35 Leading Thought Leaders in Catholic Schooling

Introduction

The Catholic school system is the largest single network of private education on earth. With more than 55,000 schools across 200 countries and over 150 million students walking through Catholic school gates every year, it is a force of extraordinary scale and equally extraordinary responsibility. Yet for a system of this size, the conversation about who is genuinely shaping its future, and whose thinking is worth following, remains surprisingly fragmented. If you lead a Catholic school, work within a Catholic education system, or sit on a board responsible for the mission of a Catholic school community, the thinkers and practitioners on this list represent the clearest signal in a very noisy information landscape.

The paradox of Catholic schooling in 2026 is this: in the countries where Catholic education was born and flourished, enrolment pressure, staff shortages, declining Mass attendance among families, and the financial viability of smaller schools create real existential questions. In sub-Saharan Africa, the Philippines, and parts of Latin America, by contrast, Catholic schools are growing faster than the Church can build them. The thought leaders who matter most right now are those who can hold this tension honestly: who can articulate why Catholic schools exist, what makes them distinctively valuable, and what it will take to sustain them through a century of unprecedented complexity. That is exactly what the 35 people on this list are doing.

This directory covers researchers, system leaders, speakers, formation experts, and practitioner heads of school. It spans Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and beyond. Whether you are a principal looking for the next great professional development read, a superintendent building a conference programme, or a board member trying to understand the intellectual landscape your school operates within, this guide is your starting point.

Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with over 10,000 copies sold globally and a Certified Working Genius Facilitator trusted by leadership teams in schools around the world, works with Catholic school leaders on the team dynamics and culture that make everything else possible. To discuss how Jonno's facilitation work might serve your school or system, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Catholic Schooling Matters: The Stakes

Catholic schools do something that very few educational institutions in the world attempt: they try to educate the whole person. Not just the intellect, but the conscience, the spirit, and the social imagination. The phrase sounds aspirational, even clichéd. But the evidence suggests it is more than rhetoric. The landmark study Catholic Schools and the Common Good, co-authored by Anthony Bryk, Valerie Lee, and Peter Holland and published by Harvard University Press, demonstrated that Catholic high schools consistently produced more equitable outcomes for students from disadvantaged backgrounds than comparable secular schools. The mechanism was not religious coercion. It was communal organisation, a shared sense of purpose, and a belief that every student could achieve. Those findings have not lost their relevance in the decades since the book was published.

The stakes are high in a second sense. In many Western countries, the Catholic school system is under pressure it has not faced before. Teaching staff with genuine Catholic formation are harder to recruit. School communities in which more than half the families no longer practise their faith represent a significant challenge to mission integrity. And the governance and financial structures that sustained Catholic schooling through the twentieth century are straining under the weight of twenty-first century demands. The thought leaders on this list are the people confronting these realities with intellectual rigour and pastoral wisdom. Following their work is not optional for anyone who takes the mission of Catholic schooling seriously.

To book Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and experienced keynote speaker, for a keynote or workshop session with your Catholic school leadership team, email jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect.

How This List Was Compiled

This directory was built through a systematic multi-source research process. Candidates were identified through analysis of the Global Researchers Advancing Catholic Education (GRACE) network, the National Catholic Educational Association's conference programming, the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education's faculty and leadership, the Alliance for Catholic Education at the University of Notre Dame, the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales, and peak Catholic education bodies across Australia including the National Catholic Education Commission. Each candidate was then assessed against six criteria: original intellectual or practical contribution to Catholic schooling, current active engagement with the field, geographic diversity, disciplinary diversity spanning research, system leadership, formation, and practice, genuine credentials in Catholic education specifically, and capacity to be engaged directly by school communities for speaking, facilitation, consulting, or professional development.

The list reflects a deliberate effort to include voices from across the Anglophone Catholic education world while acknowledging that the strongest concentrations of active, publicly accessible thought leadership currently sit in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Voices from the Global South, where Catholic schooling is growing fastest, are underrepresented here not because they are less important, but because the international scholarly and professional networks in which thought leadership circulates in English are still predominantly Northern. That gap is worth naming and worth closing.

Category 1: The Mission and Identity Architects

These thought leaders have dedicated their careers to the foundational question of what makes a school genuinely Catholic in a secular age. Their work is theological, philosophical, and rigorously practical. They are the people to read when a school leadership team is asking whether the mission is alive or merely described in a document nobody has opened since induction day.

1. Thomas Groome | Boston College

For nearly five decades, the foundational question in Catholic religious education has been answered most comprehensively by Thomas Groome. His framework of Shared Christian Praxis, developed in his 1980 landmark text Christian Religious Education and refined through ten books and more than a thousand public presentations across six continents, transformed how Catholic schools and parishes approach the task of handing on faith. What makes Groome's contribution enduring is that he never separated the intellectual from the spiritual or the pedagogical from the theological. His 2021 book What Makes Education Catholic: Spiritual Foundations, published by Orbis Books, distils his life's work into a practitioner-accessible exploration of why Catholic education exists from its deepest historical and spiritual roots through to the classroom and staffroom of today.

Groome has served as Professor of Theology and Religious Education at Boston College's School of Theology and Ministry since 1976, and his influence on how Catholic educators across Australia, North America, Ireland, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Asia understand their vocation is without parallel in the contemporary field.

