Jamie Sullivan, TLIS, joins the podcast to share her veteran perspective on shifting from rigid software platforms to agile, user-centric systems. She discusses the power of regional collaboration through her year-long AI leadership cohort and explains why technology departments must prioritize "academic teching" to keep the focus on student learning.

• Castilleja School
• Toddle LMS
• Veracross
• Ruvna Safety Solutions
• Eric Hudson (Facilitator)
• Coachella Music Festival (Mentioned)
• SeniorNet (Mentioned)
• TLIS Certification

Matt,

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.

Welcome to Talking technology with ATLIS. I am Peter Frank,

the interim 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.

All right, Bill, well, welcome. It's the two of

us, and we're recording on a Monday. We don't always record

on Mondays. How are you

feeling?

I'm getting over my weekend, my youngest son, who you don't

often hear me talk about my buddy there, Craig. He had a

production of Cinderella at college. He was on the stage

crew, so we went down yesterday and watched that. It was

interesting, because I saw him be involved with that when he

was in high school and now in college, and just comparing the

two different productions was kind of interesting, you know,

so was a good weekend. But some time on the road, you know,

driving down to college, sitting through that, driving back,

makes for a long day as a

great opportunity to listen to podcasts like this

one.

Nope. Brooke is not having

it.

Brooke says No,

she doesn't understand anything about what

I'm talking about. On a good day, hearing multiple people

talk about it is even worse.

You

can tell yourself it's a lack of understanding. I

feel like there might be another element to that, like maybe she

just,

I'm sure there is.

She hears your voice plenty enough, perhaps.

And like the idea of, like, listening to it more like that

could be part of it, too.

Exactly.

I had a funny experience this weekend. My 14

year old plays travel basketball, and we had a local

tournament. We got home, it was late, but Bill, I know you're a

huge music fan. I've started watching Coachella, like the

Coachella Music Festival, that's not something I would ever do,

but they broadcast free both weekends. YouTube just

broadcasts it, and it's this professional production, like,

it's amazing, and it's all free. But in a former life, I was a

wedding DJ, a party DJ, but I never did the like, EDM tech, no

kind of music. So that fascinates me to watch people do

it. So I'd pay attention to that. And my daughter, she's 10,

we had a rave, just totally impromptu. That's awesome,

because I just it was late, and I was like, I don't know, pick

one of the stages at Coachella, and it was EDM, and I'm like,

fascinated, and she's like, what's this? And by like, half

an hour later, she had a little karaoke machine with LED lights

that just lights up the whole room with all these moving

lights. And I got some glow sticks, and we just had this

impromptu rave out of nowhere for a while. It was great.

I wish I could have seen that.

It was really good. And we love to talk about our

kids on the show. I was wondering, do you have like, a

memory that it just came out of nowhere? It was not part of the

plan, but something just happened with your kids, or

maybe not with your kids, but just those moments in life that

would come up. It's like, man, we had no plan for that. It just

happened. And we will talk about that for a long, long time.

It's not like the one specific thing, like

something like that. It's like the one liners that they come up

with out of nowhere. And this is the one thing that we absolutely

love. Because when Craig was in like, kindergarten, and we were

driving back from a trip to Disney, and we see signs for the

state capital of Florida. And we asked Craig, we're like, Craig,

what's the capital of Florida? And he said, F lost it. Just

finished this work, like in school around the capitals,

yeah. And

then we were like, You know what, Craig, you're

right, the capital is F.

That's wonderful. So let's bring in our guests, a

long time valued member of our community, an atlas member.

Here, we want to introduce Jamie Sullivan. Jamie, why don't you

say hello to our audience, welcome to the podcast, and just

tell us a bit about yourself, your school and whatnot.

Great. Thanks for having me also. Before I get

started, I've been to Coachella 10 times.

Are you serious? That's awesome.

Yes. I have my oldest. I have four children. My

oldest, for her senior gift, she wanted to go to Coachella, so I

took her, and then she went to school at Chapman in Southern

California. So we went to Coachella every year after that,

forever. And then I went with a girlfriend. I went once without

my family or my children. I took my husband for, I think I want

to say, like our 25th or something anniversary, we took

two of the girls and my husband, and that was really fun. Then I

went with a girlfriend, just two adults, at Coachella, which was

really fun.

I've got to ask this question, because, other

than Coachella, the other music festival that I would have loved

to have gone to, and friends of mine did in South California.

Have you ever been to Burning Man?

I. Haven't done Burning Man, I have friends that

have done Burning Man that just hasn't totally like it's not all

about the music. I'm a festival person, so I've gone to many

festivals. And last year, my second child wanted to go to a

festival in Norway, so we went to Oslo, and it's their festival

in Oslo, and it was amazing.

