22 and half dholakia webb mag sp17

NewsNotes FROM AND FOR THE ALUMNI OF THE WEBB SCHOOLS

22 and a half minutes with Sanjay

Dholakia ’87

Chair of the Board of Trustees

Powerful Priorities

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H

is is an old-fashioned American success story—

a dynamic, first-generation businessperson who marries the girl he met in high school—yet it’s also remarkable to note: his story takes place in the lead-up to the 21st Century and not the 1950s.

Sanjay Dholakia ’87 has held a handful of important leadership roles: CMO at Marketo, CEO of Crowd Factory, and CMO of Lithium. His career has paralleled the rise of technology and globalization, and he’s had the remarkable opportunity to help shape and participate in the early transformation of an industry.

He holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BS in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Through one of the earliest applications of the Internet— findi g old classmates online—he reconnected with his high school friend, Melissa Barnes ’87. The year was 1996. Barnes was in Taiwan helping to build a school system (today, she is the founder of MBD Partners, supporting new and existing

Webb Magazine • Spring 2017

charter schools in the areas of school design, goal setting and monitoring, and performance reporting). They dated throughout graduate school and in 1998 they married; they now have two children, Maya and Kai, and live in Bend, Oregon. His brother, Sameer ’91, also attended Webb. In 2001, the family established the Pravina Dholakia Scholarship at Webb, an endowed fi ancial aid fund, in honor of their mother, to provide scholarship support for a deserving Vivian Webb School student. “My mother used to tell us, ‘You can’t take anything with you when you leave this earth. The measure of your life is in the number of people you help,’” he explained.

Dholakia currently enjoys working with boards and companies to help them achieve their maximum potential as well as giving back to his community. A community he is most appreciative of is Webb and this year, he stepped into its most vital volunteer role: Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

Q&A

What are the board’s priorities and goals for Webb in the coming year?

Our overall purpose and mission is clearly to help the institution succeed and thrive; and, to help the leadership and the faculty execute their jobs. On the most basic level, there are two focus areas for the board this year: 1) To build-out and expand our board by adding depth and capacity as we approach The Centennial of the school, and 2) To celebrate The Centennial of the school in a meaningful and impactful way.

We’re five years away from Webb’s 100th year (1922-2022) and we have had The Centennial Strategic Plan as our guide (www.webb.org/about); the board needs to help Webb’s leadership team execute that plan. Marketing is near and dear to my heart, and with Joe Woodward, director of strategic communications, leading the way, the board will be able to provide guidance and thoughtful partnership. As we move forward as an institution, we must get even better at focusing on our target markets and articulating our unique value to families and supporters alike.

It goes without saying that my life would not be what it is without Webb. To say I love the Schools is not hyperbole.

As Webb nears its 100th anniversary in 2022, what do you see as the school strengths? And what are areas for continued success?

I always say that our greatest strength is our world-class faculty and leadership team. These folks really make Webb what it is for our students and families.

In a broader sense, for the past five years, the board has worked hard with the leadership team to identify what is unique about Webb. There are five qualities we’ve distinguished: 1) Our location. Webb is the only boarding/day school located on the front porch of the Claremont Colleges and the greater Los Angeles area. We’re not isolated. We’re in the second largest urban region in the United States, facing the Pacifi Rim. And while our campus is snuggly protected at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, we have access to relationships, experiences and resources that uniquely come from living in a diverse, fast-growing region. Our students learn to be global citizens in the truest sense of the word.

2) Our museum. We are the only high school in the world with a nationally accredited museum on our campus, one that contributes to the unbounded thinking of our students in countless ways, from exploration and adventure to understanding basic precepts of science.

3) Our coordinate structure. With two schools on one campus —Webb School of California for boys, and Vivian Webb School for girls—we can provide the best of both worlds for our students: single sex education in grades 9 and 10 where it matters most, and co-ed education after that. Plus, a full range of leadership opportunities on campus with roles at each school for a number of students.

4) Our focus on unbounded thinking. This focus is producing young men and women who can think and act beyond traditional boundaries and lines.

5) Our Honor Code. It’s embedded in our culture and the mandate to graduate honorable leaders will never change.

Still, the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement— we’ve worked on those five areas for a long time and we’re always looking forward. We want to continue to take advantage of our location and build partnerships that create an ever richer experience for our students—the sky’s the limit there; also, to achieve new heights of awareness for the Alf Museum and integrate it more fully at Webb.

Honestly, the school does so much, so well. Not many institutions live to be 100 years old and are able to look beyond that.

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What are the board’s long range goals?

We need to start thinking about the next 100 years. The key work will be increasing our endowment. But we also want to continue to develop a strategic marketing plan, one that will build Webb into the global thought leader in secondary education. In very tight circles, we’re known around the world for the caliber of our students and our innovative educational offeri gs. We want that thought process to extend to the masses—beyond the knowledge of other schools’ heads and to parents globally.

How does a school like Webb honor its 100 years of tradition while at the same time move forward alongside the fast-paced changes in technology, society and educational pedagogy?

The key is honoring the underlying pillars of Webb’s success: its principles, culture and values.

Sometimes people are confused by the defi ition of “tradition” in discussing a school, or any organization, for that matter.

For example, you do things a certain way, like wearing a tie to dinner. But at Webb—and generally to me—tradition is about honoring the fundamental values.

I sometimes use the examples of the big companies, Kodak and GE, to illustrate the point. Both were founded within years of each other back around 1890. Kodak is gone because it kept trying to do the same thing, over and over instead of trying to honor its underlying value of ‘trying to make taking pictures as easy as using a pencil.’ GE, of course, continues to thrive because it has had an ongoing commitment to innovation.

The Webb Schools • WEBB.ORG