“What does equity look like at the level of institutional power?”
That question led me into my doctoral research and has stayed with me ever since. We speak often about belonging in classrooms. We invest in diversity initiatives for students and faculty. We examine hiring pipelines and curriculum. But far less frequently do we ask: How does justice show up in our governance structures? If Episcopal schools are rooted in the Gospel’s call “to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8), then that call must extend to the boardroom.
In my book Lonely Graduation: The Journey After the Milestone, I write about a phenomenon that affects students, professionals, and emerging leaders across institutions: the disorienting silence that follows achievement. You crossed the finish line. You earned the seat. And then you looked around and thought, now what?
What I found in researching that book and in boardrooms is that the experience of arriving without truly belonging is not unique to individuals. It is often baked into the structures that invited them in the first place.
Recent data from the independent school landscape reveals a persistent governance gap. Nearly 30% of students in NAIS schools identify as students of color, yet only 14% of trustees do. Leadership pipelines narrow further at the head of school level. Representation alone is not the full story, but it signals something important: institutional power has not recalibrated at the pace of institutional rhetoric. When equity does not reach governance, it remains peripheral rather than structural.
In a national study I conducted of 23 trustees of color across 17 NAIS schools (2024–2025), participants described experiences of isolation, tokenism, and conditional influence. One trustee summarized it this way: “It wasn’t that I wasn’t capable. It’s that I was invisible.”
These words echoed something I heard repeatedly while writing Lonely Graduation, from graduates, from first-generation professionals, from people who had done everything right and still felt like they were watching the room from behind glass. The language was different. The institutional context was different. But the structural dynamic was the same: visible enough to be present, but not trusted enough to lead.
These were not isolated grievances. They were structural patterns. Trustees reported being invited during moments of crisis but excluded from core decision-making pathways. They were asked to represent “diverse communities” but not consistently entrusted with shaping financial, strategic, or executive priorities. In some cases, there was even spiritual dissonance, a gap between Episcopal language about justice and governance practices that did not reflect that language.
This is what I call, in the context of Lonely Graduation, visibility without safety, the experience of being seen but not supported, present but not protected. In classrooms and career offices, we recognize this as a belonging crisis. In boardrooms, we have been slower to name it.
From this research emerged the CAISBG framework, Culturally Affirming Independent School Board Governance. It rests on five pillars:
- Centering Cultural Wealth – Honoring the lived experiences and perspectives trustees bring to governance.
- Reframing Governance Culture – Examining how norms and processes distribute influence.
- Racial Identity Consciousness – Understanding how identity shapes participation and power.
- Rooted in Accountability – Creating measurable pathways for equity and transparency.
- Theological Grounding – Connecting governance decisions explicitly to Episcopal commitments.
This framework does not replace traditional governance theory; agency, stewardship, stakeholder, or resource dependency models. Rather, it asks a deeper question: Who benefits from the current structure of power? And equally important: Who is shaped by decisions but not shaping them?
One of the central arguments of Lonely Graduation is that institutions have a hidden curriculum, an unwritten set of rules, expectations, and norms that some people inherit, and others must decode on their own. In graduate programs and corporate pipelines, this hidden curriculum determines who advances, who gets mentored, and who is left to figure things out in isolation after the milestone.
Boards have a hidden curriculum, too.
It lives in how agendas are shaped before meetings begin. It lives in whose questions get taken seriously. It lives in the unspoken understanding of who is there to represent and who is there to decide. When we do not examine that curriculum, we replicate it, regardless of how many diverse faces are around the table.
For Episcopal schools, governance is not merely fiduciary oversight. It is spiritual stewardship. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.” Boards hold power. The question is whether that power is organized in ways that implement justice, or merely preserve legacy.
So what does this look like in practice?
It looks like boards reviewing trustee experience data with the same seriousness as financial dashboards.
It looks like equity and belonging committees have real authority.
It looks like annual governance audits are aligned with mission and theological commitments.
It looks like mentorship structures that prepare trustees for influence, not just presence, because showing up is not enough if the room was never truly designed to hear you.
It looks like theological reflection woven into the agenda, not as symbolism but as orientation.
It also begins with self-examination. Consider:
- Who shapes decisions in your boardroom?
- Are equity goals embedded into governance metrics or siloed into separate conversations?
- How are trustees recruited, onboarded, and positioned for impact?
- When conflict emerges around race or belonging, is the board spiritually and structurally prepared to respond?
- What is the hidden curriculum in your governance culture, and who bears the cost of it?
Justice in schools does not begin in assemblies or diversity statements. It begins in boardrooms. When governance is aligned with Gospel commitments, institutional culture shifts in durable ways. When it is not, the gap widens between what we preach and what we practice. The milestone of diversifying a board is not the destination. It is the beginning. And as I wrote in Lonely Graduation, what happens after the milestone is where the real work lives.
The next 30 days offer every board an opportunity. What conversation needs to begin? What structure needs to change? What voice needs to be centered? If Episcopal schools are to remain places of moral courage and transformative education, then governance must reflect the same intentionality we expect in our classrooms.
Because equity at the margins is programming, equity at the center is governance. And justice in our schools will only be as strong as the courage in our boardrooms.
Christopher S. Dennis, PhD, is the Associate Head of School at Campbell Hall School in Studio City, CA. He is a scholar, consultant, and researcher in independent school governance and author of Lonely Graduation: The Journey After the Milestone.