Success Stories

Independence Mission Schools provides a transformative Catholic Education for 4,000 students in 14 schools for grades K-8 in inner city Philadelphia. Seven years after our founding, we engaged Bob Vitalo to provide an organizational assessment of our current operations - our talents and capabilities and our opportunities for improvement particularly as it related to CEO succession. Bob was terrific in this effort. He met with directors, staff, school leaders, and friends of Independence Mission Schools. Every participant was impressed with the professionalism, thoughtfulness, and wisdom that Bob brought to this effort. His report helped us clarify what was essential that we maintain and what important work needs to be done in the future. Moreover, this work helped us understand the leadership needs for our continuing success. There was unanimous agreement at the board and senior staff level that this was extremely helpful engagement.

I am the chair of the board of Montini Catholic High School, Lombard, IL. We just completed a search for our new president and I just want to tell you how helpful, how important, and what a good friend Barbara Daush has been to me, the search committee, and to our community.

I've had the chance to work on several previous searches in my professional life and I have to say Barbara and CS&A are among the best. I know her work with us is not done as she will be helping us with a transition process but I wanted to take this time, at the end of the week when we named our new president, to let you know how important she has been to our successful process.

Safe Passage/Camino Seguro, a PK-Grade 9 school in Guatemala City, recently had the opportunity to partner with Art Charles, John Chandler, and Theodora Konetsovska of Carney, Sandoe & Associates as we launched a search for a new executive director. Given the timing (a bit late in the season), the specific demands of the job (education combined with international social service), the geography (Guatemala), and our need for a bilingual English-Spanish speaker, we knew that our search would present challenges. Despite them all, however, Art, John, and Theodora delivered a strong and highly experienced candidate pool and expertly supported us through the entire search process. Their candidate dossiers were incredibly detailed and thoughtful, allowing our search committee to hone quickly in on those candidates of particular interest. Their invaluable support through the reference-checking process, supported again by incredibly insightful and well-prepared reports, was also a key factor in our success. The calm professionalism each of these talented consultants evinced during check-in calls always reassured us that we would achieve our goals.

Having now signed an outstanding next executive director for our organization, we are deeply grateful to Art, John, and Theodora, whose depth and range of experiences and knowledge provided us with the expertise and support we needed to move confidently through our process. Having partnered with Carney, Sandoe & Associates for countless faculty searches over the past 35 years, I can say that their retained search service is outstanding and that Art, John, and Theodora, on the international side, are experienced, thoughtful, talented, diligent, caring, and responsive professionals who go above and beyond to ensure a successful outcome for their clients.

In the five years engaging with Carney, Sandoe & Associates, we can truly say that they are outstanding search consultants, both in depth and breadth. We were well supported and advised every step of the way in our search for an interim head of school and later on a permanent head.

At the outset, they spent a considerable amount of time meeting with various stakeholders to understand UWC ISAK's vision, mission, and ethos. The process left us with little doubt that they could accurately portray our school to potential candidates, both in the position description and during preliminary screening interviews. Their network of potential candidates is very broad. With short notice, our urgent search for an interim head yielded quality candidates in a space of two weeks! The permanent head search conducted later started with more than 5,000 potential candidates that were then shortlisted to a curated pool.

The candidate dossiers that were presented to the search committee were testament of their in-depth understanding of what we were looking for. Fully cognizant that board members tasked to conduct head of school searches may be doing it for the first time, Carney Sandoe provided ample training and resources at appropriate junctures. We also appreciated the healthy push backs they gave, a function of the underlying trust.

The dedication of Ben Bolté and Deb Welch was evident when meetings were sometimes conducted over several time zones, in the wee hours of dawn and even weekends. It was a partnership, and not just a “consultant/client relationship”. They wanted to see our school succeed in the long term with the right head as much as we wanted it for UWC ISAK.

