Presented by Claro

Dr. Marquis Scott, Assistant Head of School at The Lawrenceville School, joins the podcast to share his remarkable career journey from CTO to senior administration. He discusses how the problem-solving and systems-thinking mindset from IT are transferable to roles in HR, communications, and strategic planning, offering actionable advice for aspiring tech leaders.

• The Lawrenceville School
• The First 90 Days, by Michael Watkins; book with strategies for conquering the challenges of transitions
• NAIS Article - Systems Thinking (Marquis Scott)
• Book Marquis is reading this summer - - Shift by Ethan Kross
• Marquis' doctorate thesis -  The Role of System Thinking Tools in Enhancing Diversity Directors' Insight into Employee of Color Retention Rates: A Phenomenological Study

Nick, welcome to Talking technology with Atlas,

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. Kristina llewellen,

hello everyone, and welcome back to

talking technology with Atlas. I'm Kristina llewellen, the

president and CEO of the Association of technology

leaders in independent schools.

And I'm 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 are you today?

Hanging in good

we're slowly recovering. Yeah.

So you know, we're recording just on the

heels of our board retreat. And as we mentioned in another pod,

there was some travel delays. Summer travel is for sure, the

pits. And I think that when you do it enough, you sort of just

get in your vibe. You go with the flow. But man, that energy

of people around you is always a little rough, which I would

assume is probably translating to school skills, right? Like

you may be calm having a good day, but somebody around you

bringing anxious energy could kind of throw everybody off.

Right?

100% Absolutely. But you know where we ended up

suffering on the back end, our guest struggled on the front

end.

Yes, very true. That's a great lead in

Hiram. So today we have joining us. Dr Marquis, Scott Marquis,

you are also on the Atlas board, among other things. We'll

definitely go through your incredible bio here in a second.

But as a board member, all you needed to do was show up in

Columbus, Ohio on a Friday night. And it didn't go that

way, did it?

No, it was experience that I tried to erase

from my memory, and seeing all of you here, it's popped back

up.

We're re traumatizing our guests. I felt

terrible for your travel delays, but to be honest, you rolled in.

We had a great dinner as a board, you were there in the

morning as we went through some of our strategy on Sunday

morning, so you got a very abbreviated board experience,

but I'm glad you made it home, okay, and I am glad that you

made the effort to get there. I think most people would have

just thrown in the towel, but you were dedicated. Well,

listen,

I did try to throw in a towel as I land in

Cincinnati and realized I was the wrong place. But you know,

it was important to be there as I rolled in and I rolled right

back out. Yep, of Columbus. So lesson learned, and you keep

pushing forward, you

know, Marquis, I have done that. And

in fact, it was one of the reasons that I hired an

assistant at Atlas. Was I was couple years in. We were growing

real fast, and I'm like, I got this, I can handle my travel. It

wasn't until I was supposed to be in Columbus, and I booked a

flight to Cleveland that I said that is enough. I am not doing a

good job anymore.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I recently

booked a flight to Columbus. When my flight got canceled and

rescheduled, I probably should have looked to see where I was

flying into nevertheless, it was a great experience with the Lyft

driver from Cincinnati, and it was a great learning experience.

Oh my gosh. Well, we'll shelve that whole

experience for now, and let's go into the important stuff. Dr

Marquis, Scott, you are the assistant head of school at the

Lawrenceville school, and you've been in independent school

leadership for a few decades here, right? Your focus in a lot

of your work is around equity and inclusion, strategic

planning, and lately you've been doing a lot of work in systems

thinking. So we're going to kind of circle into that. But I'd

like to start by asking you to just tell us a little bit about

your journey, because part of why you serve on the Atlas board

is that you also have a background serving as a chief

technology officer. Tell us a little bit about your journey

and how you got to being an assistant head of school.

You know, my journey has been met with

excitement, curiosity and just having fun along the path. And,

you know, Bill and I go way, way back as early as 2002 when I

first joined Newark Academy as a director of technology. And I

loved that position. I fell into that position. I didn't think

that was my path, but I happened to be in the right place at the

right time, and as I was taking over that position, I was also

doing a lot of good work around equity and inclusion, and loved

doing that. And it wasn't until, likely my seventh or eighth year

where I essentially wanted more. I wanted to do more. I wanted to

teach. I wanted to learn. I wanted to explore curiosity

independent schools. And at that point in time, I decided to go

back to school for my masters and then my MBA. And as I was

having those experiences with my professional growth outside of

Newark Academy, I was taking on different projects at the school

around strategic planning, around dei planning, working

with the advances office. Was working with auxiliary

programming, and I said, this is really cool. This is really

interesting. And all the great thing about it was I was doing

that out of the IT department, and realizing that I had this

unique problem solving skill set that I can apply to different

conversations and different experiences. So I used that as

my springboard to essentially raise my hand in every single

conversation or every single meeting to say I can do that. I

want to do that. I just want to learn here. So that's actually

led to a number of different opportunities, and essentially

one of the reasons why I wanted to move on from New York Academy

because I just want to do other things at that point in time. So

I was lucky to find a great school. The Met in gal BAM for

school in the Upper East Side, where I was hired as a CTO. And

the head of school there was great Paul Burke, was one of my

good friends now, said Marquis, you know, you have this

interesting skill set that I think would work well here at

our school, it's a K 12 school, and that was great. So I went

there and I did some more it work. I did a lot more

communications and branding, did some dei work, did some

operation work, and I also taught classes, and I was also

the academic department head. So you know, here my portfolio went

from it to dei to strategy to just applying that to a bigger

and more complex school. So did that for a number of years, and

again, I wanted to do other things, sort of moving on from

that Yale Bamford School, where I found this unique school, like

a large full school in New Jersey, a boarding school. Never

worked in a boarding school, and they were looking for an IT

leader. And I said, Absolutely. But what sold me in this

position here is my head of school, Steve Murray. I remember

in my interview process, he said, you know, you have this

interesting background that I think could be really unique.