2. Jonathan Doyle | One Catholic Teacher

Among the most widely heard voices in Catholic education globally, Jonathan Doyle has spoken to more than 500,000 people in live events across Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Europe, and Asia. His keynote address at the National Catholic Educational Association Convention in St Louis to an audience of 10,000 delegates produced an immediate wave of diocesan invitations for return visits, and his daily Catholic Teacher podcast reaches Catholic educators around the world on a weekly basis. He spoke at the NCEA Catholic Leaders Summit in Phoenix in October 2025 and remains among the most active Catholic education keynote speakers in the world. He is also the founder of the Going Deeper Catholic Teacher Formation Program, used by hundreds of Catholic schools annually to support the ongoing formation of teaching staff.

Doyle holds a Masters degree in Leadership and Management from the University of Newcastle and has undertaken postgraduate study in philosophical anthropology at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute. His particular contribution is bridging the scholarly tradition of Catholic education with a practitioner-facing, hope-filled, and emotionally intelligent communication style that resonates with teachers at every career stage.

3. Michael Van Hecke | Catholic Textbook Project

Michael Van Hecke is the founder of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education and the President of the Catholic Textbook Project, which develops and publishes history and humanities textbooks grounded in the Catholic intellectual tradition for K-12 Catholic schools across the United States. He served as president of ICLE for many years, during which time the organisation grew into the leading institutional force for the renewal of Catholic schooling in the classical liberal arts tradition in America, running its national conference, the Catholic Educator Formation and Credential Program, and the School Leaders Academy. He stepped down as ICLE President in June 2025 to lead the Catholic Textbook Project in a full-time role. Van Hecke previously spent twenty years as headmaster of St Augustine Academy in Southern California, giving him practitioner depth that informs every aspect of his contribution to Catholic education.

His foundational work in building the ICLE ecosystem, and now his textbook development work at the Catholic Textbook Project, reflects a consistent conviction: that Catholic schools become genuinely excellent when they recover their own deepest intellectual tradition rather than borrowing frameworks from secular progressive models.

4. Jill Gowdie | Catholic Education South Australia

Among Australian Catholic education's most influential voices on mission, formation, and spiritual leadership, Jill Gowdie serves as Director, Catholic Identity and Mission at Catholic Education South Australia (CESA), working across a system of more than 100 Catholic schools. She holds a PhD in Educational Leadership awarded summa cum laude and has built a career spanning primary, secondary, university, and consultancy contexts in Catholic education across Australia and internationally. She is a faculty member with BBI-TAITE, a visiting fellow at Oxford and KU Leuven universities, and a peer reviewer for Sage Publications. She is the author of Stirring the Soul of Catholic Education (2017), a text now used at Masters level in Catholic education programmes.

She pioneered the development of a national network for faith and mission formation for Catholic educators in Australia, FACE Australia, and her work on spiritual capital in school communities has influenced approaches in New Zealand, England, and the Netherlands. She is currently Vice President of the Association of Practical Theologians in Oceania.

Category 2: The Researchers and Scholars

These thought leaders anchor the field in evidence. They ask whether what Catholic schools claim to be doing actually works, and what the conditions are for genuine Catholic school improvement. Their journals, books, and research networks give Catholic education credibility and rigour in a global education marketplace that demands both.

5. John Lydon | St Mary's University Twickenham

As the Editor of the International Studies in Catholic Education journal, published by Taylor and Francis, John Lydon manages the primary peer-reviewed forum through which Catholic education scholarship circulates globally. He was a central organiser of the GRACE Colloquium 2025 hosted at St Mary's University Twickenham, which brought together more than 150 scholars, researchers, and practitioners under the theme Mission and Identity in Catholic Education in the 21st Century. The colloquium drew delegates from the United States, Australia, Scotland, Ireland, and throughout Europe.

Lydon's institutional stewardship of the GRACE network and the journal means that his influence on what research questions Catholic education takes seriously is broad and structural. He is based at St Mary's University Twickenham, the only UK institution that offers an MA in Catholic School Leadership.

6. Melodie Wyttenbach | Roche Centre for Catholic Education, Boston College

As Executive Director of the Roche Centre for Catholic Education at Boston College's Lynch School of Education, Melodie Wyttenbach leads one of the world's most significant institutional hubs for Catholic education research, professional development, and leadership formation. The Roche Centre operates the Executive Leadership Academy for Catholic school leaders and produces research and publications that shape practice across the United States and beyond. Wyttenbach represented the Roche Centre at the GRACE Colloquium 2025 in London, signalling the deepening research partnership between Boston College and the international Catholic education community.

Her institutional position means that the Executive Leadership Academy, which she oversees, has shaped the thinking and practice of hundreds of Catholic school leaders across the US who have completed the programme since its inception.

7. Paul Kidson | Australian Catholic University

Paul Kidson is Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership and Head of Postgraduate Studies in the National School of Education at Australian Catholic University. He is one of Australia's most visible researchers on principal wellbeing, with a particular focus on the unique pressures facing Catholic school leaders, and is one of the lead investigators on the Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety, and Wellbeing Survey. His media contributions in 2025 and 2026 on the ongoing deterioration of principal wellbeing across Australia have been widely published, and his research consistently provides the most comprehensive evidence base for understanding what is happening inside school leadership across the country.

