NBOA President and CEO
When independent school business leaders first started talking about AI a few years ago, I heard both excitement and hesitation, often matched with uncertainty. Today, school leaders are more informed and increasingly eager to tap AI to support their mission and operations but still may not know how to start strategically. That hunger for clarity and direction is exactly why my latest guest on the Net Assets Podcast is such a valuable voice in this moment.
Nancy Greene, vice president of finance and operations and chief financial officer at Pine Crest School, shares her own AI journey — both at Pine Crest, which received the Jeffrey Shields Innovation in Independent School Business Operations Award this year, and through her work with the NBOA Leadership Academy. She offers practical guidance for schools ready to begin turning AI interest into strategic action with measurable ROI.
Below is an excerpt from our longer conversation. This episode was recorded live at the 2026 NBOA Annual Meeting in Orlando, and is available in full wherever you get your podcasts.
Nancy Greene has received nearly every major award that NBOA gives out, including the Will Hancock Unsung Hero Award in 2018 and the Ken White Distinguished Business Officer Award in 2022. During her service on the NBOA Board of Directors, Greene chaired the Strategic Initiatives Committee, and her leadership was integral to the development of the NBOA Financial Dashboard and the Composite Financial Index Calculator, both connected to the BIIS data analysis platform, which helps school leaders measure and discuss their school’s financial health.
Shields: At the 2026 NBOA Annual Meeting, you accepted the Jeffrey Shields Innovation and Independent School Business Operations Award on behalf of Pinecrest School, recognizing your school's leadership in advancing AI, particularly in transforming business operations. For those who aren't familiar with Pinecrest's work in AI, how would you describe its impact in a nutshell?
Greene: AI has been transformational, even though Pine Crest was already an innovative school. We have interwoven innovation throughout our curriculum and our core beliefs.
I'd like to acknowledge, however, that not everybody is ready to go, and that’s to be respected. Even on my ops team, I had a couple of people less interested in pursuing this. But as they learned more and saw the winds that were happening in other areas, it became exciting to them. And recently, after a training session on agentic AI, I actually had two of them come up and say, “We’re ready now. We think we can use agentic AI.”
I will say AI has brought huge efficiencies to our office. What's exciting is I'm leveraging AI for succession planning and staff development. We have people in the business office who are in positions with a lot of redundant tasks. When you free up two weeks of time every month for someone to learn new things, it allows for growth work. Now my team is coming to me with ideas beyond what I initiated.
Shields: And you kept your commitment to them because you said AI is not about replacing any of you. AI is about being efficient and creating, it sounds like growth pathways, that allow you to build out their skills and do more strategic work.
Greene: Exactly.
Shields: So what's the single most important thing that business leaders need to consider when developing a strategic AI plan like Pinecrest has?
Greene: You absolutely need to have that plan. First, I would say that it needs to fit within your overall strategic planning goals for your school, and it needs to be respectful of your particular culture. Whether that’s a religious mission or other beliefs, your core values need to be honored.
Shields: Can any school, large or small, pursue this work or does it require certain conditions?
Green: I would say that every school, regardless of their size, can benefit. In fact, one could argue smaller schools have some huge efficiency gains because they often don't have the same human resources to do the work. Larger schools have the resources, but the question is, are they deployed in the most effective manner? There are inefficiencies potentially built into both large and small schools that can be streamlined with AI.
You have to have people to help you get started, and external partnerships is where I think a lot of people should start. Then after leveraging off them and learning, you begin to see what new skill sets you need within your organization so that you can become self-sustaining.
Shields: Tell me more about that.
Greene: At Pine Crest, we had a list of IT positions we thought we needed to hire for, which we no longer need. Instead, now we need people who can program. We need people who know RPA. We need people who can work with agentic AI. We need different kinds of skill sets because we partnered with companies to develop our RPA (Robotic Process Automation), and now we need to maintain those robots. Resources do need to be deployed.
So you evaluate each project, calculate the return on the investment and start with the lowest hanging fruit. Those are the projects where the return on your investment is going to come back quickly enough to keep the momentum going and moving. And the truth of the matter is, all schools need to be looking to start this movement. I think it's one of those things.
Listen to the full episode or explore other episodes of the Net Assets Podcast.
It’s encouraging to hear directly from a leader, with a track record for innovation, share not only how her school has deployed AI to benefit business operations, but the insight from experience to see AI as an opportunity not dependent on school size or even resources. It takes leadership, which is exactly what NBOA members have in abundance. Let’s create our AI future together by seeking advice from colleagues in our network and utilizing NBOA programs and resources to move your school forward!
Jeffrey Shields, FASAE, CAE
NBOA President and CEO
Follow NBOA President and CEO Jeff Shields on LinkedIn.
