inBrewsterMadrid

Brewster Academy has launched an initiative unprecedented in its 203-year history: Bringing the unique experience of a Brewster education to the world in a network of international schools. This endeavor has been years in the planning, and represents a revolutionary new era for the institution—one with innumerable opportunities for growth both overseas and in Wolfeboro. And it all begins in Madrid!

By Nancy Hughes and Suzanne Morrissey

n approach to learning that has the exponential power to transform education, communities, and the lives of students in our care.”

With a vision statement this bold and this ambitious, Brewster Academy seems practically bound to share its unique model of education outside its idyllic Wolfeboro home campus. And with the founding of BA International LLC in 2020, the exciting journey of building a global network of schools officially began. What led to this defining moment in the school’s history is a story of leadership, collaboration, research, and good old-fashioned necessity.

It began with a conversation between then Head of School Craig Gemmell and Chair of Brewster’s Board of Trustees, Roy Ballentine. Early in their partnership, Gemmell recalls, Ballentine issued a five-word request: “He asked me to ‘fix Brewster’s broken business model.’ ”

Gemmell, for his part, dug into ensuring strong fiscal oversight, realizing strong admissions and fundraising results. But despite success in these realms, by 2017 Brewster’s Board and senior administration were confronting an emerging paradox: Brewster was simultaneously growing in strength in its institutional capacity and in the market, yet financial indicators suggested that conventional approaches were not reversing troubling financial trends. Demographic shifts among families with high-school age students seeking a New England boarding school experience, Brewster’s historically small endowment, and rising costs of offering state-of-the-art facilities that wooed the best candidates for enrollment were all concerns facing the Board and its Head of School.

In a 2017 breakfast meeting of Board Chair Ballentine, Vice-Chair Art Coviello, then Assistant Head for Institutional Advancement Kristy Kerin, and Gemmell, Coviello encouraged the team to be bold—to leverage what makes Brewster special and to approach challenges as an opportunity.

The Bold Idea

Together, Gemmell and Kerin built a working group to begin this auspicious task. The earliest team included Lisa Braiterman, Jonathan Fouser, Matt Found, Tim Cushing, Marcia Trook, Allie Cooper, Peter Gilligan, Lynne Palmer, and Raylene Davis. Coviello led the working group, later passing that role to fellow Board member Carlos Noble ’70 in 2021. The team investigated what exactly gave Brewster its “special sauce.” Certainly Brewster’s unique location was (and is) on the list. As are the dedication and warmth of the faculty and staff who find meaning in living and working at the school—and caring for its students. Brewster’s engaged parent and alumni communities who maintain close ties through the years are also key factors. But what was the common thread—the underpinning that gave all these positive aspects a structure to build on? The group found that the resonant answer was deceptively simple: Brewster’s broad set of approaches to learning, collectively referred to as The Brewster Model. “The Model is our differentiating factor,” Gemmell says, “and once we recognized that with clarity, we set about creating the vision statement to guide the school’s work in the future.” That statement, as noted above, became the mantra of how Brewster approaches learning, in a way that truly does have “the exponential power to transform education, communities, and the lives of students in our care.” It is as vital to the institution as its mission statement to prepare diverse thinkers for lives of purpose.

But how to leverage this in a way that strengthened Brewster financially? The senior administrative team researched how other institutions have scaled their influence using their differentiators to become both more vibrant and sustainable. In the final analysis one concept emerged that aligned with mission and vision and could fix the ailing business model: develop other campuses globally where we were able to recognize unmet demand for Brewster’s particular approach to education and to do so in ways that bring financial resources back to Brewster, thereby delivering on a double bottom line. In short, Brewster was going global. But how?

The Global Plan Takes Shape

The “how” of it all started with the 2018 hiring of Ricardo Carreño, a son of Madrid who had uprooted himself and his family to come to the States to teach Spanish at one of Brewster’s New England peer schools, and fell in love with the boarding school life. Through his years, he dreamt of bringing American education back home with him to Madrid. With his move to Brewster, that dream could come true. “Ricardo has been utterly critical in this endeavor; his ability to turn possibilities into reality is unparalleled. He was the person we needed and he appeared serendipitously at the right time,” Gemmell explains.

Next, the team undertook a global scan of locations for Brewster campuses. What would make the most sense in terms of finances, the education market, stability, and many other factors? Carreño had the instincts to keep his eyes firmly on Madrid, a city he knew and loved and wished to improve by bringing a wholly American school to his home. Amazingly, months of market research underscored what he knew intuitively all along: Madrid was the place.