Here at our school, we're much more complex. We have a lot more

employees. We have a lot more staff members, a list, a lot

more students. And I said, Absolutely. So I started here in

2018 as CTO, and I remember that year, in November, the head of

school asked me to lead a branding project with

communications, and that's when things took off for me. So I

worked with the communications department on finance, branding,

operations, all of it, bringing a project to life here, and that

then led me to becoming the interim director of

communications as a CTO. So I was CTO and Director of

Communications, Acting Director communications, which is a great

experience for me, not just learning about marketing and

branding and value proposition, but also working with new

members of the community here. So these two unique roles, and I

remember I was leading that role here, and we hired a new

director of communications, and then covid hit, so I went from

thinking I was leaving for the role to sort of preparing a

school for communicating through covid in a different enticing

ways, alongside working as an IT Well, IT director and getting

the school up with a new LMS system. So that was a great

partnership for me. And so I did that for about a year and a

half, and I became assistant head of school, and then we were

launching a new DEI plan, and my head of school asked me to lead

that plan, and we had some transitions where I ended up

becoming the dean of diversity at the end of my third year at

the school. So three years in three different roles, and I did

that for about almost about six, seven months, which is great

experience. And here for me, it was not just problem solving,

but also working with new constituents, new students, new

faculty and but I'm thinking about problem solving. It's like

I can do this here. And did that for about eight, nine months,

and then we had another transition. I became director of

HR, but I was working with data. I was working with people, I was

working with systems. I was working with benefits. Here. Did

that in my fourth year, which is a great experience for me, and

once we had a new director of HR, I moved over to wellness and

well being. So I worked closely with our wellness team and our

well being leader to lead different initiatives at Red to

life and work with faculty and staff on this of issues. And the

through line here is it was just problem solving and working with

people, but also staying ahead of the school to make sure that

we were playing a long game and trying to roll the school year

out. And this past year, I was acting go ahead of school for

the school on my head of school was on sabbatical, so that was a

long way of saying I don't think I would be had success in those

roles. Had in that been my IT background and applying what I

learned to all these different positions,

that's pretty incredible. I want to ask

you specifically about the Lawrenceville school. It's a

prestigious school. It has a certain cache in our community.

Tell us about your school.

Yeah, Lawrenceville school is a

fabulous and unique environment, and we are complex with levels

of healthy joy. You know, we have 845 students who come from

all over the world, all over the country, to be in this unique

place. And what makes us unique, in many ways, is, and I talk

about our health system, we have these special houses on campus

that each student belongs to. That they meet their family,

they meet their friends, and it's a part of who they are. And

coming into our school as a 13 and 14 year old student, and you

meet other students, you belong to a family, that really sets

you off into what we believe is the promise of education, and

the other side of it is well, like a small liberal arts

school, we are huge. We have all these great buildings, we have

all these great facilities, and we have levels of joy and

excitement that our team is can become a part of. And so for me,

What I appreciate most about this position is, not only does

my family live on campus, I see my boys running around at

different camps, but I also have the ability to work in the

housing system. I can play basketball with the kids on

Sunday. I can do advisory duties. I can do all these

different things that allow me to connect with our student body

in really wonderful ways. And I think for those reasons, they

make us unique. And then on the other side, we have a great

academic experience where students can not only take

advantage of core curriculum courses, but also I teach a

course on managing technology and innovation, where, in many

ways, it's an entrepreneurship course, where I give you some

funding and you develop a model and a business plan, you're off

and running. So our students have access to those resources,

and I think for those reasons, it makes launch feel really,

really unique.

I love hearing how you talk about your

school. That's really cool. I want to go back now to the

comment that you made about technology leaders sort of

having the skill set. This is something we talk a lot about at

Atlas and on the pod. I'm sitting here with board members.

You know, we talk about it in the boardroom, that technology

leaders have, in some cases, a hidden skill set. You have

figured out how to bring that skill set to the table and have

it recognized by your leadership, which is really kind

of a special thing. Do you think that that was sort of the luck

of the draw, or Was that intentional on your part in

terms of, I know I have these skills, so I am going to jump

into communications and HR and kind of whatever the school

needs of me,

two themes, I think, number one, I think

inherently it we problem solve, we find a problem, and we're

solutions oriented. And I think because of that, that allows us

to understand the situation and then take a step back. So

inherently, we are systems thinkers. We take a holistic

approach to the problem. I think in many ways, we understand the

ripple effect of decision making processes or questions. And what

I've tried to do is a I raised my hand to do everything. I just

want to learn, and I want to be a valuable member, and I want to

play my part. And what that has allowed me to do is participate

in conversations that have been unique for me. And I've said I

want to learn and I don't mind doing that's just what we do as

IT leaders. So I think that's number one. I think the other

piece of it is when I think about my time at Newark Academy

in the IT realm here, we spend so much time in it, trying to

understand the ripple effect of a decision making. You know, I

jumped on early, and I think Bill was talking about like

wiring, right. Wiring is important to buildings, right?

You just cannot create a building by understanding how

the wiring actually works here, and that's a systems approach to

how we work. So I take that thinking, I apply it to schools.

