Heather Hoerle

Heather became our executive director in 2011. Working with the leadership team, she sets a clear direction for the staff, inspiring gold-standard service for our constituents and pushing for us to continuously innovate. Externally, in her work with schools and the wider education sector, she aims to advance the profession of enrollment management and empower individual professionals.
Since taking the helm of The Enrollment Management Association, she has led us through several steps to modernize the organization itself and professionalize the admission and enrollment industry. In that time, we have restructured our management, rebuilt our IT infrastructure, enhanced our SSAT test development processes and procedures, launched an elementary level SSAT, grown the use of the Standard Application Online to bring more families to the independent school community, and published groundbreaking research in the field of enrollment management.

A thought leader in enrollment management, Heather commissioned our first special committee on the future of assessment and personally led the charge to reposition the work of enrollment management as both strategic and foundational to institutional success.Heather’s career began in independent schools as an administrator, student advisor, and teacher at George School (Pennsylvania) and Westtown School (Pennsylvania).

She then embarked on a successful 23-year tenure in leadership roles with two of the world’s largest nonprofit independent school associations: first as associate director of The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS), then as director of admission and marketing services for The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), leading to a vice presidency at NAIS overseeing membership, corporate affiliations, customer service, and the annual NAIS Conference.

Heather holds a BA in art history from Mount Holyoke College and a master’s of education in educational administration from Harvard University. She has been a board member for Westtown School (her alma mater) and is presently a trustee for the National Business Officers Association, Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart, and New Jersey Association of Independent Schools.