Strategic Planning Process
Strategic Design Day
October 26
8:30 a.m.-3 p.m.
OES Athletic Center
Build on the Strategic Planning Committee’s extensive listening and research—and harness the power of your collective imaginations—to shape the future of Oregon Episcopal School. The Strategic Design Day will influence, inspire, and inform the direction of the final strategic plan. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.
The OES Board, in close partnership with Head of School Michael Spencer, develops and oversees the School’s Mission and its Strategic Plan. With the current five-year plan coming to a close in the spring of 2025, it is time to begin creating OES’s next Strategic Plan covering 2025-30. Our goal is to create a best-in-class strategic plan that sets an ambitious vision of the school to imagine our possible future where OES fulfills its mission in the most exciting, bold and distinctive way possible with OES community input along the way.
Process & Timeline
Phase 1: Formulation of the Strategic Plan Committee
Dec 2023 – Feb 2024
Initial work aligning on the process, logics and deliverables through Summer 2025. Foundational groundwork researching strategic planning within academic institutions, community outreach and possible consultancy partners.
Phase 2: Exploring our Possibilities
March – July 2024
First inquiry phase to understand our institutional and stakeholder insights across parents, students, faculty and staff. During this phase we will expand the Committee to include additional members from our faculty and staff as well as potentially other Trustees. We’ll use a mix of listening sessions, in person meetings and questionnaires to help begin our exploration into our key opportunities and challenges. Additionally, we’ll examine the competitive landscape, futurist thinking that can help unpack the needs of the OES community beyond the school walls.
Phase 3: Converging on Key Areas
Aug – Oct 2024
Work begins refining all of our insights from the OES community and beyond. We’ll work to synthesize this into key areas of focus and prioritize what initiatives our plan should tackle.
Phase 4: Exploring the Solutions
Fall 2024
Working with the community and key stakeholders, we’ll generate ideas for how OES might develop solutions and answers to the challenges and opportunities we see in our future. We’ll have an inclusive “Strategic Design Day” on campus, open to the community to generate great thinking and help build connection to the work so far with the OES family.
Phase 5: Selecting our Strategic Initiatives
Winter 2024
Taking all of our work in refining our priorities, take aways from the strategic design day and recommendations from the committee, we’ll start to draft the outline of our plan. Key stakeholder groups from across the community will be enrolled to help provide feedback and further insights to our collective direction. A final plan will be prepared for submission to the board and administrative teams for review and final feedback. The completed plan would then be submitted before the OES Board of Trustees for approval.
Phase 6: Community Communication and Plan Implementation
Spring 2025
Let’s celebrate as a community! We’ll find moments to communicate the final plan and talk about what comes next. Work begins to then turn our 5 year plan into workable annual goals and initiatives to help move towards the execution phase.
OES Strategic Plan Committee
Our volunteer committee members represent diverse perspectives, specialty knowledge and experience that can deliver and recommend a best-in-class 5-year plan to the Board of Trustees in close partnership with Michael Spencer, Head of School. Members have experiences from within and outside the school that span, but is not limited to strategic planning, school administration, finance, faculty, fund raising, parents and parent volunteering, entrepreneurial business and law. They have a passion for this committee and a love for OES.
Simon Atkins, Strategic Plan Committee Chair, OES Trustee, OES Parent, SVP Footwear, lululemon
Pam Dreisin, Vice-President OES Board of Trustees, Governance Committee Chair, parent of OES alumni, retired Head of School of French International School of Oregon
Paul Ehrlich, OES Board President, current parent and parent of OES alumnus, General Counsel, Global Brands & Americas, adidas
Ryan Finley, OES Trustee, OES Parent, Founder, SurveyMonkey
Sarah Grenert-Funk, OES Head of Upper School and OES Parent
Kristen Haferbecker, OES All-School Community Engagement Coordinator, Lower School Music Teacher, and OES Parent
John Holloran, PhD, Former OES Director of Studies & Upper School Faculty ‘03-‘21. Member of OES Hall of Fame Committee, Incoming OES Trustee
Manish Mehta, OES Trustee, parent of OES alumni, General Partner, Falcon 5 Capital
Georgina Miltenberger, OES Parent. Co-Head of Family Office, Eagle Bay Advisors
Krystal Ngene, OES Tapestry Affinity Group Facilitator, Inclusion Committee Member, All School Parent Partnership member, Organizational Effectiveness Consultant & OES Parent, Incoming OES Trustee
Nina Parikh, MPH, MAT, OES Health Director
Amy Richards. Friend of OES, retired independent school head, educational consultant
Jaime Sales, OES Trustee, Finance Committee, current parent and parent of OES alumna
Nate Schwalbach, Former OES Trustee, current parent and parent of OES alumnus, Commercial Real Estate Professional
The Rev. Michael Spencer, OES Head of School
Rachel Van Wickle, Upper School Math Teacher, Math Department Chair, and OES Parent
Our Consultant Partners
An introduction to Leadership+Design
We are a non-profit collaborative that exists to positively impact schools and other learning communities. Leadership+Design is a collaborative of educators, strategists, and experience designers committed to transforming the work of school and school leaders.
Greg Bamford is a Partner at Leadership+Design. Prior to this, Greg was Associate Head of School for Strategy and Innovation at Charles Wright Academy in Tacoma, Washington, and Head of School at the innovative Watershed School in Boulder, Colorado. He was a member of the founding Advisory Board at The Hatch School, a new girls’ independent school in Seattle, Washington, and is on the Board of Trustees at his alma mater, The Overlake School in Redmond, Washington. He co-founded Leadership + Design in 2014.
With his experience in school leadership, Greg brings a strategic lens to leadership development, innovation, and change management for Leadership+Design clients. He is particularly passionate about building leadership capacity and the cultural muscle to enact needed change. Greg has been a featured speaker at dozens of education conferences, has consulted with a wide range of schools nationally, and has written for publications like Independent School, Net Assets, and The Yield. Greg lives in Tacoma, Washington with his wife and two children, both of whom have been students in independent schools.