Building the Dream Team: Recruiting, Forming, and Inspiring Catholic School Board Members

Wednesday, March 25, 2026
6:00 - 7:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

Presented by Kevin Baxter, EdD - Director, Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program (University of Notre Dame)

Audience: All Catholic School Boards

Explore practical strategies to attract committed members, nurture culture, and keep volunteers engaged.

About Dr. Baxter:

Dr. Kevin Baxter serves as the Director of the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program where he oversees the formation of Catholic school leaders and serves as a professor. Students in the Remick Leadership Program earn a master’s degree in educational leadership as they learn to build robust Catholic school communities, advance teaching and learning, and manage school resources.

Baxter has had a long career dedicated to serving students, teachers and principals in Catholic schools. Over the span of more than 20 years, he has taught middle and high school math and science; served as an assistant principal, principal and superintendent of elementary schools; and, in 2015, became superintendent of schools in the nation’s largest Catholic archdiocese, with more than 265 schools and 77,500 students.

At NCEA, Baxter developed the New Leaders Academy, a leadership formation program for new Catholic school principals, and also focused on reform initiatives in governance and school finance. He co-wrote the book “Greatness in Smallness: A Vision for Catholic Microschools,” which looks to shift the paradigm on how to evaluate schools based on enrollment size. He collaborated with ACE on LEAD, a new initiative designed to increase Latino leadership in Catholic schools. After the pandemic struck, Baxter worked on converting NCEA offerings to virtual programming and taking the lead in creating the virtual meeting structure for the Catholic Leadership Summit in fall 2020.

In addition to his experience working in Catholic schools, Baxter has taught graduate-level courses in educational leadership for almost 20 years. He taught courses on transformative leadership, organizational leadership and private school law and ethics at Loyola Marymount University. He has also taught and served as an executive coach in the Remick Leadership Program and written and spoken extensively on leadership in Catholic schools.

Baxter earned a bachelor’s degree from Villanova University, a master’s degree in secondary education from Loyola Marymount and a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Southern California.