A Long-Standing Partnership 

Over the years Edgility and our team of experts have become trusted partners to the team at Value Schools. In fact, their emphasis on equal opportunities and outcomes for all students has been supported by Edgility’s equity-driven talent management and retention services since 2016. The Value Schools team has repeatedly shown that their staff are at the heart of their work, and they will do what is needed to support them and their ability to serve their diverse student body. 

• Value Schools is a Los Angeles based organization whose mission “is to establish and support high quality, values based elementary and secondary charter schools for populations of students who have been historically underserved by the public school system”. 

In 2022, our team led the successful search for Value Schools’ current CEO and President, Loreen Riley, a visionary leader with a wealth of experience in both the education and nonprofit sectors. After observing Ms.Riley serving in the role successfully for the past two years, the Value Schools Board wanted to provide support that would ensure she was able to continue to fulfill the organization’s goals. With the deep knowledge of Value Schools’ mission, values, and leadership needs from the past CEO search, Edgility was uniquely positioned to help their Board conduct a CEO evaluation, a service developed by Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Christina Greenberg in 2024. Recently, Christina sat down with Value Schools’ Board Chair Vincent (Vince) Gonzales to reflect on the process and outcome. 

The Advantage of a Formal CEO Performance Evaluation 

Good leaders desire feedback. While many may think an Executive Director or CEO has all the answers and needs no direction, strong leaders embrace constructive criticism and clear expectations from their stakeholders. A comprehensive, thoughtful review process allows for effective feedback to help senior leaders perform at the level they expect of themselves and their Board expects of them. This also gives Board members the ability to monitor and gain insight into progress on mission-critical goals. Acknowledging the importance of goal-driven evaluation, the Board at Value Schools leveraged Edgility’s CEO Evaluation service to celebrate and support their high-performing leader, while ensuring her continued success. 

Why Edgility’s CEO Evaluation Makes Sense 

Non-profit and school board members are exemplary volunteers (many of whom are leaders themselves) with a passion for the mission of the organization they are serving. As volunteers, however, their desire to support the leader of their organization in tangible ways, such as a formal evaluation process, can be constricted by competing demands on their time. Value Schools’ Board of Directors initially intended to complete Ms. Riley’s performance evaluation internally. Time constraints led to a change of plans, however, and they contracted with Edgility to ensure the evaluation was run effectively without pulling focus from other mission-critical matters. Their Board Chair Mr. Gonzales expressed gratitude that they chose to work with Edgilty, describing the process as “comprehensive”, “inclusive”, “thoughtful”, and “structured.” 

Edgility’s Executive Director/ CEO Evaluation service was designed by Christina Greenberg (a fellow leader and board member) with board members and leaders of mission-driven organizations in mind. By partnering with an organization’s board of directors, Edgility is able to provide a comprehensive and well-structured evaluation that involves key stakeholders while being cognizant of everyone’s time and resources. Edgility acts as a trusted conduit for the process, ultimately delivering a synthesized performance report to board members based on data collected and in relation to agreed upon targets. 

Expert Advice: Learn how to build leadership competencies with our guide! 

Advice from a Board Chair 

Value Schools Board Chair, Vincent Gonzales, shares his advice for Boards looking to provide a performance review of their leader: Defer to the experts. He reflects that “a CEO evaluation is a very different process” to that of less-senior leaders and staff, and “it helps to have one degree of separation.” Edgility team members are unbiased experts who can provide impartial guidance for completing CEO evaluations, and Mr. Gonzales said the Board appreciated the value a third-party brought by being able to synthesize multiple opinions and perspectives without giving any one viewpoint too much weight. Edgility had a unique level of insight that they brought to the process beyond what Value Schools felt they could have achieved on their own. 

A Partner Through and Through

The long-standing relationship between Edgility and Value Schools allowed for greater impact in the evaluation as well. In total, Ms. Riley oversees the entirety of the organization including the work that her principals do as “on-the-ground” leadership of Value Schools’ four schools (K-12). Because of this, a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t support the needs of Ms. Riley or the organization as a whole. Edgility’s expertise and long time work in the education space enabled a process that helped the Board understand Ms. Riley’s performance in relation to others in similar situations and in similar times in their career rather than evaluating her in a vacuum. In addition, having led the competency-based hiring process that led to Ms. Riley’s initial appointment as Value Schools’ CEO, Edgility was not starting from scratch and its team was able to build on its thorough knowledge of Value Schools and Ms. Riley herself as it led this evaluation process. 

This context shone a spotlight on just how much she was succeeding in the role. The Edgility team took great care to steward the busy Board of Directors through a well received process and solution, and ultimately, the evaluation gave the Board at Value Schools the opportunity to structure goals and feedback to Ms. Riley. Intentional goals and timely feedback are crucial to the success of any organization, as they allow for regular recognition and help staff to continue growing professionally. As a long-time partner, we were honored to be able to give their team another tool in which to help aid in the success of their organization, and the professional fulfillment of their CEO.