We might need to schedule a second podcast

episode exactly, just to talk about music and festivals or

whatnot. That would be fun. Tell us a little bit about your

journey and your school and you

Okay, so I am the director of tech right now

at Castilleja school in Palo Alto. It's an all girls school,

grade six to 12, and we have about 416 students, and a very

definite Middle School and Upper School. I have been here for, I

think this is my 16th year before that, I was at Sacred

Heart schools in Atherton, and I started at Sacred Heart schools

in San Francisco in the very early days of tech as a computer

teacher. So it's been a long journey and a really fun,

interesting journey, but where we sit here in Palo Alto is on a

city block surrounded by neighbors and houses. The

schools been here since 1907 and it was originally created to get

women to go to college to Stanford, because we were just a

stone's throw away from Stanford, and that was the

original purpose. I think it had different iterations, from a K

through 12 school. There was like a primary school. There

were actually boys here at one time. Most of the girls here do

not know that ever happened, but I am the mock trial advisor at

Castile as well. The last three years, maybe four years since

covid, because we saw him on covid First time, there's a

judge that volunteers for mock trial. And mock trial is where

the students go as a team. They compete in their county, and

then they can go to state and whatever. They all get the same

case. They have a prosecution, defense team and all of this.

And one of the judges, male judge, who's volunteering, said,

I went to castilleia, and all the girls were like, I don't

know you are, but he did it, and the girls almost fell off their

chairs. And he was like, I did. I went to kindergarten there,

and sure enough, he is on this picture from very long time ago.

Oh, wow.

Boys sitting in the front row. So it is a girls

school, but we did have boys months. The school right now is

getting ready to undergo a huge construction project. We are

rebuilding all of our learning spaces, three quarters of the

campus over the next 24 months. So

wow,

we're in a crazy time. It's taken us a long time

to get here, and everybody's really excited about it.

Nice.

I was the director of academic tech prior

to being the director of tech, and right now I'm kind of in

both roles, and have been for a couple of years, and we're

really needing to hire that next position, but we're kind of

taking our time to figure out what that is.

Sure there's plenty going on, plenty of change. We

often have capital project conversations, so maybe we'll

bring you back at some point after your project is over, and

you can share stories and lessons learned and whatnot. But

we know you've had a lot of experience and from your bio and

conversations that we've had prior with other people on the

staff or whatnot, we associate you with a philosophy finding

tech that gives you flexibility to structure it for the school's

needs, rather than letting the technology or the software or

whatnot drive what the school's gonna do. So to start off, can

you talk about, if there are tech directors that are feeling

maybe trapped by your current platform or whatnot, how do you

begin to flip that script so that the pedagogy stays in the

driver's seat?

I've been doing this for a really long time, and

I've seen so many technologies come and go and disrupt. And I'm

also, as anybody will tell you, I am an optimist always. I feel

like there's always a way to do what you want to do in the way

that you want to do it, but you have to get creative about it,

and it's not always the most direct way. So I feel like,

especially in independent schools, I've always been in

independent schools since forever, and I have to say we do

things differently, and every school does them a little

differently, and I feel like most of my job is finding

solutions for people. And sometimes they're tech

solutions, sometimes they're a process, sometimes they're a way

to get somewhere. And I feel like that's sort of our gift to

the school, is really being able to sort of think bigger about

how we do things, and then try to really explore and talk to

colleagues. I mean, that's the one thing I have to say my

colleagues through ATLIS, through the Bay Area, we have a

Bayes net community that we've had since the 1990s and we

communicate. We. Share and when I'm looking for a solution. So

our recent LMS change, we had been with an LMS for about 10

years, and it's a long time to be with anything. And before

that, we were extremely independent, and everybody did

whatever they wanted, which is a whole different kind of issue.

So when we decided to go with one. It was great, you know,

with student experience, that's what we're trying to do. But

then it got to the point, over the last probably four or five

years, where we were kind of stuck. It was like we could only

do what the LMS allowed us to do, and we had to create Google

Sheets, and we had to create other solutions over here to do

the innovative things that we wanted to do throughout the

school, and we're always trying to pilot new ways of doing

things to help make learning visible for students, to try to

divert them from that A, B, C, D, like, how do we get them to

look at what they're learning? And so we've done a lot with

standards and exploring and experimenting and piloting, and

we really couldn't do anything in the LMS we were in, and we

were kind of saddled with it. I felt like all we could do, and

everybody, I mean, over a couple of years, everybody was sort of

on the same page. We can only do this here, and everything else

we could do somewhere else. And that was a big push for us to

think about, why are we doing what the software tells us we

can do? And I do feel like in looking at Tech over the last

five or six years, more of the programs that we use are moving

that direction, trying to be a little more agile, a little more

flexible, a little more user centric, like giving you the

options, and you choose what you're going to implement or

utilize, and I don't feel like that was the way it was before.

We were just so happy to have a program that did this or did

that, and now we're really asking for more, and I think

it's great,

sure that makes a lot of sense, and I'm familiar

with that balance when as the software, hey, we want it to be

as flexible as possible, and we want to give the users as many

options as possible. But now you're into that, what I

associate with iOS versus Windows, or Android versus

Apple, you get into that you've got to strike that balance of

sometimes it's too many options, and people kind of freeze up. So

I'm curious, how do you look at that kind of situation where you

want to maintain that flexibility, but yet you don't

want it to be so taxing on the user that it's just too much,

and I'm not gonna use it right, because some people just throw

their hands up

and say, forget it.

