She has called herself “Can-Do Karen” for decades, since well before she began her phenomenal 26-year leadership of Branksome Hall. It was always her no-nonsense, let’s-get-on-with-it game face, born of a northern Ontario childhood with some tough challenges and her own legendary positivity, vision and drive. But now, as she enters a new life away from her school, her often 12-hour workdays and her Principal’s House across the street, Karen Jurjevich is very aware she has evolved, professionally and personally.
Arriving at Branksome in 1998, she says, “I was almost in overdrive. The word ‘vulnerability’ was not in my sphere—either saying it or demonstrating it.” Contrast that to her final speech at Installation 2023 last September, when she talked about her childhood in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and teared up when she mentioned her Croatia-born father, who died in 1966 when she was 10, leaving her and her older sister to take care of two younger brothers and support their mother as she entered the work world. Her vulnerability was on show to both students and colleagues, she acknowledges. “That is why it was an important speech for me to give.”
Unquestionably, she became more comfortable over the years. “When you’ve had a career as long as mine, you just start to enjoy it more. You relax a little bit, because that’s the gift of confidence, and also you have a lot of trust in the people with whom you work most closely. As a result, I think you can just bring your shoulders down a little bit and be truly who you are, as both a leader and a person.”
Her personal journey has included raising her artist son Michael (“Spike”) Murton, who was six when they moved on campus, a difficult divorce, and a longtime, long-distance partnership with Boston-based Canadian financial executive Richard Nino. At the same time, her professional journey has been nothing short of stellar, reshaping Branksome Hall academically, architecturally, strategically and financially. These achievements have led this former physical education and health teacher to realize that her next evolution will be to open an international consultancy focusing on business and strategic growth in the field of education.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of her tenure. Her standout accomplishments are very clear—the introduction of the International Baccalaureate (IB) for all students, the establishment of Branksome Hall Asia in South Korea, construction of the award-winning Athletics and Wellness Centre and the future-focused Innovation Centre and Studio Theatre (iCAST). Tucked in between, of course, have been countless enhancements and innovations, including the Chandaria Research Centre, the Centre for Strategic Leadership and the creation of a framework for Branksome Hall’s four key values. Together these accomplishments have made Branksome what many consider the leading girls’ school in Canada and one of the best in the world.
How this all came about is truly the story of Karen—through her vision, her personality, her ability to recruit top talent and loyal colleagues, and some happy happenstances that really amount to the kind of “luck” you make for yourself. “I’ve been driven in my life, I would say, by humility and curiosity,” she says. And truly, those characteristics are fundamental to the Karen who evolved at Branksome. That is, humility to look for the best ideas from the best people and places you can find, and a natural-born curiosity that has made her look even further and more deeply than most others would. “That’s my secret sauce,” she says.
Before reaching Branksome, she had worked in both public and independent schools after graduating from the University of Western Ontario. She first taught in Tillsonburg, in southwest Ontario, taking time out to get her master’s in education at the University of British Columbia, before marriage brought her to Toronto. Her friends pointed her to a teaching position at Havergal College, but when she couldn’t gain the career traction she wanted, she re-entered the public system as a vice-principal and then principal in the pre-amalgamation North York Board of Education. By now, she was clearly gaining traction—a Branksome-retained search consultant came calling. Karen took the plunge and, seven months later, she was announced as Branksome Hall’s seventh Principal, the successor to Dr. Rachel Belash.
Then came one of the things Can-Do Karen can do best: bring people along with her. As a self-described “curriculum, teaching and learning geek with a graduate degree,” she wanted to find the best possible academic program for Branksome—“I always questioned what we were teaching and, more importantly, how we were delivering curriculum.” Backed by an experienced Board Chair, Anthony Graham, she established a year-long task force to develop criteria for an academic program, followed by extensive research into three options: the Ontario curriculum, Advanced Placement and the IB. Karen had first come across the IB as vice-principal at Victoria Park Secondary in the mid-90s, and was inspired by its impact on students there. At Branksome, she says, “we knew we wanted graduates to have a global mindset, develop critical-thinking skills and appreciate multiple perspectives.” In a quickly evolving world, adds the ever future-minded educator, “all indicators were that technologies were advancing and people were looking beyond their borders for business, for education, for opportunities.”
