Cal-ISBOA News

OAKLAND & LOS ANGELES, CA — As our member schools prepare to begin another school year, we gathered on August 3 and 4 for the association’s annual "So Long, Summer Soirées." Hosted by Jerry Mullaney at Head-Royce School in Oakland and Lisa Turchan of The Buckley School in Los Angeles, regional networking events like this offer business officers a chance to reflect on summer operations, share best practices, and build peer connections before the back-to-school rush begins.

Both events featured informal networking, seasonal refreshments, and lively discussions about Summer highlights and Fall preparations. 

Regional gatherings serve as a core pillar of the Cal-ISBOA mission, providing business officers with a dedicated space to collaborate outside of formal events such as our Annual Conference and Workshops.

With the summer soirées concluded, Cal-ISBOA members turn their full focus to welcoming faculty, staff, and students back to campus for the new school year, equipped with fresh ideas and strengthened professional networks.

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June 29, 2026

Director of HR (and HR Subcommittee member) Beverly Christie gave Peggy an incredible tour of The Bentley School’s Lafayette Campus, where grades 9-12 are offered in a beautiful setting surrounded by rolling hills and featuring an open-air quad. The high school experience is a perfect continuation of the foundation that begins at The Bentley School’s lower campus (K-8) in Oakland, and Bentley’s highly competitive athletics program is a draw for many students. At the Lafayette Campus, the open layout and flexible class schedule prepares students well for the freedom and responsibilities of college life, and Bentley high schoolers come to own their daily routines and build their independence as learners.

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June 22, 2026

While in the area for the NorCal Facilities Workshop, Cal-ISBOA Membership Engagement Manager Peggy Marshall was hosted by COO (and Cal-ISBOA Board Member) Keith Powell and Operations Manager (and Facilities & Campus Operations Subcommittee member) Bridget Guerra for a wonderful tour of The Athenian School campus. Instilling an expansive, ongoing journey of knowledge seeking in its students, The Athenian School occupies a sprawling 42-acre campus in the beautiful foothills of Mount Diablo, where it offers grades 6 through 12, with a boarding option for high schoolers. During the visit, Peggy was excited to learn about how the school is preparing for their upcoming Reunion day held on campus every year for all Athenian Alumni.

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June 15, 2026

Thank You for helping to make our Northern California Facilities Workshop a success! We shared an invigorating day of professional learning and networking, topped off with a tour of the incomparable Head-Royce School in Oakland from Director of Alumni Relations Julie Kim-Beal. Your active participation, insightful discussions, and unwavering support truly made this event memorable.

Our small but mighty group had a blast together! Please enjoy some photos from the event below.

We are so grateful to our Facilities Subcommittee, chaired by Matt Riddle (Marlborough School) and Vice-Chaired by Pamela Connor (The Archer School for Girls). Your committed leadership throughout planning and hosting the workshop was essential, enabling Cal-ISBOA to deliver a high-quality experience in support of Facilities Directors, CFOs, and others who handle the unique work of Facilities at their independent schools.

Special thanks go out to our generous Sponsor Building Solutions for supporting the Northern California Facilities Workshop!

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June 15, 2026

While in the area for the Northern California Facilities Workshop, Cal-ISBOA Membership Engagement Manager Peggy Marshall was hosted by CFO/COO Deann Hays, Director of Facilities & Operations (and Cal-ISBOA Board Member) Eleazar Madrid, and HR / PR Manager Sydney Polich for an exciting tour of the Redwood Day School campus. Redwood Day offers lower and middle school (K-8), providing a transformative learning experience for students that creates a foundation for lifelong growth and success. The campus features several beautiful buildings for classrooms, science labs, design and art studios, a full-sized gymnasium, and more, and next year it will also feature an inspiring outdoor “Design, Build, Innovate” space with a shade structure. Redwood Day also boasts new boys and girls locker rooms and bathroom facilities, and the addition of astroturf in their well used outdoor spaces is forthcoming. We thank Deann, Eleazar, and Sydney for generously sharing their school with us!

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June 8, 2026

Cheers to a great end-of-year happy hour with the NorCal CalISBOA group on June 2! It was wonderful to relax, catch up, and celebrate Kathy Layendecker as she heads into retirement. Thanks to everyone who came out to make it such a happy occasion and thanks to Jeanne Jacobs-Gaffney for organizing it. We're looking forward to our next one!

May 29, 2026

At Cal-ISBOA, we are always trying to do more and better for our members. To that end, this year we worked to incorporate several innovations into our Signature Spring Events in Pasadena, all of which experienced record-setting attendance. In addition to the changes to our Welcome Reception and Kick-Off Dinner inspired by Charles Vogl's work, we rolled out several exciting new offerings like a new event App, a wellness experience, Cal-ISBOA Gives Back charitable giving, and new sponsor support programs that led to record community engagement.

