you guys scheduled it right?

Yes, I did. Peter says, technically I'm 001, you

guys did announce, I think, at one of the conferences, that

double oh one was here. But as it turned out, double of two was

there.

I love it. So Kevin, let's start with this.

I have to admit, I always say, you call me out. I admit this

freely. I always say, nobody went to school to work it at an

independent school like nobody dreamed of being IT director at

an independent school when they were a kid, and yet you did. So

let's start there. Tell us about your journey.

I'll give you credit. It's probably not

exactly that accurate. I wouldn't say I dreamed to be an

independent school technology director, so you're still

correct there, but I think to understand my story, you really

go back to my kindergarten classroom. You know, in 1986 we

actually had an apple two computer in the classroom. Was

probably rare at the time for a public school. I was a curious

kid. I wanted to figure out how to turn it on. I was probably

the only kid in the class that knew to get to reach around

back. There was a switch there, right? Still love playing Oregon

Trail, which had been released in 1985

still the best game of all time, yeah,

still the best

game of all time. I'd also say, for anyone

questioning whether playing video games is valuable, I think

that having my entire family die of starvation or dysentery over

and over again, it's probably a formidable lesson in failure,

problem solving and determination.

Gen X, we have been shaped by that trauma

of letting Ma and Pa drown in the river. I'm just saying

I went to public school for kindergarten, but

then went to Catholic school the remainder of my elementary

career, so I didn't see another computer in a classroom until

high school. I was lucky enough to have a family who could

afford a computer at home, so when I was seven or eight, we

had one at home, and I spent all my time playing with that,

figuring out how it worked. I grew up taking things apart. If

something was broken in the house, my parents would let me

have it because they knew I couldn't put it back together.

But I wanted to see how it worked, so I took everything

apart. You know, fast forward to high school. I actually took a

computer programming class, and I think that's really the seed

to your point about wanting to be a technology director or

serve some role in education. I really got energized with that

class. It was Visual Basic, which to think back was

absolutely awful, but it was the experience of like learning that

I could make something happen on the screen. I actually thought,

I want to get into that. You know, that teacher I had at the

time was just a great cheerleader for the excitement I

had in that class to see how my computer program ran. So I

thought, you know, maybe I could do that. There weren't

technology directors in schools at the time, right? It was

mostly computer science teachers and such. So I would say that

that's probably the seed that I thought, maybe this something I

might want to do. So to that point, I don't have the journey

that some of your other guests have, where they've kind of gone

to industry or gone somewhere else, or even started in the

classroom. It was a little bit of a straight line to being a

technology director.

That's really awesome, and it's

interesting because your journey being a little different. You

know, one of the things that we want to talk to you about, and

part of why we invited you on to the program, is that you are

kind of a project manager extraordinaire. And I do think

that all tech directors, to some extent, must have that puzzle

building skill, because there's always a big project. But it

feels to me like you have gone through just about a million

information system implementations, a bunch of

building projects. Is that kind of the key to your interest and

or success. Do you just like a good project? Like, do you like

ripping things out at your house and building LEGO sets? Like,

are you a project person?

Well, I'm definitely Lego guy. You can

actually probably see the top of my Lego tree right there behind

me, between my wife and I, we have more Legos than I care to

admit. So definitely a bill in that respect. I'd say that my

experience with projects is really the result of my need to

want to see how everything fits together. I think my desire to

be a technology director is because it's one role in the

school that really touches everything. Right? I can be

involved in so many different things from day to day, and

that's what kind of keeps the interest in the excitement over

25 years or so in this industry, I've been in colleges. I've been

in K 12, municipal and now independent schools. I've seen

the gamut of use that every single different possible

information system I've helped to implement or manage. We're in

the middle of a major one right now for our finance group. I've

seen every different size building project. We just opened

a brand new 50 plus million dollar dining hall of Hotchkiss

in December. We're still, I mean, punch list is still very

active, and we'll be doing that for a while, but at least we are

serving meals there and joining us community. So I approach

everything as a project. I've studied Advil methodology. I

really run even my own operations. An agile way. I'm I

have plans on the shelf for kind of long term planning, but I do

everything operationally in kind of short monthly sprints, and I

try to direct my team in that way too. I kind of look ahead

what's coming up, but the projects are just goal posts

along that path, right? You know, trying to help people

solve problems. I gravitated towards mission based

organizations and nonprofit my entire career, because I'm

interested in the impact that technology in particular has on

things right? We're not counting widgets. We're not tracking

profits. We're thinking about how each of these things comes

as a part of the larger picture to actually create some kind of

impact in the lives of others, in particular, for our current

industry, students in classrooms or residential settings in my

case, as well.

So I have a question for you. You mentioned

agile. You know Christina will swear by Asana. It makes me

think about the process and the tools. Again, agile is

definitely a process, but like, can you describe the process

that you do go through, how you involve other people. And then

what are the tools of the trade that you employ to make sure

that these things have their start, their middle and their

end?

