"Don't change your vision statement.
Audit your systems."
We Help School Leaders See What's Running Their Schools.
Keelson Consulting exists to help school leaders see and strengthen the invisible systems that determine whether their schools thrive or struggle — systems hidden beneath culture, climate, and daily operations that most leaders never name, examine, or intentionally build.
We work with founding leaders building schools from scratch and successor leaders stepping into schools that keep producing results they didn't design. In both cases the work is the same — find the invisible architecture, examine it honestly, and build something that outlasts the person leading it.
The invisible systems running beneath your school's surface — how decisions get made, how people get hired, how time gets allocated, how information flows — are producing everything you can see. The culture. The climate. The trust. The dysfunction.
The People Behind the Work
Darko Simunovic came to the United States as a refugee from Bosnia. He arrived in a country he didn't know, speaking a language he was still learning, and walked into American public schools that gave him something he couldn't have anticipated: a future. Those schools didn't just educate him. They changed the entire trajectory of his life. He has never forgotten it.
That experience is the reason Darko has dedicated his career to ensuring that every school — and every network of schools — has the invisible architecture it needs to deliver on its promise to students. As Founding Principal of Mansueto High School, he designed and opened a non-selective public high school on Chicago's Southwest Side that became one of the highest-rated schools in the city. As Chief Operating Officer at Noble Schools, he oversees operational strategy across 17 campuses, managing a team of 50+ staff and a $30M annual budget — designing the systems that make exceptional student experiences possible at scale.
Darko co-founded Keelson Consulting because he believes the work of building strong systems belongs at every level — inside the school and across the network. Whether a leader is opening their first classroom or overseeing dozens of campuses, the invisible architecture either holds or it doesn't. He knows which one changes lives. He lived it.
B.A. Political Science, Knox College
M.A. Urban Special Education, Cardinal Stritch University
Erin Simunovic's journey into education began the way so many do — with a belief that every student deserves more. As a Teach For America Corps Member in Greater Milwaukee, she stepped into classrooms where the stakes were real and the systems were invisible. What she saw wasn't a lack of effort or care. It was the absence of the invisible architecture that allows great teaching to actually land.
That experience never left her. Over the next fifteen years — teaching AP Literature at Noble Network of Charter Schools, leading curriculum and instruction, serving as Chief of Staff and then President of North Lawndale College Prep, and most recently coaching leaders across the Archdiocese of Chicago — Erin saw the same pattern everywhere she went. Schools full of talented, committed people working inside invisible systems that were undermining everything they were trying to build.
She co-founded Keelson Consulting because she believes the students who need great schools the most deserve leaders who have been taught to build them — not just to inspire, but to architect. Her work extends beyond schools into system-level organizational management — partnering with networks, dioceses, and education organizations to build the operational infrastructure that makes great schools possible at scale. Her conviction is simple: when the systems are right, kids don't just feel the difference. They achieve it.
M.S. Secondary Education, Marquette University
B.A. Communication, Lake Forest College
Illinois Professional Educator License
Two Kinds of Leaders. One Framework.
You have a rare opportunity — and enormous risk. This framework helps you build the invisible architecture intentionally before the wrong systems calcify into the very problems you're trying to avoid.
- Founding principals and heads of school
- Charter school leaders in year one or two
- Leaders succeeding into a blank slate
- Anyone building something new from the ground up
You've tried initiatives. You've rebuilt culture. You've hired great people. And something still isn't working. This framework helps you find the invisible system failures underneath the visible symptoms.
- Principals 3–10 years in who feel stuck
- Leaders who succeeded someone else's school
- Anyone whose culture initiatives haven't stuck
- Leaders tired of fighting the same fires