Head of The Madeira School Looks Outward, Toward Future

The Madeira School, McLean’s prestigious and private all-girls high school, has occupied its campus along Georgetown Pike since 1931. In those 80 years, the school has seen many eminent figures pass through its gate, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes, Jane Goodall and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Distinguished alumnae include Katherine Graham and Stockard Channing. Famed socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor studied there but did not graduate.

The school has also weathered some significant gales, including the arrest and incarceration of Jean Harris, its fifth headmistress, who was convicted of killing her lover, a well-known diet doctor, as well as the 1973 murder of a student on campus grounds.

Longtime McLean residents might remember these events. However, it is a testament to the school’s insular community, as well as the ability of this community to close ranks during times of crisis, that Madeira’s legacy has not been so negatively impacted as to deter parents from paying $48,497 a year for their girls to board at the school. (The fee is $36,824 for day students.)

Indeed, one of the significant achievements of Dr. Elisabeth “Betsy” Griffith, who headed the school for 22 years before her retirement in 2010, was to solidify the campus enclave, building new faculty housing and overseeing the renovation of new classrooms and a student center.

Now a new head of school has taken the helm and is piloting the school in a new direction — one that focuses outward, past the white fences along the Pike.

Pilar Cabeza de Vaca recently completed her first year as Madeira’s ninth head of school. McLean Patch recently interviewed the new headmistress.

The first word Ms. Cabeza de Vaca uses to describe herself is “international.”

“I’m not from one culture,” she said. “People ask me where I’m from and I say I’m part Ecuadorian, part American, and I lived 10 years in France.”

Cabeza de Vaca grew up in Ecuador, but chose America, and Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania, for college. She is tri-lingual — a requisite of a career that has spanned three continents. She speaks English, Spanish and French. She described all stages of her professional career with a charming combination of humbleness and can-do-it attitude.

After college, she said, she encountered the thick glass ceiling for the first time in Ecuador. Possible employers kept directing her application toward secretarial work. Instead, she found herself teaching, which she loved. Her employer, the American School of Quito, soon asked her to become its director general. Her reaction was one of shock, albeit a pleasant one. “I hadn’t been a teacher for very long and had no administrative experience,” she remembered.

When she was ready for a major change around the year 2000, she decided to look for jobs in Western Europe or Latin America. A headhunter all but shot her down.

“I went to a headhunter and said ‘I’m looking to leave Ecuador, can you give me some hints?’ He said, ‘your last name isn’t going to cut it. It’s a difficult name. It’s Latin. And you’re coming up through the ranks — you only have experience with one school. That’s not going to cut it. And you’re a woman, and divorced, so that will be held against you.’

“And,” she said, with a hint of whose-got-the-last-laugh-now in her smile, “he told me I was too short.”

His admonitions proved to be incorrect; she was offered a job heading the American School in Paris. “The school had a very bad reputation, but I thought Paris would make up for it,” she said. Most of her male colleagues were stunned at her ascent. “It was like little Pilar was going off to the big leagues,” she recalled. “Looking back, I probably got [the job] because no one else wanted it.”

It took eight years, but Cabeza de Vaca completely turned the school around, bringing it out of the grips of three labor unions and out of a financial black hole.

“It was a challenge,” she said.

Most recently, Cabeza de Vaca was working as the interim executive director of the European Council of International Schools when a headhunter contacted her about the Madeira headmistress opening.

“I went to [Madeira’s] website and saw Betsy’s profile,” she said. “I said, there is no way I would be considered for this position!”

In what is now a common thread in Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative, she underestimated herself. Madeira’s search committee put her on the long list, then the short, before finally offering her the head of school office in December 2009.

Her appointment marked a departure from the norm of the school had been operating under during Griffith’s tenure. “I think the board was really wise in choosing someone so different. There was never the expectation that I had to follow in Betsy’s footsteps,” Cabeza de Vaca said. “This has allowed me to push forward in different directions, and chart my own course.”

“Betsy is a historian and looks at things from a historical perspective,” she continued. “I tend to look at things from a cultural perspective. It’s healthy to have a new head, and a new era. We have to honor the past but forge the future.”

The future, according to Cabeza de Vaca, will be for Madeira to look outside its McLean enclave, and to find inspiration and knowledge in different countries and cultures.

At her September 2010 installation ceremony, Jo Ellen Parker, Cabeza de Vaca’s Bryn Mawr classmate and current Sweet Briar College president, spoke about this new direction for Madeira.  “Your new head of school has called herself a ‘global citizen,’ and has talked and written about the importance of international perspectives to a 21st century education. Here at Madeira, under her leadership, a new generation will be prepared to navigate and succeed in a complex and intriguing world.”

In her own installation speech, Cabeza de Vaca explained her point-of-view: “Although Madeira has always welcomed students from other countries and will continue to do so, I believe it is far more important to educate today’s generations to embrace other cultures, others’ ways of thinking, other points of view in a very global sense.”

Cabeza de Vaca plans to “create a new and improved program that is more holistic and less local,” she said. This includes stressing how imperative it is to learn a second language, read world literature, and keep current with local and world events.

Meredyth Cole, assistant head of school at Madeira, sees the benefits of Cabeza de Vaca’s worldview for Madeira students and its community. “Her wide lens provides a breadth of perspective that is very relevant in today’s world,” she said. “Speaking personally, I have learned so much through conversation about how economies, politics and education differ outside of the United States. Pilar’s global perspective is certainly enriching our school and community.”

Out of Madeira’s 321 girls, 54 percent are boarders. Out of that pool, 13 percent call another country their home. Although Cabeza de Vaca does not necessarily want to drastically shift this makeup, she does want to solicit a broader mix of international students to campus.

She understands, however, that her goals cannot be simply checked off a list. “Financial aid is directed toward international students for that ethnic and racial diversity. So, there is a socio-economic divide at Madeira that we need to be cognizant of, and address,” she explained.

She has something in common with each international student that attends Madeira — she has a tried-and-true answer for this question: "Why would you ever leave a city like Paris for the suburbs of Washington, D.C.?"

“I obviously miss Paris,” she said. “But if I left here in five years, I would say I missed all this nature.”

With her first year at Madeira done, and year two quickly approaching, she has taken a characteristically optimistic look both backward and forward. “My leadership style is very different than Betsy’s. Some people are recalibrating, but all have been very open and very willing to hitch a ride with me.”

Editor's Note: Lauren Edmondson is a graduate of Madeira. We asked her to interview the new head of school because of her knowledge of Madeira.