I ask folks when either faculty or staff or even

students come to me with something, I always start with

the question of, what is it you're trying to accomplish? You

know, sometimes people kind of come in with they're like,

already halfway down the thought stream, and I want to make sure

I understand what is the outcome you're looking for. What is the

current state? What does the future state look like? And then

explore together collaboratively, what possible

solutions exist. Can we buy something? Do we have to make

something? I'll employ tools based on the need. Sometimes you

need a tool. Sometimes you don't. I'm probably perhaps one

of few tech directors who often says when it's not a good time

to use technology to solve a particular problem. And I think

some of that comes from my business training, my MBA, I do

a little bit of business process analysis. I do look at the

process of things and to say, well, maybe technology can help

here, but sometimes it's people, it's relationships, it's

behavior, it's whatever that process is. So I'll look to pick

that apart document again. As I said earlier, I'm interested in

how things work, so I want to take that process apart. I want

to take that need apart into its individual components and really

understand how each piece fits together. And then, you know, I

really take a systems thinking approach to just about

everything. And I'm very visual too. So sometimes I'll just map

it out pen and paper. Sometimes I'll use a diagramming tool, but

I want to see those relationships between people,

process and technology, and how that all can flow to what is the

outcome that's desired. So from a project management

perspective, that can be very compartmentalized, you know,

what is the scope of work? What is the timeline we have, what is

the budget we have? And we can kind of work towards that from

an everyday operational perspective, again, taking that

agile approach. It's what's coming up, what do we have to

produce in? What timeline we're kind of working backwards,

letting folks kind of lead in different areas to produce those

things. And you want to fail quickly, you know, try

something. If that doesn't work, you go back to the drawing

board. So a little bit of design thinking in there as well. But I

think that's the benefit of the sprint. Is especially in today's

complex, uncertain environment, we don't always know the

solution, or we think we might, and we want to try that. But

it's not like it used to be, you know, where there was kind of

few things to choose from, few tools to choose from few

solutions to problems. You'd kind of pick one and you'd have

this monolithic project to get to the end of it. It's not

really the case anymore. There's just so many different

components and pieces and things can kind of change along the

way. So it's really about building a relationship where

people are willing to kind of work with you in an iterative

process, whether it's on the operational support side, okay,

you know, we've got trustees coming in two weeks. Okay? What

meetings are happening? When do they need them? Hybrid? Do they

need them in person? Work that out for that individual case,

it's almost never a cookie cutter. It's never a template,

frankly. So approaching it from that perspective kind of puts

you behind

the curve on that. So Kevin, one of the reasons I

wanted to have you on as a guest is because of your business

acumen, the fact that you actually have an MBA, and we

just dropped the pod with James pal Mary from NBOA, and we were

discussing, what does the tech director need to know? And

you're kind of like that double unicorn in which you have both

the Tech experience and the business chops in order to

really have a great conversation with school leadership talk

about this new project that you're working on with the

developing the new chart of accounts and whatnot, and how

your experience with also having that MBA assisted in the

facilitation of this project.

Yeah, I originally had applied to

college as a dual major computer science, computer engineering.

It was quick that I learned I wasn't interested in kind of

building and understanding, like the hardware piece. I was more

interested, again, in that impact of how technology can

serve things and business. You know, Management Information

Systems was kind of the place I moved to, because that kind of

afforded me that ability to really say, you know, in a

business setting, in particular, in any order. Organization. How

is technology helping drive impact? So two years ago, we

realized we have quite a bit of legacy software and process in

place for our financial system, very complex error for all lots

of manual effort, right? It's time to modernize that system,

and the CFO and I at the time, kind of talked part of the

challenge wasn't just the technology stack. It was

actually the Chart of Accounts, the number of accounts that are

used to support the school and how that all flows to financial

statements. So certainly, having a business degree, having

understanding of what financial statements are and a chart of

accounts and how all that functions certainly gives me a

leg up, especially when trying to support a business office

transition like that. Because it's not just, I'm not just

bringing the technology leadership to that table. I'm

actually bringing an understanding of the content

area. I guess we've been lucky in some respect, because I'm the

only one that's been continuous through that project. We've had

some turnover in our finance department, so CFOs left. We got

a new controller, new senior financial analyst. So actually,

all the key players from the Business Office side have turned

over during the course of this project, so it's been helpful.

