The 2020 NCAIS Summer Heads Retreat

Ari Betof is an experienced Massachusetts-based management consultant who has previously served as a head of school and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2018, Ari Betof founded Organizational Sustainability Consulting, LLC, through which he provides consulting services to social sector organizations, with a particular emphasis on educational institutions. He’s scheduled to deliver a keynote session to the North Carolina Association of Independent Schools (NCAIS) in June 2020.

The NCAIS is comprised of more than 80 independent schools, five of which were founded prior to 1900, that employ more than 3,800 teachers and serve around 38,000 students. In an effort to better serve these teachers and students, the association hosts the NCAIS Annual Educators Conference as well as multiple professional-development workshops, one of which is the Head of School Summer Retreat, scheduled this year from June 22 to 24.

The three-day conference begins with an NCAIS board meeting on June 22 at 2 p.m. A Positive Developments workshop is hosted the following day by Stephanie Lischke. Dr. Betof’s session, meanwhile, starts at 9:30 a.m. on June 24 and is titled, “Tap Dancing on Marbles: Leadership, Organizational Stewardship, and Institutional Sustainability.”

Participants in this interactive session will collaborate to explore and gain a better understanding of topics such as the alignment of resources and strategic direction, and promoting organizational sustainability. The session will also touch on topics discussed from the prior day’s change-management workshop.

Schools Should Review Pandemic Crisis Plans for Coronavirus

Based in Boston, Dr. Ari Betof is an established consultant who helps define strategic pathways for diverse private sector and nonprofit organizations. Reflecting the recent worldwide spread of a novel virus, Dr. Ari Betof authored the Medium article, “Coronavirus: 5 Steps Colleges & Independent Schools Should Take Now.”

First, Dr. Betof advises leaders not to panic, instead highlighting the need for an “agile, Goldilocks approach” that positions the planning continuum at just the right level between being proactive and taking a wait-and-see approach to see how the situation evolves.

In this regard, those institutions that developed Pandemic Crisis Plans (PCP) at the time of the 2009 H1N1 flu and integrated the PCPs within the broader crisis response have a built-in advantage. Those boarding schools and colleges with many international students residing on campus or placed in homestays have often been particularly detailed and thorough in their planning approach.

However, institutions that created plans that simply gathered dust after the H1N1 pandemic passed have more work to do in re-establishing an optimal crisis-response protocol. Dr. Betof counsels that it is not necessary to “reinvent the wheel.” Rather, as a concrete starting point, examples can be gathered and trusted peers consulted with experience in dealing with such situations.

Dr. Ari Betof Serves as Case Competition Judge

Dr. Ari Betof is a Boston-based consultant and leader of Organizational Sustainability Consulting. With his experience working with international organizations, Dr. Ari Betof was recently a case competition judge at Cornell EMI Conference LogoCornell University’s Emerging Markets Institute (EMI) Annual Conference. The winning team in this year’s competition was from Uniandes in Colombia. The other three finalists teams were from CKGSB from China, Cornell (eMBA program), and INSEAD (France/Singapore).  This year’s competition focused on a Chinese consulting company looking to expand internationally in connection to the Belt & Road initiative.  Other judges included Christina Valauri, Roberto Cañizares, Sofia Kalantzi, Juana García, Fernanda Cahen, and Sharyl Cross.