Mindful School Marketing

The new-school-year excitement has started to wear off. Routines are established, workloads are growing, and between busy schedules, competing priorities, and everyday frustrations, it’s not uncommon for a little tension to creep into our school communities. Sound familiar? That’s why we’re bringing back this timely conversation with Bridget Johnson , founder of the Deans’...

When enrollment falls short, the instinct is often immediate. We need more marketing. We need more inquiries. We need more applications. But marketing isn’t always the real problem. In this episode, I sit down with Tom Sheppard, Founder of 20 More Students, to talk about how independent schools can better diagnose what’s really happening when enrollment numbers start to shift. Tom argues that toda...

Your athletics program may not have changed dramatically in the last decade. But everything around it has. NIL (Name, Image, Likeness). Changing college recruiting and eligibility. Club sports. Specialized training. Sports academies. Rising parent expectations. Families today have more options, more information, and often very different expectations for what a strong athletic experience should pro...

Families aren’t just Googling “best private school near me” anymore. They may be asking AI detailed questions about their child, comparing schools across multiple platforms, reading reviews, watching videos, and researching your school for months—or even years—before they ever fill out an inquiry form. In this episode, Aubrey talks with Heather Burchfield and Moira Anderson of Truth Tree about wha...

As we kick off a new school year, I’m bringing back one of our favorite conversations, a live panel recorded at the Small School Leaders Conference. It captures something I hear constantly from small school marketing teams: the reality of being one person, or maybe one and a half, trying to keep up with an ever-growing list of channels, campaigns, and expectations. I’m joined by three...

As we head into a new school year, this is exactly the kind of episode I want school leaders to hear early. I sat in on Jason Craige Harris’s session at the LeadTeam Summit, where he broke down what it actually takes to build a strategy for culture that works, and I left that room energized in a way that stuck with me. So when he joined us on the podcast, I wanted to go even deeper. Jason is...

Every spring, schools pour weeks of staff time and thousands of dollars into a gala or auction because that’s what has always been done, even as the return on all that effort keeps shrinking. Barbara Barron joins us in this conversation to talk about why that model is running out of road and what a school might do instead if it actually let it go. We also get into how many separate asks a fa...

Andrea Gribble manages social media for around 85 schools across the country, so she’s usually the first person to notice when something is shifting for school communicators. In this conversation, we get into the real tension a lot of schools are sitting with right now, how to protect students from deepfakes and misuse without disappearing from social media altogether, and how to keep postin...

There’s a version of busy that gets worn like a badge of honor in schools. Wearing a lot of hats, doing more with less, the kind of overload that gets praised right up until it doesn’t. Rebecca Malotke-Meslin, founder of Pleasantly Aggressive Coaching and Consulting, coaches women leaders in schools and nonprofits, and she’s watched this pattern play out over and over; that insti...

Should This School Event Stay or Go? How Schools Can Evaluate Events and Programs with Miriam Stein Schools are really good at adding things. A new event, a new tradition, a new fundraiser, another community-building moment, and every one of them started for a real reason. The problem is that almost nothing ever comes back off the calendar. So you end up with programs that look successful from the...

We put a lot into our websites. The pages look good, the content is thorough, and we assume families will move through it the way we mapped it out. Then we actually look at the data and realize a lot of them are not navigating it at all. They are researching on their own time, often late at night when no one is at the desk, and showing up as fully formed applicants we have never spoken to. In this...

Enrollment looks different than it did even two years ago, and the pressure to figure out what’s actually moving families from inquiry to enrolled is real. The COVID bump has leveled off, parent expectations have shifted, and the mental load of carrying your school’s enrollment goals while wearing every other hat is not getting lighter. In this episode, I sit down with Marnie Schattgen...

Retention conversations tend to spike at re-enrollment time, but by then, a lot of the damage is already done. Families aren’t usually making their decision to leave in one moment. They’re collecting small data points all year long, quietly asking themselves whether the school still feels like the right place for their family. In this episode, we sit down together to talk through what&...

By the time a family lands on your website, they’ve already done their homework. They’ve Googled, scrolled your social media, and asked around the neighborhood, so when they finally get to you, they’re not really browsing anymore. They’re evaluating. And the pages they land on first are either going to move them forward or send them somewhere else. In this episode, we dig i...

Parent feedback doesn’t have to wait until the end of the year when everyone is burned out and families have already made their decisions. In this episode, we talk about building a feedback system that runs throughout the year, so you’re catching issues early, not just documenting them after families have left. What we keep coming back to is the feedback loop. Gathering data only works...

If you work at a school that serves students with learning differences, you already know your marketing has to do things other schools never have to think about. The families coming to you aren’t browsing options. They’re exhausted, they’ve already tried a lot of things, and they need to know you’re the right fit before they take one more leap of faith. In this episode, we...

Burnout in schools isn’t just about being busy or overwhelmed, and it’s not something a day off or better time management can fix. In this episode, we unpack what burnout actually is, how it builds over time, and why so many school teams are feeling it more deeply right now. In this episode of Mindful School Marketing, we are joined by Brooke Carroll, principal, consultant, and coach at Acies Stra...

A school website can look polished on the surface while problems quietly build behind the scenes. In this episode, Tara shares how school marketers can run a quick technical checkup to see whether their website is truly healthy. From page speed to mobile performance and broken links, you’ll learn the small set of checks that reveal how your site is really performing. Tara also explains which alert...

In this episode of Mindful School Marketing, Aubrey and Tara sit down with Jason Craige Harris, a strategist, conflict mediator, and mindfulness teacher who works at the intersection of culture, leadership, and institutional life. Jason brings deep wisdom to the conversation about what it truly means to lead with steadiness in uncertain times. From navigating school crises to making high-impact st...

In this special live episode of Mindful School Marketing , we recorded a panel discussion straight from the Small School Leaders Conference. Tara and Aubrey are joined by experienced independent school marketers who are in the work every day, navigating small teams, limited budgets, and constantly changing expectations. We are joined by Lori Kriegel (Chief Communications Officer at Wooster School)...

In this episode of Mindful School Marketing, we dig into one of the most complex and timely questions facing independent and private schools today: should your school participate in voucher or ESA programs. This conversation is especially relevant for school leaders navigating financial pressure, enrollment strategy, and mission alignment as school choice expands across the country. We are joined...

In this episode of Mindful School Marketing , we’re joined again by leadership coach and consultant Rebecca Malotke-Meslin, founder of Pleasantly Aggressive Coaching and Consulting. Rebecca works with early and mid-career women leaders in schools and nonprofits who are often praised for doing everything but rarely supported in sustainable ways. Together, we name what so many school leaders are qui...

As we wrap up the year, it’s just the two of us, Aubrey and Tara, reflecting on what we’ve learned from our guests and what’s ahead for schools in 2026. This year, so many of our conversations have come back to two big shifts: the rise of millennial parents as today’s primary decision makers and the growing role of AI in how families search for and evaluate schools. In this episode, we’re sharing...

In this episode, we’re joined by Jesse Meadow, co-founder and Managing Director of Schoolcraft Digital, where he helps independent schools across the country plan and implement marketing strategies that truly connect with today’s parents. Jesse shares how the idea of The Fourth Turning can help school leaders understand the times we’re in and lead with purpose. We explore what it means to run a sc...

In this episode, we sit down with David Madison, Executive Director of the National Association of Episcopal Schools (NAES). David shares how Episcopal schools define their identity and communicate their mission in ways that serve both their faith-based roots and their wider communities. He offers insights that every independent school leader can apply when clarifying values, strengthening culture...