My business office colleagues shout out to honey and Josh in

particular, who are part of the core team. Often say, I'm

helping to serve almost as an additional business officer for

them, because I have the continuity of this project. I

was part of the design and implementation of the actual

chart of accounts itself. I understand how the school works,

and again, that comes from being involved with every department

in the school. From a technology support perspective, I actually

do have an insight and understanding into what their

needs may be from a budget perspective, or, you know, a

tracking perspective, what kind of data they might need to make

decisions. And so I was at part of the process of kind of

discussing what that looks like. Now we also engaged an outside

consultant to help with that process, especially because of

the transition. So we did have some kind of expert outside

resources too to build off of, but we did that collaboratively,

and so I was able to speak intelligently and be a valuable

member of the team at the chart of accounts because of that

business experience. Now we're in the phase of implementing

that in a brand new tech stack as well. So we will go live in

July with a new central ERP system, financial accounting

system. We're pretty mature in a lot of our processes, though,

even especially purchasing, we have kind of a large, complex,

distributed setup. We make use of a bunch of different

interesting technologies with that respect, and that's been

part of the challenge, is finding solutions that actually

meet that. So we're not going backwards, right? We don't want

to influence a new system and have people have less capability

than had before. But a lot of that's being driven by, you

know, what? We need for budget reporting to areas of the

schools so they can understand how the resources are being

allocated and used, and also being able to interface with all

these other partners. Again, the financial technologies. Tech has

become very, very complicated, but it's also a key area where

you can get efficiency. You don't need as many people

necessarily anymore by leveraging technology in the

right way. Or you can make those people's jobs a lot easier so

they can focus on the human relationships they need with the

various faculty departments.

It's really interesting. And Kevin, I want

to pause there for a second, because you've experienced a lot

of turnover. You've been at Hotchkiss

for about a decade, right? 11 years coming

up soon, yeah, okay,

so almost 11 years, and in that time, you've

experienced a ton of senior leadership churn that obviously

introduces a lot of organizational chaos, not only

for the tech team and the tech leader, but for the entire

school. Tell us a little bit about that. Tell everybody just

a bit about some of that churn and kind of how you've been able

to be that consistent thread as things have changed.

I do often find myself in rooms of people where

I'm the longest tenure. There are certainly some other key

partners that have been at the school longer than I, so I

welcome their partnership as well to help with that. I don't

always like to look back either. It's nice to be the kind of the

historian to say, like, oh, we tried that before and didn't

work, and here's why. So let's learn team mistakes kind of

situation. But as I came in the head of school, was actually

transitioning, so I had an intern the first year, and then

the last 10 years have been the same head of school, although he

just announced his retirement. We have a new one coming in

July, so I'll be on my third head at Hotchkiss come next

year. I'm on my third CFO, and she's currently an interim as we

select a permanent one, and in every other position,

advancement, admission, academic life, dean of faculty, Associate

Head, Dean of Students. Every single administrative position

in the school, senior administrative position in the

school has turned over at least once, if not twice. And then

many of my operational period as well, facilities has turned

over. Security is turned over. So yes, it is a lot of churn.

Now I will say the folks that are in some of those positions

now are great, great partners, whether I've been with them for

a year or two or three or four, those relationships are the way

in which we get work done. I think the challenge for me has

been every time that position turns over, I have to kind of

start over, build a new relationship, build trust to

work with that person. Person. Modern organizations, especially

independent schools, are very matrix oriented, like there is a

hierarchy, there's a organizational chart, per se,

but then many people hold different roles in different

departments, right? Same person can have three different jobs.

The dean of faculty is the head of the faculty, but also as the

teacher and so has to report to an academic department head.

It's a dynamic and interesting environment where we really have

to co Elevate, you know, work together with leadership or the

authority in any given situation could be fluid. So building

relationships, building trust with people, understanding what

their needs, their goals are, especially senior leaders, to be

able to be in a position to support them and what the impact

and the outcome they're looking for. It takes time. So the more

churn there is, it's just that much more time. And I don't

serve on the senior leadership committee at our school. It's

just not the way we're structured. The IT director

isn't there, so I'm not in a room. I'm not at the table with

all of them. So I have to make my own table. I have to reach

out and set up standing meetings with these folks, and it's kind

of one on one, although there's a benefit to that right? Like

not being just part of a large group, I can actually build a

strong personal relationship with each person, understand

their areas, and then being a systems thinker that I am, I put

all that together in my head, I can kind of draw the map of the

whole organization. I think that's what makes me a key

partner to folks, is because they can be talking about their

needs, their wants, what they're working on, and I can help

connect that to other dots that I'm seeing somewhere else, that

maybe they're not going to work. I can help put them in touch

with another contact or a colleague somewhere that's

working on either something similar, so we don't duplicate

effort and resources, or if there's things that are very

complementary to each other in terms of initiatives, and then I

understand how the technology, in many cases, or the business

aspect of things, can support

those needs. It sounds like you're very much the

glue that keeps all those pieces connected. For you to do that, I

want you to describe your team. Who do you have there with you?

Because in order to do all the things that you're doing, I

would assume, and you know what they say about that, but I would

assume that you've got a pretty deep bench and people that you

can really count on. So can you give our audience an idea of

what it looks like there?

I do have an amazing team, and they've been

turned there too. That's not the same team I started with. So

there are six of us total. Now. We've had more than that. We've

contracted. Sometimes less is more. So I think actually six is

the right number for what we're trying to accomplish right now.

Within the resources we have, I have folks that handle kind of

IT support, three of those folks who are really frontline meeting

with people doing all the help desk and classroom support and

all that kind of stuff. And I have two folks who actually have

been there longer than I have that kind of head up our

infrastructure, you know, servers, network security and

that kind of stuff. But it's a great team of self starters.

