President of Fieldstone Consulting, Inc.®, Dr. William A. Weary serves boards and administrations of universities, colleges, independent schools, and nonprofits generally, in the United States and abroad. Assignments include planning, governance, assessment, transition management, and facilitation. Some 300 institutions have been served since 1994 and Fieldstone Consulting's founding. He is in his 25th year of full-time consulting.
In addition to ongoing consulting in higher education, Bill has written and presented widely, largely on presidential and board assessment, presidential search, and board leadership. Works include:
- Presidential and Board Assessment in Higher Education: Purposes, Policies & Strategies, with Richard T. Ingram (Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, 2000).
- Essentials of Presidential Search (AGB, 1994).
- "The Role of the Board in Presidential Transition," in James Martin and James E. Samels, eds., Presidential Transition in Higher Education: Managing Leadership Change, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
- "Stressed Institutions: The Role of the Board," in James Martin and James E. Samels, eds., Turnaround: Leading Stressed Colleges and Universities to Excellence (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
Presentations for higher education include workshops on presidential and board assessment and on presidential search at the National Conference on Trusteeship of the AGB (1995-2007, and 1995-2003, respectively), as well as a panel discussion on presidential assessment for The Chronicle of Higher Education's conference on the state of the academic presidency (2006).
In conjunction with his consulting to independent schools, Bill has spoken at the 1996, 1997, 1999, and 2004 annual conferences of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and regularly has delivered keynote addresses for state, regional, and other associations of independent schools. Significant assignments have included assisting NAIS in preparation of its transformational strategic plan (1999), guiding the planning and restructuring of the International Boys' School Coalition (2000), focusing the Southern Association of Independent Schools on its next plan (2006), and, for the Speaker and Republican Leader of the U. S. House of Representatives, conducting with a colleague the first comprehensive assessment of the House Page Program (2008).
Bill has engaged broadly in issues of global education, both with international schools (Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, Japan, and Switzerland) and with universities (Albania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and, tangentially, Mongolia). Through the Open Society Institute in Budapest, he has led workshops on governance for private universities of Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union; for OSI he also spoke on university autonomy to the rectors and ministers of education of the state universities of Ukraine and Georgia (2005). In the fall of 2007, for the association of board chairs of Spanish universities (Conferencia de Consejos Sociales de Universidades Españolas), he delivered an address on best practice in university governance.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College, Dr. Weary holds both master's and doctoral degrees in history from Yale University. He taught European history at Amherst and Bowdoin Colleges, did research on early modern France and the house of La Trémoïlle as a graduate fellow at the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research in the Humanities, and headed the upper schools of Abington Friends School in Philadelphia and the Dalton School in New York City. After leaving Dalton, he consulted and wrote for some years at Independent School Management (DE), which he left to join the former AGB Presidential Search Consultation Service as a director. As president of Fieldstone Consulting, he has continued to work with AGB on numerous projects, including its strategic plan.
Bill has served on three boards of educational institutions, Friends World College in New York, Wilmington Friends School in Delaware, and Hebron Academy in Maine. For 14 years he has been president of his condominium association. Living in Washington, D.C., he also spends considerable time at his home in Maine.