Kidson also serves as President of the NSW Branch and National Board member of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders, and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. His research has a practical orientation that makes his work directly usable by school leaders, not merely cited by other researchers.

8. William Sultmann | Australian Catholic University

William Sultmann is a professor at Australian Catholic University whose research focuses on Catholic school leadership, educational policy, and the conditions under which Catholic schools can sustain mission integrity over time. His attendance and participation at the GRACE Colloquium 2025 in London reflects his active engagement with the international Catholic education research community. Sultmann's work addresses the structural and institutional conditions that either support or undermine the distinctiveness of Catholic schooling, examining questions of governance, leadership formation, and the relationship between system oversight and school autonomy.

His contribution is particularly valuable for Catholic education system leaders and diocesan office teams who need evidence-based frameworks for building and sustaining Catholic school improvement at scale rather than at the level of individual inspiring schools.

9. Richard Wilkin | St Mary's University Twickenham

Richard Wilkin is a researcher at the Centre for Research and Development in Catholic Education (CRDCE) at St Mary's University Twickenham whose work focuses specifically on Catholic school leadership in England. His 2025 publication in a Springer Nature volume on Catholic educational research contributes to a growing body of literature that examines whether Catholic school leadership is genuinely distinctive and what the evidence for that distinctiveness actually shows. Wilkin's research matters because it takes seriously the lived experience of Catholic school leaders in a post-Christendom context, asking not just what Catholic leadership should be in theory but what it actually looks like when practised by people leading real schools in real communities.

His earlier work on aspiring leaders' perceptions of Catholic school headship is among the most directly practical research available for dioceses and systems thinking about how to build their leadership pipeline.

10. Kath Engebretson | Australian Catholic University

Kath Engebretson is a professor at Australian Catholic University whose research spans religious education curriculum, catechesis, and the theological foundations of Catholic schooling. She presented a paper at the GRACE Colloquium 2025 on the curriculum model being adopted by Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools for their new Religious Education curriculum, drawing on the work of Fr Luigi Giussani and exploring how Religious Education can be simultaneously intellectually serious and spiritually formative. Her contribution to curriculum theory in Australian Catholic schooling makes her a significant voice in the ongoing renewal of Catholic Religious Education practice.

Engebretson's work sits at the intersection of academic theology and curriculum design, making it particularly valuable for heads of Religious Education and curriculum leaders who are grappling with how to make faith formation real rather than merely compliant.

Category 3: The Alliance for Catholic Education Ecosystem

The Alliance for Catholic Education at the University of Notre Dame has become one of the most productive institutional forces in Catholic schooling globally, combining research, teacher formation, leadership development, and school improvement into a coherent ecosystem.

11. Kevin Baxter | Alliance for Catholic Education, University of Notre Dame

Kevin Baxter chairs the programme committee for the ACE Leadership Conference at the University of Notre Dame, which will host its fifth annual gathering in November 2026. He is one of the senior leaders within the Alliance for Catholic Education, an organisation that has graduated thousands of teachers for underserved Catholic schools across the United States and has built an increasingly international research and leadership development portfolio. The ACE Leadership Conference draws Catholic school leaders from across the US for multi-day professional learning that is explicitly Catholic in orientation and practitioner-focused in design.

Baxter's influence is structural: by shaping what the ACE community learns and who they hear from, he helps set the terms of professional conversation for a significant slice of American Catholic school leadership.

12. Julie Dallavis | Alliance for Catholic Education, University of Notre Dame

Julie Dallavis, PhD, is one of ACE's most published researchers, with work appearing in NCEA's flagship practitioner journal Momentum. Her 2025 article, co-authored with Frankie Jones, on building data culture in Catholic schools appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of Momentum and addressed how Catholic schools can build evidence-based improvement culture while remaining explicitly Catholic in their orientation. Dallavis combines research credibility with genuine accessibility, writing for practitioners rather than only for peer reviewers.

Her institutional home at ACE and Notre Dame gives her work an amplified reach through the ACE alumni community, which includes thousands of Catholic school teachers and leaders who are among the most motivated and mission-driven in the US system.

13. John Schoenig | Alliance for Catholic Education, University of Notre Dame

John Schoenig is a senior researcher and programme developer within the Alliance for Catholic Education whose work on school improvement, teacher development, and the conditions for effective Catholic schooling has shaped ACE's programmatic approach across multiple initiatives. His contribution spans both the research and implementation dimensions of Catholic school improvement, making him a bridge between the scholarly literature and the practical realities of what works in Catholic school classrooms and leadership teams.

Schoenig's work at ACE reflects the organisation's distinctive approach: evidence-based, explicitly Catholic, and relentlessly practical. For Catholic school leaders who want to move beyond inspiration to actual school improvement, the ACE ecosystem that Schoenig helps animate is among the richest resources available globally.

Category 4: The Formation and Spirituality Leaders

These thought leaders work at the intersection of theology, spirituality, and education. They ask what it means to form teachers and leaders in the Catholic tradition, not merely to train them. Their work resists the reduction of Catholic schooling to a management challenge with a Catholic branding layer.

14. Pamela Patnode | St Paul Seminary School of Divinity

Pamela Patnode directs the Catholic School Leadership graduate programme at The Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity, one of the flagship professional formation programmes for Catholic school leaders in the United States. Her participation in the GRACE Colloquium 2025 in London demonstrated her engagement with the international dimension of Catholic school leadership formation, and her programme's explicit integration of theological formation with practical leadership development represents a model that other programmes are studying.