They take initiative, they're smart, they know what they're

doing. It's taken the 10 years to assemble that team, and it

really is the dream team right now. We've got people from

different experiences, you know, different industries, but

everyone's focused on serving our customers, our faculty,

staff and students. I don't have to micromanage that team from

the agile methodology. You know, we run huddles regularly,

usually through a week or so. We don't stand up for those.

Sometimes they're called Stand up, meaning, if we don't stand

up, we sit down. But they only last 30 minutes at most, usually

to try to make sure folks know what's going on, know their

piece, know what they're need to be working on and bring back.

And it's really more meant to be a time to discuss what

challenges or blockers are in the way, and can anyone else

help push through those things and then get a sense of what's

coming next. What do we need to prepare for next? So we're

probably the smallest of what we consider to be our peer schools

in terms of the size of our IT department, but then we're

independent schools. I like to say that a lot like everyone's

different. They're organized differently. We have some

talented folks in the faculty side who run the theater and

that kind of technical stuff and music, so we don't have to

handle that piece of it. We don't have an ed tech person or

role in the school. I haven't had one for quite some time, so

we do our best to support that, but it's not a position we have

to officially serve. We collaborate a lot with the

library folks. There's a lot of talented faculty and in

departments that can actually kind of bring subject matter

competency and a comfort with technology. You know, we have a

STEM lab and things, robotics program, all that kind of stuff.

Photography has a ton of technology, but those faculty

are actually very comfortable with that and know what they're

doing, so we don't have to provide a ton of support there.

So our team is right sized in that respect, and then I take on

way more than I probably should. I help our academic office.

Veracross is those of you who have it know that can be a

barrier to manage. You know, I don't want that all to fall to

our registrar. It's not all academics, right? We use it for

all kinds of things, athletics and other things. Athletics and

other things. So I help with the annual cycle of that, in terms

of loading Residential Life information and athletic

information, and try to reduce the load on our academic

department. And I'm also working with our dean of academic life

and our associate head on a lot of institutional research type

projects as well. Have a passion for that. We're building a data

warehouse. I work very closely with CIRIS. We're a CIRIS member

now. I think the partnership that they have with ATLIS and

the fact that the conference comes together has been huge for

folks like me who aren't institutional researchers and

don't have an institutional research office, but we're

trying to do some of that. It's just a perfect collaboration

between two organizations that are kind of serving a lot of the

same folks. So it's a right size team for what we need to

accomplish and what resources we have. But you're right, Bill,

like, if it wasn't for the depth of bench I have, I would not be

as successful as I am. For sure,

you have a lot going on, and I'm curious,

like, what some of the big projects are in your world right

now. You mentioned that you just opened a new dining hall, and I

guess we didn't really stop down on your school. Your school has

a residential program. So I guess maybe two part question,

can you just tell us a little bit about the school, also just

what's in your universe right now? What are you and your team

tackling in this second part of

the school year. So the hatchka School is grades

nine through 12, with some contingent post grads as well,

almost all boarding. But we do have sizable day population.

Many of those are faculty students. So they are

technically day because they get to live in the faculty

apartment, but they're on campus. So when you consider

that the number of actual students that are commuting from

within a 30 mile radius is very small, so for all intents and

purposes, we are a boarding school, you know, full

residential program, 600 and some odd students. 615 20,

depending on the day, we have a beautiful campus, 500 and some

odd acres in the main campus on the deepest freshwater lake in

Connecticut, and then we have a farm, 200 acre farm, down the

street, that actually helps produce a lot of the food in our

dining hall and serves a number of different academic purposes

as well. So it's a relatively small, or I guess, maybe perhaps

medium sized, rural boarding school, but we are considered

often one of the top boarding schools in the country. Have one

of the largest endowments, extremely large operating

budget. I came from K 12 public K 12, where we had 3600

students, pre K through 12, and the operating budgets

essentially the same for a 600 student campus. You know, we

have about 75 faculty who live on campus all year round of the

150 or so faculty members, so 625 ish students and about 350

faculty and staff is cool. We support with six people

that's keeping you busy. So what does

this part of your year look like?

For folks who aren't familiar with the

boarding school environment? I like to describe it as a roller

coaster that never stops. We are definitely on like the second

hill. We've come back from winter break, and we are now

accelerating down the hill towards what will then be the

uphill climb of summer programs and everything else. So the

second semester was in full swing. The trustees were just on

campus approving a budget for next year, which is going to set

all kinds of things in motion. We're going to start accepting,

you know, sending acceptances out for next year's class. We're

planning summer programs support. We have a pretty robust

summer programs that goes on, and there are all kinds of so

the dining hall was probably the biggest construction project

going on until December. And while we have some things to

button up there. We've now moved focus to a number of other

things that are going on, renovations, constant dorm

renovations in a continuous cycle. So we don't do full

dorms. We do like, a wing at a time or a floor at a time to

meet the programmatic needs. So that requires the movement. In

this case, this summer, there's going to be, like, our entire

business office, who is already planning to launch a brand new

financial system actually has to move all their offices

physically in a couple of months, and that's disrupting a

number of other things. And actually the completion of the

dining hall set in motion a series of administrative office

moves. So our communications folks are moving this week. Our

development folks are going to be moving a little bit to make

some additional room for the business folks who will move

another month, and then come summer, once all those moves are

done, then some additional renovation stuff can be done.

