Pre-Conference Workshops — 2025 ICGS Conference

Conference Overview | Registration | Sponsors | Schedule of Programming | Pre-Conference Workshops | Networking Opportunities | Keynote Speakers | Breakout Sessions | INSPIRE! Sessions | Post-Conference School Visits | Hotel Accommodations | While You’re in Philadelphia |  Participating Schools/Organizations

ICGS is pleased to offer Conference delegates the opportunity to participate in Pre-Conference Workshop opportunities, to take place at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown in advance of Conference programming. Each three-hour workshop is scheduled for 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on June 23, 2025. There is an additional $150 USD fee to participate. Space is limited. 

Registration for these opportunities is included on the Conference registration form. If you have already registered to attend the Conference, and you’d like to add this opportunity to your event itinerary, please email Dorothy Martindale at dmartindale@girlsschools.org.

Choose from the following options:

  • Fostering Leadership Through Healthy Relationships and Consent Education
  • Intercultural Dialogue Workshop: Connecting with Empathy Across Difference
  • Building a Compelling Future Positioning in ICGS Girls Schools: Enacting a Reputation Led Strategy Process
  • Coaching: A Key to Success
  • From Classroom to Catalyst: Nurturing Creativity and Confidence in All Learners

Fostering Leadership Through Healthy Relationships and Consent Education
with I Have The Right To 

As educators, one of the most powerful ways to empower young girls is to teach them the foundational skills of healthy relationships and consent. These principles are not only essential for personal well-being but also form the bedrock of effective leadership. In this workshop, educators will gain valuable tools and strategies to help girls develop into strong, confident, and empathetic leaders by fostering self-awareness, mutual respect, and the ability to set and respect boundaries in all relationships. Through a combination of theory, practical exercises, and discussion, this workshop will explore how teaching girls about healthy relationships, consent, and power dynamics can ignite their leadership potential.

Presenters: Susan Prout, Founder; Karen Udall, Program Development Coordinator | I Have The Right To

Intercultural Dialogue Workshop: Connecting with Empathy Across Difference 
with the Institute for Global Learning

Our students want to engage with challenging issues and talk about what’s happening in the world. Yet most secondary schools have limited capacity to provide curriculum-integrated opportunities for real dialogue that develops competencies students need to succeed in schools, workplaces, and beyond. In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to explore the various school models of intercultural dialogues, to learn from data collected by the Institute for Global Learning (formerly GEBG) over two years of study with a group of educators, and to engage with a new publication on integrating intercultural dialogue in various aspects of a school’s curriculum.

Participants will:

  • understand how various models of intercultural dialogue teach essential competencies relevant to their students’ future success.
  • be able to identify how to integrate new opportunities for intercultural dialogue or to enhance existing dialogues.
  • become inspired to utilize this straightforward, low-cost pedagogy in programming, particularly supported by a new and free resource.

Presenter: Melissa Brown, Director of Professional Development and Intercultural Programs | Institute for Global Learning

Building a Compelling Future Positioning in ICGS Girls’ Schools: Enacting a Reputation-Led Strategy Process
with The 5Rs Partnership

Is your school operating in a competitive context where differentiated positioning and reputation are key imperatives to act on for future sustainability and planning?

If yes, this is a must attend pre-conference workshop for leaders of girls’ schools that will impart a thought-provoking and practical new lens to meet the complex educational and market challenges of our times. More than ever, the outputs of a strategic process need to provide compelling and cogent reasons for parents, girls, and staff to choose and then stay at your school.

In our extensive global commissioning with ICGS schools, we find that the best leaders in girls’ schools create ambitious, big picture understandings, bring them into possibility through strategic foundations including visioning, make them live through culture, pedagogy, learning habitat, and curriculum, and articulate them through authentic messaging. Joining these elements in one planning process is now crucial to impact.

This interactive pre-conference workshop will provide key pathways, strategies and change drivers to success for ICGS schools. The outcome will be a reframing of how schools should understand, develop, and enact a whole of school strategic process to deliver numerous shared possibilities for your girls, staff, parents, and alumni.

Presenter: Stephen Holmes, Founder | The 5Rs Partnership

Coaching: A Key to Success
with Carney, Sandoe & Associates

Carney, Sandoe & AssociatesMost school administrators come to their jobs without direct experience in many of their new responsibilities. We learn our jobs primarily by doing, often through trial by fire.  Wouldn’t it be helpful to have someone guide us through this learning process? Someone with experience and someone trained to help us build confidence by finding the resources within ourselves to succeed? Someone who offers a judgment-free zone to process. That’s what a coach does. Two experienced girls’ school heads and certified executive coaches will share research and their own experiences on the benefits of coaching for Heads and other senior administrators.

Presenters: Susanna Jones, Senior Consultant; Ann Teaff, Senior Consultant/Practice Leader, Leadership Coaching Practice | Carney, Sandoe & Associates 

From Classroom to Catalyst: Nurturing Creativity and Confidence in All Learners
with Marymount School of New York Creative Technology Team

Director Ava DuVernay once noted, “Don’t wait for permission to do something creative.” This raises the question: how do we as educators help our learners build a creative mindset, one that empowers them to take risks, embrace curiosity, and develop innovative solutions to complex problems. Participants will engage in a series of hands-on, minds-on activities that help students (and you) model creativity at any age and in any discipline. By the end of the session, participants will walk away with a toolkit of creative ideas to foster a classroom environment where students feel confident embracing ambiguity, expressing their ideas, and tackling challenges creatively. 

Presenters: Lillian Ritchie, Director of Innovation; Don Buckley, Entrepreneurship Educator; Eric Walters, Director of STEM | Marymount New York