In the last week of March 2026, our Head of School Chris Hancock successfully defended his dissertation and we are pleased to announce that he is now "Dr. Hancock"! Dr. Hancock completed his doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. 

Dr. Hancock says, "It's been a long, insightful journey, and I'm grateful to the Benchmark community for their warm support from the start. I'm thrilled to have deepened my expertise to help me lead this wonderful school and hopefully shape some necessary changes within the broader independent school landscape."

The title of Dr. Hancock's dissertation is "Head of School Intuition and the Simulated Experience." He partnered with a Philadelphia-based company, SchoolSims, to create a suite of simulations designed to focus on independent school leadership decision-making and intuition development. The purpose of this study was to examine how, if at all, an independent school leader’s intuition differs by years of experience and to identify observable patterns of behaviors that emerged during a simulation.

 

 

Here is the formal conclusion of Dr. Hancock's research: 

Conclusion:

This study demonstrates that intuition among independent school heads is not a static trait. Rather, it is a dynamic cognitive process deeply shaped by experience. Veteran heads draw on extensive professional histories to make faster, more assured judgments, often grounded in mission alignment and informed by emotionally resonant prior experiences. Novice heads, still developing authority within their communities, tend to approach complex problems with greater expression of nerves, heightened curiosity, intentional collaboration, and more protracted decision-making—patterns that may yield innovative solutions even as they signal a still-maturing intuitive process. This study also highlights the effectiveness of simulated experiences at surfacing these differences and making visible and measurable an independent school head’s capacities to notice, interpret, respond and reflect.

Ultimately, this study underscores that intuition—perhaps considered ineffable or unteachable by virtue of its relative non-existence in educational leadership programs, research, and general discourse—can be examined, understood, and developed as it has been for a long time in many other fields (Okoli et al., 2016; Lasater, 2007; Bakken & Gilliam, 2003). In an era where independent school heads increasingly confront ambiguous, high-stakes challenges that put their school’s futures and their own on the line, cultivating intuitive capacity across the leadership pipeline is not simply beneficial—it is essential.