Our facilities team is amazing, and they've always got a ton of

stuff going on, and a lot of that does have kind of a

crossover with tech. So I partner very closely with Mike

verze, who's our current facilities director, and that's

a great partnership to have. We stay in constant contact about

what's going on and what's coming down the pike. So we're

often doing a lot of support to set the stage for those types of

projects going on, too. We are actively trying to build data

warehouse. I'm working with folks in that respect. We're

tackling the topic of AI, lots of discussion, not necessarily a

lot of action there, but trying to get our hand around what we

might do there. As we're waiting for a new head to start in July,

we're searching for a new CFO. So I'd say right now, I can't

really point to a number of different specific projects

beyond that financial system. That's kind of what's. Taking

most of the cognitive load right now, but there's all these other

enabling things that are kind of happening in the wake of the

major construction piece. We just also completed a capital

campaign, or kind of finishing phase of capital campaign in the

first one in 30 years for our school. So there's a number of

initiatives that will come out of that. We just completed the

Ask self study. There'll be a few pieces left to do that, but

the visiting team was here in October, that will probably

produce a bunch of ideas and things to work on. So, yeah,

it's a storm of things happening all at once, but that's what

makes it really exciting. Yeah.

I mean, it sounds beautifully chaotic,

which tends to be the case with boarding schools. Is my

experience is there's a lot of beautiful chaos. Bill and Hiram,

you guys are probably feeling tired just hearing about that,

but given the fact that you bring some pretty unique

perspectives, you know you've got this business background,

you have helped with a lot of change management and transition

at your school, can you speak to either what your goals are for

maybe the back part of your career, or specifically the

things that sort of capture your interest. In other words, I'm

sure that you're reading and listening to podcasts and

getting involved in things that maybe not all tech leaders do.

So what I'm trying to get to is this issue that we often wrestle

on this podcast is like about career mapping and if tech

directors want to step into broader leadership roles, even

if they're not defined, it sounds like you're a leader in

your school even if you don't necessarily have a chief

executive type title. So I'm just kind of curious, like, what

it is that interests you, where you think the back part of your

career will go, especially in terms of, like, how you think

about yourself as a player in the leadership team of your

school.

I'm open to a lot of different opportunities. I

think I'm privileged to be in position where I am, where I'm

comfortable. I've got a great team. I've got a decade here,

which is just slightly longer than any other professional

stint I've done. I did higher ed for seven or eight years, public

K 12 for nine, and then now I'm at 10. So it's kind of a

progression of how long I've stayed. I could actually see

myself staying at Hudson for quite a bit longer when I was

recruited to come here and I left the public K 12 space. I

had completed everything I had set out to do, and what I had

laid in front of the trustees at the time of the school board in

terms of, we had three, three year each operational cycles we

completed there. I was ready. I was like, it's either make a new

plan for the future or try something new. And so that was

the opportunity that presented itself at the time, and I was

prepared for that. So I made the decision to come to Hodgkins and

did something similar, you know, tried to map out what, what does

it look like? So we are kind of at the end of a, you know, end

of a decade is the end of a timeline, but the schools still

in transition, right? We have a new head coming in. There'll be

all kinds of new ideas and things coming in. We've got a

bunch of other great administrative faculty and folks

that have new ideas the school undoubtedly take up a strategic

planning process. We were completing the NE ask study

right when I arrived. So the 10 year cycle is completed. We've

got a new self study completed that's going to come up with a

bunch of ideas, I guess. Where I am right now is somewhat

patiently waiting to see how I can get involved in any of those

areas. And if that turns into something where perhaps, if the

new head, or the new CFO decide, you know, perhaps Kevin can have

a greater role at the senior admin team level, great. And if

not, I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing and make those

tables myself. I will say that the interim CFO, we have now

Maria Kimsey, who came from Mercers Berg before she retired,

and is now kind of doing these one year stints to help schools

get over the hump. She's been a tremendous advocate for me, and

actually got me invited to participate in our building

grounds and environment trustee committee now, so I've been

before the audit and risk committee as a guest a number of

times. But other than that, don't have any permanent

membership or participation in any other board committees. So

this is my first you know, they realized that when you're

talking about things like physical assets, the physical

plant, we have fiber running everywhere on this campus.

That's kind of part of that purview that that committee

probably should be thinking about in terms of long term

capital planning. So they're talking about adding technology

as a formal piece of that community as well. So I've

recently joined that. So that's a piece of growth of my own

career to be part of that board committee, and I've had that

again before, but not when it came to house slightly

different. I'm open to those opportunities where I can help

more with trustees. I also look externally, though, right? I'm

in a great place where I'm afforded the ability to kind of

work with organizations like Atlas. I put my hat in the ring

and told you Christina and others, if there's a board

position at Atlas open at some point in the future, I'd be

interested in serving in that way. I look for opportunities

where I can do a presentation at the Atlas conference, or

otherwise, the network is incredible, and so I want to

contribute to those. So I think. The second half of my career, or

the back half of my career, as you say, I was probably just

looking for more opportunities to serve other folks, right?

