Skip Kotkins

About half of Skip Kotkins’ work at CS&A is leading senior executive searches; the other half consists of governance consulting, which includes designing and leading board retreats, helping schools create their strategic plans, board training, and special governance projects. The two halves of his work improve each other, as Skip likes to say that he works at the intersection of leadership and strategy.

Skip has led countless searches and worked with schools in more than two dozen states and internationally in places as diverse as Vietnam, Jordan, Korea, Mexico City, the Netherlands, the Dominican Republic, and more. He is pleased to say that he has done work with the largest (two searches for Punahou School, HI) and some of the smallest schools in the country, as well as Montessori and Waldorf, coeducational and single gender, boarding and day schools, schools serving gifted learners, and schools serving a neurodiverse population. While Skip has worked with Catholic, Episcopal, and other religious schools, he has a particular expertise working with Jewish day schools. Representative recent projects include the President search for a large Catholic boy's school in the south; a large modern Orthodox Jewish School in the Southeast; the head of a day/boarding school in Hawaii; a gifted school in the midwest; and two pluralistic Jewish day schools in Arizona, and Montessori schools in Minnesota, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Hawaii. Representative consulting projects include: work over two years that led to the successful unification of governance for The St. Paul’s Schools (MD); strategic plans for both Buckley School (NY) and St. Bernard’s School (NY); four projects including the strategic plan for the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), the largest accrediting organization in the industry; and strategic plans for two different Catholic schools in Louisville, KY.