Patnode's particular contribution is in articulating what spiritual leadership looks like in a Catholic school context: not as an add-on to management but as the animating principle from which all other decisions flow.

15. Eamonn Conway | University of Notre Dame Australia

Eamonn Conway is Professor of Integral Human Development at the University of Notre Dame Australia, positioned at the intersection of Catholic social thought, formation, and educational leadership. His attendance and participation at the GRACE Colloquium 2025 in London reflects his deep involvement in the international Catholic education research community. Conway's work draws on the Catholic intellectual tradition's robust account of the human person to articulate what Catholic schooling can and should offer students: not merely academic credentials but genuine formation in wisdom, conscience, and solidarity.

His location at the University of Notre Dame Australia, with campuses in Fremantle and Sydney and strong ties to Catholic health, education, and social services, gives Conway both institutional grounding and cross-sectoral reach that enriches his contribution to the field.

16. Abbot Christopher Jamison | Worth Abbey

Abbot Christopher Jamison of Worth Abbey in West Sussex is one of the most accessible and intellectually serious voices in Catholic leadership formation operating in the UK today. His keynote and panel contributions at the CATSC (Catholic Association of Teachers, Schools and Colleges) conference in 2026 brought him before an audience of Catholic educators across England and Wales. Jamison previously served as Director of the British province of the Worth Abbey community and has written extensively on the relationship between the Benedictine tradition, contemplative life, and educational leadership.

His contribution to Catholic school formation is rooted in the wisdom tradition: an insistence that leadership without contemplation produces activity without meaning, and that the best Catholic school leaders are those who have learned to lead from a place of genuine interior freedom.

17. Sr John Dominic Rasmussen | Dominican Sisters / Openlight Media

Sister John Dominic Rasmussen OP is a Dominican Sister and Catholic educator who co-founded the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has been a keynote speaker at the National Catholic Educational Association Convention and is the executive director of Openlight Media, which produces video and print educational content to support Catholics in living their faith more deeply. She also developed the Disciple of Christ: Education in Virtue curriculum, which provides schools, parishes, and families with resources for teaching the joy of a virtuous life in Christ.

Rasmussen represents the conviction that schools are not just sites of instruction but communities of formation in which students are invited into a way of living, not merely a set of facts.

18. Christine Allen | CAFOD

Christine Allen is the Director of CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, and a keynote speaker at the CATSC conference 2026. Her significance for Catholic schooling is rooted in CAFOD's deep integration into the life of Catholic schools across England and Wales through curriculum resources and its commitment to Catholic social teaching as a living practice. Allen's work connects the mission of Catholic schooling to the Church's global commitment to justice, solidarity, and care for creation in ways that give Catholic Religious Education and social justice programmes genuine substance.

Allen's contribution to the thought leadership landscape of Catholic schooling is to insist that the purpose of Catholic education cannot be separated from the preferential option for the poor that runs through every foundational document the Church has produced on education.

Category 5: The Catholic Education System Leaders

These thought leaders lead or have led major Catholic education systems, diocesan offices, or peak bodies. Their decisions affect thousands of students, teachers, and school communities. Their thinking shapes what Catholic schooling looks like at scale.

19. Caroline Candy | St Mary's University Twickenham

Caroline Candy co-organised the GRACE Colloquium 2025 at St Mary's University with John Lydon, bringing together more than 150 scholars and practitioners from across the English-speaking Catholic world. Her role at St Mary's connects her to the UK's primary institution for Catholic school leadership formation, including the only MA in Catholic School Leadership in the UK. Her work supports the global GRACE network, which will host its next major colloquium at Boston College in 2026.

Candy's contribution is curatorial and connective: she builds the infrastructure through which Catholic education researchers and practitioners can find each other, share work, and advance the field together.

20. Chris Richardson | St Mary's University Twickenham

Chris Richardson directs the MA in Catholic School Leadership Programme at St Mary's University Twickenham, the only programme of its kind in the United Kingdom. His work in developing Catholic school leaders who are grounded in both the intellectual tradition of Catholic education and the practical demands of contemporary school leadership makes him an important formation figure for the UK Catholic school sector. Participants in the programme he leads are drawn from headteachers, deputy heads, and diocesan leaders across England and Wales.

Richardson's programme serves a population of school leaders who are often navigating the tension between the demands of a secular regulatory framework such as Ofsted and the mission imperatives of the Church, and his work helps them develop the intellectual and spiritual resources to hold that tension well.

21. Br David Hall | Australian Catholic University

Professor Br David Hall FMS is a Marist Brother and professor at Australian Catholic University who chairs the Religious Education Reference Group for Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools, overseeing the development of a new Religious Education curriculum for the archdiocese's 297 Catholic schools. His attendance and participation at the GRACE Colloquium 2025 in London reflects his engagement with international Catholic education scholarship, and his institutional position at ACU's Lasallian research and formation hub gives him reach across Australia's Lasallian Catholic school community.

Hall's contribution is particularly significant for Religious Education curriculum design: he is one of the people in Australia most actively engaged in translating the best of international Catholic curriculum scholarship into practical frameworks that Australian schools can adopt.