I've done a lot of management consulting that was part of my

formal training. I'm always happy to pick up the phone and

help other schools. I haven't created a business out of that,

and I don't intend to. I like to build that community, that

network of folks happy to take my experience and help other

schools who might need it, or other organizations, and so I'm

going to continue down that path. ATLIS has been a

tremendous part of my professional growth over the

last 10 years, because that network turned into the ALI

membership. Right? I got a cohort from that year joining

that or applying to be part of Ali was largely the result of me

thinking about the question you just asked, which is asked,

which is, what am I going to do next? And I said, Well, you

know, maybe I could participate and try to, like, teach or do

presentations. Like, well, if I'm going to do that, I should

go through the program myself first as a participant and

understand what that is. So that was kind of the impetus to do

that, but that was a great professional experience as part

of that cohort and working as a team. And then tlis was the next

piece of that right of very excited to get the

certification, if for no other reason than for its purpose, to

demonstrate that my experience over the last 20 some odd years

led to being able to say, Yes, I understand technology,

operations, pedagogy, supporting all aspects of independent

school life. So more of that, more of kind of help others. If

another opportunity came up, though, to move to attend

school, I might consider it. But again, I got a great team and a

lot of opportunities for change coming at hoshka, so I could see

myself staying here long term as well.

Christina, I want to push back on you talking

about the back half of his career. Because I'll be honest

with you, Hiram and I are here looking at one another, and I'm

like, back half. He hasn't even finished his front half Exactly.

He's got all of his hair. I don't see any gray there. I'm

looking at Hiram, and I am like, this is what the back half looks

like. He's the front half.

He did say he was in kindergarten in 1986 I I was

a sophomore in college.

This man played the Oregon Trail on an

Apple too. So I think that I am well within my right to ask him

about his back half of his career.

Yeah, in kindergarten. In kindergarten.

No, we got the boys all riled up. Sorry,

Kevin, they'd get a little testy. Sorry, dude, get off my

lawn.

Yeah, all right, but I do have a question in all

of my blustering here, as you're talking about things and as you

were describing like the work that you do and where your realm

is, and how you try to get out and work with the others, and

the fact that you mentioned that you don't really have, like, an

ed tech group, but you work with your librarians, which I think

is really one of those areas. But one of the things that I

think I know, I am, I know Hiram, is we've spent some time

talking about this is when we get around, like, how are we

picking the tools that we're using? How are we vetting

things. How do we make decisions on what we are and we aren't

going to use so what does that look like for you in that

process of risk mitigation? And that, you know, you mentioned

some stuff, I think, in the run of show notes that we had around

vetting certain tools. What does that relationship look like when

it really like there really isn't the Ed Tech everyone

focusing on what they're doing, what's that look like? How do

you navigate that?

I obviously take the business and the

cybersecurity piece of that to heart. That's primarily my focus

is making sure that the school's information is safe, and I try

to educate folks as to why that's important, right? Why

can't you just start using some new software if you're going to

put a bunch of our data into it, and so we have those open

conversations. You know, the school has policies I've been

supported in centralizing that, you know, all of our it is

supposed to be centralized in my department. I hold the budget

for all that. There is a process to register a request for

something new to vet that I do a lot of the vendor vetting,

contract management myself or in collaboration with school of

legal counsel whenever necessary, but we've built a lot

of reusable pieces of that. Now we have a DPA or data processing

agreement template that we can use. But again, I'm always

looking to understand, all right, what is it you're looking

to do? I always start with what is it you want to do? What

problem do you want to solve? And whether that's in an

administrative department or a classroom, it really does.

Classroom, it really doesn't matter. They have an outcome

they're looking for to support, and then we do have a group of

folks on campus who can make decisions about prioritizing

those things. I am afforded a lot of leeway in terms of making

decisions about what we will adopt and what we won't, and a

lot of that has to do with what is the actual risk there in a

classroom setting if they're looking to use something for

instructional purposes and it's all they're uploading is maybe a

roster of students that's gonna be a lot easier to approve than

something where we're relying on some unknown AI agent behind the

scene to churn and process our data for some decision making

thing. So the process is we take everything right? One by one.

Again, that Agile methodology of understand what the challenges

of the request, how does this thing stack up against our

values as a school, against our policies in terms of what we're

willing to accept, in terms of risk, and then just making

common sense decisions with people, though, like we don't

just say no to everything, where we don't say yes to everything.

If there is a justifiable value in that thing, and it's we're

not already doing something else, if it's not going it's not

going to duplicate resources or something of that nature, then

I'm happy to say yes and support that. But we have 1000s of tools

in place. I keep a meticulous inventory of all the ones I know

about. Does that mean there's not shadow it? Now there's

absolutely a little bit of a wild west in some areas.