We are complex. We have layers of emotions and engagement and

priorities here. And I think the tool kit that IT leaders have,

we're able to pull on different tools at any given moment, but

the challenge for us is trying to find out how we leverage

those conversations. And for me, I think the only way to do that

is just to raise your hand and sit in meetings. And then what I

try to do throughout my life is when I work on a new solution, I

will present options and have people work towards those

options. And that's worked well for me as we go forward. I think

as we move forward here, you know, we spend a lot of time and

at least talking about the complexity of schools like it is

really complex as we talk about value proposition, we talk about

AI, we talk about factory retention, I think it is we

understand the discipline of those conversations, and can

drive those conversations in really authentic ways here. So I

just tried to make sure that I'm in the right place at the right

time, but also bringing people along in my decision

making Marquis, I just want to see you next time

wearing a cape. This is the first time I've actually heard

your origin story, and it's so impressive all the different

facets of school life that you have touched. I mean, I know it,

directors tend to have their fingers in all sorts of

departments. They're talking to alums, they're talking to

parents, students, teachers, etc. But I mean, for you to

actually walk the walk in these various departments is truly a

testament to your skill set. Now I'm kind of curious, looking

back, is there a particular area that you miss that you're no

longer part of?

So the IT department reports up to me, and

I just love it. I don't know if my IT director loves it, but I

think I love it, and I have learned over. A time that you

know leadership is about empowering the people you work

with. I need to empower my leaders to lead, and my job is

to be resource. I learned that early in my career here,

however, I love July 1 every single year, because I walk down

to the idea department, I say, can I just help onboard new

faculty? I miss onboarding new faculty, where we give them a

new laptop, we meet them one on one, and every year the IT

department said I can do one help desk ticket. I miss the

energy of getting a help desk ticket and running down a

hallway and just trying to figure out what the issue is,

and then seeing the instant gratification of those tickets.

So I would say at the end of the day, I do miss every now and

then doing those help desk tickets. I now have different

sorts of help desk tickets in my life and what I'm doing here,

but that adjourn of working with students and faculty and just

seeing that the onboarding and just talking to them about

technology like I don't see it as much in my current job here,

but when I walk on a help desk every now and then, I'll just go

behind that desk and I'll talk to them what's going on. And

that's really a highlight of my job. I think

the marketing team at your school or

the IT folks need to like, make one of those memes like, hate to

see Marky comment, right? I just want to do a help desk ticket.

But it is. There is something very satisfying about resolving

an issue and having it being fairly simple, that's really

fun. So I don't know if they love seeing you come in or hate

seeing you come in, but at least it gets resolved either way.

And part of it is, you know, we in it, and I

think at my job here, like we are, people centered. That's who

we are inherently here. So the benefits of working in it is,

you work with all constituents, all constituents. There's no

other job that's as complex as that, except the head of school

job where we touch on every community member throughout the

year to navigate their challenge and opportunities. And for me,

that has been a blessing for me to learn up through it, and I

just tried to apply that to my approach in school leadership.

You mentioned our history. You know, we both

started out in day schools, and you talked about moving on to a

boarding school. And I've had the good fortune of being on

your campus a number of times, and it is like a small college

campus. I mean, it is quite sizable for the people that are

thinking about the differences between what a day environment

is like in a boarding environment is like,

particularly at the size you're at, what are the differences

between what Hiram and I might be dealing with on a day to day,

as compared to what you would see in a boarding school, one of

particularly of your size,

there are dramatic differences between the

day and boarding environment when it comes to just leadership

in general. And I'll use the IT perspective here for a second.

From a day perspective. You know, you have your day job, and

rarely do you have major tickets over the weekend, especially the

year gets going here, but in boarding school environment,

they're living here, so you're likely to get some tickets on

the weekend, and you just would not get at a day school

environment, right? And some of it sometimes is housing related,

because faculty live on campus, so that's different. And some of

it is student related, because students live in the actual

dorm, right? So that's a major difference, the way I think

about this. Families live in dorms. So how do you separate

the internet policies from families versus students? Right?

You just can't shut it off at 11 o'clock, for example, and you

have to be aware that families have partners or spouses who

need higher levels of bandwidth or resources because they're

working remotely. That's a whole new world we've had to navigate

to figure out how we support the community. That's number one. I

think number two is the complexity of how you think

about your accepted use policies can be really blurry between a

day and board of school environment. So with a day

school, it's binary, right? You're off school. If a student

has issue at home, you can work with the families in different

ways here, but your students live here throughout the year

here, so the education around responsible use is really

important for our community members, so they understand how

to navigate the decisions when it comes to online use and

online learning here. So I think that's the biggest piece. The

other piece is leadership of day schools is much different,

probably because everyone's leaving after five o'clock. It's

different, right? It's not many people in the building and a

boarding school, you're living and reading 24 hours a day. So

for example, when you're an IT person around campus and you

have a house event, sometimes you might get questions at a

barbecue or a gathering, whereas in a day school environment, you

might not see that as frequently. So that's a huge

piece of the puzzle here, and I think overall, globally here,

when you're running a boarding school here, it's 365 all year

long. Christmas. Thanks. Given the holidays and trying to make

sure that you find time to pull back, but also support the

community members as they need throughout the school year. It's

easy to adapt to here, but it's a different level of

preparation.

So Marquis, I have a quick follow up to that

because of your size, is there a feeling of or a desire for a

certain level of autonomy within departments, or alignment

between departments that you need to work through to move

maybe the teaching and learning goals forward together,

collectively, in terms of the tools that we're using, and

making sure that you've got buy in, because one department might

want to use X, another one might want to use, why? Because, and

I'm just supposing here, and this is why I'm asking the

question, is there the closer? I don't want to use collegiality,

because I don't want to imply that they're not collegial. But

like this closer working relationship that you might have

in a day school, where everyone's sitting down at the

table together at lunch, or everyone might be in shared

spaces that different areas use. Because of that is there that

desire for autonomy that you might not see in a day school.

