Martha Haakmat
Each month RG175 does a "deeper dive" to get to know one of our Independent School colleagues. This month we are spotlighting Martha Haakmat. Martha is an experienced educator who has spent her 35-year career teaching and leading in NYC independent schools. She brings a depth of understanding and perspective to her work, having held various faculty and leadership positions in a wide variety of school communities. Coming from her most recent service as a head of school, Martha worked specifically on enrollment, marketing and finance in a changing admissions landscape, and she developed strategic planning expertise, which included diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goal setting and ongoing systemic work. She is now the Executive Director of Haakmat Consulting LLC providing leadership coaching and support for DEI strategic planning for schools and other organizations. Martha currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS), The Brearley School and Early Steps. She is also a lead presenter for the NAIS Institute for New Heads and is a credentialed Montessori administrator.
What do you enjoy most about your job as it pertains to Independent Schools?
I've enjoyed a long career in independent schools these past 34 years, and what I value most now is being able to draw from my experience as a teacher, diversity director, middle school head, head of school, trustee and a parent of three children who spent 13 years each in one Brooklyn independent school community. The work I have been doing in schools these past 2 years to support their active, strategic and systemic movement forward toward equity and inclusion has been some of the most challenging and most rewarding. What feels new and exciting is the way trustees and senior administrators are committing to engaged leadership of this work in full alignment with their school missions, visions and values.
What are some of your greatest achievements?
This is an interesting question. My first response is that my greatest achievement is surviving and thriving as a Black woman in predominantly white schools for as long as I have. There were many times that I questioned my decision to work in the independent school system, and what kept me here was being mentored by strong and fabulous people of color; forming critical relationships with students, parents, leaders and colleagues in school communities in New York City; and having the support and love of colleagues across the country through the NAIS People of Color Conference. Being able to connect with so many people committed to equity was more of a greatest honor than an achievement, and I made it my second job to create and maintain relationships with so many talented people across schools.
How has Covid-19 affected your job/business and how have you adapted?
I started a full-time DEI and anti-racism consulting business in July 2019 and COVID hit six months later. My first thought was that my business would surely fail in a global pandemic. Then in an unfathomable demonstration of hatred, George Floyd was murdered, and alongside an increasing hunger for the truth about our country's history of racism, a global movement for racial justice was sparked. Schools, organizations and corporations near and far began to call and email. To keep up with requests for support, I grew from working with one partner consultant to a team of five, and we swiftly changed our model from on-site trainings and workshops to online interactive work. I worked 12- and 14-hour days during the week and through each weekend from June 2020 through June 2021, with one week off this past March. In some ways, facilitating online meant greater access and consistency for my work with Boards and leadership teams, and the Black@ movement was a key motivator toward their strategic equity planning and action.
What is your connection to RG175?
Honestly, one of the RG175 consultants, Doreen Olson, was someone I met many years ago at one my first PoCCs in the early 90s. Doreen had a calm and cool wisdom that immediately pulled me in, and she has always been someone I've admired since then. My most recent connection to RG175 is Tony Featherston, a colleague from headship in NYC and now a good friend. I've also been keeping up with several placement firms in terms of their commitments to equity, and RG175 has impressed me with their training for consultants and placement of leaders of color and of women into headship and key administrative positions. I am well aware that the whiteness and maleness of independent school leadership will not change if the placement firms are not on board, and schools would do well to carefully note each firm's markers of active commitment.