Back to School
Bringing MBA skills to private-school admissions
Whitney: She hopes to graduate from admissions to running a school one day.
Photo by Robert Schoen
When Stephanie Whitney (MBA ’85) left behind a globe-trotting career in marketing in 1996 to raise her two young sons and get involved in her community, she had no idea she was about to discover a whole new passion — and career — in education.
A self-described “people person,” Whitney took a marketing position at Hewlett-Packard in Andover, Massachusetts, after graduating from HBS and stayed there until she and her husband, former HBS assistant professor John Whitney, moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where they worked for two years, until Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
“I had my first baby by then, so it was time to go,” says Whitney. After a short stint in Paris, the family returned to Massachusetts, where another son was born. In 1993, Whitney went back to HP to work in market research. Three years later, the family moved to Florida, and Whitney “retired” to be with her kids.
“I got involved in parent organizations and became one of those supermom volunteers — chairing fundraisers and all that,” says Whitney. “I found out I was really good at it.” In fact, she broke the school’s fundraising record.
The family’s next stop was California, where Whitney led a fundraiser for her sons’ new school. When she learned that the school was looking for a director of admissions, a new career dawned on her. She knew she was the right person for the job and made a pitch to the school’s director.
“He thought I was just this volunteer mom,” recalls Whitney, who had no admissions experience. “I told him, ‘I’m pretty good with people, I understand education, and I understand marketing. You can teach me about admissions.’ He thought about it and said yes.”
Over the next five years, Whitney worked to show the school, which was long on tradition and rather short on market analysis, how to build its brand, think about the school as a business, and use the admissions process as a competitive advantage.
“It goes back to what you learn in first-year Marketing — it’s all about the customer,” says Whitney. “I got to hunker down and roll up my sleeves and use my experience to make a difference there. It was pretty exciting.”
Since 2004, Whitney has been doing the same and more as admissions director at Green Farms Academy, an independent K–12 coeducational day school near Westport, Connecticut. “We came back East to be close to family and because we missed the four seasons,” she explains.
At Green Farms, where arts, athletics, and diversity are of particular focus in addition to strong academics, Whitney is helping the school understand its market and competition, while redefining its brand. “Whether it’s how you position the school in the marketplace or how you help students figure out whether this is the right place for them, it’s problem-solving, and I love that,” she says.
Now that she’s found her own niche, Whitney has long-term plans to stay in her new field. “I’ll do admissions for a little longer. I’m still collecting experience, because I didn’t come up through the academic ranks. But someday I’d like to be the head of a school. I think that’s what’s out there for me.”
— Margie Kelley
