Diego Merino
Each month RG175 does a "deeper dive" to get to know one of our Independent School colleagues. This month we are spotlighting our newest RG175 consultant, Diego Merino. Diego is an educator and consultant dedicated to helping organizations with a social purpose to improve how they recruit, hire and develop, to build excellent teams, and to advance their missions. He led recruitment at Avenues: The World School for eight years, overseeing recruitment of all colleagues and tripled headcount. In that capacity, he led successful searches for a range of leadership roles across Avenues, including heads of school, division heads, directors of admissions and enrollment, and many more. Prior to Avenues, Diego was vice president of talent at Harlem Village Academies, a five-school charter network committed to progressive education. He began his career as a middle school teacher in Chicago through Teach For America and worked as a grantmaking program officer with a focus on human rights in Latin America. Diego holds bachelor's degrees in music and religious studies from Indiana University, and a master's in public administration from New York University. A former New Yorker, he now lives in Oaxaca, Mexico with his family.
Why did you choose RG175?
I felt that with RG175, we share a commitment to a genuine partnership with schools, including sustaining support well beyond a new leader's start date. We both care deeply about sustaining a thriving independent school ecosystem and its next generation of leaders. And I've known several partners for years, which gave me a sense of the depth of wisdom and expertise within the firm.
What are you looking forward to most about being a consultant in a search?
Searches are times when so many questions bubble up. Where do we need to go? How will we succeed? What do we need to preserve, and what do we let go of? And so many more. Without a doubt, what I'm most looking forward to is to be a trusted partner to schools, their boards and search committees, as they grapple with the questions unique to their search. And equally, to meeting talented school leaders and hopefully being a helpful influence on their careers.
What are some of your former achievements when you were a head of school?
I haven't been a head of school before. Instead, I held a unique role among independent schools, as the founding head of recruitment for Avenues: The World School. I oversaw recruitment of hundreds of educators, including around one hundred leaders, as Avenues grew from one to five campuses globally. I led searches for a wide range of leadership roles across Avenues, including heads of school, division heads, directors of admissions, and many others. And we built an extraordinary team that did remarkable things - like building Avenues into a thriving, innovative, top-tier school of almost 2000 students in the heart of New York City.
What is most rewarding about serving as a mentor to school leaders?
In my last role for eight years at Avenues: The World School, I had the privilege of working with dozens of senior educational leaders spread across the globe - heads of school, division heads, and many more. With different leaders at different times, I would be recruiter, strategic adviser, confidant, provocative gadfly, recruiting partner and more. Nothing in that position brought me more satisfaction than the strength and quality of those relationships.
What are your thoughts on the search process?
Every search represents risk and opportunity. And it's so easy to overdo it on one side or the other - to be overconfident on one side, or too risk-averse on the other. I believe that successful searches are undergirded by careful, thorough introspection: the school clearly seeing the leadership challenge their search needs to address, and each candidate's understanding of the kind of leadership challenge that they're best suited to take on. I try my best to help everyone to do that kind of clear, helpful thinking.
Why are you doing this? Concerned with leadership in independent schools?
The world is growing more complex, fast-changing and interconnected than ever before. And I believe education urgently needs to evolve to rise to the challenge of educating students for that ambiguous future. Independent schools can play a key role of innovating and pointing the way for that wider transformation, because of the freedom inherent in their independence. But to realize that potential, the right leadership has to connect with the right opportunity. I see my contribution as helping to make more of those connections happen for more schools.