Head of School Transition

I am writing today on behalf of the search committee to update our community on the Head of School search. Our search consultants from Educator’s Collaborative have provided the committee with a well-screened applicant pool of 17 candidates for our consideration, based on the leadership profile we developed. To determine this pool, the consultants examined approximately 50 candidates who expressed deep interest or who were recommended. They then interviewed and checked references for nearly 40 of those.

Our timeline and process for moving forward is as follows:

Dear Members of The Vermont Academy Community,

We are delighted to assist Vermont Academy in the 2025 Head of School Search.

The success of a Head of School search is dependent upon community feedback. We need to know and understand Vermont Academy from multiple perspectives to develop a profile of your new leader who will honor the past and confidently steward the school through its next chapter. 

The link below relates to a survey that will enable Nat and me to begin to understand Vermont Academy from stakeholder perspectives. The survey will be followed by our campus visit on September 16 and 17 when we will meet with various community members. Your input in this initial phase of the search is critical. The survey and visit input will assist us in developing a leadership profile and identifying the experience and personal attributes that are important for the next leader to possess. While many talented school leaders will be attracted to the headship at Vermont Academy, we will seek candidates well-suited to lead Vermont Academy beginning in July 2025 and well into the future.

Please take a moment to complete the brief survey by September 14, 2024, by clicking on the link below. Your input is genuinely appreciated.

With warm regards,

To the Vermont Academy Community,

As promised in our letters of August 1, 2024, announcing Jennifer Zaccara’s decision to move on from her role as Head of School at Vermont Academy effective in June of 2025, I write today to share with you the plans that the Board of Trustees has developed to identify and recruit the next Head of School to take office on July 1, 2025. Jennifer’s time at VA has been a time of strong advancement at the school. She leaves behind a proud legacy of achievement as she moves on to the next chapter of her career.

The trustees of the school have the responsibility of finding, as Jennifer’s successor, an outstanding new Head of School with the vision, skills and capabilities to lead Vermont Academy in the next phase of its evolution. We take this responsibility very seriously and are committed to overseeing this process with great care. We collectively have the opportunity to embark on the next chapter of Vermont Academy’s story that will impact its students for the next generation.

We intend to keep the school community well informed throughout the search process and will be relying on the broad participation of the community in a number of ways to ensure a successful outcome. As part of our commitment to keeping the community informed, we have today launched a Head Search page on the VA website, where we will post information and updates.  

The Board of Trustees, which has the ultimate responsibility for selecting the next Head of School, has appointed a Search Committee to conduct and manage the search process for our school’s next leader. I will be chairing that Search Committee, and will be joined by the following Committee members:

Having interviewed several search firms with excellent experience and reputations, we have retained Educators Collaborative (EC) to help us with our search. EC has conducted over 1,000 successful head of school searches since its founding in 1971. Leading our project will be Mary Seppala and Nat Conard. Both are highly experienced search consultants who have also served as heads of independent schools and are well respected and known by educators throughout the country. Mary and Nat feel strongly that Vermont Academy presents a highly desirable professional opportunity that will attract an excellent pool of candidates.

The success of this search will depend in large part on the input that the Search Committee and the consultants receive from the VA community. Nat and Mary will come to campus for two days early in the school year to hold extensive meetings and listening sessions with members of the community—students, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, and trustees—in order to develop a leadership profile for Vermont Academy’s next Head of School and to gain a thorough understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing the next Head. We will share more about that visit in the weeks to come.

In advance of their visit, and fully realizing that not everyone will be able to participate in these meetings, the consultants will invite everyone to participate in an on-line survey that will address the following questions:

Finally, they will ask for any suggestions or nominations that you may have for candidates to be the next Head of School.

Mary and Nat will synthesize the information from the survey, their visit, and their conversations with the Board and Search Committee into a leadership profile that describes the skills, experiences, and attributes that we seek in our next Head of School. They will advertise the position extensively, access their comprehensive database and professional networks, and actively recruit and intentionally solicit and encourage applications from well-qualified prospective candidates. Much of this will take place during the months of September and October. As we approach Thanksgiving, the Search Committee will review applications and invite eight to ten candidates to confidential interviews with the Committee. From this group, the Committee will invite the top candidates to the School for two full days of interviews. There will be opportunities for representatives from all constituencies in our community to meet these finalist candidates and provide feedback to the Search Committee on their impressions. Ultimately, a single candidate will be chosen by the Committee and be recommended to the Board for approval.

We will provide updates as the process unfolds, and in the meantime, we are, as always, grateful for your support. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me or any member of the Search Committee should you have any questions or concerns.

Jeremy Herbert ’99, Chair of the Board of Trustees and Search Committee Head

Dear Vermont Academy Community,

As I am entering my 8th year as head of school at Vermont Academy, I have been reflecting on our achievements as a school, on the vibrant experiences of the students and faculty, and on what our school needs for its new chapters. We have achieved so much in recent years, and this is a moment to celebrate the growth and momentum that we can see all around us. It is also a moment to think about what leadership our school needs for the next decade. I have thus decided that this 2024-2025 academic year will be my last year on the hilltop, and that the time is right for the next leader to launch a new era.