And I do think part of that is getting the

right people around the table in coming up with norms and the way

that you're going to do things, we really had to come up with

conventions. And when we switched, you know, we moved

from one LMS to Toddle, which offered a lot, but it was under

construction quite honestly, and everybody knew it, and I was

very transparent about that from the get go, but it was either

sitting in where we were or forging ahead with the

understanding we were all going to have to be working together.

So I work with thankfully, I have a retired teacher who

decided to do her gap year as my Toddle associate, and she is

amazing. And she calls it a gap year. She loves it. She's having

so much fun not being in the classroom, but being able to

sort of work with us as we forge ahead, and I also have the gift

of the Director of Institutional Research and teacher support. So

she's been here a long time. She's worked with teachers on

assessments, all sorts of things. She came with an EE Ford

grant a long, long time ago, and we never let her go. So she also

helps us sort of make sure that there's clarity about what we're

going to do and how we're going to do it. And we have different

groups doing different things, and that's okay, but knowing

what those parameters are and how we're going to use the tool

and reaching out to those people that want to explore something

new and giving them that, but also giving the people that just

really want to do what they do, and you know, it's challenging,

and yet they knew the struggle right that we were in trying to

make a decision. So when we decided to go with it, they knew

it was the right thing, but they also knew this is all I want to

do, and this is what I did, and it was okay before. So if you're

going to do this, you have to show me how I can do that. So we

had really structured professional development. We

spent a lot of time coming up with checklists for teachers and

putting all those pieces together for them so that they

have the support. We also have multiple venues for support for

them. So we do drop ins. They come in, they have Toddle

support at CAST delay.org where they can email anytime and get

support from multiple people. But we really had to pick and

choose what parts of the LMS we wanted to use. We had to be

specific. And Toddle is amazing, and they're always iterating,

which is great. And Toddle. Challenging at times. So we've

kind of found our flow. And I would say no one wants to go

back. That's for sure.

You've said so many things that I want to comment

on. Bill's brain is spinning. You can see it on his face. I

know I'm writing stuff down. I've got all this stuff, you

know. But you mentioned your gap year person, you mentioned

having somebody on from an IR perspective, which in another

facet of my life I spend a lot of time on. I'm very interested

in what I'd like to really ask you to do, and this is just to

go back and then we can jump forward again. One of the things

I'm always interested in is, what does your department there

look like outside of you who else is there in support of

everything that's going on from the tech, the Ed Tech

perspective.