22. Michael McGirr | Caritas Australia

Michael McGirr is a Melbourne-based essayist, educator, and mission leader who currently serves as Mission Facilitator for Caritas Australia, the Catholic agency for overseas development. This role takes him regularly into Catholic schools across the country for the annual Project Compassion campaign, which involves 1,700 schools and 1,200 parishes. He previously led mission and faith formation work at St Kevin's College in Melbourne and is the author of several books including Things You Get for Free, which won the National Biography Award.

McGirr's voice matters because he bridges the gap between Catholic intellectual seriousness and genuine warmth: he makes the mission of Catholic schooling feel compelling rather than obligatory.

23. Ronald Nuzzi | University of Notre Dame

Ronald Nuzzi is a priest and researcher at the University of Notre Dame who has been one of the most consistent voices in Catholic educational leadership formation in the United States over the past two decades. He has published extensively on what the distinctiveness of Catholic school leadership actually requires of those who practise it, and his work examines the relationship between faith, leadership effectiveness, and institutional mission, drawing on both empirical research and the Catholic intellectual tradition.

Nuzzi's contribution is in sustaining a rigorous, research-based account of Catholic school leadership that resists both sentimentality and secularisation: he insists that Catholic schools can be excellent precisely because of their Catholic identity, not in spite of it.

24. Patrick Duignan | Australian Catholic University

Patrick Duignan is one of Australia's most influential researchers on authentic leadership and its application to Catholic and values-driven school communities. His work on authentic leadership for Catholic school leaders has been widely adopted as a framework for professional development across Australian Catholic education systems, and his books and papers have shaped how Catholic school leadership is theorised and taught in Australian universities and professional development programmes.

His contribution to the Australian Catholic education landscape has been foundational: many of the senior leaders currently running Catholic education systems and diocesan offices in Australia encountered Duignan's ideas during their own professional formation.

25. Stephen Elder | Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools

Stephen Elder leads within Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS), the governing body for 297 Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne and the sixth largest education system in Australia. His institutional position places him at the centre of one of the most complex and significant Catholic education systems in the Asia-Pacific region. MACS is actively engaged in curriculum renewal, particularly through the RE Reference Group chaired by Br David Hall, and Elder's leadership within this system shapes the conditions under which that renewal can succeed.

The scale and influence of MACS within Australian Catholic education means that the decisions made by its leadership team have implications not only for the 297 schools it governs but for Catholic education across Australia more broadly.

26. Damian Hennessy | Catholic Education Commission Victoria

Damian Hennessy serves within the Catholic Education Commission Victoria, providing governance and strategic leadership for Catholic education across the state of Victoria in Australia. Victoria is home to one of the largest concentrations of Catholic schools in Australia, and the Catholic education sector in Victoria has been at the forefront of systemic reform, particularly around inclusive education and curriculum renewal. Hennessy's work within this system addresses the policy and governance dimensions of Catholic school sustainability that are increasingly critical as the sector navigates questions of viability, mission, and identity in a changing social landscape.

His contribution to the thought leadership landscape is practical and systemic: he is one of the people making the decisions that determine whether the structural conditions for Catholic schooling in Victoria can be sustained into the next generation.

27. Megan Clarke | Catholic Schools NSW

Megan Clarke is a leader within Catholic Schools NSW (CSNSW), the representative body for the state's 591 Catholic schools educating one in five NSW students and employing more than 30,000 teaching and support staff. CSNSW operates at state and national level to represent Catholic education to government, media, and other stakeholders. Clarke's leadership role within this system places her at the intersection of advocacy, governance, and educational leadership.

New South Wales has the largest concentration of Catholic school students of any state in Australia, and the decisions made within CSNSW's leadership team have implications for the entire Australian Catholic education policy landscape.

Category 6: The Lasallian, Salesian, and Charism Voices

Catholic schooling is not a monolith. It is a constellation of distinct traditions, each with its own charism, pedagogical heritage, and institutional culture. These thought leaders represent the living traditions that animate significant streams of Catholic schooling globally.

28. Mark Edwards | Catholic Education Sandhurst

Mark Edwards is Executive Director of Catholic Education Sandhurst, the system serving the Diocese of Sandhurst in regional Victoria, Australia. His leadership of a regional Catholic education system that serves communities spread across a large rural and semi-rural geography gives him a perspective on Catholic schooling that is distinct from the major urban systems: questions of viability, community belonging, and the role of the Catholic school as often the only significant institutional presence in a small rural town are central to his work.

His contribution matters because much of the Catholic education thought leadership ecosystem focuses on urban systems, and the 40 percent or more of Catholic schools that serve regional, rural, and remote communities are systematically underrepresented in the literature.

29. Laura Johnson | National Catholic Educational Association

Laura Johnson is an active voice within the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) whose writing and advocacy work in 2025 and 2026 has addressed some of the most pressing practical challenges facing Catholic schools in the United States, including enrolment management, Catholic identity in a pluralistic student body, and the integration of digital technology within a distinctively Catholic educational framework. The NCEA publishes NCEATalk and Momentum, both of which are primary communication channels for Catholic school practitioners across the US.

Her voice in the NCEA community reflects the concerns of practitioners rather than only researchers, which is what makes her contribution distinctively valuable in a landscape dominated by academic voices.

