Mary Seppala

Mary Seppala feels most alive when she is deeply immersed in understanding the culture of a school. The variety of schools she has represented in her search work is intentional, seeking out the uniqueness of each environment and allowing her to work with each school community to define their future leadership needs. A teacher, counselor, special education administrator, and school leader, Mary understands schools from a Board, faculty, student, and parent perspective. She welcomes challenge, as demonstrated in her role as the first American and first woman to lead Munich International School (the first IB World school) and then transition to all-girls leadership at The Agnes Irwin School on the Main Line in Philadelphia.

Social justice education is in Mary’s DNA. She has worked in the Middle East, living in a Kurdish Village near the Syrian border; did projects in villages in Tanzania; and had a Fulbright exchange in Argentina. Her passion for multi-cultural work led her to develop the first anti-racist teaching program in a group of Philadelphia Independent Schools in 2013.

Mary is the only EC partner who spent 30 years in public education. Having worked in public, international, and independent schools at all levels—including teaching at the university level—she is masterful in the overlap of education and culture.

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Eric Temple

Eric Temple served as a Head of School for the past 18 years, and most recently as the Head of School at Lick-Wilmerding High School, a coed day 9-12 high school in San Francisco, CA serving 550 students. Before joining Lick-Wilmerding eleven years ago, for seven years Eric headed The Carey School, a pre-kindergarten through fifth grade coed day school in San Mateo, CA.

Eric began his career teaching English and as the Dean of Students at Ojai Valley Upper School, then moved to Crystal Springs Uplands School where he taught English, was the Dean of Studies and Assistant Head of School. Eric has served on many school boards, the California Association of Independent Schools board, and the NAIS Board as Secretary and Chair of the Equity and Justice Committee. For five years, Eric served on the faculty of the NAIS Institute for New Heads where he taught about the entry process and understanding school culture.

He holds a BA and MA in English Literature, a MEd in Educational Leadership, and has executive coaching certifications from UC Berkeley’s Executive Coaching Institute at the Haas School of Business and the NeuroLeadership Institute. 415-279-1837 etemple@educatorscollaborative.com

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The Board of Trustees is responsible for the appointment of the Head of School. It is one of the most important responsibilities of the Board. The Board will support the consultant to develop the Candidate Position Statement, meet with all finalists and, based on the recommendations of the Search Committee, appoint the new Head of School. The Board will ensure that the process is fair, inclusive, and rigorous and in keeping with our school values. 

The Search Committee is a sub-committee of the Board of Trustees, tasked with overseeing the search process on behalf of the Board. The Committee will work in collaboration with the appointed Search Consultants to gather community input, identify the application criteria, interview candidates, and make a recommendation to the Board about which candidate to hire. The full Board is responsible for appointing the new Head of School.

The appointment of the new Head of School is the responsibility of the Board of Trustees. Our current head, Melinda Bihn, will continue to lead the school in day-to-day operations while leaving the work of the search to the Search Committee and the Search Consultants. However, Melinda is, of course, invested in the success of the process to find a new leader and has offered to support the process in any way that the Committee may request of her. 

The Board of Trustees thinks that it is essential that we conduct a full open search that follows the principles of best practices established by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and identifies potential candidates from a wide range of backgrounds and experience. There may be qualified candidates within International and they will be equally welcome to participate in the process. The search consultants will manage the applications and confidentiality will be maintained throughout the process.  

The Search Committee is currently in the process of appointing a search firm to support us through the process. Details of the appointed firm will be updated in January. 

The anticipated timeline is set out above. This is not set in stone and may change as we proceed through the process. The goal is to find the right candidate regardless of deadlines. However, this webpage gives an overview of our current expected timelines. 

The search committee will provide updates to the community both via email and via this webpage. Relevant updates may also be shared in regular schoolwide communications. 

We value the perspectives of all members of our International school community. There will be opportunities for the community to provide input into the candidate position statement, recommend candidates, meet finalists, and share impressions with the Search Committee.

Interested candidates should refer to this webpage in January or reach out to the Search Consultants once they are appointed. Confidentiality will be maintained throughout the process.

Once the search firm is identified, they will solicit recommendations from the community. In the meantime, please direct candidates to this webpage.  

Please reach out to headsearch@internationalsf.org with any questions.