Step by step, she and the IB prevailed. “The IB approach to teaching and learning is a far superior option to the Ontario curriculum,” she says. The research-based process was crucial. “I think that got the buy-in, in a much less emotional way, for the faculty, the community and the Board. It was truly a game-changer for our school.”
She also needed buy-in on offering the rigorous IB program to every student in the school, which the IB task force report had shown was the preferred approach. But could all students handle it? Parents were worried. Aware that Upper Canada College already had the IB as its single offering for boys, she raised these questions in response: “‘Is this program not suitable for girls? Can only boys do a rigorous academic program?’ We had to overcome a protective attitude from parents toward their daughters,” she says. “Their sons could be thrown into the IB and survive, but they questioned having their daughters in the same program.”
Karen went with a five-year phase-in so parents and teachers could get used to the shift to the IB. She also introduced a comprehensive learning strategies program, the first of its kind at the school, so that any child could build on her own unique learning style. “We all learn differently. So we designed a program that would give students agency over their own learning.”
Thus was Branksome transformed academically, receiving accreditation as an IB World School on February 3, 2003, one of just eight in Toronto at the time and the only girls’ school. “When I arrived, Branksome had always had the reputation as a school with well-rounded girls—you know, friendly, welcoming, we do sports, we do academics, we do co-curricular and community service,” says Karen. “The IB was the perfect alignment. An IB liberal arts education speaks to well-roundedness.”
What was becoming clear was Karen’s willingness to jump on an idea or opportunity and run with it, going all-in. With the IB well-established, she one day in 2008 noticed a piece of mail promoting an obscure city-building project on Jeju Island, South Korea. “I wonder who builds cities these days,” she thought casually, and put it aside. Months later, a larger, follow-up package came. This time she looked more closely and, increasingly intrigued, talked about it with a student boarder, Jisu OH’09, from Jeju Island—“I had never heard of Jeju until Jisu introduced me to it”—and began corresponding with Jisu’s mother, an artist there. An American consultant to the South Korean government said in the package he’d be coming to Toronto, and Karen told her assistant, “If he tries to get in touch with me, I’ll take his call.”
It turned out that the Seoul government had hired the Boston Consulting Group to make a list of top schools in North America and the U.K. that might be candidates to build offshoots in the Jeju Island free economic zone. In part, the schools would offer an international education to the children of foreign residents, but more importantly, they would encourage South Korean parents to educate their children in South Korea rather than send them overseas, frequently with their mothers, and perhaps lose key talent. “Often it tore families apart,” says Karen.
And yet, she notes, “I’ve never met another school principal during that time who said they even opened the package.” Woe to them because, in addition to the academic benefits, the revenue potential from this proposal was extremely attractive—“a windfall for the school,” she says. She pulled in then Board Chair Jim Christie for a dinner with the consultant, “and Jim said, ‘You have my support to take this to the next level, Karen—let’s go for it.’ He never hesitated.”
“Next level” meant a feasibility study and multiple trips to South Korea. Drawing on her wide range of international connections, Karen hired a veteran Asia-based IB educator and leader, Australian consultant Peter Kenny, to lead the process. She also created a new senior role at the school by promoting Karrie Weinstock to Deputy Principal, giving added strength and consistency to leadership at Branksome Hall Canada. “I knew it was critically important to not take my eye off the ball during this period of international expansion,” says Karen. “There was no one better to partner with than Karrie.”