30. Gini Shimabukuro | University of San Francisco

Gini Shimabukuro is a long-standing Catholic education researcher and academic at the University of San Francisco whose work addresses the foundational purposes and practices of Catholic schooling from both theoretical and practical perspectives. She is the author and editor of chapters and books in Catholic education that address questions of teacher identity, school mission, and the formation of students in the Catholic tradition. Her contribution to the Catholic education literature spans decades and reflects a commitment to grounding Catholic schooling in its own intellectual tradition.

Shimabukuro's work is particularly valuable for school leaders who are developing their understanding of what Catholic education is and why it matters, approaching the questions with scholarly rigour but genuine pastoral warmth.

Category 7: The ICLE Formation Community and the Renewal Movement

The renewal of Catholic schooling in the classical liberal arts tradition is one of the most significant movements in Catholic education today. The Institute for Catholic Liberal Education and its associated network of schools, programmes, and practitioners represent a coherent vision for what Catholic schooling can be when it recovers its deepest intellectual heritage.

31. Dr Ryan Messmore | Institute for Catholic Liberal Education

Dr Ryan Messmore became President of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education in June 2025, taking on the role from ICLE founder Michael Van Hecke. He joined ICLE in 2024 as Director of its Catholic Educator Formation and Credential Program before stepping into the presidency. His commentary and analysis on education, faith, and public life have appeared in publications including First Things, Touchstone, and Comment, reflecting a broad intellectual engagement with Catholic culture and education policy.

Messmore's task as the organisation's new president is to sustain and accelerate the renewal of Catholic liberal education that ICLE's founding made possible. The ICLE national conference in Columbus, Ohio, in July 2026 will be one of the first major gatherings under his leadership.

32. Deann Stuart | Institute for Catholic Liberal Education / St Mary's Catholic School

Deann Stuart serves as Associate Director of the Catholic Educator Formation and Credential Program at the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education and as Dean of Curriculum at St Mary's Catholic School in Taylor, Texas. She holds a BA and Master of Humanities from the University of Dallas and a PhD from Baylor University, and has received multiple awards for excellence in teaching across middle school, high school, and university levels. Her work in forming teachers and school leaders who understand the Catholic intellectual tradition as a way of seeing and engaging the world has been described by graduates of the credential program as transformative.

Stuart's contribution is in the sustained, patient work of formation: helping educators recover a sense of vocation that connects their daily work in classrooms to the long tradition of Catholic teaching.

33. Daniel O'Connell | Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick

Daniel O'Connell is a researcher and diocesan advisor based at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Ireland, who represents the important and sometimes underappreciated voice of Irish Catholic education in the global conversation. Ireland has one of the most distinctive Catholic school systems in the world, having served as the near-universal provider of primary education for most of the country's history, and is now navigating a complex transition as the state seeks to diversify school patronage. O'Connell's participation in the GRACE Colloquium 2025 reflects his active engagement with the international Catholic education research community.

His contribution matters for anyone seeking to understand the Irish dimension of the global Catholic school story, which has enormous historical and theological significance for Catholic communities in Australia, the United States, and the UK.

34. Patrick Tiernan | St Mark's High School

Patrick Tiernan is the President of St Mark's High School in Wilmington, Delaware, USA, and a practitioner-scholar whose keynote presentation at the GRACE Colloquium 2025 in London demonstrated his engagement with both the school leadership reality and the international Catholic education research community. His combination of active school leadership and genuine scholarly engagement makes him a rare and valuable voice in a field that too often separates the thinkers from the practitioners.

His contribution is to demonstrate, from the inside of an actively led Catholic school, that the vision articulated by researchers and theologians can be genuinely lived rather than merely aspired to.

35. Jonno White | Consult Clarity

The thinkers on this list are the people who have defined what Catholic schooling can and should be. Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with over 10,000 copies sold globally and a Certified Working Genius Facilitator trusted by school leadership teams around the world, is the person you bring in when you are ready to act on what they say: to build the leadership team culture, have the difficult conversations, and align your team around the mission that all of these thinkers are articulating. Working Genius, created by Patrick Lencioni and completed by over 1.3 million people globally, is one of the fastest-adopted team assessment tools in the world, and Jonno is one of the most experienced certified facilitators delivering it in school contexts. Whether your Catholic school leadership team needs a keynote, a team workshop, or a Working Genius facilitation, Jonno works with school teams around the world and international travel is often far more affordable than clients expect.

To book Jonno for your school or system, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Several people were seriously considered for the final 35 but were not included for specific reasons.

Anthony Bryk's co-authored 1993 book Catholic Schools and the Common Good, published by Harvard University Press with Valerie Lee and Peter Holland, remains one of the most important empirical studies of Catholic schooling ever conducted. However, Bryk's current work is primarily at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on improvement science more broadly, and his active engagement with Catholic education specifically has diminished in recent years.

Gerald Grace, whose book Catholic Schools: Mission, Markets and Morality is foundational reading for anyone studying Catholic education policy, is emeritus and no longer active in the field in a way that would make his inclusion on a list of current thought leaders accurate.

Thomas Burnford served as President of the National Catholic Educational Association in the United States and was widely regarded as one of the most effective advocates for Catholic education during his tenure. His current engagement with the field following his NCEA departure was not confirmed through web research.

