Chatham Hall is an all-girls preparatory boarding and day school with a close-knit population of 141 girls in grades nine through twelve. Situated on 362 bucolic acres in southern Virginia, it is an equestrian’s dream, with horses stabled right on campus, riding trails, and three practice arenas.

 

In 2013, Chatham Hall started looking for a new Rector, or Head of School. At that time, Suzanne was working as Director of Enrollment at the New Hampton School in New Hampshire, and her experience in change management, leadership, and fiscal sustainability seemed like it could be a good fit for Chatham Hall. However, relocating was not her only hesitation. Suzanne wondered if she was ready to be a head of school.

 

It was a conversation with a headhunter that convinced her to pursue the opportunity. “He told me that men usually enter the head of school search three years too early and assume they will get the skills they need on the job,” she recalls. “Women enter the search three years too late because they are waiting to perfect every skill they think they will need.” In July 2014, Suzanne was inducted as the 16th Rector of Chatham Hall School.

 

Preparing young women for leadership plays a central role in the Chatham Hall program. Among other initiatives, the school offers a Leaders in Residence program that brings luminaries from different fields to campus for two days each year to share their perspective and engage with students. Recent visitors have included Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, primatologist Jane Goodall, feminist icon Gloria Steinem, and tennis player Venus Williams. “The idea is for students to engage with and have access to people that are experts in their field,” says Suzanne, “so that they can learn about the path to leadership.”

 

This focus on leadership dovetails perfectly with Suzanne’s educational background. She minored in Women’s Studies at Connecticut College, and she studied under Carol Gilligan, a pioneer in gender studies, as part of her master’s degree in education at Harvard University.

 

But Suzanne’s path to leadership started in 1981 at Fay. “Fay definitely planted the seeds for who I am as an individual and a professional,” she says, pointing out that her desire to stay involved in athletics, the arts, and the community is a mindset that she adopted during her time at Fay. “I loved the Fay experience so much that I wanted to be part of the boarding school world professionally and personally.”

 

Suzanne recalls former Headmaster Brooks Harlow’s persona as “larger than life,” noting his ability to command a room when he spoke and his presence at sporting events, which imbued players with the immediate sense that what they were doing mattered. “Now, I don’t want to be larger than life,” says Suzanne, “but I try to be at games and performances because I know from experience that it means something.”

 

After Fay, Suzanne went on to Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut, where she learned from the Head of School that leadership—especially in an educational environment—should also include a love of ideas. “I celebrate academic success and try to engage in meaningful dialogue about different academic subjects,” she says, “It should be cool to be wonky!”

 

In 2002, Suzanne returned to Fay, where she served as Director of the International Student Program and Director of Admission under Headmaster Steve White. From Steve, she learned the importance of outreach. “He was a great fundraiser and fantastic at keeping alumni connected to the school, which is something that I also try to do.”

 

Of course, being a head of school today is a very different job than it was 20 years ago. “There is so much to learn in terms of risk management, understanding liability, and dealing with the fiscal sustainability that I don’t think heads of school had to deal with in the same way in the past, ” she says.

 

For the young women at Chatham Hall, the pressures, challenges, and obstacles to leadership have also shifted in the past 20 years. “The biggest challenge for bright, motivated young women today is the notion of perfectionism,” says Suzanne. “Girls feel that they have to be flawless in their understanding and execution and in how they approach tasks and articulate their ideas in order to compete. It’s a very dangerous idea.”

 

Suzanne points to a 2011 study that Princeton University commissioned on undergraduate women and leadership as evidence of the high stakes felt by today’s young women. The University commissioned the study because they were concerned that female undergraduates and faculty within the University were not putting themselves forward for leadership positions. The results were surprising. Young women reported feeling that they had to be perfect in order to apply for a leadership position. Furthermore, the study found that for every year a female student was at school, her reported level of happiness decreased, and her levels of anxiety and depression increased. There were two outliers to this trend: young women who played on sports teams and young women who went to all-girls schools.

 

Suzanne hopes that under her leadership, Chatham Hall can provide an antidote to this trend. “I want our girls to leave here feeling confident about themselves academically and completely prepared to meet the challenging intellectual environment around them,” she says. “I want our girls to be change agents,” she adds, “to feel empowered to make a difference and to be armed to do so.”