It's interesting the way you think about it. So

let me start with the leadership perspective. I think boarding

schools have larger IT teams. When I was hired here, we have

12 members of our it. That was the biggest team I've ever had

in my life. And then within that team, we had an operations team

and we had a support team, and each those teams had their own

individual directors. And then we had members of what we call

faculty who were sort of the tech liaisons for different

groups of people across campus that worked with a dotted line

with us. And we had an academic liaison person who also worked

with the academic department heads. So from a CTO

perspective, you gotta have that global perspective what's

actually and you can speak all those different languages of

what exactly is going on here. So I start with that, because

the difference in a boarding school is that people can work

with different parts of the teams at any given time here. So

for example, one of the changes I made over the last couple of

years is our IT director sits on department heads because I think

it's important for him to understand the academic pedagogy

of teaching, learning and what they're deciding that's number

one, two, if there are any questions that emerge there, he

can jump ahead of it and be able to provide additional context.

That's one piece of it. The other piece of it is most

boarding schools have data integrity teams always just has

nine people on it, right? So remember, data folds up through

your department here, so we have a data director who all sees

data, so he has to work with people across the school on data

integrity, right? Because all schools have tried, years ago to

have one database, which just does not work. So we have a best

of breed approach, and most ed directors do not want to fight

that battle, because you never win that battle here. So what we

try to do is make sure we have a data person oversees that area,

but there's nine people across the school here. So the point

I'm making here is that there are different levels of teams

that are individual pockets, and in most cases, your team is a

liaison to those individual pockets. So for example, we have

a support team that we have, sort of a technology trainer who

works with teachers and our AI leaders on AI implementation and

LMS coordination inside of rice life curriculum and housing

here. So there's pockets of teams, and each year, team

members always work with those individuals. Whereas in a day

school, you see that complexity at that level, it's smaller,

yeah, yeah. And it's all about the org chart.

Thinking about this, I'm doing the mental gymnastics of kind of

drawing this all out and seeing what this looks like. And I

think that's the piece that is really interesting. And I think

that a lot of schools, regardless of size, boarding or

day, when you hear about the way in which these things are

structured, how can you boil that down? It might not be

people that are necessarily full time roles that you might have

at your school that are serving in these in this capacity, but

the ability to set up structures that allow for the level of

communications and information sharing as you're describing, I

think, is an incredible asset and something a lot of people

can really take away from what you've just shared.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so this is what I mean

when it comes to effective leadership in a complex

environment, right? We have to have systems upon systems. You

gotta have good people to put into those systems. So I think,

when I think about it, leaders and IT directors and CTOs, our

job is to have a holistic perspective from a big picture

vision, and then we can sort of work down from that. But to do

that effectively here, you have to be able to empower leaders.

You have to be able to navigate confusion and anxiety, right?

You gotta be able to bring people along those conversations

here. So for me, when I think about the boarding school

complexity. Year, and I think about my role specifically here,

what I try to do with our IT team is and make sure you have

the right systems in place, and then once you have that, then

the communication is seamless, then the processes are up to

par, and you have effective collaboration. But in the sense

of systems, what you begin to happen is people work in

decentralized mechanisms. So for example, I've been in schools

where IT leaders will often work in a silo, and what you'll often

see is they will have a Faculty Technology Leadership Team here

that does not connect with the IT team because the IT director

doesn't want to understand teaching and learning, or they

don't want to collaborate. So here's a great example. You

know, when we design our classrooms, we actually design

them based on the teacher's input. Here we are the resource.

Let them design their class, their basics, right? A smart

board or bright link, an Apple TV, right? But beyond that, the

teachers should be driving here, but our team knows and they

believe in this here. If we don't have that input here, how

can we have that effect on buy in or collaboration? So that's

how we think about leadership here at the law school school,

can I ask you Marquis, how you guys are

thinking about AI? It's just something that all of our

listeners want to hear from a bunch of different schools. And

as complicated as your structure is, and the fact that getting AI

out into the hands of the users is complicated, even for a more

simply structured school. Tell us a little bit about how you

guys are thinking about that at Lawrenceville.