The Global South deserves specific acknowledgment here. Catholic schooling in sub-Saharan Africa and the Philippines is growing at a rate that far exceeds anything happening in the Western countries that dominate this list. Pope Leo XIV's meeting with Catholic education leaders in Africa in November 2025 underscored the urgency of attending to these voices. The absence of African, Asian, or Latin American voices from this list is a gap worth naming and a research task worth undertaking.

Common Mistakes Leaders Make When Engaging with Catholic Education Thought Leadership

The Catholic education thought leadership landscape is rich enough to transform how a school leader thinks about their work. It is also large enough to waste years of reading energy if the wrong questions are asked. Here are the most common mistakes Catholic school leaders make when engaging with this body of work.

The most common mistake is treating thought leadership as a substitute for institutional decision-making. Reading Thomas Groome or following Jonathan Doyle does not relieve a principal or system leader of the responsibility to make difficult decisions about their own school community. Thought leadership is a resource for thinking more clearly, not a replacement for thinking. The leaders who get the most from the people on this list are those who bring genuine questions to the reading and return from it to the hard work of implementation.

A second mistake is importing frameworks wholesale from one national context into another. The Alliance for Catholic Education model in the United States was developed within a specific historical and regulatory context. The ICLE classical education renewal is responding to specifically American dynamics around Catholic identity in a pluralistic democracy. The GRACE network in the UK is embedded in the particular relationship between the Catholic Church, the state, and the school system in England and Wales. Each of these contexts teaches something important about Catholic schooling everywhere. None of them translates directly without thoughtful adaptation.

The third mistake is valuing credibility over relevance. The most highly credentialled Catholic education researchers are not always the most useful voices for a principal navigating a specific challenge in their own school community. The people on this list span a range from deeply theoretical to explicitly practitioner-facing, and the right voice for your current challenge may not be the most eminent voice in the field. Match the resource to the question you are actually asking.

Fourth, many school leaders engage with thought leadership only during professional development seasons, then return to the same management routines that the thought leadership was questioning. The leaders who change their schools are those who build ongoing engagement with ideas into the rhythm of their leadership, not those who read a book before the annual conference and forget it by February.

Fifth, there is a tendency among Catholic school leaders to engage primarily with voices from within their own national context. The International Studies in Catholic Education journal, the GRACE network, and the NCEA publication ecosystem all offer access to ideas and research from across the global Catholic school community that most individual school leaders never encounter. The thought leaders on this list collectively represent one of the richest and most underutilised intellectual resources available to anyone leading a Catholic school.

Implementation Guide: Building Your Catholic Education Thought Leadership Practice

Following the right thinkers is only the beginning. Here is how to make this list actionable in your leadership practice.

Start with one question rather than one person. Before opening any of the books, articles, or podcasts produced by the thought leaders on this list, identify the single most important question facing your Catholic school right now. Is it a mission clarity question? A team culture and leadership alignment question? A Religious Education curriculum question? A school viability question? A formation and staffing question? The answer shapes which voices to prioritise.

If the question is about mission and Catholic identity, start with Thomas Groome's What Makes Education Catholic and Jonathan Doyle's Going Deeper Catholic Teacher Formation Program. If the question is about research-based school improvement within a Catholic framework, engage with the Alliance for Catholic Education's published resources through Kevin Baxter, Julie Dallavis, and John Schoenig. If the question is about classical Catholic curriculum renewal, Michael Van Hecke's foundational work at ICLE and the current leadership of Dr Ryan Messmore offer the most coherent programmatic framework.

Make GRACE your global network. The Global Researchers Advancing Catholic Education colloquium meets every two years and produces a special edition of the International Studies in Catholic Education journal following each gathering. The next colloquium will be hosted at Boston College in 2026. Engaging with the journal and considering conference participation is the most direct way to access the best current scholarship in Catholic education globally.

Subscribe to NCEA's Momentum journal if you are in the US or work with US school communities. Subscribe to the International Studies in Catholic Education journal for access to global scholarship. Subscribe to Jonathan Doyle's daily Catholic Teacher podcast for daily formation content that is accessible, encouraging, and grounded in genuine Catholic intellectual tradition.

Plan for team engagement, not just individual reading. The most powerful thing a Catholic school leader can do with the ideas on this list is bring them to their leadership team. A Working Genius facilitation session with Jonno White, a Certified Working Genius Facilitator who works with school leadership teams around the world, creates the shared language and team alignment that allows a leadership team to implement any of these ideas more effectively. The ideas are the vision; the team is the vehicle. Both need attention.

To explore how Jonno's facilitation work might serve your team, email jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the most influential Catholic education thought leaders globally?

The most influential current voices span several domains. In research and scholarship, Thomas Groome at Boston College, the team at the Alliance for Catholic Education at Notre Dame, and John Lydon at St Mary's University Twickenham as editor of the International Studies in Catholic Education journal represent the strongest concentrations of intellectual firepower. In practitioner-facing content and speaker engagement, Jonathan Doyle of One Catholic Teacher is probably the most widely heard Catholic education voice in the world today, having spoken to more than 500,000 people in live events across multiple continents. In classical Catholic education renewal, the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education under Dr Ryan Messmore's leadership and Michael Van Hecke's Catholic Textbook Project represent the most coherent institutional movement in the field.

What is the GRACE network and why does it matter?

