Blogs

The Tuesday Letter, No. 01. Sent to subscribers on Tuesday, October 27, 2026. This summer, at a community event, I set up a folding table with one question on it: Who helped you get here? I expected a few polite answers. I stood there most of the day. Almost everyone rocked back on their heels before they answered. Elders and teenagers, Seattle-born and transplanted, some in polished English and some in broken English. One older woman began with a father who was never there,

Every institution has an official story. The real one is held in pieces, by people who have never compared notes. An article from the Apply series Every school I have worked at, and every school I have worked with, can tell you who it is in about ninety seconds. It is on the website. It is in the viewbook. It is painted on a wall somewhere, in a font chosen by a committee. I went and read the mission statements of the five schools Niche currently ranks at the top of the coun

The machines were never the threat. Forgetting what they are for is. An article from the Build series. Part One of two. Bring up AI in almost any room (a faculty lounge, a board meeting, a dinner table) and someone will eventually ask the question with a half smile: "So, is this Skynet?" I understand the joke. Many of us grew up on The Terminator, where the machine wakes up, decides humanity is the problem, and takes over. The Doom Story Has Real Narrators It would be easy to

An exam you could not cram for, and what it taught me about building something that lasts. An article from the Build series There was an exam at Episcopal High School (Alexandria, Virginia) that you could not shortcut. It was the Shakespeare exam, and it came senior year. My teacher, and later my colleague, Whit Morgan, ran it. There were several sections to it, and twenty-five years later I will not pretend to remember all of them. What I remember is the part that matter

What the room says, and what it costs. An article from the Listen series. I have been in the room. Board meetings. Faculty meetings. Dorm hallways. Zoom squares. I have been the person raising something, and I have been the person on the other side of the table when someone else raised it. Over twenty years working in schools, I have heard the same small set of sentences used to end a conversation that should have started one. If you have spent any time inside an organiza

A question at a folding table, and what it opened. An article from the Listen series This past Juneteenth, I stood at a booth with a question. Not a survey. Not a sign-up sheet. Just a question, offered to whoever walked by: Who helped you get here? Forty recorded interviews and a few hundred conversations in, I thought I had heard the range of what people say about this. I hadn't. Here's what was different. Most of my work happens inside one institution at a time. One school

Sometimes the thread through a career is not a job. It is a question. An article from the Understand Series In 2019, I enrolled in an MBA program at the College of William and Mary. The first course was called Renaissance Manager, and it opened with an assignment I did not fully appreciate at the time. Every student had to identify a wicked problem: a real, unsolved challenge from their professional life or their industry, something with no clean answer and too many competing

An article from the Understand series For years, I asked other people to tell me their stories. I sat with alumni, students, educators, executives, and families. I asked my five questions. I listened from there. Over time, I built an organization around a belief I had begun to see again and again: every story holds knowledge the person carrying it may not fully recognize. Then someone asked me to explain mine. And I struggled. The Sentence I Was Telling Myself It happened whe

This is an article from the Listen series I want to tell you about a point guard's eyes. In my first years back at Episcopal High School, this time as a boys' varsity basketball coach rather than a student, I coached a young man named Anthony. He wanted to run our offense. He wanted the ball in his hands as the starting point guard, and anyone who has played the position knows what that job actually requires. It is not the shooting. It is the listening. I can still see him in

I lost my father, Stanley Edward Lee, to brain cancer, glioblastoma, nine years ago today. I felt a tightness in my chest this morning. I thought it was from a bad night of sleep. Nope. It’s August 12th. A day that somehow still sneaks up on me. Nine years ago, I knew this day was coming. The cancer was aggressive. We discovered it around January, followed by a short seven-month battle. As I carry that pain, I continue to create joy and love in honor of Stanley Edward Lee. La

When I started Bridging Legacies Across Campuses (BLAC), I was interested in stories. I wanted to understand how people experienced schools, organizations, and communities. I wanted to hear about moments of opportunity, challenge, belonging, uncertainty, and growth. At the time, I was not thinking about frameworks, models, or institutional design. I was simply curious about people's journeys and what those journeys might teach us. As the conversations accumulated, however, so

At one point, it felt as though nearly every corner of the College Football Playoff conversation traced back in some way to Nick Saban’s leadership system. Former assistants, coordinators, and program leaders connected to Saban had spread across some of the most visible programs in college football, carrying pieces of his philosophy into new locker rooms, institutions, and generations of athletes. Nick Saban- Former Head Football Coach at the University of Alabama Kirby Smart