I am a member of the Board of Trustees at the American College of Sofia in Bulgaria and led the head of school search committee in the spring of 2021 to replace our seven-year incumbent. We interviewed three search firms and hired Art Charles and John Chandler of Carney Sandoe to help us lead the search. They educated our first-time search committee members on process, commitments, and best practices. Our situation was unique being an American school in the Balkans, but Art and John offered tailored advice to our situation. They not only fielded applications from candidates who learned of our position, but proactively reached out to their network of leaders who hadn’t heard about our search. Our ultimate hire was one of those people. Carney Sandoe helped us conduct an efficient and effective Zoom-only search process during COVID, without compromising the integrity of the process or the search’s outcome. When it came to negotiating with our finalists, Carney Sandoe were thought partners on every aspect of the proposal, including compensation package vs. cost of living, market competition, impact of accreditation findings, contract review, community outreach, and internal and external communication. Generally, their response time was two hours or less, regardless of the time difference. They were extremely kind, patient, and thorough and encouraged us to evaluate fit throughout the process. In the end we couldn’t be happier with our head of school.

Having a reliable team of seasoned professionals with practitioner experience on your side is a blessing at the best of times - never more so, than when hiring a head of school. Add to the challenge, a most demanding brief, in the midst of a global pandemic. We sure made it difficult, but Art, Ralph, John, and Deb brought trusted counsel, sound wit, and sage advice all along the way, and despite having hideous time zone differences, email responses were nearly always within the hour. Taking the time to comprehensively get to know our school, community, and needs, privileged Carney Sandoe with the knowledge and informed discernment, which along with their proven methodology, delivered a shortlist which, well, nailed it. Our school benefited greatly from our collaboration, and I know will continue to reap untold benefits stemming from our hire, perfectly matched, by our perfect search partners.

The team of Art Charles, John Chandler, and Deb Welch were simply outstanding in support of our searches. As we sought to hire two principals, the CS&A team were always available, responsive, and thoughtful in their approaches, work, and recommendations. COVID required new approaches and creative thinking, and I appreciated the team's leadership and flexibility to personalize the search for our school. I was also grateful for their patience and dedication in ensuring a complete process, fully considering the candidates' needs and our school's needs. Hiring a school leader can have a real impact on a school, and the CS&A team will not hesitate to make the extra effort to support schools with the hiring process.

Many thanks to you, Bill, and Bob Regan for guidance through this process. Not only did we find the perfect fit for our school, but this process also helped us look at our school community through many different constituent lenses … something we should have done long ago. I am grateful that you challenged us to do so, and I think we will be better for it in the future.

Due to an unavoidable change in personal circumstances, International School Basel found itself needing to recruit a new Senior School Principal very late in the annual recruitment cycle (late February). We knew that recruiting an excellent Senior School Principal at such a late stage of the year was going to be a real challenge. We thus decided to contact Carney Sandoe in the final week of February about assisting us with this search. Within five hours I had a reply and was connected with Art Charles and John Chandler. This was immediately followed up with a video call the same evening, where Art and John clarified our requirements and outlined a possible way forward. I was impressed by the rapid response to my initial request. We were very happy with the plan suggested by Carney Sandoe and made the decision to work with them on this important search.

Over the next few days, we worked closely with the Carney Sandoe team to develop the candidate brief and advertise out role. Art and John constantly kept in touch with me, regularly updating me on the progress of our search. In just over two weeks from my initial contact, we received the first of the candidate dossiers. We were amazed at the strength of the field we were able to attract. Without doubt, this was largely due to Carney Sandoe's strong reach and connection within the international school leadership community.

The candidate dossiers we received from Carney Sandoe were detailed and extremely helpful in allowing us to develop a very strong shortlist of candidates, who we started interviewing just one month and a day after first contacting Carney Sandoe. We ended up appointing our new Senior School Principal only 36 days after first contacting Carney Sandoe. I am absolutely sure that this would never have been possible without all the work done by Art Charles and John Chandler, who remained fully engaged during the entire process. I was amazed at how quickly they responded to any queries - do they ever sleep!

I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Carney Sandoe to any school looking to recruit a senior leader to your team.

Thank you for your work on this important leadership search. We couldn't have done it without you and I've really valued your expertise and guidance along the way. I've learned so much and, most of all, really enjoyed working together on this.