Yeah, that's a great question. And you know,

I'll start with this. Here's the truth of AI. It's here. We know

that, and we want to ensure that we are helping schools. And I've

always said that we want to approach AI with curiosity and

care, because this is about balancing tradition and

innovation. So when I think about that from a global

perspective here, what we tried to do is two things. Number one

is create joyful play with AI in partnerships with students and

faculty. And what that has allowed us to do here is, not

only do we have a new director of AI and student projects here,

but she has done some great work in bringing our faculty along

and understanding AI for those who are really interested in it,

and we recognize some are going to say, No way, and that is

actually Okay, as you understand the ethics around AI, how to

maximize teaching, learning, and on the other hand, she has done

some great work with our student AI team here, where they have

worked with her and looking at our community, from operations

to academics to begin developing programs to developing AI apps

and stuff like that. But the point I'm making here is we're

still playing with it, we're still testing it, and we're

still learning here, but the key piece is we are upfront with

what we're learning and with the some of the challenges and

opportunities. So we're reporting back to the community

as to our journey with this conversation, and we've done a

lot of great work over the last two years, and one of my

projects this year is to work with a small group of folks,

including our director of AI, to develop an AI vision statement,

which will help us, from a global perspective, understand

the why and the how with AI. And of course, we want to make sure

it's embedded into our mission and our vision. But here, at the

end of the day, it's going to include a faculty piece, it's

going to include a student piece, it's going to include

some level of understanding around ethics. So we're going to

have different including an alumni portion. We're going to

have different elements of themes within the AI plan here,

so I will work our school through those conversations

here, but the key piece of that is that group of stakeholders

that will help us get there will include students, faculty,

parents, senior staff and alumni. So we have a statement

here that's co created, that's built on tradition and shows how

we want to step through innovation here. So I think

that's the right approach moving forward here, because if we're

not Cole learning with our students here, we're missing out

on such a great opportunity of understanding exactly how we can

infuse AI into our school life here. So that's how I'm gonna

approach it this year. And here's what we're learning now,

as our tuitions in many schools are north of 4050, in some

cases, $80,000 value proposition will be an important

conversation for our schools. And what we're seeing now in

some of our revisit days and families are saying to us, one

of these that shows your school is because of the fact that

you're looking to AI. So in many ways, this could be part of our

value proposition going forward. So in other words, we don't want

to be the shiny new school that wants to shine a theme here. We

want to make sure that we're being thoughtful, we're being

intimate, or being deliberate and intentional as to how we

approach AI going forward

100% and I have this conversation a lot,

which is that whether we lock it down for learning is kind of

short sighted, right, because of the fact that you're training

these kids to. Go out into the workforce and to work for people

who are expecting them to be aI literate. So I'm curious, then,

what you think the future of school looks like, because it's

all bundled together AI and the role of the teacher evolving. So

what is school gonna be? Do you have some predictions on that?

This is the number one question that many

schools are beginning to navigate, and we are hearing and

we're seeing this at the board level, from a governance

perspective, and that's partly because the evolution of change

feels so much more rapid. On top of here's some trends that we

know one employee well being, and this is your question. Bill

around boarding school, lifestyle is, you know, our

employees are navigating change in really complex ways, whether

it's the political factors that are happening, whether it's

financial sustainability, whether tuition, like we're

seeing it work in ways that we haven't seen before here. So we

got to make sure that employee well being, student well being,

will be a priority here, because us, you know, we're talking

about faculty and staff retention, the shortage of

teachers is real, like they're not just walking down shit. They

want to teach it, right? This is a market that's shrinking that

we want to pay really close attention to. And so that's

number two. We also know that innovation and balancing AI and

traditional innovation will be important as we go forward. So

that will be a part of the conversation. We also know that

inclusion and belonging and the intersection of that and the way

our students self identify and the way they are achievement the

needs of what they need, today versus yesterday, is important

to student well being right? So that will be important part of

the conversation. We also now know that the whole visa

situation that many of our schools have been dealing with,

for schools who are net tuition driven, have to worry about with

management, right, so that it will be a part of the

conversation. And we also know that tuition affordability is a

key aspect of farm sustainability. That's a recipe

that we want to continue to understand here. So the reason I

paint the picture for you here is we know the future of

education is going to be a whole array of those things I've been

talking about here. So it will be important for us to continue

to drive home our mission around belonging and inclusion. We also

have to make sure that we are mindful around balancing

tradition innovation here, and we also know that we have to pay

closer attention to the ways we think about the school business

model. Will it be sustainable going forward, especially the

college landscape, especially around the transfer portal.

Whereas all these things are at play in ways that we as parents

are asking much more direct questions. So when our kid goes

to a great school that what they want to know is, is my child

going to get into Harvard or Princeton for the value

properties that we're paying here, and if not here, I'm going

to have my kids stay home. You know, here's a trend that we're

seeing now, is that some of our conversation now is families are

just staying home. They're just staying home, right? So if you

think about that from a community perspective, and the

future of education here, it's gonna look rapidly different as

you begin to have transactional conversations with our family

here, which would be more important for us to take a step

back and understand how these All intersections are planned

and hitting each other. So I think the point here that I'm

painting for you, it is really complex for us, because we have

emerging themes that are complex, and we have a themes

that we're still trying to unpack together here. So we look

at the plate of menu here like, Whoa, what is going on here? And

that's important for us to understand what's going on and

be thoughtful about our next steps.

So marqui, I want to take a step back for just a

moment, because, if I heard you correctly, you mentioned that

you have a director of AI. Was that your creation? And where

does that stand in relation to some of the other directors

within Lawrenceville? Because it sounds like because you've done

this, you're walking the walk, and you're going from good to

great. To use a quote from Jim Collins,

yeah. You know what I appreciate most about the

Lawrenceville school is we try to meet the students where they

are. And our history shows that, whether it's coming out of the

2020, racial pandemic and developing a DEI plan around

inclusion belonging to make sure we are zoning in, or whether

it's our work around developing a well being plan to address the

student and faculty needs around well being, because it's no

longer academic, right? It's social, it's psychological, it's

all these different arenas that are important to children well

being here. And the reason I paint that picture for you is,

as we think about the version of AI, how it's influenced our

community here, the way we approach that work is, first of

all, Jennifer Parnell has done great work to the point where we

realized there was a need to not only stamp that position, but

also back her with the resources and support to make sure that

she can do the good work that she is doing here. But that was

based on the needs assessment. We didn't come out and just say,

let's have a dark day of AI and let's push forward here. We had

two years worth of great data, great information and

conversations that led us to believe, okay, we actually just

sort of create the position and structure it in a way that makes

sense for her growth and school's ability to move forward

in these conversations here, and what that has done for us is not

only has given us a little more insight into not only the needs

of our school here, but it's allow us to understand, and

she's a great teacher, which is the key part of this, to

understand how we balance innovation with tradition,

because she sees both aisles of those

conversations. You know, if I was going to have an

inferiority complex, you would be feeding into it right now.

