What would it take to keep principals in the role long enough to lead lasting change?

In this episode, Alejandra Barbosa, CEO of the Educator Collective and founder of the Principal Impact Collaborative, shares how a Dallas-Fort Worth fellowship supports school leaders through the years when most are likely to leave. Built around community, design thinking, adaptive leadership, and a broad view of well-being, the program has led to a 90% retention rate among graduates, ten points above the regional average. Principals design and test their own solutions, from new student engagement protocols to a student-run store that brought one school’s chronically absent students up to 94% attendance.

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Key Insights

• The Year Three to Five Gap: Why most principals leave before the five years it takes to institutionalize change, and what that turnover costs schools.
• Community Over Isolation: How a fellowship built on psychological safety turns peers into lasting support.
• Start Small, Fail Cheap: Why low-risk design projects, shaped by student voice, outperformed expensive fixes.
• Leading Adults: What adaptive leadership looks like for principals who trained to lead students, not staff.
• Well-Being Beyond Self-Care: How values, purpose, and flow, not just sleep and exercise, help leaders stay in the job.

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