Sometimes I know about things, and I make a value judgment and

say, I'm not going to push on that because it doesn't rise to

the level of risk. I'm not going to create a problem where there

doesn't need to be one. But there's other areas where I

absolutely find out about things, and I say, oh, there's

really an intense risk there. We need to discuss why that is, and

then say, can we bring that into proper compliance? That's not to

say we're taking it away. No, you can't have it. But like, is

there a process to get to a yes? I'm always looking for a way to

get to yes. People may not think that that's the case, so that's

the intention. They probably thank Kevin for Department of

No, but I prefer to be the Department of know how, and kind

of bring the expertise and say that's fine. You want to use

that tool if it's meeting your outcomes. But if you adopted

that on your own, like there's some things we need to do just

to bring that into the fold, to make sure that we're properly

managing that resource, to make sure that it has an actual

return on investment for the school, if dollars are being

spent that it's actually meaningfully impacting the lives

of either faculty, staff or students, ultimately, to support

students

in their education. Are there aspects of

boarding school life that would surprise non boarding school

tech leaders. What do you have to deal with that bill and Hiram

don't have to deal with?

Well, I guess a follow up, Christina. I mean,

you probably have an international community as well

as boarders, right?

Yeah, we have a substantial international

community of students.

So from a data processing perspective, you got

a variety of different data agreements that you also have to

be compliant with. Australia has different ones. Asia has

different ones. GDP are

the reality is that even in the US, because

there's not a centralized federal law, we have that even

in the States. So I would say that I don't look at the

International piece of that much different. Yes, it's more

countries to manage. But again, it's all just part of a best

practice risk management approach. Understand what the

regulations are. Make sure we understand we have an inventory

of what systems we're using to process people's data. The

residential aspect being the ISP essentially for people, right?

We're providing Internet service and networking for residential

areas which have nothing to do with the academic or business.

Running of the school is certainly a large piece of

things. Again, we have, I think, 75 families just on campus alone

that we're we are literally managing their stuff. And their

stuff has, over time, become more complicated. You know,

everything is now smart. Everything's on the network. So

it's 1000s of little pieces of this and that that we, you know

have to properly manage but provide a service that they're

not paying for. But that's a key part. That's a benefit for them

to have the on campus residents, these are for some of their

spouses. They work from home, right? They may not be

affiliated with the school other than being in the spouse of a

faculty that needs to work for that person you know in order to

do their job, which may not have anything to do with Hotchkiss.

So some of those aspects are probably unique to a boarding

school where it's both adults and students. You know, students

are trying to do all kinds of things outside of academic

activities. So we're not just focused on supporting the

network and activities for that piece of it, right? We have an

entire student activities department. You know, in

addition to clubs and affinity groups and everything else.

There's all kinds of programming outside of the academic day for

them to support co curriculars. We do all kinds of international

travel with students, especially around breaks. So there's

processes and support to be done and data to be secured about all

those trips too. So there's a lot to a boarding school

community to manage beyond what day schools do. But a lot of it,

I think, is actually more of the same, just a little bit

different in terms of the scope many of these things. You know,

protecting the schools data is important, whether you're day

school or boarding school, but yeah, you're going to see the

data in more things. You're going to have more tools you

need to manage all these other aspects of a boarding or

residential program that you don't otherwise have.

Kevin, you had talked about a small project,

institutional research. I call that small, right?

I don't think that's small. It's very

big,

I know. And the fact that you're creating a data

warehouse, can you elaborate a little bit more on what kind of

research hostages is actually looking to accomplish with this

satellite department that you have are now part of

I'm not sure we've really defined that, so

that's part of the discussion. So I have great support from our

Associate Head of School, who's new to the school just a couple

years so she hasn't interested in this. Our dean of academic

life has been with the school for a long time and been in

different roles. He has a. Desire to get more decision

support out of our academic data. What we realize as a

school, what I've come to realize over the time I've been

at Hotchkiss, is we just haven't had an organized approach,

right? We have many, many different information systems.

Everything's kind of a silo. There is benefit to bringing

those together, and that really comes from an experience I had

when I was at UConn in higher ed, because one of the

departments I supported under the vice provost, there was the

institutional research office, right, and that was the office

that at the time, right, went to school back then, you weren't

doing things online, you were doing on scan Tron sheets, and

they were bringing those in for course evaluations and trying to

make decisions about what programs to run and how faculty

were performing based on some of that data. We don't do any of

that at Hotchkiss, and some of the initiatives that are

currently being undertaken are around faculty growth and

evaluation, you know, trying to get an actual program in place

that's going to require us to collect and then analyze data

around that. So we need a facility to do that. We have

lots of great conversations going on about student health

and well being, and we do a number of surveys for that with

outside partners and such. But to bring that back to a central

place where then that can be linked with other relevant data

would be useful. We do a ton of information gathering,

reporting, again, within each functional area. You know,

advancement is doing a ton of information analysis about how

best to fundraise. Admissions is doing that, and has been doing

that for a number of years with respect to application process.

But folks would love to know the through line of that, are there

predictors of certain outcomes, and what is the predictor of

student success? How do you build programs for that. So

again, thinking about the Neas study, it's a self study to

think, how are you running your programs? How are you resourced?