That's not hard to do, Bill, it's not hard to do, I

know.

But because we go back and I'm like, Oh, I

remember when Marky and I were both in the same job, and I look

at you now, and I'm like, Oh, my God, look at what Mike, he's

doing it. Look around. So 30 plus years at the same place. I

think we've evolved in our own different ways, in terms of

fulfillment, I'll say, but I want to point to the fact that

you've truly become, I think, the type of leader that you've

done multiple things, you've been able to make and take steps

from really starting at what I'll call that help desk level,

to go back to what you were saying, you know, loving to get

into the weeds on the help desk, and that being the thing that

you miss, to really a very highly elevated position at one

of the top schools, not just in New Jersey, but in the United

States, when it comes to the independent school community,

how have You over all of those different roles, right? Because

we've talked about this recently, this past weekend at

the board retreat, in terms of, how do we elevate the role of

the tech director? Where does that then lead? What have you

done? What have been, kind of some of the hallmarks of you

developing your leadership style and your ability to lead in

these different areas that have allowed you to make these

transitions to where you are now.

Yeah, I like that question a lot, Bill,

because I'm interested too like, that's a whole different

leadership skill than help desk. So where'd you get that from

school? From other people? I want that question too

bit by a spider.

I know.

Let me answer in this way. I think number one is

my head of school is fabulous. And not only has he been a great

mentor for me here, but he has also been a great supporter when

I'm not in the room. And that matters in leadership, because

when you have that and someone speaking on your behalf here, it

allows the work that you're doing to thread through the

school in ways that are important, whether you're at the

table in the room or not. That's number one that, and I've tried

to, in many ways, lead in the same exact way, right? If I can

do anything to make you a better leader, be a resource. I'm happy

to do that, and I think the benefit of that is I've been in

a number of positions throughout my career where I think I can

add value in school leadership, right whether it's

communications or HR or well being or strategy, and I think

it's important to give back that has always been my leadership

style. However, I did recognize early in my career, when I was

in technology, that I just was curious, and I realized that

when I was met with different opportunities and challenges, I

could actually pull on a different toolkit that I didn't

know I actually had. So for example, listening and just

learning, right? That is it. That's what we do, right? When

you walk into a classroom and the teacher says, The Smart part

is not working, you're saying, Well, tell me what's going on.

How can I fix this? That's listening and asking questions,

right? So that has been transferable for me, as I led in

different arenas of the school, like I don't think I'll ever do

HR again, the toughest jobs I ever had, but the most rewarding

experience I've ever been a part of, because I was working with

faculty in a different lens, and I learned so much about my own

capacity to lead and articulate a vision, but also what it means

to support faculty through that lens here. But again, I learned

that from my early days in it, you know, I have an MBA, which

is great and all, but I knew numbers before I had an MBA,

because I had this budget, and I had to work with the finance

department, and I had to work with operations that I was

forced to understand that added value of $1 and what it meant to

bring in vendors, right? I got that from it, and it's worked

now in my own school leadership position here. And the other

piece of it is the relational aspect of my role. You know, I

have aspirations to run a school. One day. But I do think

I have a different trajectory than someone else coming through

the ranks, because I've done so much across the school. You want

to talk about finance. Let's talk about financial and talking

about relationships. Let's talk about any number of things here

that I've been able to tap on. And I think what has allowed me

to do that is a that because of my role. Now, instead of school

here, assistant school, have this unique they have a gray

area for a job. It's a gray area which is you have your job. But

I cross the school depending on what the priority is of the

school and the needs of the Head of School at the given time. So

in my role here, I try to make sure that I set my head of

school up for success. I try to stay five steps ahead of him to

say, this has come online. This was coming on. How do you want

to navigate this? And I'm off and running here. Or if I see a

problem a solution, I sort of know when something escalates

for me. So for example, in March, we saw the whole visa

challenge happens. Oh, okay, this is a problem for us here. I

need to organize a group. I gotta bring everyone together.

We're gonna have communication like that was me helping to

planning lead to just keep us going so that we're not doing

all the work in June and in July this year. But where'd that come

from? Because we know that in it, you start your summer

planning in January or February of the preceding year here. So a

lot of what I'm doing now is transferable from it. I just I

didn't know I had these skills until I was put in position to

actually leverage these skill sets here. So to answer your

question directly, some of it was develop my own marketing

brand and how I want to be known as a leader here, but also

showing that I can be versatile when the time comes when I'm

ready to lead a school that's

really awesome. You definitely have a

well rounded background. Thank you for that. You know, here we

sit heading into a new school year, and I'm curious if there

are things you're excited about. What's happening at

Lawrenceville this year. What kind of projects or initiatives

are you guys looking forward to? What does the school year look

like for you guys moving into 2526

we're about three and a half weeks away from the

first set of students to return to campus. And what I love about

orientation is everyone's new, right? Whether you're returning

or you're new to the building, you are just new. And that

energy and excitement on day one is one of the best feelings,

because they're coming in and they're eager to learn, they're

hugging, they're high fiving at sports. So I'm ready to jump in

full force. And I know this year here we have a number of

projects that we're talking about. Like, number one is, you

know, part of our work this year is just making sure that we have

a finger on our pulse when it comes to community well being.