The new event App allowed members to access schedule information and program details from the convenience of their phones while on-the-go, as well as providing easy access to sponsor information and a number of important member resources. We are excited to see what we can do with this App in the future!

Thanks to Platinum Annual Corporate Sponsor Poppy Bank's generous support, we were able to provide a unique Mindfulness Experience that included resources to support busy professionals attending conferences that included Wellness Walks and a Community Corner featuring tactile experiences like puzzles, coloring books, colorful slime, watercolors, and guided mindfulness activities to support focus, increase mental clarity, and optimize adult learning.

Designed to support the groups and communities that support our schools, this year we introduced Cal-ISBOA Gives Back, a charitable giving opportunity benefitting a local service organization. Selected as our 2026 beneficiary for its critical support of our school community during the 2025 LA fires, The Change Reaction is an organization that provides financial assistance to Angelenos.

Finally, we worked to better support our sponsors through a special orientation as well as a Sponsor Ambassador program that connected sponsor representatives with our members, to help new and returning sponsors get to know our community and have a great experience.

We hope you could feel the impact of these innovations! We look forward to continuing to raise the bar.

May 20, 2026

Thank you to all who joined us for our Welcome Reception & Kick-Off Dinner at the Langham Huntington in Pasadena! Between the excellent company, delicious food, and gorgeous setting, it was the perfect way to begin this year's Annual Conference. 

Building on the traditional foundation for our dinner as an opportunity to bring our members and business partners together for a purely social occasion, we were inspired by this year's Annual Conference Keynote speaker Charles Vogl to make some intentional changes designed to help guests connect even more deeply. In distinction from previous years, we reduced the number of guests at each table to better support rich and inclusive conversations, we set votive candles and fairy lights in our centerpieces to help guests keep their focus on their table and dinner companions, and we introduced a small activity with Conversation Reflection Cards to give guests a structured invitation to share personally with each other. You can learn more about Charles' impactful suggestions and how to fold them into your next gathering by downloading his guide to Sacred Dinners for Deep Friendship. 

We hope you were able to join us for this memorable evening! If not, we hope you will plan to join us for next year's Welcome Reception & Kick-Off Dinner in Northern California. 

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May 15, 2026

This year, the Cal-ISBOA HR Workshop in Pasadena featured not one but two fantastic keynote presentations to assist our HR members in their pursuit of excellence at their schools. 

Our Workshop day began with an empowering keynote from award-winning author, speaker, blogger, and business owner Catherine Mattice (Civility Partners, Inc.) on the topic of Your HR Superpower: Building a Culture of Ownership and Accountability. Presenting a model of how HR work can be integrated into a school's business strategy, elevating HR professionals from "complaint deposit boxes" to be strategic partners in decision making, Catherine presented actionable insights and tips for understanding and improving your organization's employee culture. Hint: remember to check and potentially change the "OIL"! 

Following a parade of exciting breakout sessions, our HR Workshop culminated in a Closing Keynote from nationally recognized expert on leadership, culture, and the modern workforce Eric Swenson (Tanzanite Leadership Development and Symmetry HR Outsourcing) on the topic of A Blueprint for School Culture: How You Can Shape Connection, Engagement, and Belonging. In a moment when employee engagement and retention are more important than ever, Eric invites HR managers to position themselves as the proactive architects of workplace culture and employee experience rather than administrators, with the help of innovative HR leadership strategies without adding budget or headcount.

Workshop registrants can access full presentation slides on our Workshop Materials page when they are logged in. If you were able to join us, we hope these two keynotes gave you useful insights and ideas to apply at your school!

Below: (left) Catherine Mattice and (right) Eric Swenson presenting at the 2026 Cal-ISBOA HR Workshop.

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May 11, 2026 

We welcomed advisor, speaker, and bestselling author Charles Vogl to give a very special keynote at our Annual Conference this year on the topic of Creating Deep Connection: Community Building Fundamentals. Helping us define the nature of a true community in the era of post-pandemic loneliness and isolation, Charles offered evidence-based arguments for the foundational importance of authentic connections and community in our work and in our lives more generally. He identified tools and strategies for building these connections and the sense of belonging that they engender through intentional invitations (over announcements) and by creating opportunities for real platonic intimacy to develop among participants.

Ahead of our 2026 events, we worked to incorporate innovations in our Annual Conference, HR Workshop, and Facilities Workshop inspired by Charles' impactful ideas, and if you were able to join us, we hope you could feel the difference! 

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