Heads Wellness Series: Leading with Vision and Resilience in Complex Times
Inspired by The Calling and the Climb at the Spring 2025 PAIS Heads Annual Meeting
No charge for PAIS School Heads
Program ONE: December 5, 2025, 1:15-2:30pm
In person at the Heads Retreat, Hotel Hershey, Hershey, PA
Is It Still Worth It? The Price of Leadership
Presenter: Rob Evans
School headship can be deeply rewarding. But its challenges, which were always complex, have metastasized. As their stress levels have risen, heads’ average tenure has dropped. To many, the future now seems daunting. How can they find more fulfillment—and pleasure—in their work? Rob Evans will outline positive steps that can help.
Meet the Presenter: Rob Evans
Rob Evans is a clinical and organizational psychologist, school consultant, and executive coach to school leaders. A former high school and pre-school teacher, he served for 40 years as the Executive Director of The Human Relations Service, a non-profit community mental health clinic in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He has consulted to more than 1,800 schools, public and private, throughout the U.S. and internationally, working with teachers, leaders, and boards, and has spoken to hundreds of parent groups.
Rob attended the Germantown Friends School, in Philadelphia, and received his undergraduate degree from Princeton and his doctorate from Harvard. His particular interests are in leadership, in helping schools manage change, and in crisis intervention. He also provides professional development for teachers on, among other topics, strengthening communication with parents and improving collegiality and candor among educators.
He is the author of many articles and four books. His newest, co-written with Michael Thompson, is Hopes and Fears: Working with Today's Independent School Parents, published by the National Association of Independent Schools. His others are: Seven Secrets of The Savvy School Leader, The Human Side of School Change, and Family Matters: How Schools Can Cope with The Crisis in Childrearing.
Program TWO: February 19, 2026, 10-11:30am, Virtual
Leading Well: A Reflective Journey for Heads of School
Presenter: Isaiah Noriega, Leadership + Design
This session offers heads of school a space to connect through storytelling, share leadership journeys, and learn from one another. Together, we’ll explore frameworks on self-reflection that are the epicenter of how we lead and take care of ourselves.
Meet the Presenter: Isaiah Noriega
Isaiah Noriega (he/him) is a partner at Leadership + Design. He is an experienced educator, counselor, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practitioner with a passion for well-being and community building. Isaiah recently served as the Dean of Community and Well-being, Chief Diversity Officer, and Founding Director of the Evergreen Institute at Indian Creek School, where he led initiatives that center student well-being, leadership development, and belonging. With a background in clinical-community psychology, Isaiah brings expertise in mental health and organizational psychology to his work. Before joining Leadership + Design full-time, he was a Fellow and a Leader in Residence.
At the heart of Isaiah’s work is a belief in the power of people—their stories, their leadership, and their potential to thrive when truly seen and supported. A certified life coach and trained restorative practitioner, Isaiah blends empathy with strategy to help communities move forward with clarity and purpose. Outside of work, Isaiah enjoys reading, sports, and spending time with his wife.
Program THREE: April 21, 2026, 1-2:30pm, Virtual
Leading with Vision and Resilience in Complex Times
Presenters: Kate Ebner and Anne Foley, Nebo Company
Schools have always played a central role in their communities, serving as places of learning, community, networks, and employment. However, the complexity of challenges faced by schools, their leaders, and their Boards, have evolved significantly in recent years, with continuous disruptions arising from the aftermath of the pandemic, growing concerns about mental health and well-being, attraction and retention of faculty and staff, the implications of artificial intelligence for teaching and learning, and more. Old models of leadership are insufficient for today's school leaders.
This program places school leadership in today's context, illuminating the new capacities needed for effective, adaptive and resilient leadership and highlighting a leadership approach that blends practicality and a vision for the future.
The presenters will introduce a new leadership model, called the Transformational Leadership Framework, designed to assist school heads and boards of trustees in learning how to develop the capacities needed to navigate intricate conditions and thrive in challenging, complex environments. This framework equips you as a leader to lead more effectively, navigate complexity, and address real-life goals and challenges while fostering personal and institutional sustainability, growth and development.
Meet the Presenters: Kate Ebner
Kate Ebner is the Founder and Leadership Coach of Nebo. She believes that, given the opportunity, everyone can be visionary. Over the past two decades, she has worked with numerous groups, companies, organizations and communities to guide them through the creation of a compelling vision. She is the creator of Nebo’s proven visioning process. As a result of her work in this area, countless leaders have succeeded in translating vision into action leading to results. Kate blends deep experience as a change leader with a lifelong commitment to helping people and organizations to make their visions real. After more than two decades of leading organizations first hand, she knows the challenges that leaders face. Kate’s clients appreciate her strategic perspective, empathetic style and the positive sense of accountability that she provides as they travel the path towards realizing their goals.
As a coach, Kate typically works with senior executive leaders and C-level leaders in a range of industries and especially enjoys working with people who face significant challenges. A thought partner to her clients, Kate taps into her knowledge of transformational change, drawing upon what she has learned in her role as Founding Director of Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership (ITL) and her role as a leadership faculty member there.Education: Executive Certificate in Leadership Coaching (Georgetown University), Bachelor of Arts in English (Middlebury College)
Personal: Enjoys spending summers with her family and friends at Lake Nebo in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. Avid reader, animal lover, and cook.
Anne Foley
As Chief of Staff, Anne acts as a “connector” within The Nebo Company, working closely with Kate Ebner and Erin Gregg to unify the efforts of a growing company and move them in coordination toward strategic goals. She sees herself as a facilitator and cultivator of personal and organizational success.
Anne is also Vice President of Client Experience, focused on our growing education practice. An educational leader by training, Anne has dedicated her career to helping people and institutions grow and fulfill their highest aspirations. She spent 18 years working as a teacher and senior administrator in independent schools, most recently as the Interim Head of School at The Field School in Washington, D.C. Anne is passionate about making teams of people and systems “hum” and finds resonance with Nebo’s mission to help leaders access their deepest resources to achieve their most important priorities.
Education: Master of Arts in Education Leadership (Teachers College, Columbia University), Bachelor of Arts in History (Grinnell College)
Interests: Enjoys spending time with her two children and spouse, particularly at the beach in North Carolina. Avid reader, hiker, and viewer of Scandinavian crime procedurals.