Rich Levine

Background

About Rich Levine

A four-time independent school governance leader—first as board chair, trustee, finance committee head, CFOO and now as Director of Special Projects & Operations—Rich Levine understands the complexities and challenges leaders and administrators face. As a strategic partner to heads of schools and boards, Rich brings a blend of cross-disciplinary private and public sector experience to his work helping schools meet those challenges—steadily advising and leading across a range of opportunities unique to independent schools. His expertise covers- strategic prioritization and organizational structures - financial sustainability - development planning, debt management, and reserves - capital campaigns and endowments - facilities maintenance and expansion - diversity, equity, and inclusion - annual admissions and financial aid - parent, student and personnel relations Rich began his work with independent schools while still an executive in the private sector, where he spent 25+ years building, scaling, and commercializing online and offline businesses and products for start-up to Fortune 500 companies such as Charles Schwab, Nestle, and Dole. During that time, he created and managed eight businesses across the digital commerce, banking and finance, and consumer packaged goods industries, including leadership of a hundred-million-dollar business and functional oversight for divisions exceeding one billion dollars. Six of those businesses were first-to-market concepts, products, or businesses, including developing an online, branded, web-based trading community; building a first-ever worldwide partnership for a fully integrated credit card experience; rolling out a nationally-branded, cross-channel line of juice drinks; creating the first branded kids’ juice drink in recyclable pouches; conceiving and marketing the world’s first caffeinated juice drink; and manufacturing pre-colored raw materials for an Asia-based manufacturer. Inspired early by his father’s family-owned writing instruments business, Rich leads from the belief that people and purpose sit at the heart of every good product and service offering. From his earliest days as a leader, Rich focused on cultivating employees and team cultures around a sense of community that ultimately became as important as delivering on that belief. Outside the office, is also an amateur photographer and has traveled across five continents and 40+ countries, where his passion for amateur photography ensured the experiences live on forever.