So when I came in as interim tech director, a

tech director was leaving, and they asked me to come in as

interim, and that was great, but I haven't been able to leave as

interim. And I loved academic technology. I was a director of

tech at Sacred Heart for a long time, and I moved into academic

tech when I got my doctorate, that was going to be my like. I

need to get back to teaching and learning. I'm tired of looking

at switches and ports, and none of this brings me joy. So I

intentionally got out of that world and really loved it here

and Castille as structure. When I came into this role was that

academic tech fell under academics. It did not fall under

tech. And so it was amazing in so many ways, I worked strictly

with academics. It's not that I didn't talk to tech or work with

tech on things, but I didn't touch hardware and I didn't

install software necessarily. I had my own budget for academic

software and all of that, but I worked with teachers and

students period. I loved that. So when I took on this other

role, they were like, it's just for a short while, and it has

been not too long, couple years, but longer than I anticipated. I

have an amazing team Help Desk, Ian, who had, at that time when

I came into interim, he was just starting, so he was like, What's

going on here? And who is she? Because I wasn't really one of

the people that interviewed him at that time. I was academic

tech only. And then Steve Turnbull, who's in your Ali

program, and he's amazing, and Steve is my right arm on all

things construction and operations and all of those

pieces, because there's a lot going on here. And Laurent, who

is our systems cybersecurity. And there should be another

person, obviously, because I'm two people right now, and we

haven't quite defined what that role will be. It's sort of

shifted and changed, and quite honestly, I am definitely

towards the end of my career. I'm not at the beginning, so I

would like to continue academic teching as long as I can, and

keep my hand in that. So it's been sort of also something

where I'm like, I don't know that. I want to give that up

100% and yet, this other job does take a lot of my time, and

when I leave Castille at that will be, I'm not going to be at

another school, so I want to make sure I leave them with the

right structure for them going forward. So I'm really taking my

time thinking about that and talking to a lot of people, a

lot of my colleagues throughout ATLIS and the Bay Area, and

thinking about what that will be. Because right now our

school, we're losing three quarters of our learning spaces,

so it's going to be a different game for a couple of years. We

have two buildings that will remain, and then we have a

temporary campus, a two story, portable campus on our field

that sits on top of an underground garage that we just

built. So there's a lot going on here, and I don't feel that I

know exactly what we're going to need just yet. You know, in

looking at the new plans, it's going to be an extraordinary

campus, and I want to prepare the school for that, because

that is the future, and I want to make sure they have the right

people in the right places. And so we have sort of been back and

forth, and we have a new head of school this year who's amazing,

and she's also been a really great thought partner on that,

sort of, what do we really need and what will we need? So that's

where I'm at with staffing, but we have a really tight team. We

are BYOD school too, so we don't manage the devices, which takes

a bit off out of our realm, but there's a lot going on. The

first thing I did when I took over as interim tech director

was literally removed everything on prem and moved everything

into the cloud. Streamlined a lot of things. We just moved to

Veracross, so we were able to integrate all of these things

that happened 24 probably I was able to streamline a lot so we

are much more efficient than we were then. There were a lot of

parts in. Pieces then. So that's been really helpful.

Bill's brain is just spinning even more now.

Oh, I know.

And I never heard academic teching before. Is that

mean we should fold into our I like that a lot. Academic

teching. I

want to go back to this because you mentioned your

IR person. You mentioned the person that you've got that's

doing the Toddle piece. Are there any other groups like I

think about our librarians, how closely we work with those. I

think about our buildings and grounds guys, and just the

amount of work that goes in there, you know. And some of the

other committees that I'm on that aren't tech, but you're on

them. Are there any other relationships that you've got in

the school? What do those look like?

For sure. So one of the things about castilleia

is that we're grades six through 12. We don't teach tech courses,

we don't teach maker courses, we don't teach those kinds of

courses. Everything is integrated. It's a different

model. Some people are like, I just want to teach great things.

So there have been people that this just is not up their alley.

It's not what they want to do. They really want to teach. And

for us, everything's integrated. So the Maker Space people, we've

had a maker space since the early days, and those people

definitely work with the teachers. They have different

windows of time, but everything is integrated with curriculum.

So you're working with other teachers, bringing them into the

makerspace during history to create monuments of women after

the DC trip. And you know, what would a woman's monument look

like to you? So we work really hard to do that, and it's super

intentional, and we are so used to it that, like you said, there

are all these people I do work with that head of facilities,

especially right now, as we are moving people out of these

buildings, they intend to demo, literally right after graduation

or deconstruct. You can't demo anymore, but they intend to do

it as soon as Brad is over. So we are working with them, and my

team is running over like getting new offices set up where

people are doubling up in some of the spaces that are going to

remain. And I also work with them all the time on everything.

We're looking at new software to streamline our ticketing so that

facilities and tech can ticket together. We were looking at one

now we're thinking about a different thing. So we all work

together on that. I also work with the Health and Safety

Director, Jesse. She is key, especially with this temp campus

and all the things that we're putting in and we're moving and

are the speaker systems going to work via this versus that? And

so I am coordinating I work. I guess the tech director position

here falls under finance and operations that sort of realm.

So we all meet weekly and coordinate on everything from

the temp campus move to these other spaces. Will we have

summer camp? Will we not have summer camp? You know, all the

summer operations that still intend to happen, so all of

those people, and then for the academic side, primarily it is

Karen, our Director of Institutional Research, the dean

of faculty, obviously, academic leadership, the Upper School

head, the middle school head. We're all in conversation a lot,

but I would say that most of the magic happens when I'm working

with those other people right and connecting on what they're

doing and how we find something. You know, we moved to ruvna

Recently, but we had three programs that were doing

different things, and those conversations and putting those

pieces together are what makes everything work. Here, for sure,

it brings to light the breadth and the depth of

what tech directors, again, we were talking about this before

we went live, and it was like, what is it that you're saying

that resonates with other people in this role? And it's the sheer

scope of what we need to deal with and how we need to start

thinking about those things. Because it's not just looking at

the switches and all of the ports and dealing with that,

it's really being able to talk to fluently all of those

departments in a way that can connect all of those pieces,

because we really do sit at the intersection of so many of those

different things.

One of the things I think I'm very

fortunate in is that two of my daughters went to Castle, so

I've been a parent volunteer since before I came here to

work. I also know everyone because of those different

roles. I know the Advancement team. I know the facilities

team. Help with calendaring. You know, as tech people, for the

most part, I'm certain everyone can resonate with this. If

there's a calendar thing and I'm trying to do this thing, but it

needs to be on the website, and it needs to happen here, you

know, go talk to the website people. Never do we say that.

We're like, Sure, let's talk about let's figure out how we do

that. So I feel like I have a connection with everyone from

communications to advancement to facilities to the food service

people. If there's something I need. To set up for them. So I

feel like I'm very lucky to sort of know the inside too as a

parent, and understand what parents expectations are and

things like that too.

So as you think about that, just the vast number

of perspectives, you've been at the school for a while, this is

going to be your last place that you're going to be at, we've

spent a lot of time asking people how they are thinking

about succession planning. Like, how do you not only prepare

those people that you're working with for potentially making that

step up, or really prepping the school for, like, okay, if I'm

only here for x, amount of time more you need to be thinking

about X, Y and Z things because of, again, that breadth, that

scope that we talked about. Have you started thinking about those

things? Have those conversations come up? What does that look

like for you?

