President Search Process

Dear Westminster Community,

It is with a grateful heart that I share the news that I will conclude my tenure at Westminster and retire from the day-to-day work of leading a school at the end of the 2025-26 school year. That transition will mark my 12th year as Westminster’s President and my 27th as the Head of an independent school. Creating a thoughtful and well-timed succession plan has been important to me and to our Board of Trustees. This shared goal led to making this announcement at this time in order to provide a head start on the search process.

Serving as Westminster’s President through these years has been a privilege and an honor. I have a unique vantage point to witness the commitment, vision, and endless Wildcat energy that makes this one of the finest schools in the nation. In a role like mine, it is abundantly evident every day that our success is founded in teamwork combined with an unerring focus on our mission and values. To that end, I have been fortunate to work with a visionary Board of Trustees whose generous support and guidance has been instrumental in each phase of Westminster’s growth. Likewise, our Leadership Team has been uniquely effective at building a school for the future through an era of ambitious goals and unprecedented challenges.

Of course, it is translating bold ideas into the student experience that is the work of our creative faculty and staff and they have been inspirational in their dedication. Surround all of these talented leaders with parents and alumni willing and able to serve as key partners and the result is Westminster’s unique ability to bring out the best in our students. It is watching our students discover their potential that is an inexhaustible, daily source of motivation and joy.

I am writing in the present tense because there is still more to accomplish. I look forward to making the most of this final year and a half to build on our momentum and ensure that it continues into the future. Emilie and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to join the  Wildcat Nation over a decade ago and will consider this a lifetime membership! Thank you for welcoming us to Atlanta in 2014 and for being fellow travelers in this extraordinary journey. The best is always yet to come at Westminster and it will be a singular pleasure to watch this school community continue to thrive through this transition and well beyond.

Onward,

Keith Evans
President

Dear Westminster Community,

Westminster President Keith Evans has advised the Board of Trustees of his intention to retire at the end of the 2025-26 school year after completing 12 extraordinary years as our head of school. While we will miss him greatly, we also will wish him a retirement that is as rewarding to him as his time here has been for Westminster.

On behalf of the Board, I want to thank Keith for his inspiring vision, innovative spirit, and strategic leadership—anchored in an unwavering commitment to our mission. It has been an honor to work alongside such a thoughtful leader and friend, and all of us on the Board have enjoyed partnering with him in this journey. 

In the coming months we will be celebrating Keith’s transformative impact on our entire Westminster community. Under Keith’s leadership, the Westminster community has come together to achieve ever-higher standards of academic excellence and standing among the very best independent schools in the United States; the School has attracted and retained a world-class team of faculty, staff, and administrative leadership; and our student experience has been deepened to provide every student with hands-on opportunities to engage with the world around them.

Additionally, Westminster’s team has built a resilient financial infrastructure and received record-setting philanthropic support; our campus facilities have been reshaped to support collaborative and participatory models of teaching and learning; and Westminster has become a more inclusive and supportive campus community, allowing our students to reach their fullest potential. In all his endeavors on behalf of our school, Keith has embraced Westminster's mission to create leaders of conscience whose impact in the world is our shared purpose and legacy.

We are grateful to Keith for advising the Board of his intentions at this early time, thus allowing ample time for a thorough process to identify our next President. Trustee, alumnus, and parent Brand Morgan ’94 has agreed to chair a Search Committee of the Board to identify Keith’s successor. In the weeks ahead, Brand will communicate with the Westminster community with further details about the search and opportunities for engagement.  

We are blessed to have had Keith’s leadership for over a decade and continuing through June 2026. Our next President’s charge will be to build on Keith’s contributions, while carrying forward Westminster’s enduring vision and shared values that have been articulated in From Our Founding.  

Our deepest appreciation goes to Keith and Emilie Evans, and to all of you who make Westminster such a special community.

