Woodward Academy is an educational pillar of the ATL Airport District community, dedicated to not only its students, but to the residents and community that surround its campus. At the helm, is Senior Vice President for Academic and Student Life, Marcia Spiller. Read more about her dedication to forward thinking and steadfast commitment to the community at large and why she’s one of our favorite Ladies in Leadership.
List the company/organizations with which the nominee is involved.
Marcia Prewitt Spiller is the Senior Vice President for Academic and Student Life at Woodward Academy in College Park, GA. Spiller’s service goes far beyond Woodward Academy and the education world, however. She also has been very active in the Atlanta community, serving on the Boards of the Boys & Girls Clubs and Hands on Atlanta and is currently Board Chair of The Enrollment Management 
Association.
She served for nine years with the National Association of Independent Schools, including three years as chair of the board. She also served for 12 years as a board member for the Southern Association of Independent Schools, where she worked with schools internationally assisting with accreditation, including schools in Nicaragua, Columbia, El Salvador, and the United Arab Emirates. She maintains roles at the Georgia Independent School Association (member and past president), National Network of Schools in Partnerships (Board Member), the High Meadows School (Board Member), and Atlanta Speech School (Board Member). Prior to her appointment at Woodward Academy, Spiller was Head of The Children’s School in Atlanta, a position she held for more than two decades.
Describe the innovative aspects of the nominee’s work with the project, program, or business.
At Woodward, Spiller is at the helm of all academic affairs. During the pandemic, she led the effort to quickly move the school to an online synchronous model, which allowed classes to continue despite staggering technical and logistical hurdles. In resuming school this fall, Spiller planned a safe return to campus for students, while also allowing remote students to continue with synchronous learning. She has transformed world language curricula and international programming, making Woodward a national model in global education. From the ground up, Spiller built Woodward’s
International and Global Connections Program which now offers a graduation distinction in Global Studies as well as unprecedented study abroad, cultural immersion, and language learning opportunities. In 2017 the Foreign Language Association of Georgia recognized her for these efforts.
Describe the impact/results the nominee’s contributions have had on the community through her involvement with the company or organization.
Spiller has overseen the development of Woodward’s Service Learning program, which involves students at all grade levels in efforts to engage with the communities surrounding the school’s College Park location. This includes an on-campus farming operation that provides produce to food banks, mentorship partnerships with an educational nonprofit, Habitat for Humanity builds, food drives and advocacy around homelessness and ecology. During the pandemic, Spiller opened Woodward’s campus as a processing center for the nonprofit Urban Recipe, which gathers and distributes thousands of pounds of food per day around metro Atlanta. Spiller also is chair of Woodward’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force, charged with creating a Strategic Plan and blueprint for Woodward’s future as a diverse institution with a deep and enduring respect for difference.
What special qualities or characteristics make this nominee’s contributions unique?
Spiller is beloved at Woodward for her unwavering support of faculty and staff, and her unhesitating commitment to push Woodward’s academics into the future. She is known for her uncompromising vision. When she sees a possibility, she will insist on finding a way to make it reality, all while collaborating with people across the Woodward community, investing them in ownership of new initiatives. Every day, she is remaking the ideal of what private education can be.