Yeah, I think about it every day. I think

especially with all these transitions and things where we

are having people pack their goods and go to a portable and

some of your stuff is going to have to go to storage, and some

will be stored you can get to any day, and some storage for

two years. So we have an amazing faculty, an amazing staff. They

are amazingly agile, and they understand where we're going.

They want to be part of this community, and they know how

long it's taken us to get here, and so they work really hard.

They love what they do, and we also have amazing students

families. I am so fortunate, and I love working here, and I have

to I'm constantly thinking about leaving them in the best way

possible I can, and I feel like our entire department thinks

that way, and whether somebody in our department wants to step

up and be in this role, those are things we're going to be

talking about right now. We're a bit mired with our move to

portables and all of that, but we definitely are looking every

day at what we need best. And one of the things that I'm

thinking a lot about is data governance. Because we moved to

Veracross just end of 2023 we fully implemented, and it's been

great before that we literally had different systems, sometimes

the same system, but it didn't talk to the other person's

system. So we had a lot of great system people doing great work.

Nothing wasn't happening, but it wasn't as streamlined. So I

really want us to explore, especially with AI and all the

things that are happening. And want to make sure that we

document, document, document. I want to make sure that people

know what we do and how we do it, and what connects to what,

and all of those things. And Allie Wensel has been a huge

help when I moved into this role. Ally is my bestie, and she

and I have done some consulting together with educational

collaborators and other things. And she's right down the road.

She's been my partner, and that was one of the things that I

insisted on, I was like, You know what? I'm moving into this

interim role, and I really want to make sure I have the support

I need to do what I do. So with Veracross being relatively new

to the school, and me new to this role, and trying to

streamline things and integrate some things with Veracross, the

school was really supportive, and getting me the support that

I needed to make sure that I was doing the best job that I could

given everything that we had going on. So Ally came, and she

really was my guide on the side. Everything I put together, I

just, you know, hear me out. What do you think? And she was a

great sounding board, great support. And then I had Tye

Campbell.

It's an embarrassment of riches here.

I know I felt so grateful that they agreed to do

it. First of all, he helped on the Veracross side, and he was

there when we needed support for things. You know, we've been in

Veracross Less than a year, and I did not know everything, nor

did we have a database manager for Veracross, which is

something I'd like to also consider for the school going

forward. And again, it's on the list of many things, but we

don't have an administrator. It's kind of parsed out, and

that's okay in some ways. You know, admissions really manages

admissions, and they do a great job, but tye's worked with them.

So Tye knows everyone here. I have to get him, like a

sweatshirt or something, because he definitely is an honorary

castellan member here, and Ali as well. So been really lucky

with that, but I really want to document. There's a lot of

documentation. I just want to make sure we review it, and that

is put in a fashion that we can really utilize going forward. If

we all walked away, somebody would know what to do. Nice,

yeah,

you're name dropping lots of people who've

been on this podcast and lots of people familiar in the Atlas

community. And it's just another testament too. We see it all the

time, especially in this community. I don't know that

people can appreciate it if they're not from this community.

I'm a longtime Association professional Atlas is my. Fourth

Association, if not my fifth, but of all the communities that

I've been a part of and been supporting, I've seen nothing

like I see here. And I hope if any of our listeners are newer

to the Community Technology Leaders, or just on the tech

team period, it is really like that. You can just find people

on LinkedIn, or you meet them at conference, or you meet them in

places, and they will totally pick up the phone and they will

help you like no one should feel shy about that. This is such a

supporting community, so I hope others do that. Coincidentally,

talking about succession and Ali Wenzel, especially, we know this

is passionate for her, I'm curious your thoughts. Jamie,

about succession for you. Tanya, just for a second, take a step

back, not just at your school, but in this community in

general, there's a lot of talk about succession and how many

people are coming in from other industries like they used to.

