New Kid in School
Ellison: Teaching is "in my DNA."
Courtesy Ed Ellison
After graduating from HBS and spending several years at Salomon Brothers and CS First Boston, Ed Ellison (MBA ’91) left Wall Street to go into education because “teaching and coaching are in my DNA,” he told the Florida Times-Union’s Jacksonville.com (August 4, 2011). In July, Ellison became headmaster of St. Johns Country Day School in the Jacksonville suburb of Orange Park. Most recently, he had served a nine-year stint at the Roxbury Latin School (RLS) in suburban Boston. At RLS, Ellison was director of finance and operations, taught math, and coached the track team, which he founded, to multiple Division III New England prep school championships.
Ellison, who spent five years in the Marine Corps — he finished first in his class at Officers Candidate School — before enrolling at HBS, grew up in a family of teachers, so his career path is not all that surprising. He said he was drawn to St. Johns by, among other positives, its “unwavering commitment to academic excellence” and “its intimate and nurturing family atmosphere” and by the dedication of the school’s entire community — students, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, and trustees — to the institution’s continued success. Located on a 26-acre campus with state-of-the-art facilities, St. Johns is a pre-K through Grade 12 co-ed liberal arts private school with an enrollment of approximately 620 students. That’s down from some 750 due to the difficult economy, a decline Ellison hopes to reverse by “extending our reach, without lowering the bar, to attract more families and kids who are willing to work hard.”
While at HBS Ellison recalls being inspired by several members of the Finance faculty — including Professors Carl Kester, Jay Light, Tim Luehrman, Andre Perold, and Peter Tufano — which he said had a lot to do with his initial career decision to go to Wall Street. “Also, in my first year,” he says, “I was fortunate to have Nitin Nohria as my Organizational Behavior professor. He was terrific, and I am thrilled that he is now Dean.”
As for the lingering effects of the HBS case-method on his approach to secondary education, Ellison said, “I often frame new concepts around a useful real-world problem in need of a solution. For many years, while teaching students about mortgages in Economics class, I would have them build a mortgage spreadsheet exactly the same way Art Schleifer showed us in Managerial Economics in my first year at HBS. And I do try to use the Socratic Method when I teach. You can’t hide in my classroom.”