A year of negotiations followed, and Branksome emerged with a very good deal. Karen calls it “the Four Seasons model,” where the ownership and management are separate. With the annual royalty and other income from Branksome Hall Asia, Branksome Canada is able to support student and faculty interdisciplinary experiences in Korea and fund major capital projects on the Toronto campus. Branksome Canada appoints the principal, both sides appoint the chief financial officer, and the majority of board seats are held by Branksome Canada.
Karen credits Jim Christie and Peter Kenny as critical to the launch of the project—“The three of us together built that school.” And they can take credit for adding millions upon millions of dollars to Branksome’s reserves. “That was the beginning of me seeing myself as an educator and a businesswoman, to be honest,” Karen says.
She was also excited from the start about the academic side, which includes the IB, and the opportunity for a study-abroad program. “This was the next step in being internationally minded.” She imagined sending Branksome Canada students there for a year, but, she says with a laugh, “Others went, ‘Slow down, Karen.’ ‘OK,’ I said, ‘we’ll go for a term’—I was off to the races!” In reality, all Grade 9s go to South Korea for two to three weeks, where they explore Jeju Island and Seoul and undertake a week-long, interdisciplinary unit of study with their Branksome Hall Asia counterparts.
There was another reason Karen had extra time for the Korea project. The end of her marriage in 2009 brought an evolution in her personal life and made her more reflective. “I learned to treat myself with kindness and more compassion than perhaps I had ever done in my life previously. And in order to do that, you do have to allow yourself to be somewhat vulnerable. I think I became a better leader, a better friend, a better mother and all those things. Because I finally just started cutting myself some slack.”
It was also during the Branksome Hall Asia period, when negotiations with the South Korean partners were in full swing, that Karen had her reckoning with the business side of education. Given that she was also in the early stages of a new building and capital campaign, Board Chair Raj Chandaria, a past parent and longtime supporter of Branksome, suggested she enter a major executive program. “Research and apply to the best schools in North America,” he advised. She kept that advice in mind, and in 2016 she entered the Executive Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Palo Alto, California, and came out—again—transformed. “Living in Silicon Valley for two months, you don’t come back the same,” she says. “Everybody’s an entrepreneur, or at a minimum, they have the mindset around innovation and entrepreneurship.”
From that experience, you can directly trace her strategic focus on a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship at Branksome, including the Noodle program—the school’s start-up accelerator for student business and tech ideas—and the iCAST project with its emphasis on creativity, innovation and the arts. At the same time, she was building the Athletics and Wellness Centre, thanks to the money flowing in from Branksome Hall Asia. Donors provided about $16 million of the $40 million cost, and the rest came from the school’s burgeoning reserves. “We opened the AWC on time, on budget, no debt,” says Karen.
It’s also no surprise that the AWC, a project that this former basketballer, varsity rower and now certified yoga instructor had imagined for many years and oversaw closely, makes money every year from outside uses of the facilities. Her demonstrated business acumen led to an invitation to join the board of Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. in 2017 as one of two newly appointed first female directors. She’s proud to be a role model for aspiring young businesswomen, and adds: “Anytime I have a learning opportunity in front of me, I am excited and highly engaged.”
There are plenty more of those opportunities to come. Sometime this summer, she will set up a home in London, U.K., an ideal base for her to consult internationally and still stay connected to Canada.
Her other current fascination is Croatia—she’s working on gaining citizenship from the birth country of her father and of her mother’s parents. Characteristically, it’s both an emotional journey and a practical one. There’s the excitement of exploring her heritage. “I have the time now when I can travel there and go to the places where my ancestors were born.” And, of course, Croatia is part of the European Union, meaning its passport will allow her to work in Europe.
It’s going to be a more measured chapter. No more 12-hour days—“absolutely not the least bit interested,” she says. “I want to continue to enhance my health and fitness. I’ve got an amazing son, fabulous friends and colleagues all over the world. Rick and I both see the world very similarly. We are excited about the next chapter. There’s so much to learn, to contribute and to explore.”
Words to live by for Can-Do Karen.