How many people are staying with it? As long What is your

perspective, as far as the landscape there and what's

coming as far as once this generation of technology leaders

are moving on, and I've noticed many of you want to stick around

longer. I've seen many people retire, but they're still

they're still volunteering at ATLIS. They're still in touch

with their school. So yeah, succession, how do you see that

for the community at large here,

I could definitely be retired. Let's

just say that, and I'm not which is crazy. My husband's been

retired for like 10 years, and he worked at Xerox Palo Alto

Research Center for like 30 years, and he's like, why? And

I'm like, I'm still having fun, and I want to leave this school

in a good place, like there are a couple things, and want to

make sure that I leave things feeling good. I love this place,

and I think that's what a lot of us did. But I gotta say, I have

been so fortunate to work with some of the younger people

coming in and newer leaders, a couple that are on the ATLIS

board. I have been so fortunate to work with them, to present

with them, and we are in very good hands in that regard, I

have no doubt about that, and I'm excited. I feel like we have

a lot of gifts, and we bring a lot, and it's great, as people

that have been doing this for a long time, but talking with some

of the newer tech directors, or people that have just been in

this for, you know, 10 years, they just bring some really

fresh ideas. They just have a different perspective on the

world. And yet, we still have a lot of the same core values as

we look at Tech in schools and how we do what we do. But they

also have boundaries. So there's that, and we do not so well, I

have to say, and that will sustain them. I mean, I think

that's part of it for us. Like you said, we all want to Yeah,

we want to volunteer. Yeah, I want to be on there. Yes. I'd

love to share what I know, yeah, and all the time, not for money,

like just to do it because we love what we do. And that's the

thing. I think the people that are coming are also looking at

the world from a different perspective, with regards to

everything, from AI to everything. This is a time for

fresh eyes, and I am a firm believer and huge fan of having

fresh eyes on anything. That's why our new head of school is

amazing and that she sees things. And I'll be like, That's

exactly right, yeah, you know, whereas other people might not,

but she sees it. So it's great. I think we're in very good hands

going forward. And I'm also excited that those of us have

been around forever can still share some knowledge and

expertise. But also, you know, when I present with people like

Jen zenora or Ling Lim like I learned something new every

single time.

Sure, I love that positive outlook and

perspective. I wanted to shift gears because we don't want this

conversation to go on without mentioning you've got a special

project and cohort going on in your area. You've got this year

long AI, leadership cohort there in the Bay Area. And I feel

like, you know, sometimes if the people in our community aren't

as connected, independent schools might feel like they're

a little bit on an island. Tell us about the program. How has

this cohort model made a positive impact here on tackling

AI,

we started, I think in 2024 right after AI

came out and about, I think we were all in it about nine

months, 10 months, and I was doing every thing I could do,

every online thing I was showing up for, it all. And there were

amazing programs all over, both in California and throughout

ATLIS put on great programs. I was doing everything I could,

and yet I felt like, where am I? Am I making any movement here?

And I was just struggling with the one hour session or the half

day workshop. And in the Bay Area, we have a lot even face to

face things. I felt like it was just wasn't moving things along

as I had hoped. And I'm sure I was doing just fine, but I

really was frustrated myself,

sure,

and I sat down, like, one weekend, it was like,

you know, why can't we have something that goes on for a

year, and why can't we have a bunch of other schools? Like,

I'm talking to Ali and I'm talking to Eric at nueva and I'm

talking to Peter at Christel, and we're talking all the time,

but I feel like we're just not making any progress here. Like I

feel like I'm not moving the needle enough, and I needed

other heads in the game. So I had a rainy weekend, and I sat

down and sort of mapped out my ideal professional development

would be, you know what? We'd have a year long program,

someone like Eric Hudson could, like, be our program leader,

facilitate the program, bring the knowledge that we need, or

things to think about facilitating us together. And I

went to other schools, I was like, I don't want to do this

alone, like I could bring Eric here, and we could spend a day

with ourselves, and that's amazing, and we have done that,

and it's been amazing for our teachers. But I was like, I feel

like I need to move leadership. I can't do this alone, and I

need more people in this game. So I mapped it out. Every month

we'd meet online, and we'd have three full day workshops at the

beginning of the year, at the middle of the year, and at the

end of the year, where everyone would come together in person.

So that limited this to a regional event. I was like, I

can't fly people in for a day. I don't think they would get the

budget for that, but let me see. So I ran up by my head of

school, and she said, go ahead. You can pitch it, because I knew

I couldn't ask Eric if she said, Sorry, no, go. So I ran it by a

few friends, obviously, and said, What do you think? Am I

crazy? Is this good? Is this bad? And they were like, go for

it. And I didn't invite anybody or tell anybody about it. I was

just like, I want to propose this. I don't even know if it'll

happen. So I saw Eric ATLIS, actually, yeah, I reached out to

him before ATLIS. And then I said, can we connect at ATLIS?

And he said, Sure. So I sent him what I was thinking. I literally

had, like, a couple slides about these be the dates, and this is

what we do. He and I met, and he said, you know, Jamie, I'm

really not going to be teaching people stuff. And I said, No,

that is not what this is about. This is a working professional

development, and everybody's working on creating leadership

in their schools around AI, whatever that means for them. So

if you can facilitate that, this will be amazing. And he said

that I can do, I think. And I said, okay, so because it was

new and I didn't know where this was going to go, I reached out

to people I knew schools that I knew that were doing good things

and might be interested. I also wanted to make sure we had

people that knew that had like schools, so some K through

twelves, some nine through twelves, some six through 12.

And the first year, we ended up with seven schools, six people

in each school. And Eric agreed that was like a good number to

start with. We had our first meeting face to face, September

of 2024 we decided to start after the school year got kicked

off so people weren't frustrated and not doing too many things.

And you could pick anybody. So I had like an admission person on

there. I put it out there as an application at the school. Then

I met with like each person, each school I was inviting. I

ran through my little slideshow on what it would look like and

would you be interested? This is a pilot, and this is how much it

had cost. We basically split the cost of Eric's time, and split

the cost of any food that we needed for workshops or

whatever. Everybody was in. Nobody said no. So it was a go.

