NBOA President and CEO
In leadership, some of the most instructive lessons don’t come from moments of certainty, but from periods of profound change. Few decisions test an organization more than a merger, when history, identity and finances collide.
No one knows this better than Frank Aloise, CFO at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia, and the latest guest on the Net Assets Podcast. Aloise was the third of three distinguished guests I recorded in-person during the 2026 NBOA Annual Meeting.
In this episode of the podcast, we discuss the pivotal merger Aloise helped steward 15 years ago. Our conversation explores what it felt like to live inside business ambiguity, tradeoffs that come with change, and how time has a way of reshaping perspectives.
Jeff Shields: I’m going to take you back to 2011. It was a big year for you and your school because you oversaw the merger between Springside School, which was all-girls, and Chestnut Hill Academy, all-boys. I remember right afterwards, I said, “Frank, this would make such a great NBOA program,” because mergers weren't that common at the time. But it was too soon. The change was still too new. Fifteen years later, is it safe to ask you about that?
Frank Aloise: It was nerve-wracking because you're caught in this moment of change and uncertainty. There was a consultant working with us on personality stuff. My assessment was done in May, right when the board was making all these decisions. The consultant showed us this graph of your drives, your motivations and how you're behaving. Mine was completely vertical, which is not my normal behavior.
He looked at our [head of school] and asked, “What is going on right now in Frank's work? If you don't let him loose, he's going to explode.” The decision-making was very slow, and I'm a person who likes to get things done. Find the problem, get it done or assign it to someone and move on. So I was really struggling with that [sense of] stopping everything and making all these new decisions.
The name changes and property exchanges — there were just so many things to do in the background that most people didn't care about.
After the merger, I ran three corporations for three years because there was a parent corp., and then the two high schools. We had to do that because of all the bond issues, financial issues and legal issues. The name changes and property exchanges — there were just so many things to do in the background that most people didn't care about.
[Here at the 2026 NBOA Annual Meeting] I'm speaking on a panel about a couple of these things. It’s been a very interesting experience over the years to work with people who feel so passionate about the school brand and school name, and trying to bring them along on this journey of becoming a better school, a modern version of what we had been doing.
Shields: Everyone has to give something up in a merger, right? It’s hard to get to that place. Each party also has to buy into the greater good and what's on the other side.
Aloise: It was hard because it was all about the people. Some people chose to leave — both parents who didn't believe in the new brand or thought we were doing something wrong, and employees who knew this wasn’t the place that [they wanted] to work.
But today we see these same people coming back — alums who are now proud of what we've built over these 15 years and donors who've come back in pretty big ways to support this new school, built out of two schools that were both about 175 years old at the time of the merger.
Shields: Merging two single-gender schools — did that make it harder or easier than merging two co-ed schools? A lot of folks could see an opportunity to change the program, to educate both boys and girls but then others will say they’re committed to all-girls education or all-boys education.
For 50 years prior to the merger, we'd had a coordinated program [between] the high schools. I call it the longest courtship ever before getting married.
Aloise: We did both. So we kept the pre-K through grade 8 schools single sex, [with a] co-ed high school. For 50 years prior to the merger, we'd had a coordinated program [between] the high schools. I call it the longest courtship ever before getting married.
There's some overlap as the students get into middle school, some lunch or recess time and electives. And that was a very conscious choice as we looked at the future and tried to distinguish ourselves and keep a little bit of that, when making those decisions.
Shields: What's the best advice you could give to a school that's considering a merger?
Aloise: Rip the Band-Aid off.
To hear the rest of this conversation, listen to the full episode or explore other episodes of the Net Assets Podcast.
Jeffrey Shields, FASAE, CAE
NBOA President and CEO
Follow NBOA President and CEO Jeff Shields on LinkedIn.