So making sure, from a micro level, that we're engaging the

faculty and staff and thoughtful and important discussions around

what is happening inside the dorms, what is happening inside

the classrooms, what is happening across the school, to

make sure that we're supporting our employees from a global

perspective, but also to have them having the resources they

need to get through another successful year on the flip side

of that and making sure that through our well being plan, we

have a new dean of campus well being and making sure that she's

off and running, but also working with her and our

students and our Student Life team to look at student well

being, to make sure that we are supporting all facets of student

well being here. So that's our focus for us this year. And then

we're having some really interesting discussions at the

school around value proposition, right? We have value proposition

since plural at the school, not just one thing, multiple things

here. So we're going to delve into that this year with our

community to understand what's working well, what are we

seeing? What are some areas for growth for us? I'm really

excited to delve into that, and that's really important for two

reasons. Number one is our schools have high tuitions,

right? It's prices to come through our schools here, and

parents are asking us more and more about, who are you, what is

the value? So I think just understanding who we are and

having those thoughtful conversations are going to be

intriguing as we head into the school year. So I'm excited for

that and the work that we're going to do around our AI vision

statement. It's going to be huge. You know, many schools are

trying to be the first market for the AI vision statement, and

for us, we just want to take our time. We want to rely on our

community. We want to be, as I said earlier, intentional and

deliberate about moving that forward will be important for

us. So those are some of the projects that I'm interested in

this year. They're going to be, in many ways, in my portfolio.

So I'm excited to start the year off in those way. And then, you

know, those are the day to day things that I worry about

around, you know, new team members, making sure they have

the support they need, making sure we're available for

students. But those are the three hallmarks of things that

we hallmarks of things that will be on my mind

as I head into the year. Those are really

great things. I can't wait to kind of hear how that all

unfolds.

Markie, one of the things I'm interested in, I'm

gonna take us back to the conversation where you were

talking about, like your organizational structure, but

also the number of roles that you. Had, and the number of

titles that you've held, because, you know, the idea of

tech director, the CTO, or maybe, you know, I didn't hear

you say it, but maybe CIO versus, you know, Director of

AI, and all of these different titles, I guess my question is

boiled down to, like, What's in a name, what's in a title, and

how do you see titles, and the way in which we talk about the

roles that we have in the tech world, throughout the various

positions that we have and hold, how do those titles have and

hold meaning in our schools? How do they allow us to, as I would

like to say, have the juice to get the job done, you know, to

put us in a position where we can truly influence, where do

you see those in the role of the tech department at schools, big

and small?

Yeah, that's a really good question. You know,

all of our schools are, in many ways, hierarchies of decision

makers, and some of that those decisions are influenced by the

title that you have. And I've seen in some schools where the

title can sort of make or break your role depending on what

you're doing, and because of that, the weight behind your

decision making can actually follow suit. So for example,

I've had unique titles throughout my career here, and

I've only had as I think about my career at the Lawrenceville

school, my title has been assistant head of school, but

I've had these subtitles and roles I have led, whether it was

in HR or communications. In many ways, titles give you the

ability to be the decision maker, right to hold influence,

to push initiatives forward. So when we think about titles, I

try to make sure that titles reflect the work that you're

doing now, and be open to flexibility in that title. So

for example, it's actually not clear to me if schools still

have direct of its anymore, and it's an interesting word we

still use, because I think the IT director, the role continues

to evolve and emerge in really wonderful ways. And I think

schools want to just pause and ask ourselves, does that

actually support the role of IT director? And do we have to

shift that title? Because when you do that, it sends a signal

that a this is important for the school and be the person sitting

in that role has the authority to make the decision necessary

to move that forward, because in absence of that here, IT

directors can sometimes be met with confusion and frustration

where they might not have the ability to make a decision

because of their actual title. That's the hard line, key

takeaway, and something that's really hard to navigate here.

However, there's a ways to go around that even at

Lawrenceville school, my title is my title here. I didn't

aspire to be assistant head of school. I just wanted to do

right by the school. And for me, at the end of the day, I just

wanted to learn. Knowledge is key. If I could sit in a finance

meeting and understand the budget process with my CFO.

Awesome. If I could sit with my head of school and the strategic

planning meeting just be a final wall. Awesome. If I could sit in

the advanced meeting to understand stewardship and

fundraising. Awesome. And here's why this matters, because

whenever you are developing a position, there's always a group

of people thinking about the position. And do we go internal

or external? And what I've seen in many cases is those who are

successful are the ones that keep raising their hands because

they say, oh, Bill, oh, that person is everywhere. Let's give

that person a role here. So I've tried to approach my own growth

and my career by just raising my hand and learning and let the

rest happen and the outcome will be the outcome. But I didn't set

out for a title change here. I set out to sort of do what needs

to be done here. So to answer your question specifically here,

I think for individuals who are thinking about, how do I change,

how do I have a discussion with the senior leadership about

evolution change, I might start not from top down, start from

bottom up, because when you have the experience and the data

point to that, then the conversation is actually easier

here. So for example, so many schools are thinking about AI

innovation here, and some want to hire innovation directors.

For me, I would say it directors, if you don't have

someone meeting it, get ahead of it. Call a meeting with your

senior leadership team or small set and say, I like to run with

this. Here's how I want to do it, and then let that be a

guiding principle and let the outcome be the outcome. So

that's how I think about that transition. I'm not sure if

that's helpful or not, but that's how

I think about it. It's great because I think about

what you've said in the context of when I started as Director of

Technology, my job is so much different than what it was 1015

1920, years ago, my title hasn't changed, but the job has, and I

think being able to use those experiences redoing that job

description, which none of us touch because I'm doing the job

I don't have time to document like, you know, my job

description, but that's an exercise we should all be

undertaking as we go through this process, so that when you

need to have those conversations, when you need to

have those either internally or externally, you can point to

those skill sets and those things that you've done that

really set you apart. Because one of the things that we

touched on in earlier conversations over the past

weekend and recently is again, that idea of what's in the

title, what's in the name, and that can be so different from so

many different places. So I think what you're saying in

terms of from the bottom up, looking at those experiences, I

think really hits home. I think in leadership,

you have to be okay with being vulnerable.