And I have to say our first year was so great, just learning from

each other, that was a big piece of it. We really wanted to

connect with other people and talk about what we were doing.

Some people were on policies, other people were on frameworks.

Everybody was in a different place. Somebody was creating a

class. So we got to present. You got to learn from each other.

You got to see share materials. It was great. It was really

great. And the mix of people was your school decided who you

wanted to bring. We did not decide for you. You bring

whoever you want. It was so great that at the end of the

year, Eric and I were like, I don't know, what do you think?

And so we put it out there, and everybody's like, let's do

another year. So we're in year two right now. We added two more

schools, and so far so good. We meet this Wednesday online. So

we meet online every month that we're not meeting face to face,

and we only meet face to face, September, January, June.

Are each of the schools bringing their own

problem to the group? Or are you focused on, like, trying to

solve, like, a specific problem across all schools,

they all bring their own. So everybody came

with their own priorities in mind. And Eric gives us enough

in. Information enough time to share what we're doing. And then

every time he starts with a new like, here's what I'm seeing,

because he does. He sees so much, and he's able to share

that and bring that to the group. And then he gives us time

to work in our groups. He usually pairs two groups

together that he feels like could learn from each other, and

he'll do some time for that. He's just got a great eye for

putting those pieces together. And then he also offers a couple

hours of coaching time each semester to each school if they

choose to use it. And some do, some don't. But I think

everybody's taken away some amazing information. They've

connected with people on things that they're doing, seeing

things that they hadn't even imagined, which is amazing. Been

really happy, and it's been a great program for us, and it's

incredibly inexpensive. Once you parse it out across seven or

nine schools, and people are like, Oh my gosh, I could never

do that kind of PD, otherwise,

I can imagine there's a lot of sharing,

because I would come into something like that with like,

an idea of like, okay, I want to focus on this, because this is

the one problem. But I wouldn't want to lose the conversations

or the resources that maybe some of those other people are using.

So knowing that you can kind of come together, you can probably

have those times for those shared conversations. And having

worked with Eric here at MKA, I know just how well he can work

to facilitate those types of conversations amongst those

different groups, I'm jealous, is what I'm trying to say. I

will fly

out, I

will find that money, and I will come

No, I definitely thought about inviting some

schools from LA. I'm like, Oh, God, how big can we get? But the

size is really nice. We know each other, we see each other.

But he did have me talk to a school on the East Coast that

was going to replicate it, but they had a lot more schools. But

I know he did that last year, so I just thought it was, like,

such a simple idea. Was like, how hard could this be? And

people made the time, and they all do have their own priorities

and things that their school wants and expects. You know, if

you're going to invest in this, here's what we need. So it's

been great for us as a school and our teachers. We brought

Eric here to do a teacher all day workshop, and all of a

sudden, every teacher was walking out of there, can I join

that cohort next year? It looks so great. And I didn't realize

he was doing this so amazing. I've learned so much. And so

they were really excited. So at first it's sort of like, Oh,

it's another thing to do. And then once they realized, sort of

the work that we were doing, once we were sharing back, they

all wanted to be a part of

it.

Well, getting over that anxiety is huge.

Yeah, exactly.

And Eric Hudson is always pretty good for making

you feel like a million bucks. Getting everybody pumped up.

Yeah,

right. He does. Leaves us all pretty energized,

and he really tries to pull out the people that are doing

something that everyone needs to hear right? Because we are all

at different times, working on different things. So this year,

too, has been really good, and it didn't feel like we were

doing anything again, because obviously this train is still

moving. There's change constantly. So it's good, really

good.

I wanted to ask about a couple more things

though, Jamie, something near and dear to my heart is, of

course, the T list ATLIS certification for technology

directors. And I gotta say, so you participated recently, and

you not only took the exam, but before that, you participated in

the T list prep program. And I was thinking to myself during

that as you were actively engaging, I thought in the

future, she is going to be facilitating these T list

programs. I wonder, because it seemed to really speak to you.

You are not just starting out. You're not in the middle of it

at this point, but you still felt like, Hey, before you wrap

this up, you wanted to earn the certification. So I'm curious,

from that perspective, what interested you about continuing

your professional development and doing things like preparing

for another exam and earning more credentials at this stage?

