Changemaker Spotlight Q&A: Austin Ewachiw, Calvert Hall College High School

This Q&A series aims to provide readers with valuable insights from changemakers across the social impact community. 

Austin Ewachiw is the Director of Technology at Calvert Hall College High School in Baltimore, MD, his alma mater. He led the adoption of Blackbaud’s Total School Solution to consolidate campus systems and now oversees data management, cybersecurity, software integrations, and digital compliance. He serves on Blackbaud’s K–12 Advisory Board.

Q1: How do you see your role as Director of Technology shaping the experience of students, faculty, and families—and what does leadership look like in that role today?

I have always felt that technology should be close to invisible—working seamlessly in the background so students can focus on learning, faculty on teaching, and families on staying connected and informed. At the same time, the role of technology leadership has evolved as the dependance on technology has moved from enhancing operations to mission critical. Collaboration becomes quintessential. Today that means being present, listening to what’s needed across campus, and making smart decisions that balance innovation with reliability.

Q2: You’re an alumnus of Calvert Hall. What did it mean to you to come back and serve the school—and how does that personal connection influence how you lead?

Coming back to Calvert Hall wasn’t just a career move—it was personal. I work with genuine people who care deeply about the place and the people within it. I am commonly asked how long I’ve worked at the school, and I always say “be sure to add 4 years to include the time I was here as a student.” That connection keeps me grounded and reminds me every day that I have real impact on students who are having the same formative experiences I did. It holds me to a higher standard, because this isn’t just a job—it’s an institution that is very special.

Q3: In a time when schools are navigating rapid change, what do you believe technology leaders must do differently today than they did five or ten years ago?

Technology leaders must be nimble and can’t just be infrastructure managers anymore. Strategic planning has gone from a place of making things fit to needing to be involved from the very beginning. This is a major challenge that tech leaders struggle with across the board because all the aspects of a complex school environment create unique priorities and stake holders from across the campus. The athletics director wants stadium lights, the school head has classroom enhancements approved, the advancement director has a donation for an interactive tribute display, you get the point. Now more so than ever, tech is woven into each one of these initiatives and can’t be an afterthought to be successful the first time through.

Q4: When leading the adoption of a campus-wide platform—like you did with Blackbaud’s Total School Solution—how do you evaluate whether a new technology is truly helping students, parents and staff, not just adding another tool? What signals matter most to you?

Big changes like that work best when school leadership is on board from the beginning. Buy-in from the top helps all the various parts of the community recognize that a commitment is being made to enhance all corners of the campus. The most honest signal is the ‘a-ha’ moment when newly updated tools become infinitely more accessible, and data visibility takes on a whole new perspective. I also pay close attention to the conversations in the halls, offices and lunchroom. If people are having issues, they tend to share freely. If there are victories, you may never hear about them without a one-on-one with them. Find a way to celebrate these in a way that a larger audience can reap the benefits as well. People benefit from a win, large or small.

Q5: You’re a strong proponent of thoughtful change management. Can you share an example of a change you had to slow down or redesign to bring people along—and what that experience taught you?

A recent example was in our health suite. The software they use to track student health was clearly getting stale due to a lack of product development and it loosely connected to our unified school information system (SIS). We could have continued a path of annual disappointment, but this became an opportunity to holistically reevaluate the solution. Needs had changed, and a modern, nimbler, connected solution would give our health professionals the tool they needed to be more efficient and accurate in the critical work they did. The change would bring challenges to transition from A to B, but well worth the effort. I don’t know the first thing about treating a bloody nose or a how to tape an athlete’s ankle, but I do know that the right tool leads to better results, full stop.

Q6: With cybersecurity and digital compliance top of mind for schools, what are two or three habits you believe every educator and student should practice to help keep their community safe online?

We all know the big 3 by now (MFA, Strong Passwords, and Patch Management), but where I feel we all can improve is to have an open mind to things like external audits and evaluation. In tech we become very protected of the systems we provide and maintain. Schools even more so because we run lean departments and have limited resources. I will often tell folks we become ‘cloistered’ because a campus environment presents as more of a bubble than a landscape. We know just about everything we need to in the bubble, but what we really need is to stay knowledgeable in what is happening in the industry as a whole. Finding trustworthy third parties is a great way to address this, and force yourself to be open suggestion that the external industry may have already found a best practice.  

Q7: As a leader on Blackbaud’s K–12 Advisory Board, what themes are you seeing across schools as they think about the future of education technology?

The conversation that keeps coming up everywhere is AI—not just the tools themselves, but how schools develop responsible, intentional frameworks around them before they fall behind the curve. There’s also a strong push toward data consolidation; schools are tired of managing disconnected platforms and want cleaner, more integrated ecosystems that present significantly more valuable data. With my K-12 Advisory Board, we get to see not just what is being developed inside the products as they mature, but also what is coming next. A great example of this is seeing how Blackbaud is including AI agents in their core products to really address shortfalls of small staffs and accumulated arduous tasks. Deemed “Agents for Good”, their agent is already vetted with the same security and compliance already present in your applications, something third-party will constantly have challenges with. The amazing thing about AI right now, is we are still writing the playbook on how these tools can impact our individual environments. Those are the discussions we are having right now, with our group and sub committees.  

Q8: What’s one lesson you’ve learned at Calvert Hall that you believe other schools could apply—regardless of size or resources?

Relationships are as critical as infrastructure. No matter how good your technology is, it only works best if people trust the people behind it—and that trust is built through presence, honest communication, and genuinely care. Any school, regardless of budget, can lead with that.

Q9: What’s one project or accomplishment you’re most proud of in your career so far, and what impact did it have on students, families, or the broader school community?

Blackbaud’s Total School Solution implementation stands out because the scale and complexity of it touched literally every corner of the institution—admissions, academics, finances, communications, and beyond. What I’m most proud of was also fostering ‘integrations’ along that journey, which I will always say is how our institutions can differentiate themselves. From 10,000 feet, we all use the same underlying platform. How we use it, what we plug into it, and how we find new and creative tools to get valuable insight out of it, is what makes the DNA of our institutions so unique.