Since then, working with the team in Wolfeboro and a growing team in Madrid, Brewster has developed sound corporate and governance structures, selected excellent investors, and acquired two ideal campuses in Madrid—one in the center of the city (Chamberí) and one in a suburban community (La Moraleja).

“Ricardo’s expertise as we’ve focused on Madrid as our first international location has been remarkable,” Gemmell emphasizes, adding that building the right team has been vital. As Gemmell moved into his new role as the President of Brewster and BA International LLC, and Kristy Kerin became Brewster’s Head of School in Wolfeboro, the team quickly took shape. First, Gemmell engaged two experienced Brewster faculty members to play pivotal roles in the launch: Bret Barnett and Jonathan Fouser, both of whom serve as Founding Deputy Heads of Brewster Madrid. Brewster’s brand is now a familiar one in Madrid as a result of a robust social media campaign, thanks in part to this talented duo’s ability to describe the Brewster experience to a new audience in ways that are igniting great interest.

The Madrid project also welcomed Micaela Carney as Dean of Admissions, Javier Menendez Acosta as Financial and Human Resources Manager, Enrique Vargas as Marketing Manager, and Nancy Hughes as Dean of Faculty.

Ariane Baer-Harper, a noted international school industry leader, helped guide the team in its earliest days before heading to Austin, Texas, to lead another school. At the helm, Craig Gemmell is once again in the role of Head of School, one he relishes. “When I first came to Brewster, I saw truly happy students who exuded a calm confidence and gratitude for being at their school. And the culture of collaboration among adults at Brewster seemed unique, and it inspired me,” he recalls. “Now, I have a chance to foster those same amazing qualities in our new home, and the possibility of recreating that experience for an entirely new group of young scholars is, frankly, one of the most exciting times in my career.”

Since October, this core team has been culling thousands of resumes from candidates in the United States and around the world to build the Madrid school’s “founding teaching team,” who will begin together as all Brewster Academy teachers do—by attending Brewster Summer Institute (BSI) in July. Barnett says while he’ll miss the cool Winnipesaukee waters (it’ll likely be around 100 degrees in Madrid at that time of year!), he’s looking forward to having everyone together. “And I’m equally excited about continuing to collaborate with the folks in Wolfeboro to create network partnerships that enable both schools to get better,” he says.

As the team has grown, another milestone in this journey has been reached: Brewster Madrid’s first campus is well into renovations, the admissions process is yielding wonderful students, and Brewster’s first international school is poised to launch.

School Is In Session

Through all the research and planning, the team realized this endeavor’s goals were best reached by launching not just a school to service high school students, but K-12. Why? Dean of Faculty Nancy Hughes explains: “The school that opens in September will feel like Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro in many ways; however, the look will inevitably be different, set as it is in the heart of a European capital— and given that students from ages 3 to 18 will be filling its halls. The decision to open as a Kindergarten to 12th grade school is largely a response to market demands. In Spain public and private schools are traditionally K-12.” This decision has also proven to be one of the most exciting aspects of the endeavor, as it has pushed the academic team to learn about the process of educating young people in new ways and brought them into rich dialogue with experts in the lower and middle years. Welcoming young students has led to some interesting moments, too. Gemmell reports that one of the best days he has had in Madrid was when he interviewed a 4-year-old boy who left his mother’s side and happily crawled into his lap!

Like any start-up organization, the team members on the ground in Madrid have all been juggling many roles. Everyone is meeting with parents (on Zoom and in person), interviewing students, and giving tours. Micaela Carney, Dean of Admission, shared that, for her, the best part of this experience thus far has been meeting with the wide range of families and students: “It seems like so many of the families who are finding us are looking for something different. Each day it is this interesting mix of Spanish families who want their children to learn to think independently, expat families thrilled to have an American school right in the center of Madrid, American families moving to Madrid to expose their children to life beyond the States, and international families from across the globe attracted to the school’s diversity.”

In September, the first international school will open in the Chamberí neighborhood, and Brewster’s mission and vision will have traveled with the team over to the Iberian Peninsula. “It has been fabulous to see that the right students are finding us here,” Gemmell says. “We are accepting a really fantastic collection of ‘diverse thinkers,’ and we are so excited to help prepare them for their lives of purpose.” He acknowledges that the strength of Brewster’s reputation in the United States has been an enormous asset as the school enters into a wider market and begins its admissions process. “Our history is an extensive one in the States, and we are known to be successful working with a wide range of students. We keep meeting with families with multiple children, whom they acknowledge are very different. These parents are coming to us because they are trusting that we can serve all of them well. And we know we can.”

