NBOA President and CEO
I offered Heather Hoerle, EMA’s executive director and CEO, six questions as she enters her last year in the role.
1. What was your vision for the enrollment profession a dozen years ago when you took the helm of EMA?
I was working for NAIS when NBOA started in the late 1990s and saw how it really brought together a community of business officers to focus on financial sustainability and business strategy. NBOA lifted up the profession from the start, which was exciting to watch. I wanted the same thing to happen for admissions and enrollment professionals when I came to SSATB (now EMA) in 2011. I believe the vision has been realized, and this last decade has really been enrollment’s in terms of advancing the profession and changing the nature of enrollment work.
2. How have you seen the relationship between the business officer and enrollment leader change over the years?
Today, in the best independent schools, the enrollment and business offices have a real partnership that is both collaborative and strategic. Those two leaders manage areas critical to a school’s long-term success: enrollment/tuition revenue and financial strategy.
The COVID years highlighted the importance of the enrollment/business partnership. Schools that adapted well during the pandemic, on average, increased their enrollment have been able to keep those numbers — about 65% of independent schools, according to DASL. The schools that didn’t adapt as quickly are facing challenges. About a third of our schools are experiencing enrollment decline, which requires a strong, strategic partnership between enrollment and business. It’s more important than ever.
You and I have modeled this partnership at the national level through collaboration between our associations and lifted up this conversation about admissions’ partnership with the business office.
3. Let’s talk about data. What data should enrollment teams and the business office be sharing and analyzing together?
Let me tell you a story. My boss at NAIS was the amazing President Pat Bassett. Early in my first year working with him, he asked me to brief him on membership issues. I started talking about a member who wasn’t happy. He put his hand up and said, “In God I trust. All others must bring data.” His point was that one story does not make a trend. Track the data and then tell me the story. I went back to my team and determined how we’d take our anecdotal information and build data-informed trends. Ultimately, we developed numerous ways to bring Pat the data that he needed as the leader of NAIS.
The story applies to enrollment leaders. Please understand that your CFO is busy — don’t waste anyone’s time. Show up with trend data and have informed conversations on issues in enrollment that affect your school’s success. Data is critical because it reveals trends over time, and those trends can tell you an awful lot about what’s happening inside and even outside your school. If you have a strategy in place, data helps show whether that strategy is working or not. For instance, if your goal is to grow the school over five years, data will show whether you’re hitting your targets.
Data also highlights weaknesses inside schools. When I was working in admissions, we had consistent feedback in our exit surveys saying our athletic program wasn’t strong. Even though the school had a successful athletic program, the perception was that we weren’t focused enough on winning, and this issue was affecting our new student yield. We acted on the data. We started working with our communications team to publicize our athletic achievements in the press more effectively. Within a year, the perception had shifted significantly in the surveys, and the issue dropped from being a reason families didn’t enroll. We corrected this misperception thanks to data.
With the partnership between DASL and BIIS, really good data is easily accessible to everyone that has an impact on the business of our schools — so make the commitment to enter your school’s data and use it on the other side to make informed decisions for your school.
I deeply believe in the value of associations like EMA and NBOA, which are dedicated to monitoring trends and issues such as enrollment, financial stability and legal challenges that affect our schools.
4. How would you recommend independent schools prepare for challenges and maximize opportunities, to ensure sustainable enrollment and financial stability?
I deeply believe in the value of associations like EMA and NBOA, which are dedicated to monitoring trends and issues such as enrollment, financial stability and legal challenges that affect our schools. Our school leaders don’t have the time to stay on top of everything, and no school can thrive if they try to go it alone. But they can better prepare for future challenges by leveraging the resources and support provided by professional associations.
5. As you retire from your leadership role at EMA, what do you think your legacy will be?
SSATB hired me to build membership and to create an association. When I joined in 2011, the organization was best at test processing and was not deeply involved in professional training, community building or even research for the community. I had honed those skills at NAIS and brought them to SSATB. However, as all leaders know, you often learn of higher priorities within an institution after you sign on. First we updated the legacy tech system to ensure our tests really were “gold standard” while slowly working on building the association and its membership. In 2016, we changed our name to the Enrollment Management Association (EMA) to reflect our focus on enrollment management. From there, it felt like things took off.
I hope my legacy has been first and foremost about building a resilient community in support of enrollment leaders.
When I arrived, for example, we had 450 people attending our annual conference, and this year we expect 1,600.
I hope my legacy has been first and foremost about building a resilient community in support of enrollment leaders. I also hope that EMA has helped to build the skills of the people who do admissions and enrollment work, giving them quality training, research and resources to be leaders in their schools.
6. On a more personal note, what are your plans after you retire next July?
My life changed in 1980 when I went to Rome for my spring term abroad as a college junior. It was an incredible six months going around Italy, meeting artists and art historians and seeing art that I had studied in books back at Mount Holyoke College. That program has a special condensed offering for alumni, and I will head off to Italy again when I retire. I plan to douse myself in art and art history without a thought about independent schools, to breathe and be creative for a bit.
I’m on several boards, and I love doing governance work and helping boards with strategic initiatives. I’m hoping my accumulated knowledge over the past 40 years can be helpful, and so I may consult with schools in some form or another. “Watch this space,” as Rachel Maddow says, and keep in touch!
I’d like to conclude by noting that Heather has been an invaluable peer to me throughout our joint tenures at EMA and NBOA. She served on the NBOA Board of Directors and invited me to do the same at EMA, and it has been a pleasure being on both sides of the boardroom with her. What I will miss most is the countless times we took the “Jeff and Heather Show” on the road and the laughs we had on and off stage! If you know Heather, please join me in extending congratulations on her impressive tenure at both NAIS and EMA. Thank you, Heather, for your collegiality and for being my confidante and friend when I needed one the most. You will most definitely be missed!
Jeffrey Shields, FASAE, CAE
NBOA President and CEO
jeff.shields@nboa.org
linkedin.com/in/shieldsjeff/
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