It is worth it to take a moment to think about what we have achieved, together, in the last seven years. We began with a strategic plan that identified our four educational pillars, our identity and brand, the students we serve best, and a way of teaching and learning that is our trademark. We made the Center for Learning a place where all students go to learn their signature ways to work and learn and achieve their goals. From our course offerings to our strategic hiring of faculty, we have strengthened our programs and raised our academic reputation, and that is apparent in our outstanding college acceptances for our 2023 2024 academic year. During two of the last seven years, we faced the challenges of COVID and yet ran our programs in person, minimizing the disruption for our students and families. We expanded the idea of what Vermont Academy could be when we acquired Mount Snow Academy, now Vermont Academy at Mt. Snow, in order to further our mission and identity as a Vermont school with immersion opportunities in athletics. In our philanthropic work, we increased the annual fund to $1 million, and we received the highest gift in the school’s history that has enabled us to restore the grandeur of Fuller Hall classrooms, renovate several floors in Alumni Hall, adding much-needed dormitory expansion, and install a state of the art fitness center in the Lucy Athletic center. This and more we have done together. Everyone played a role in our success. Again, I am so proud of what we have achieved.

Next steps for our school include celebration of our 150th anniversary. We will engage in further work with the strategic plan, and ambitious plans for our Dover campus, Vermont Academy at Mt. Snow. In all, there is a great desire to bring our graduates “back home” to celebrate our school, to share their stories and recognize the transformational role that Vermont Academy played in their lifelong commitment to learning and in their ability to achieve their potential. Vermont is both a place and an idea, and the values of character, tenaciousness, ingenuity, and creativity that are associated with the state are the very ones that we use to nurture our students and help them to be productive citizens living purposeful lives.

As a devoted leader who has watched fabulous administrators, faculty, mentors and coaches commit themselves fully to our mission and motto: “Be True to Your Best Self,” I know that it is the personal relationships that distinguish our school, and those are some of the things that I will miss so much. While I plan to stay in educational leadership, I will continue to be connected to and supportive of our school with lifelong affection for our faculty, students, alumni, and parents. I am deeply proud of our community, our school’s history, and our direction for the future.

This year, my team, the board, and I will be focusing on our continued growth, on the quality of the student and family experiences on our campus, and on a smooth transition for the next head of school. I will be completely invested in reaching the goals we have set before us, and I will conclude my leadership, having served eight years as the eighteenth head of school at Vermont Academy, and its first female head of school. Soon, you will hear more about our transition process, and I am completely confident in the path we have set before us. As I write, I am full of Wildcat pride. This is going to be another great year for Vermont Academy, and my heart, mind and spirit are “all in” just as they always have been.

I am so grateful to everyone in this community – both on campus and in our extended alumni and parent networks. It has been a joy to serve this school, and I am so happy to give one more, greatly treasured, year to our exceptional school.

Warmly,

Dr. Jennifer L. Zaccara, Head of School, Vermont Academy

On Behalf of the Vermont Academy Board of Trustees

Since coming to Vermont Academy in July 2017, our Head of School, Dr. Jennifer Zaccara, has given her heart and her talents to our gem of a school in the Green Mountains. In the face of the economic struggles brought on by a world-wide pandemic, Jennifer has built a strong team and sustained the physical and emotional health of the community—its students, its faculty and staff, and its alumni. The school is stronger today, seven years later, because of her leadership, skill, and love of the school. The time is right for Jennifer now as she looks to her next career plans and for our community as we seek new leadership for the next era. It is thus with appreciation for Jennifer’s contributions and with excitement for the future of the school that she has sustained and strengthened that Jennifer and the Board of Trustees today announce that the 2024-25 school year will be her last at Vermont Academy.

The pillars, the values, of Vermont Academy espoused in our Strategic Plan—Independence, Ingenuity, Community, and Land have been the guiding principles in a renewal of the academic program, the growth of the Center for Learning, the creation of a values-based Residential Life program, and the development of exciting new initiatives like the partnership with LaLiga and the acquisition of Mount Snow Academy. Jennifer guided the creation and implementation of this Strategic Plan as one of her first initiatives at VA. The clear focus and identity that the plan has given the community has attracted students, families, and new faculty, and has engaged more donors. The historical restoration of Fuller and Alumni classroom and dormitory spaces, the reconfiguration and modernization of the science classrooms and the installation of the new fitness center in Lucy Athletic Complex over this summer, made possible by a gift from Tom '59 and Steve '57 Richardson, are further evidence of a school community that knows who it is, is focused on its priorities and is moving forward to an exciting future.

Jennifer has been a visionary leader not only for Vermont Academy, but in the independent school world beyond Saxtons River. She has been a leader among the Lakes Region Schools, Vice President of the Vermont Independent School Association, has served on the Board of the Association of Independent Schools of New England, and has recently been elected to the Headmasters Association, an organization of the finest heads of schools throughout the country. In each of these organizations and others, she has ably represented VA, celebrated our identity, and given us a presence and voice on the national stage.

In the coming weeks I will share with you the detailed plans for our search for Vermont Academy’s next head of school. Until then, on behalf of the Board of Trustees, I want to sincerely thank Jennifer for her dedication and significant work in sustaining and building Vermont Academy. I know you will all join me in the coming year as we celebrate her work and look to the exciting future of Vermont Academy.

Sincerely, 

Jeremy Herbert '99, Chair of the Board of Trustees, Vermont Academy