A Conversation About Ethics with Debbie Fermo

Debbie Fermo, the new Upper School Director, brings a distinguished career to Kent Place. A Naval Academy graduate who went on to serve as a helicopter pilot and mission commander, Ms. Fermo then chaired the English department at the Naval Academy, and later cofounded the Naval Academy’s Women’s network. She comes to Kent Place after being dean of faculty at The Pennington School. In all aspects of her professional life, she has led with a focus on values, ethics, and leadership. 

How have you historically interacted with, and thought about, ethics? 

I feel like I always thought ethical behavior, and character, was part of my upbringing. I was raised mostly by my mother and grandmother, and was always taught the importance of being a good person. These values were reinforced by the Naval Academy, which has a robust leadership and ethics curriculum. 

In the Naval Academy, I appreciated that the ethics were scaffolded and age appropriate: that your expectation to handle and understand ethics was different as a freshman than it was as a senior. We had to think a lot about the ethics of being a junior officer, too, and all the ethical dilemmas when in that position of leadership. I’ve always thought that case studies were a great way to talk about ethics, in that you can think about what you would do. I also used to always read “The Ethicist” in The New York Times. I always felt like I knew the answer to the dilemmas. 

Why do you think ethics is a difference-maker at Kent Place? What excited you about working at a school with an Ethics Institute? 

I admired how Kent Place was unabashedly talking about ethics, whereas most schools don’t. Often, parents/caregivers feel like students are getting this sort of education at school, and school relies on them getting it at home. If no one is intentionally talking to students about their values, then it might not be happening at all.

This is a true value add of an independent school: about being good people. So many schools aren’t talking about that. When they say it’s important to abide by the Honor Code, what does that really mean? 

What do you think all young people should know, or think about, when it comes to ethics? 

I think people should think about it in a way that they know what they truly believe. I also think that if decisions of right and wrong are hard for people, then they haven’t thought too much about ethics. I always tell my kids that if you don’t pay for something in your cart, either you give it back to the store or you go back and pay for it. If you’re able to do it, you should do it. At the end of the day, you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know you’re a good person who does the right thing. 

Do you have a philosophy of ethics and leadership? What is it? 

I believe you can’t be a good leader unless your moral compass is pointing true north. There are so many parts of leadership that require you to sift through decision-making, by way of whatever moral compass you have. 

What do you hope our Upper School students learn about ethics? 

I want them to be in touch with right and wrong, and to stay true to that definition of right and wrong, especially when it gets hard. If they were ever in a position where they were forced to make bad decisions, I hope they wouldn’t put themselves in that situation again.

If it’s 2 a.m. and a student feels she needs to take a shortcut to get her work done, I’ve already told all the students that they shouldn’t do that, but should instead come talk to me. We need to give kids an out, give them options, to not make an unethical decision. 

Trying to live a good life, to be a good person and to do the right thing, isn’t easy. The world is trending toward people who aren’t doing the right thing, so we’re swimming upstream. At Kent Place, where we’re teaching girls to be empowered, strong, and all those things, we’re providing them with all the tools to swim against the current, keep swimming, swim hard. 

What values resonate with you most when making ethical decisions?  

That’s a difficult question! 

I feel like people conflate values and virtues. I did one of my master’s at St. John’s, where we studied Aristotle. I loved his theory of the virtues. Depending on what you’re reading, he has 25 to 30 virtues. He would say that finding the mean of every virtue is your character. His was the system that always resounded with me: You have to find the mean. Finding the mean of each virtue is how you build good character. 

Take the virtue of humility. If you’re too humble, you’re meek. But if you’re not humble enough, you’re pompous and conceited. The middle is humility. 

And it’s important to do everything with integrity.