Secondariae LLC is headed by Daniel D. DeMars, a former Trustee of Cardigan Mountain School, a private all-boys junior (grades 6-9) boarding school in Canaan NH. His work with Cardigan encompassed more than that requested of the typical Trustee: teaching intellectual property, chairing the Parents’ Association, assessing the financial viability of several programs, consulting on academic programs involving invention & innovation and serving as the school’s first Strategic Initiatives Liaison. Additionally, he has consulted with other private schools in establishing collaborative programmatic (e.g., STEM, innovation) relationships with nearby colleges and universities. Mr DeMars holds a BS in Chemistry from Siena College, an MS in Pathology from the University of Vermont and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The first thirty years of his professional career were focused on managing both the scientific and business sides of biomedical product research, development & commercialization, with particular emphasis in the commercial development of academic research and facilitating relationships between university-based researchers and the private sector. Over the course of his career, he has worked with numerous universities and academic medical centers, including the UCLA School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Pittsburgh, Dartmouth Medical School, Eastern Virginia Medical School, University of Vermont College of Medicine, Duke University, California Institute of Technology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Albany Medical Center and the University of Washington.
His raison d’etre for Secondariae is simple and applicable: Heads of School – and their governing boards – often have a “bullet list” of operational items to which they simply cannot attend, for whatever reason(s). Their time is limited, they have a myriad of other duties, they are traveling frequently to meet with donors and parents, their senior administration is already burdened with day-to-day responsibilities, trustees are often unavailable to lend an operational hand and – due to the very nature of their position – they lack an outsider’s perspective. None of these are the fault of either the Head or the Board of Trustees…they are merely the nature and consequence of their unique leadership positions within their respective schools.
As a parent of two sons who attended independent/boarding schools, plus his tenure as both a Trustee and Strategic Initiatives Liaison, Mr DeMars understands how independent schools operate. Located in Vermont across the Connecticut River from the bucolic campus of Dartmouth College, his geographical location allows easy access to independent schools within New England and New York, as well as the rest of the northeastern US where the majority of independent/boarding schools are located. He provides an objective set of eyes and ears that can address an independent school’s challenge(s) with knowledge, experience, perspective and creativity; well-versed on strategic management, innovations in education, fiscal planning, university relations, operational issues and organizational behavior, he is following his deep-seated passion and devoting the “back nine” of his professional career in the pursuit of assisting independent schools and making them even better than they are today.