June 7, 2024, served as my final day of service as the director of the Kigali International Community School (KICS). I am thrilled to share that Dr. Dean Verwey began his service as Head of School at KICS on June 8, 2024. This didn’t happen by accident or without a determined effort. Now, I would love to share what succession has looked like for us at KICS in this process. This is not meant to be a prescriptive list. This is just my journey through this process as an international school leader.
First, it starts with me. As the chief steward of the vision, mission, and values and the wonderful people of our community of KICS, I had to be aware of what God is doing (more on that in the next section) and lead myself and my community through this process. While all other stakeholders are involved (board, leadership, staff, students, parents, etc.), I had to take the mantle of this enormous leadership moment and lead. Lead myself and others towards a successful succession.
Second, I had to prepare myself with the Lord. The call to leave somewhere should be stronger than the call to come. Don’t leave somewhere because it is hard. Leave because God calls. With this in mind, my process began in November 2019 as I sensed the Lord say in my time with Him that He was preparing me for a transition. I was certain the Lord had to be wrong, because just a few months earlier, we had moved into our beautiful, custom-built home. And yet, after hearing the Lord again, I then shared it with my beautiful and loving wife, Susie. We agreed that if the Lord called us away, we would follow. Over the next several months, we continued to seek the Lord and His will for us. At every turn, and in each “fleece” moment, the Lord made it clear; the Lord was leading us to focus our full-time attention on leading B2THEWORLD. This is an educational ministry we co-founded in December 2017 to help serve students in countries impacted by war. For the previous years, we had been leading both. The Lord was preparing us to give B2THEWORLD (video) our undivided attention to serve more students in more countries. This was scary, but clear and invigorating.
Third, I worked on preparing the board. This was tricky because the Lord was making it clear in 2019–2020 that our transition would be in 2024. Do I hold that in until a closer time? Was that lying? What do I do? I decided to share it with my board chair one-on-one. He read a letter I had prepared and then said, “Ben, this is really clear. Now, hold onto this. Don’t share this now; it will do the board no good.” So, I listened. And I am glad that I did. This allowed me to hold in tension that the Lord was preparing me for a transition, and yet, there was much work to be done over this time. If you are following along, this was during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of the 2020–2021 school year, and as my contract was ending in the 2021–2022 school year, I shared with the Board an invitation to pray with Susie and me about succession. They did, and now we were all praying together. When it came time to renew my contract in 2022, I was able to make it clear to the board that I would be signing my final contract as Director of KICS. This allowed for the process of prayer and for the board to have three years of preparation and conversation about what succession would look like.
Fourth, I prepared our community. I shared with the KICS staff in May 2022 that I signed my contract, which would mark my final contract, and our term as KICS Director would finish in June 2024. This was a hard moment. I had always been on the other side of these conversations. I was the one who always stayed. Now, I was sharing with our community that I would be leaving. Many tears were shed. And yet, sharing with the staff in late May of 2022 allowed everyone the summer to experience their feelings. It also allowed us to go through the 2022–2023 school year without any sense that this was our last. It allowed for a normal year. In November/December 2022, as the Board prepared to formalize a search, I shared with the broader KICS community: parents and students. I prepared a blog post that was shared with our friends and the broader community outside of KICS as well. This was done to help prepare them for this transition and to let them know there was an amazing opportunity for the next steward.
Fifth, we went through the process. You can see the Succession list below. It is certainly not exhaustive but has been guided by Peter Greer’s book, Succession, and William Vanderbloemen’s book Next. We relied on others who had gone through the process and sought to learn from them about what worked and what did not work. We then sought to understand what would work best for us.
Succession checklist:
- Identify the timeline of succession and then work backwards.
- Determine if the school will use a search firm or not. There are pros and cons to both.
- Determine a search committee.
- Prepare a profile for the position.
- Share the profile with as many people as possible in your network.
- Task the committee with identifying the best candidates possible.
- Equip the committee with the tools they need to accomplish their work.
- Filter interest → applicants → candidates → finalists.
- Invite finalists to campus for a concentrated visit with key stakeholders. Keep schedules and settings as similar as possible.
- The board makes the final decision after receiving feedback from stakeholders during the visit.
- The board prepares an offer for the top choice with various compensation details.
- Once the candidate accepts the offer, the community is informed.
- Incoming HoS and outgoing HoS connect to map out a transition plan that’s board approved.
- Incoming HoS is included in key decisions: budget, hires, structure, etc.
- Outgoing HoS and incoming HoS map the transition date and how they will support each other.
As I shared, this list is not exhaustive, and we are still going through it. I am sure others who have gone through it before can add to it, and there are details under each of the 15 points above.
I am grateful for God’s provision through this process. KICS is in a wonderful place, and I can’t wait to see how the Lord uses Dr. Dean to steward KICS into its next season. I am grateful for God’s call to KICS and away from KICS to steward B2THEWORLD.
I am thankful for our community, board, and team for the ways they have shown grace, mercy, and love to me in this succession. My prayer is that we will bless the KICS community with a positive and successful succession, the first of its kind.
Though I didn’t share many details about this, my wife is a superstar. Her support has been unwavering and a true example of “Turi Kumwe”—we are together. Work with your spouse to ensure you are on the same page. Do not move forward until you are both together.
If you or your school have questions about succession planning or need help, feel free to reach out to me at ben@b2theworld.org.
SAIS has a wonderful and thorough set of checklists that have been helpful.
About the Author
Ben and his wife Susie co-founded B2THEWORLD in 2017, to help develop schools in countries recovering from war. To date, B2THEWORLD serves over 1,300 students in 5 schools across Pakistan, South Sudan and Rwanda. Their heart’s desire is that every child in every country recovering from war would experience the fullness of life that Jesus describes in John 10:10 and Isaiah 61. Now living in Philidelphia, Ben is an ordained minister who holds a Doctor of Ministry in Global Christianity and Development from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.