What are you going to do next? So I think we've been dancing as

an organization. We've been dancing around this idea of,

there's all kinds of things we might want to do. And again,

this is where I think some of the churn and senior leadership,

you know, someone comes in, they have an issue, they want to

start, but then if they leave, someone else doesn't necessarily

pick that up. So I think we've just gotten away with the fact

that we don't have institutional research office, or we haven't

been doing this in a programmatic, centralized way.

It's not just say it hasn't been done again, every area is kind

of doing their own and analyzing their own thing. My desire,

again, is that kind of systems thinker, collaborator in chief,

bring all those pieces together. And so my proposal at the time,

two years ago, when I kind of started that project, was, if

you build it, they will come. I was only looking to build the

infrastructure, a place to put the data. And I actually worked

with mission and data a little bit to kind of build some of

that piece. But I've with the CIRIS resources, actually been

able to do more of that myself. I'm not an expert on the data

analysis side, but I am trying to be an expert on the what

infrastructure can I provide you so that those who want to take

up these questions, that you have a place to ask that

question, and we have aggregated enough information to help you

answer that in a meaningful way. And so that's really what it

comes down to, is I'm looking again, as I do with most of the

types of things I'm doing, is I'm looking to find something I

can build to help others get to a place where they can

understand the impact of the program, of the initiative, or

make decisions about what to do next that are data informed, and

not just, let's just try the next thing, or let's just do the

next thing that someone has an idea for. So I think we're

maturing in that respect as an organization, and I think that

we're actually lucky we didn't start this sooner. Many

organizations are on like, version three of their

warehouse, and they've had to scrap everything because they

were early adopters. Learned the hard way, and then are now

starting over again. We get to start from all those lessons

learned and just kind of hit the ground running.

That's really great, that you've put

your own personal interests and layered it on top of what's

great for the school, and that'll be awesome. I'd love to

have you keep talking to us about that IR journey that

you're on, because it sounds really interesting, especially

that you're driving it. So that's really incredible.

That'll be a deeper dive for another day. Andor you got to

present that, I think, at ATLIS conference. But before we run

out of time with you, I want to go with a little bit of a rapid

fire, because you are a fan of this pod. You were so supportive

from day one, reaching out to us and letting us know that you

were a fan and that you were following along. I'd be willing

to bet you haven't missed many episodes, not one. Oh my gosh,

bless your little heart. Oh, that makes me happy. Thank you

for being our number one.

I have an hour and a half commute to school

actually, so I need as many podcasts as I can to listen to

so I wouldn't miss

it for the world. I love that. Thank you.

Okay, so now that means that you know that we've been through our

journey on these wrap up questions, so we're going to

fire a bunch of them at you all at once. Okay, okay, so we

normally say, how do you take your coffee? How do you respond

to that? I'm a tea drinker. Sorry.

And as it turns out, you like bourbon. So

what's your bourbon?

By any bourbon will do in a storm, I guess,

good answer. Okay, I'm not a cop. And a sore Perez, but it's

your vibe. I do like bourbon over whiskey.

Oh, how do you feel about zombies? Yeah.

So I'm not a particular fan of the undead,

but I have, because of this podcast, I have put a

substantial amount of thought and prompts into chat GPT to

kind of come up with what would be my melee weapon of choice. So

nice. I have settled on the machete. Okay, doesn't require

batteries. Can be used as a utility, and just for, you know,

absolute carnage. I think that that's gonna be my choice.

Yeah, he's on the team

Exactly. I'm just glad you did your research.

Shout out to Peter Frank. I just in the 100th

episode wrap up. Oh, where he went through the painstaking

effort to get all the zombie references. It is hysterical.

I'm still laughing, actually, that it was amazing.

We are too. Every once in a while that just

needs to be like your day end jam, to just let go of stress or

something, because it is very funny and it's very us. So he's

an incredible contributor in the back behind the scenes of this

podcast. If I need you to guest host this pod for me, are you

willing? Absolutely sure? All right, guys, so the next one I

can't make, we are inviting Kevin. He's gonna guest host,

since he's our number one fan.

Then he gets to put up with us. It's gonna put

us all out of a job.

Exactly what I've learned is you can fix it in

post.

So we can fix it in post. My advice to

you, friend is, when I call on you just make sure you have that

bourbon. Any bourbon will do you might want a little bit of that

before you come and try to wrangle this whole situation,

bourbon and tea,

I will say, I don't know, Christina, the

special sauce that you have, you know the questions to ask to

really get people to answer with amazing answers. So I would not

do nearly the job you did, but I'd be willing to give it a shot

for sure.

Okay, that's going to be your next audition.

It's happening. Everybody you heard it here. Our next co host

is going to be Kevin. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us

today. This has been a really great conversation. You are just

such a great fan and such a great supporter of Atlas, so I'm

so glad we got to have you on the pod to chat with you a

little

bit. Thanks so much for having me. It's been a

pleasure.

This has been talking technology with ATLIS,

produced by the Association of technology leaders in

independent schools. For more information about Atlas and

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