Katharine Kelley ’82
Chair, Board of Trustees

Dear Fellow Members of the Westminster Community,

As we embark on the exciting journey of selecting our next President, Westminster’s Board of Trustees is committed to leading an inclusive process guided by the highest standards. After interviewing several outstanding executive search firms, the Board is pleased to announce that we have recently retained Carney, Sandoe & Associates (CS&A) to help us find our next President. CS&A is an internationally recognized educational search and consulting firm with extensive knowledge of independent schools and decades of experience successfully guiding schools through searches for heads of school, senior administrators, and faculty. CS&A is uniquely positioned to help us find a dynamic and visionary leader who will continue to build upon Westminster’s excellent academic foundation, vibrant community, and commitment to the holistic development of our students.

In addition to our partnership with CS&A, the Board of Trustees has assembled a President Search Committee which will work closely with CS&A throughout the process. We are confident that the collective experiences of those on the Committee and their unwavering commitment to Westminster’s mission will help us identify the best candidate for this important role. It will be the responsibility of the Search Committee to screen and evaluate candidates and to make a recommendation to the Board of Trustees for our next President. The members of the committee include:

• R. Brand Morgan ’94; Chair, President Search Committee; Trustee; Parent ’25, ’27, ’30 
• Mike Egan ’74; Former Board Chair and Emeritus Trustee; Parent ’02, ’04, ’06, ’13 
• Rand Hagen ’95; Trustee; Parent ’26, ’31
• Ira Jackson ’83; Trustee
• Katharine Kelley ’82; Chair, Board of Trustees; Parent ’19, ’21, ’24
• Stephen Lanier ’96; Trustee; Parent ’26, ’30
• Jenny Latz ’91, Trustee; Parent ’22, ’24, ’27
• Joel Murphy ’76;  Former Board Chair and Emeritus Trustee; Parent ’06, ’08, ’13 
• Floyd Newton III ’73; Trustee; Parent ’07, ’10, ’12
• Dana Ugwonali; Trustee; Parent ’23, ’25

As we launch the search, our goal is to offer our entire community multiple opportunities to provide thoughtful input to assist in our search. Our consultants from CS&A, Devereaux McClatchey and Marsha Little, will visit campus in mid-January and look forward to getting to know our community through conversations with parents, students, alumni, trustees, faculty, and staff. Additionally, in early January you will receive an online survey that we encourage all community members to complete. This survey will help the Search Committee understand the priorities identified by members of our community. After the site visit is complete and the survey results have been compiled, CS&A and the Search Committee will create a position description to share with President candidates.

We understand that the search for a new President is a critical moment in the life of our School, and we are committed to keeping you informed throughout this process. While we will work to remain as communicative and transparent as possible, we will also need to honor requests to work confidentially with candidates in order to ensure that we are able to recruit the most talented leaders. We encourage you to share your thoughts and feedback at any time by emailing PSP@westminster.net, as your input is vital to selecting a leader who will best  represent Westminster’s future.

Thank you for your continued support of Westminster. We look forward to the next steps in this important journey together.

Warm regards,

R. Brand Morgan ’94
Chair, President Search Committee

Dear Fellow Members of the Westminster Community,

We are excited to share this important update as we begin the search process for Westminster's next President. In the upcoming weeks, the Search Committee will be welcoming Devereaux McClatchey and Marsha Little, our search consultants from Carney Sandoe and Associates, to campus to meet with a wide variety of constituents including faculty, staff, students, parents, trustees, administrators, and alumni. Devereaux and Marsha’s visit will enable them to better understand the qualities and experiences we envision for our next President, ensuring that the search process is aligned with the needs and aspirations of our community.

In conjunction with our consultants’ site visit, we invite you to participate in an online Community Survey that explores many of those same topics. The Search Committee encourages each of you to complete the survey as the findings will help us more deeply understand the opportunities and challenges that await the next President as well as the qualities and characteristics our community believes are essential for that individual to be most effective. You can access the link to the Community Survey here. (The survey link was included in the email sent directly to Westminster community members. If you are a member of the School Community and did not receive this communication, please contact communications@westminster.net.) The survey will close at 5 p.m. on Friday, January 17.

Finally, we encourage you to watch for updates on the President search which will be shared via email and on the President Search Process page on Westminster's website. If you have questions, we invite you to contact us directly at PSP@westminster.net.

