The Navigator

Elisabeth “Lisa” Allen LeFort concludes her second term as chair of the Emma Willard School Board of Trustees this June. Having completed her full tenure as trustee, Lisa will end her time on the Board but not her commitment to the Emma Willard community. With deep gratitude, we recognize Lisa and her incredible service to and support of our school.

There are no passengers aboard an America’s Cup race boat, only crew. Racing a forty-year-old “twelve metre” requires all crew members (13 or 14 people) to perform a defined role in choreographed collaboration. Lisa LeFort serves as navigator on the world championshipwinning Challenge XII, a role that closely mirrors her contributions through two stints as chair of the Emma Willard Board of Trustees.

“On a race boat, you have to work as a team: everyone has a job, timing is everything, and communication is critical,” explains Lisa. “And we’re racing against paid sailing professionals who are at the top of their game. But what we have is chemistry as a team, so we believe we’ll beat those other teams. And that’s how we win; we believe in ourselves.”

Serving her second term as board chair (2020–2023), Lisa has helped Emma Willard chart a course through an unprecedented period of challenge and growth for the school. Those who know her best credit Lisa’s quiet confidence and her belief in the possibility of achieving any intended outcome as a galvanizing force for the Emma Willard board and the school’s leadership. The correlation between racing boats and running an organization is clear.

“Lisa loves to sail, and sailing provides a great metaphor for her leadership. She always understood how to position the Emma Willard boat in relation to the wind. When the winds of COVID blew our way, she was steady, calm and nimble, helping us trim our sails continuously to maintain a steady course,” says Head of School Jenny Rao. “Lisa is an extraordinary navigator of boats and historic institutions because she never loses sight of her compass, she uses our mission as our guide, always steering us towards that true north. She has served Emma Willard with distinction, and I believe it will be many years before we can truly grasp the significance of her contributions to this institution.”

Among the many accomplishments during her tenure as trustee, Lisa is especially proud of the planning process that led to the creation of the school’s five-year strategic plan, Leading with Purpose: A Strategic Vision for the Future, which was approved by the Board in May 2021.

“In some ways, the influence of the pandemic and all of the uncertainty associated with it helped us to delve deep into strategic planning as an almost cathartic process. It felt like we—Jenny and I—could be truly productive in that work together,” explains Lisa of the early work on the strategic plan. “And I loved partnering with Jenny because neither one of us is particularly reactionary, and we both had visions for the school that far outstripped the challenges of the moment at hand. There was this unspoken agreement between us that we needed to ‘stick to our knitting,’ as they say, to have a hope of seeing it all come to fruition!”

From innovations in pedagogy to the pursuit of equity and belonging, and from campus preservation to modernization, Leading with Purpose proved essential in helping Emma Willard tack through the headwinds of the pandemic and emerge in a position of even greater strength. As Lisa notes, “We want Emma Willard to have its rightful place among the most prestigious schools in the nation, and the Board sees this plan as a key stepping stone along that path.”

This kind of entrepreneurial thinking extends beyond her role on the Board and into Lisa’s personal life. After starting her career as a teacher of economics and history in a Quaker high school, Lisa made an overnight decision to purchase two trailer loads of used office furniture that she would ultimately transform into a booming business and one of the largest woman-owned enterprises in the state of Florida. It’s this kind of calculated but opportunistic decision-making that has been a hallmark of Lisa’s leadership and left an indelible impression on her peers.

“Over the past six years, I have had the opportunity to watch Lisa successfully lead our school as a Trustee and as the Board Chair through complex, difficult, and often joyful times—and her leadership skills have been on full display throughout,” says fellow trustee and classmate Betsy Gross ’72. “She was so purposeful in launching both the strategic plan and the current capital campaign and was persuasive in cajoling alumnae and others to take on key assignments. Lisa is a real leader, who thinks strategically both for the short and long term. She has shown her love, dedication, and passion for the mission of our alma mater and has worked tirelessly to greatly improve so many aspects of our school!”

Outside the Emma boardroom and off the open seas, Lisa has two sons, Bryce (38) and Alec (35), both of whom also sail along with her and her husband, Jack LeFort, who skippers Challenge XII. Bryce and his spouse Charlotte have a young daughter August; while she has yet to embark on her own sailing career, one might imagine it’s in the cards for this next generation.

The LeForts won their first America’s Cup world championship in 2019, just three years after purchasing their vessel—an incredible accomplishment by any measure, but all the sweeter due to the composition of their crew of family and friends, and the age of the boats that are raced. This July, after stepping down from the Board, Lisa (along with Jack) will make one more run for the world championship, and she sees a clear metaphor for her time at Emma Willard as she prepares for this next challenge: “Given the historic nature of our boat, I will be using every tool and technique available to help the crew push it to the limits of performance. It’s a complex job to be the navigator but, if you want to be on the boat, you must have a job. And you don’t waste time wondering whether you’ll fail or succeed; you just do your job!”

INTERVIEW BY LUKE MEYERS