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YEARS IN BUSINESS

10

LOCATED IN

Maryland

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES

6

NUMBER OF BOARDING SCHOOLS WE SERVE

25

Folio Collaborative

At Folio, we think teachers are the best people in schools to help leaders drive change. When teachers grow professionally, kids thrive, and schools flourish. Our tailored in-person and virtual trainings introduce member schools to new ideas, frameworks, and data they can use to elevate growth. Our technology platform helps make sure that professional growth is both visible to leaders and validated by peers. It particularly emphasizes space for conversation, feedback and self-reflection. Throughout the product we leverage research from behavioral science to support a repeatable, continuously improving practice.

WHY BOARDING SCHOOLS CHOOSE US

The people working in boarding schools wear many, many hats. Folio’s platform supports professional growth, and conversations around professional growth, in all of the different ways a person serves a school.

OUR MISSION

Folio is a leadership collaborative for educators. We help our members drive change by making professional growth a strategic priority.
I have loved being a Folio Ambassador because it gives me the chance to reflect on the journey that we had in rebuilding our professional growth and feedback practices and to share the insight we gained with schools who are just starting that process. Because Folio was such an important and useful component of our program, it is nice to be able to speak authentically and enthusiastically about how much it's contributed to our school.
Sarah Wolf, Middle School Dean of Academics, Polytechnic School
Thank you for helping me understand the power of Folio to go beyond evaluation. I love hearing about the different ways other schools used Folio to promote and encourage professional development as well as stated needs and goals of the institution. It is a very powerful tool.
Sharon Jones Phinney, Head of Lower School, Winsor School
Folio has proven an integral catalyst for two strands of our faculty learning and growth pursuits. First, it centers the learning agency where it needs to be: the individual faculty learner. Second, it has strengthened our natural inclination to want to collaborate and make meaning of our work with faculty colleagues, and so our sense of collective efficacy and understanding have transformed. The introduction of a flexible and intuitive option like Workspaces keeps professional pursuits, reflection, and learning out of the “inbox” and in an easily navigated central location.
Derek Krein, Dean of Professional & Programmatic Growth, Tabor Academy
Before Folio, each department had a different system and people could not consistently reflect back. They had to pull from multiple places to get information. We needed to unify the process to benefit people’s growth. When we saw that there were other schools doing the same work we were and sing that problem with Folio, we immediately said 'this is for us.'"
Josh Pretzer, Dean of Faculty Culver Academics, The Culver Academies
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Boarding School Alliance Partners

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WILLIAM GILYARD

Will Gilyard is in his 19th year of working in independent schools. In 2020, he returned to his alma mater Choate Rosemary Hall to take on the roles of Form Dean, and Alumni Engagement Associate. Will joined Choate after nine years at the Kingswood Oxford School (KO), a 6-12 independent day school located in West Hartford, CT, where he served as Dean of Students, an upper school math teacher, assistant football coach, and faculty advisor for the United Students club and Boys of Color group. At Choate, Will is the faculty adviser to Choate Afro Latino Men (CALM), and Girls Who Code (GWC).

Will also serves as a core faculty member and helped create the curriculum for the Institute for New Teachers of Color in Independent Schools, created in 2020, the Interschool Leadership Institute, created in 2013. Will also served as a core faculty member of the Kingswood Oxford Leadership Institute for Educators of Color (KOLIEC) from 2011-2018 and helped create the curriculum for the mentoring/advising circles for institute participants.

Before joining KO, Will was the Head of the Upper School at the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine in New York City. He serves on the board of advisors for the IDEAL School, also located in New York City. He is passionate about the role of educators in independent schools, specifically in the lives of students of color. Will has attended numerous workshops, conferences, and institutes related to leadership in independent schools and anti-racist education. Will had the honor of being a member of a think tank for the CARLE institute. 

Will has his B.A. in Psychology from Williams College and his M.A. Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of St. Joseph. Will is thrilled to be a part of the TABS (The Association of Boarding Schools) team and looks forward to working with energized and focused individuals who are interested in being change agents in the residential life sphere.

Will and his wife, Afton, ALP/Enrichment Teacher in Stratford Public Schools reside in Wallingford, CT with their two sons, William (10) and Maxwell (8).
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RYAN PAGOTTO

Associate Head of School Ryan Pagotto ’97 joined Blair’s faculty in 2002 and is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the School on matters related to student and residential life, including health and counseling services, athletics and co-curricular programs. He runs Monday School Meeting and, among other things, is known for greeting students in the morning at the Clinton Hall doorway and offering freshly picked apples from his office during the month of October. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, Ryan serves as a member of the history department and teaches Global Issues. He also authors the monthly e-newsletter From Hilltop to Home, a communication designed to help new boarding-school parents navigate the ins and outs of the Blair experience.

Over the course of his time at Blair, Ryan has served as a history teacher, head tennis coach, a dorm head and Dean of Admission. He completed his undergraduate work at Dickinson College, where he captained the men’s tennis team, and earned a master’s degree in educational leadership from Columbia University. Before joining the faculty at Blair, Ryan taught at the Taft Summer School in Watertown, Connecticut, and Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, Pennsylvania. He also spent three summers as program director of the Cambridge Prep Experience at Peterhouse College, Cambridge University.

In addition to his roles in schools, Ryan has served as a faculty member for the TABS (The Association of Boarding Schools) Summer Session and is a regular presenter at national boarding and independent school conferences on student and residential life.

Ryan and his wife, Jennifer, performing arts department chair and Director of Instrumental Music at Blair, live in Grullon House with their children, Jack, Will, Ella and Addison, and their dog, Teagan. The Pagottos enjoy opening their home to Blair students, faculty and staff members throughout the year.
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SUSAN BALDRIDGE

Susan served as a professor and leader at Middlebury College for over 25 years, most recently as Executive Vice President and Provost, leading Middlebury’s academic programs across multiple campuses – Middlebury, Bread Loaf, Monterey – as well as study abroad locations around the world. Prior to her Provostship, Susan served as Vice President for Strategy and Planning, Dean of Planning and Assessment, and Dean of the Faculty. She is a tenured Professor of Psychology and taught throughout her time at Middlebury.

Susan began her consulting firm in 2018, advising schools, colleges, non-profits and foundations in the areas of strategy, planning and governance; and coaching senior administrators to build leadership capacity and support change management. This led her to partner with TABS in 2019, in the development of TABS current strategic plan.

In addition to consulting, Susan co-authored the book, The College Stress Test, an analysis of educational markets and tools for helping schools to identify their place within market trends. The book was named one of the best books on higher education in 2020 by Forbes Magazine. Susan has presented extensively on topics relating to human sexuality, social psychology, and the psychology of women and gender. She received her B.S. with highest honors in Psychology, Phi Beta Kappa, at Denison University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology at UCLA.