PRESIDENT

Wilmington, DE

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE

ISI introduces young Americans to conservative thought and the Western intellectual tradition through educational programs, conferences, mentorship, publishing, and digital media. This is done under the guidance of distinguished scholars and accomplished practitioners. Across its initiatives, ISI builds communities where students encounter enduring ideas, test them through rigorous inquiry, and develop the habits of mind and character necessary to become virtuous leaders for liberty. Participants emerge intellectually refreshed and better prepared to ask the right questions, challenge fashionable orthodoxies, and serve the public good with clarity and courage.

ISI’s programmatic strategy is organized around a “Reach, Teach, Launch” framework:

Reach: Through digital media, podcasts, social media, ISI campus chapters, and the Collegiate Network’s 90+ student publications and national news aggregator at collegiatenetwork.com, ISI builds awareness and identifies talent at colleges and universities across the country.

Teach: Through ISI Forums, lectures, debates, seminars, and summer schools, ISI provides cost-effective, faculty-led formation in the foundational texts and ideas of the Western tradition. The Forums model alone, a “seminar-in-a-box” delivered by ISI’s 3,000-strong faculty network, has reached hundreds of campuses.

Launch: Through the Honors Program, CN Internships and Fellowships, and the Weaver Graduate Fellowships, ISI invests deeply in its most promising students, equipping them for influential careers in academia, public service, law, media, and beyond.

The Institute’s alumni include a Supreme Court Justice, a co-founder of PayPal, the founder of the Heritage Foundation, the president of Hillsdale College, and dozens of leading writers, scholars, journalists, and statesmen across American public life.

THE OPPORTUNITY

The Board of Trustees of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) seeks a President to lead one of the oldest and most respected institutions in American conservative higher education. Founded in 1953 by the journalist Frank Chodorov, and with William F. Buckley, Jr. serving as its first president, ISI has served as an academy for ordered liberty for more than seventy years, challenging the dominant currents of higher education and introducing tens of thousands of America’s top college students to the ideas and virtues that sustain a free society. 

For seven decades, ISI has been one of the indispensable institutions of American civil society: an association of scholars, students, donors, and friends devoted to the slow, patient cultivation of virtuous leaders who ask the right questions, engage seriously with the questions of our times, and work within their various spheres to cultivate and renew the roots of American order.  

ISI’s posture is civilizational rather than merely political. As the ISI historian Dr. Lee Edwards once wrote, “in politics there are no permanent victories or defeats, only permanent things like wisdom, courage, prudence, and justice.” The continuation of the American experiment in self-government depends on more than mere technical knowledge; it requires citizens shaped by moral imagination, reason, and historical understanding. The Institute’s work is measured in generations, not election cycles. Its task is to inspire young men and women to discover and delve more deeply into the riches of the Western inheritance, and to send them into American life better equipped not only with arguments but with curiosity, imagination, character, and a love of the things worth conserving. 

The next president will inherit an institution in strong condition. ISI has just completed its $75 million Roots of American Renewal campaign. Its endowment has more than doubled in recent years, from approximately $8 million to $17 million. Its programmatic platform (campus chapters, ISI Forums, the forthcoming Intercollegiate Retreats, the Honors Program, the Weaver Graduate Fellowships, the Collegiate Network, the Modern Age journal, and newly launched video podcasts, which have garnered over 20 million views) is the strongest in recent memory. Its national headquarters in the Brandywine Valley, anchored by the Linda L. Bean Conference Center and the Studio 53 media facility, has become a national destination for conservative intellectual life.

The role calls for a leader of strong character, humility, intellectual seriousness, and managerial excellence, with a proven ability to build and sustain institutions. ISI is looking for someone who can carry forward what has been built while opening new chapters of his or her own.

THE POSITION

The President reports to the Board of Trustees, whose chairman is Mark C. Henrie. The President is responsible for the strategic, programmatic, financial, and cultural leadership of ISI, which has about twenty-five staff and an annual operating budget of approximately $8 million.

The President serves as ISI’s principal external voice to donors, alumni, faculty, students, the press, and the broader conservative intellectual community as well as its chief steward internally, ensuring that ISI’s people, programs, and resources are aligned to its mission.