Totally you gotta be okay with being vulnerable. You gotta be

okay with asking for help, you got to be okay with asking for

support and feedback, and I am not here today unless I was

given some feedback and I was able to respond to that

feedback. I've had to be extremely vulnerable throughout

my career to get to where I am. So for example, I did

presentations in front of board members or senior staff. You

know, I was like, Oh, my God, some things, I'm so scared, but

I need to do it because that allowed them to see me in a

different light here. So for example, for folks who are

thinking about transition, I would say, do more internal

presentations where they see you in a different light, not as a

tech director, but as an expert around that specific item, you

know, take 15 minutes of your senior staff and you say, I'd

love to talk to you about some data that we're finding around

enrollment management or AI, do it right, and that allows them

to see you in a different lighting. And for IT directors,

you have to, because otherwise they're going to always refer

you as it at some point, you have to make that change here.

Nobody can do that to being vulnerable and being open to

feedback and support and then letting that feedback and growth

allow you to shape your career. And that's how I've led my

throughout

my career. So before we wrap this

conversation up, Marquis, you know, we jumped right into all

of your incredible journey and clearly your incredible school

but we know you on an outside of school level because you serve

on the Atlas board. You're really active in our community,

and you're a really funny dude. So my question, I guess, is

like, what do you do on the personal side? Tell me a little

bit about what sparks your interest, either the books you

like to read, the podcasts you like to listen to, what kind of

interests you have outside of school, we jumped right into the

official stuff. But tell us a little bit about the you stuff,

the me and my kids. I love spending time with

my family and our two active boys, eight and five, Carter and

Gavin, and they just love sports and being outside. So you know,

when I'm not in the business of the office, in many ways, I set

up a situation whereby the weekends are with my family, and

we love the boarding school experience, so they're part of

the boarding school lifestyle. So whether I'm taking my sons to

a play or an athletic event or an academic experience here,

they just enjoy that. So it allows me not only to see the

students at their best, but also integrate my family into my work

on a different level. So I'm a big golfer. I love to play golf,

I love to play basketball, and I like to spend a lot of time with

my boys and family when I'm not in school, and my doctorate work

is in systems thinking, and I spend a lot of time thinking

about organizational leadership. And one of the books that I read

every single year is the first 90 days that I have behind me.

And I read it every single year, probably because I do different

things every single year.

That's really interesting to read the

first 90 days at the beginning of every school year. You read

it every year,

every year. Oh, I love that. And anytime we hire a

new senior staff member, I give them a book, and I talk them

about it throughout the year. And I think that's important for

two reasons. Number one is we work in institutions where we

are so relational, right? But when you approach our work from

an inquiry based model here, so much comes out of that here. So

the way I think about my work every year is, it's a reset,

right? I'm asking different questions. I have different

ideologies. I have different experiences here. So the reason

I said my doctor is because when I think about my work in our

organizational leadership, and the first in the days here, the

way I approach the project last year is actually not going to

work. This year it doesn't work, and I've learned that over time

here. So I have to re approach the question again, making sure

that folks understand the why and the how and the reasons, and

then we begin to work every single year. So that's one of my

favorite books. I'm reading a book called. Emotions right now,

that was our faculty read that I think is really beneficial in

the way that we lead independent schools right now, because it is

complicated and it's complex, and our students, who are lovely

and who are experiencing so much, are navigating so much in

their life here. So if we are able to shape and foster the way

we think about emotions, then we then can help our students also

navigate that. I'm also completing that book too as we

start the school year. So those are my favorite reads that I

always come back to, and I love what I do. There's no other job

in the world I would rather do, and Hiram and Bill can attest to

this. I mean, if you think about the work that we do every year,

we have the resources, we have the structure, we have the

policies to put in place to help our community navigate change,

and we're going to do it every single year. Sign me up, which

is why I've been education so long

I love it. I can tell your passion is very

clear. It's been such a really great conversation. I've loved

getting to know more about your path, and I always knew you were

just like a bundle of energy that I loved being around. And

now I understand a little bit more why. Because I feel like

I'm the same way about the association community, like when

you fall in love with an industry with a group of people

who are doing great work. I don't even think about the work

as work. Yes, I need refreshing, and I need a moment to take a

breather like any human would. But part of my problem is I love

the work, and that is why my husband has to show up with my

coffee cup, because I just plow straight into my days, and it

sounds like you have that energy too, which I just love.

Well, no, I appreciate it. I enjoyed this

experience. You know, as I started with earlier, much the

work that I've done will complete it to date, in part has

because I've had, in many ways, an interesting technology

experience, right? We can apply that work through all areas of

school life and community life in intentional and wonderful

ways. And as I think about you know, I've been in education for

2324 years, I've learned to just try to capitalize on what I

think is right for the community, but I've always tried

to do what's best for the community here. But there's no

greater reward than working education, and that's something

that I think it has allowed me to not only reaffirm but also

continue to take advantage as I continue to grow my own career.

Dr Marquis Scott, you are a delight. Thank

you so much for spending your time with us today. This has

been incredible. We really appreciate you. Thank you.

This has been talking technology with Atlas, produced

by the Association of technology leaders in independent schools.

For more information about Atlas and Atlas membership, please

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