Thank you, in advance, for sharing your input as we launch this search. We are grateful for your commitment to Westminster and wish you the best in the new year.

Sincerely,

R. Brand Morgan ’94
Chair, President Search Committee

Dear Westminster Community,

We are pleased to share an update on Westminster’s search for our next President as we enter a new phase of the search process. Our search consultants at Carney Sandoe and Associates (CS&A), Devereaux McClatchey and Marsha Little, visited Westminster over the course of three full days in mid-January. During their time on campus, they met individually and in groups with faculty, staff, administrators, students, parents, alumni, and trustees. We appreciate the time, care, honesty, and enthusiasm with which so many of you shared your thoughts about Westminster and your hopes for the School’s next chapter. During this same timeframe, more than 1,500 members of the Westminster community completed a survey aimed at collecting perspectives on the qualities and qualifications our community members hope to see in our next leader. 

The survey results and on-campus conversations revealed a high level of consistency across constituencies regarding what is valued most at Westminster, namely the School’s deep commitment to fostering academic excellence and an appreciation for curriculum and instruction that develops and prioritizes critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. There was also great appreciation and care expressed for the School’s commitment to leadership development among its students, Westminster’s extraordinary faculty, staff, and administrators, as well as the School’s welcoming and inclusive Christian mission and culture.   

This collective community feedback has informed a Position Description crafted by the Search Committee. The Position Description articulates our mission, values, and aspirations— as well as the qualities and qualifications we believe our next President will need to lead Westminster through the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.  

As we look ahead to the School’s next chapter, community members noted a desire for the next President to support the continuous refinement and advancement of the exceptional academic program, taking full advantage of Westminster’s investment in its dynamic campus and new facilities. Not surprisingly, given the strong sense of community that already exists at Westminster, constituents also spoke to the desire for the next President to play a central role in nurturing relationships across campus, promoting a collective sense of purpose and camaraderie, and engaging with alumni and relationships in the greater Atlanta community and beyond.

The Position Description has been shared widely with prospective candidates and is now linked on the President Search page of our website. Over the coming weeks, the Search Committee will begin to engage with prospective candidates in partnership with our search consultants. We look forward to sharing another update once we reach the next milestone in this phase of our process.

On behalf of the entire Search Committee, we extend our deepest gratitude to our community members who have so generously participated in the various listening sessions, provided feedback via the survey, and reached out through the Search email address. Your input is a crucial part of this effort and will ensure the best possible appointment for Westminster’s next president.  If you have further questions or feedback about the search, please email us at psp@westminster.net.

Warm regards,

R. Brand Morgan ’94
Chair, President Search Committee

Dear Westminster Community,

The President Search Committee is pleased to share that the selection process for Westminster’s next President continues to progress with multiple exceptional candidates interested in joining us as the next leader of our community.

Our search firm, Carney Sandoe & Associates, has been working hard to vet a high-caliber pool of leaders identified through a national search. The top candidates will be interviewed by the Search Committee over the coming weeks. We are especially grateful to our dedicated community for sharing your hopes and perspectives at the outset of this search. The input from faculty, staff, parents, alumni, and friends of our School served as guideposts for us in our recruiting process and in crafting a position description that effectively outlined what our community values most in its next leader. On behalf of the Search Committee, thank you for your partnership in this important work.

The following are a few insights from our engagement with candidates to date:

• The Search Committee received strong interest from a large group of highly qualified and diverse leaders from across the country.

• The interested candidates have displayed an extraordinary breadth of experience that aligns well with what our School community identified as most important in terms of the qualifications and priorities for Westminster’s next leader.

• As a diverse Committee representing varying points of view and connections to Westminster, we have endeavored to represent the broad variety of perspectives within our community. This collective effort has played a vital role in the search process.  

Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to sharing more information with you as it becomes available. In the meantime, you can access the position description and all communications related to the search on the President Search Page on Westminster’s website. We remain deeply grateful for your support and contributions to this important endeavor.

Warm regards,

R. Brand Morgan ’94
Search Committee Chair

Click here for the announcement of Westminster's 6th President!