Of course, the magic behind serving these diverse thinkers well is Brewster’s unique team approach, and that too is a central component of Brewster Madrid. The team has spent hours and hours in interviews and on tours explaining to prospective families how our team-based approach—the Brewster Model—works and how it allows teachers to provide individualized instruction that both challenges and supports each student. This approach that has been a hallmark of Brewster’s education for close to 40 years is not only finding an enthusiastic audience among families, but also among teaching candidates. “Surely, Madrid is a draw! It’s a walkable, beautiful European capital city with lots of green space and is just teeming with world-class museums,” Hughes says. “But if I had to find a common denominator among all of the faculty candidates we’ve been seeing, it would be a desire to collaborate with other colleagues in a deliberate way. Most of the candidates we have seen have done their research well. They know Brewster Academy, or are learning about Brewster Academy, and they are excited to work at a place that expects teachers to collaborate—that sets aside time for such critical work.”

As one of the Deputy Heads of School, Barnett is also charged with overseeing all of the non-academic parts of the program. He is busy selecting furniture for classrooms, playing with the nuances of the daily schedule, writing student and family handbooks, and drafting

Madrid emergency protocols—to name a few of the tasks that are keeping him busy. Barnett is also organizing after school activities. “Working to bring hallmark extracurricular programs like drama, basketball, lacrosse, and soccer to our school is an interesting project to undertake,” he says, “as most Spanish schools do not offer athletics or drama—rather, students seek these programs out themselves after the school day, playing for club teams or going to local theaters. I look forward to being a leader in the Spanish market in terms of what it means to educate the whole child.” The best work, however, will be bringing the culture and sense of

Madrid

Where is Brewster located in Madrid?

The first of two campuses in Madrid to open is located in downtown Madrid’s Chamberí neighborhood…near the popular Museo Nacional del Prado and the Palacio Real (the Royal Palace). The second school, Brewster La Moraleja, will be in the northeast region of the city (and is on track to open its doors in 2024).

Jonathan Fouser describes Madrid as “cosmopolitan and cool,” with distinct neighborhoods that make it feel accessible, warm, and welcoming. Dean of Faculty Nancy Hughes notes that “just as Brewster in Wolfeboro is able to use N.H.’s mountains and lakes as outdoor classrooms, our team will be able to leverage the city as a campus.” inclusion of Brewster Academy to Madrid. As Barnett explains with a smile, “Building community is my jam.”

Back At Home Base

Brewster’s first international campus is a significant point of pride for Brewster Academy. Back in Wolfeboro, this project will have resounding effects on the Academy’s long-term strength and development. It will extend Brewster’s brand and reputation, dramatically increase the number of students the school is able to serve, fuel innovation, open new opportunities for study and teaching exchanges, and, importantly, it will generate resources that will fund Brewster’s ongoing growth.

Once the Brewster Madrid campuses are fully enrolled, Brewster will serve upwards of 1,200 more students each year, changing the educational landscape in Madrid and supporting the aspirations of wonderful students. By expanding its reach, Brewster will showcase its unique approach to teaching and learning, thereby influencing broader conversations about education and how best to support the needs of today’s students.

Funded entirely by outside investors, the international endeavor will also generate significant financial returns. The investors are driven by a double bottom line: an opportunity to be part of a project that will be a fruitful financial investment while meaningfully changing educational offerings for students and families in Madrid. Revenue generated through Brewster Madrid will be put to work immediately at Brewster Academy, funding need-based financial aid, investments in the Wolfeboro campus and programs, and supporting one of the school’s greatest assets: its faculty.

Academically, Brewster will evolve from a single school with 200+ years of experience and history to a group of schools, all operating under The Brewster Model. Students will have opportunities to move among campuses and study in different environments and cultures. Brewster faculty will expand their professional network, gaining professional development opportunities and sharing best practices and new ideas.

Looking To The Future

All of the Madrid team’s efforts right now are directed toward a group of key objectives: matriculating a great group of mission-appropriate students, building a remarkable faculty to serve each of our students the way each needs to be served, building a strong culture shaped by kindness, engagement, respect, curiosity, and joy. “In short, our work is to recreate the inimitable culture of Brewster in Madrid,” Fouser says. In the short-term, the path ahead includes the launch of the second campus in La Moraleja, a suburb of Madrid. Additional interest has been expressed from others in cities on the Iberian Peninsula and further afield for additional Brewster campuses. But the founding team is keeping its planning horizon short and its focus right now on September 7, 2023, when the first students will enter through the gates of a school that will feel both very new and equally familiar. And so begins Brewster’s next chapter.