The position is based at ISI’s national headquarters in the Brandywine Valley near Wilmington, Delaware. The President is expected to be in residence at the headquarters with significant travel for donor engagement, programs, and external representation.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Mission and Strategic Leadership

Articulate and advance ISI’s mission with clarity and conviction. Set the strategic direction of the Institute in partnership with the Board, balancing fidelity to ISI’s founding purpose with responsiveness to the changing landscape of American higher education and civic life. Hold the Institute to its vocation: the formation of young leaders in the truth, goodness, and beauty of the Western tradition, with a horizon measured in generations rather than election cycles. Understand ISI’s place within the broader ecology of American civil society as one of the indispensable “little platoons” forming the rising generation in the principles of ordered liberty.

Fundraising and External Relations

Serve as ISI’s chief fundraiser and public face. Cultivate and steward relationships with major donors, foundations, and institutional partners. Lead the next major fundraising initiative beyond Roots of American Renewal Campaign. Sustain and grow the Institute’s network of alumni, faculty affiliates, and movement partners. As needed, be able and willing to speak and write with substance and grace on behalf of the Institute. 

Programmatic Excellence

Ensure that ISI’s programs across the Reach, Teach, and Launch tiers meet the highest standards of intellectual seriousness and operational quality, spanning from Forums and the Collegiate Network at the top of the funnel to the Honors Program, CN Fellowships, and Weaver Fellowships at the bottom. Approach students as a trusted professor would: with patience, passion, and a serious account of what it means to live a life of virtue in the modern age. Identify opportunities to extend ISI’s reach while maintaining depth and quality. 

Talent and Culture

Recruit, develop, and retain an exceptional team in Wilmington and beyond. The President will partner with the Board to recruit and onboard additional members of a senior leadership team in the early months of his or her tenure, including a Director of Programs and a Director of Development, seizing a meaningful opportunity to shape the Institute’s executive bench for the next chapter. Build a culture of intellectual rigor, mutual respect, and mission focus. Mentor rising leaders within the Institute and across its national network.

Financial Stewardship

Steward ISI’s endowment, operating budget, and capital assets prudently. Work with ISI’s senior leadership team and the Board’s Finance Committee to ensure long-term financial sustainability.

Board Partnership

Work closely with the Chairman and Board of Trustees, providing the Board with the information and counsel it needs to govern effectively. Support the Board in its own development and engagement.

QUALIFICATIONS & ATTRIBUTES

The successful candidate will bring most, if not all, of the following:

  • Demonstrated leadership experience at a senior level in a nonprofit, educational, philanthropic, or related institution, with direct accountability for staff, budget, and strategic direction. He/She will have led a healthy and productive multi-leveled team and organization.

  • Sound judgment in a complex and changing movement. The ability to navigate the breadth of contemporary American conservatism (classical liberals, traditionalists, fusionists, post-liberals, and the new right) with intellectual openness and institutional prudence. Experience working across coalitions of the right is preferred.

  • Operational and managerial excellence. Demonstrated ability to manage budgets, set priorities, hire and develop talent, nurture internal culture, and hold an organization accountable to outcomes. Comfort with ISI’s “Reach, Teach, Launch” model and a track record of growing programs through scalable, cost-effective design.

  • Deep appreciation for the ISI mission. Familiarity with the evolving conservative intellectual tradition, the Western canon, and the questions and texts that have shaped American civic life. The next President should be conversant with the thinkers and traditions on which ISI’s work has been built, from Burke and Tocqueville to Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet, and with the broader inheritance of Western civilization that those thinkers sought to defend. Familiarity with the great books is highly valued. A personal connection to ISI is preferred, but not required.

  • Civilizational disposition. A natural orientation toward the long view: someone comfortable measuring success in generations rather than news cycles and drawn to the formation of young leaders rather than the headlines of contemporary politics. The Institute’s work is patient by design; the next President must be temperamentally suited to that patience.

  • Fundraising effectiveness. The ability to cultivate and close major gifts, build donor relationships of trust, build an effective fundraising system, and lead or significantly contribute to capital and endowment campaigns.

  • Personal qualities. Integrity, humility, courage, generosity of spirit, and a deep commitment to the formation of young people. A vocation for the work, not merely a position.

To inquire, please email your CV to info@missionadv.org.