I think most of us are lifelong learners, and I

had four kids before I went for my doctorate, so I was like, You

know what? I need to keep learning. That was the impetus

then, and here I saw the program, and it covered such an

array of areas across tech, you guys really spent a lot of time,

obviously looking into each of these areas. Like Bill said, we

are attached to every single thing in a school. And I wanted

to make sure that I was still learning and I was still

growing, and the PREP program really helped me sort of define

those areas. And it's funny, because after I took it, I

remember looking at the results, I wanted to know sort of where

are the areas I need to strengthen? And it was

definitely the area. Felt like I needed to strengthen. So it was

good. It targeted exactly the thing I want to work on, which

is data governance, and that was an area that I wasn't as strong

in, and I felt like that is something I really need to work

on. So I was not surprised, and I had plenty of prep, and I did

fine, but I have to say, the PREP program for me was really

helpful, just also hearing from other people and connecting on

understanding the format and all of that. But I just wanted to

continue learning and growing, and as I was moving into this

tech role with the construction, all these things that I had not

done in a very long time. You know, I was academic teching, so

I didn't really,

I love

it. Need to know all of these things, and yet I

had experienced them previously, but it's been a long time. So I

wanted to make sure that, you know, challenge myself, but also

continue learning. So it was great. And you did a great job.

Peter, everybody did, Bill, you were in there too.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, but Bill didn't

have much to do with

it

at all. Oh, stop it.

It's funny because it's so not true.

It's a great way to sort of better understand

your strengths, your weaknesses, all of those things. I would

recommend it to anybody.

We appreciate that. We're glad you got that out of

it. Yeah, the timing was really good. So I just wanted to ask

kind of in closing here, so your career has spanned so much of

the educational spectrum, from the early childhood to grad

students with all of that experience and perspective,

like, is there a fundamental truth about how humans learn

from tech that has remained constant. It doesn't matter

whether someone's for or whether they're an adult student, adult

learning, learning like fundamental truth about people

learning from technology that you've identified is, yep, it

doesn't matter their age. This is a truth about people in tech?

Yeah, I started, actually, my career when I was

getting my master's in educational computing. At the

time, the director of the program, she had a nonprofit,

what was a research project, but she was building to be a

nonprofit. This was literally 1990 ish, and she was creating

technology learning for older adults who missed technology

altogether so they had not had personal computers. They had not

had any of this. And while I was in this program to learn how to

work in schools with technology, that was really long time ago,

but she felt like there was this whole group of people that will

never get that opportunity. So how can we help them? And she

started this organization called senior net, and it was centers

around the United States. They met online via, like, AOL, or, I

can't even remember, it was long time ago,

sure.

And they were so energized by just learning. And

they also had been accountants, and they had all these careers,

but none of this was connected to that. So that's where I

started my career, and teaching older adults how to use

computers. And now I am an older adult, and like you said, I've

done preschool, teaching them logo and moving the turtle on

the screen, and I've done students, and I've done

teachers, and I've done online, and I've done all sorts of

programs. And I have to say, anyone I work with, for the most

part, really has an openness. They want to learn something.

And it's not about the tech. The one thing I try to do is not

make it about the tech. There are people that come in here and

want to know how they can use Claude to do the thing. That's

great, but for the most part, people want to do the thing. And

whatever that thing is, as a tech leader, that's the thing

I'm looking for. What is it that you want to learn? They want to

learn something, and the tech is often just a vehicle for that.

And I can talk with you guys, and I can talk with valiant Ty

and all these people about the tech part of it, and that's

really fun. But for most of the people I work with, they just

want to do something. And how they get there, I try to give

them the menu like these are the variety of choices that you have

depending on what you want to do, and that talking through and

walking through with people and helping them just understand

what the options are to what they want to do, suss is out

those things that you're trying to you know, the what's the

right tool for the job? And that's where I feel like I fit

best. I'm here to help translate what you're trying to do and

make it easier for you and find a way. And sometimes a lot of

it's more process than it is tool, but it just depends

to.

Words that kind of came up in my mind as you were explaining that

Everyone's curious, they just need to be made to feel capable.

Yep.

And I think when you were talking about

particularly working with older adults, you know, it was funny

when I said I was away this weekend, my wife and my mother

and I went to the show, and we were talking about my father,

who was a former teacher, and he got out really before technology

got and he was always curious, but he never felt like he was

capable. And that to your point, Peter, what is that fundamental

truth? We're all curious. We all want to learn things. It's just

often we don't feel like we're capable enough to do it. If we

can empower people to feel capable, like you're saying

you've done and done masterfully. I think that's the

biggest thing that we just need to keep in mind.

Yeah, it's not about the tech.

Yeah, I love that. I wrote that down. It's not

about the tech. It's about what you're trying to accomplish with

the tech.

Yeah,

make it about that. Jamie Sullivan, thank you so

much for sharing everything that you have to share with

us.

This has been really fun. Thanks, guys

and Bill. We miss Hiram.

Yeah,

no, we don't.

Oh, wow,

no,

man, all right.

Do you see how smoothly this went, how easy it

went. We had a really good dialog back and forth. It was

fabulous.

Well, I missed Hiram. So Hiram. I missed you. I

suspect Bill did too. I

just

spent the weekend with Hiram. So I had a ton of time. Hiram was

at my house, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I got enough Hiram. I

could use this as like my Hiram detox time.

Okay, sure. Thank you all so much. Thank you both.

This has been talking technology with ATLIS, produced by the

Association of technology leaders in independent schools.

For more information about Atlas and Atlas membership, please

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