By Aisha Laspina-Rodriguez, Director of Communications, Hackley School
On Nov. 20, 2025, we marked an important milestone: we “flipped the switch” to launch Hackley’s brand new website. The project was two years in the making, and by the time the day arrived, more than 100 members of our community had taken part.
Students, families, alumni, faculty, staff and friends gathered in focus groups, joined demo presentations, explored research and shared personal feedback with the Communications Office. Along the way, they became collaborators in every sense, offering their expertise, creating content, contributing stories, guiding tours, and lending their voices and faces to audio and video projects. What emerged was more than a website redesign. It was a labor of love for our School. It was a commitment to telling the Hackley story and sharing the student journey with greater clarity and depth.
Hackley School's new website launched on Nov. 20, 2025, a culmination of two years of work that involved many members of our community.
Storytelling is at the heart of what we do in the Communications Office, and the student journey is one story we always have to get right. We needed a website that really shows what learning and growing at Hackley are like, is easy for everyone to navigate, and honors the experiences and connections that make our community unique. After all, school websites are the first place prospective families experience the energy of our School, what we do here, and who we are. This redesign became one of our most significant initiatives, and we hoped it would serve as a launchpad for fresh ideas and continued collaboration across the School. I might be biased, but I’d say we delivered.
The first step was the discovery phase of the project, which we launched in summer 2024 with our website redesign partners, Interactive Schools. Over two months, we held eight focus groups with one goal: to understand how our community feels about how we are telling Hackley’s story and to identify what was missing from our website storytelling. Those conversations led us to our new website theme: More, together. We chose it with intention. That simple phrase reflects the heart of our community: our commitment to collaboration in growth.
Our focus groups also affirmed that our previous website didn’t fully capture the student journey or meet users where they are today. People expect visual storytelling, strong imagery and clear, concise language. Meeting those expectations required thoughtful work and lots of planning.
And with all careful planning, there’s almost always at least one curveball.
In January 2025, a month ahead of schedule, I welcomed my little one into the world. January was a whirlwind, and it meant I would be away during the spring for maternity leave. I was nervous. Who would keep this project moving while I was gone?
I am lucky to be part of a community that truly lives our values, always ready to help one another. Reflecting that ethos, a task force of incredible colleagues volunteered to take on the biggest challenge when I could not: coordinating the production of a video and photography schedule for our redesign partners who would be visiting the Hilltop from the United Kingdom for only a handful of days. These incredible colleagues hit the ground running and collaborated across divisions, classes, athletics, arts, boarding and more to showcase as much of student life as possible.
Our partners at Interactive Schools visited Hackley in April 2025 to capture the magic of the Hilltop for the new website.
Our community rallied together in support of this project. In doing so, they elevated the work and ensured the successful launch of the website. When I returned early in the summer, I was deeply moved and teary-eyed by what had been accomplished while I was away. I will never forget it.
One of the most memorable moments of this project came during Employee Welcome Week in August 2025 when we got to thank some of the many people who helped along the way. As I called out the names of faculty and staff, you could see the surprise on their faces. Many had no idea how much their small acts of help had shaped something so big. They had simply stepped in when asked and yet together, they helped create something far greater than I could have done alone. It was a quiet but powerful reminder of what it means to be “More, together.”
On Nov. 20, we closed one chapter and opened another. Along the way, I learned several important lessons as a leader in this work, and I look to carry these into all areas of my life:
- Community makes everything possible. Asking for help is a sign of strength.
- Invite ideas. The perspectives of others bring insight and inspiration.
- Design succeeds through teamwork. A talented group created the webpages and further refined them to shape a more complete and authentic view of the Hackley experience.
- Celebrate progress along the way. This one is hard! Because let's face it, special projects are so stressful. But celebrating the small wins is crucial.
- Always listen to students (this is a fun one!). They offer clarity, insight and thoughtful guidance.
Communications work is about more than information. It’s about connection. This redesign gave us the opportunity to bring the Hackley community together, hear from voices across the School, and create a website that reflects the richness of the student journey. This project reminded me that we can do more, build more, learn more and create more, together.
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A special thank you to our partners at Interactive Schools, whose expertise and dedication created a beautiful website that captures the spirit of our Hilltop. Check out our website at hackleyschool.org, watch our video and experience our virtual tour.
About the author: Aisha Laspina-Rodriguez joined Hackley as Director of Communications in October 2020. She says she couldn’t tell Hackley’s story without the voices of faculty, staff, students, families, alumni, friends and her talented communications team (Rozanne Rosenberg and Wade Tonken). With nearly 20 years of experience in marketing, public relations and communications, Aisha has worked in entertainment, education and nonprofits focused on health, social justice and youth programs.