The GRACE network, which stands for Global Researchers Advancing Catholic Education, is an international network of researchers and practitioners in Catholic education that gathers periodically for colloquia to share research and build relationships across national contexts. The 2025 colloquium, hosted at St Mary's University Twickenham and organised by John Lydon and Caroline Candy, brought together more than 150 participants from the US, Australia, Ireland, Scotland, England, and continental Europe. The 2026 colloquium will be hosted at Boston College. GRACE matters because it represents one of the few structural mechanisms through which Catholic education research circulates globally rather than remaining confined to national silos.

How was this list compiled?

This directory was built through systematic analysis of the major institutional networks in Catholic education, including GRACE, NCEA, ACE at Notre Dame, ICLE, the Catholic Education Service in England and Wales, the National Catholic Education Commission in Australia, and a range of diocesan and university-based Catholic education centres. Each candidate was assessed against six criteria: original intellectual or practical contribution, active current engagement with the field, geographic diversity, disciplinary diversity, genuine Catholic education credentials, and practical accessibility for school communities. The list deliberately represents researchers, system leaders, formation experts, and practitioners in roughly equal measure.

What are the biggest challenges facing Catholic schooling globally right now?

The most significant challenge in Western countries is sustaining Catholic identity and mission integrity in school communities where the majority of families and an increasing proportion of staff are not practising Catholics. This is compounded by the growing difficulty of recruiting teachers with genuine formation in the Catholic tradition. Financial viability, particularly for smaller schools in rural and regional areas, is a pressing concern in Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. In the United States, school choice legislation and the expansion of scholarship and voucher programs are creating both opportunities and pressures for Catholic schools. In the Global South, where Catholic schooling is growing rapidly, the challenge is building the leadership and formation infrastructure to sustain quality and mission at scale.

Can I hire someone to facilitate workshops on leadership and team culture for my Catholic school team?

Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with over 10,000 copies sold globally and a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, delivers workshops, keynotes, and facilitation sessions that help Catholic school leadership teams build trust, align around mission, and develop the communication skills to lead well together. Working Genius, created by Patrick Lencioni, has been completed by over 1.3 million people globally and is one of the most effective team assessment tools available for school leadership teams. Jonno works with schools around the world and international travel is often far more affordable than clients expect.

Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss your school's needs.

What books should every Catholic school leader read?

Thomas Groome's What Makes Education Catholic: Spiritual Foundations (Orbis Books, 2021) is the most accessible entry point into the foundational question of Catholic education's purpose and identity. Anthony Bryk, Valerie Lee, and Peter Holland's Catholic Schools and the Common Good (Harvard University Press, 1993) remains essential reading for understanding what the research evidence says about why Catholic schools work and under what conditions they work best. Jonno White's Step Up or Step Out addresses the leadership dynamics of difficult conversations, conflict, and accountability that are central to any school leadership team's ability to function well and implement the vision that these books articulate.

It is available at https://www.amazon.com.au/Step-Up-Out-Difficult-Conflict/dp/B097X7B5LD.

Who should I follow on LinkedIn if I lead a Catholic school?

Jonathan Doyle's platforms, including his daily podcast and social media presence, are the most accessible entry point for daily Catholic education formation content. The NCEA's LinkedIn presence, the Alliance for Catholic Education at Notre Dame, and the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education all maintain active institutional pages. Many of the individual thought leaders on this list maintain personal LinkedIn profiles where they share research, reflections, and professional updates. Starting with those who most directly address your current leadership challenge will give you the highest return on your engagement investment.

Final Thoughts

Catholic schooling is one of the greatest intellectual, pastoral, and institutional achievements of the Catholic Church. Its 55,000 schools and 150 million students represent an extraordinary commitment to the conviction that education is a work of love, that knowledge and faith are not enemies, and that every child, regardless of background, deserves to be formed as a whole person rather than merely trained for economic productivity. The thought leaders on this list are the people sustaining, renewing, and deepening that conviction in a world that makes it harder to hold every year.

The work of following the right voices is itself a form of leadership. The principals, system leaders, board members, and educators who invest in building a genuine intellectual and spiritual life around the mission of Catholic schooling are the ones who create school communities that last, that attract and retain the best people, and that produce graduates who carry the mark of that formation into the world. That is the return on the investment of reading, listening, following, and occasionally bringing in the voices on this list for your own school community.

Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, works with Catholic school leadership teams around the world on the team dynamics that make everything else possible. To discuss what that might look like for your school, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits across the UK, India, Australia, Canada, Mongolia, New Zealand, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, USA, Finland, Namibia, and more. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Next Read: 33 Inspiring School Leaders Building Staff Culture

The thought leaders in this directory think and write about what Catholic schooling can and should be. The next question is how to build the school culture that makes it real. The 33 school leaders profiled in this piece are the practitioners who have done exactly that: who have built the kind of staff culture where teachers want to stay, students want to learn, and mission stops being a document and starts being a daily reality.

The challenge of building a genuine staff culture is harder than it looks from the outside. A principal can articulate a vision with complete clarity and find, six months later, that nothing has changed. The reason is almost always the same: the team does not yet have the shared language, the trust, or the practical communication tools to act on the vision together. What these 33 school leaders discovered is that the culture work has to come before the vision work, or at minimum run alongside it. You cannot build a mission-driven school on a team that does not yet know how to talk honestly with each other.

Keep reading: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/school-leaders-building-staff-culture