Summer Loveland wasn’t looking for change.

She was happy with her job at the time.

Her husband Dave Loveland was taking a break from teaching eighth grade for a year to pursue a master’s degree and was starting to look for a job for the upcoming school year.

It happened during Christmas Break. Loveland was sitting on the couch with her daughter Truly. Dave went into his office to look at job listings on his computer.  After a while, he walked back into the room.

“(Summer), you know I’ve been looking for jobs for myself, but St. Mark’s is looking for a CFO,” Dave told her.

She had been in finance for over 30 years, but never thought about working at a school.

But she decided to take a look at the job description anyway. And that would change everything.

Loveland would have never gone into finance had it not been for her father. Born in Corpus Christi, she moved to Nacogdoches in fourth grade when her father, now retired, took up the position of Chair of the Accounting Department at Stephen F. Austin State University.

She actually wanted to be an interior designer.

“Starting in middle school, I really enjoyed decorating my doll houses,” Loveland said. “And I thought, ‘I want to do this for a living. I want to design other people’s homes.’”

Her father didn’t feel like that was a good career path for her.

“That’s not happening,” he told her. “Which business degree will you choose?”

She didn’t question his judgement.

“To me, my dad is the smartest man I know,” Loveland said. “I knew that he was looking out for me in the long term.”

She didn’t know anything about business majors. But then, she took her first accounting class as a freshman at Texas A&M University. And she loved it.

She ended up sticking with it. After graduating with a bachelor’s in 1993, she got her first job as a staff accountant at CTX Mortgage.

Then, after a year, she left for a bigger opportunity at Thousand Trails. At that point in her career, even with a full-time job, she still wasn’t done with her education.

SMU has a part-time program designed for professionals with at least two years of work experience. Loveland applied to the business school and started classes in 1995.And after three and a half years, she got her MBA in 1998.

After three years at Thousand Trails, she left to work for KPMG in Dallas as a senior auditor. She would then transfer to their Los Angeles office for nine years.

This proved to be a major turning point in her career.

“At such a large firm, there were a lot of opportunities to work with clients in different industries,” Loveland said.

Disagreements with clients. Technical issues. Stress. All-nighters.

“I was sometimes working over 100 hours a week,” she said.

After 15 years at KPMG, Loveland decided to leave public accounting and got her first CFO position at the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System.

“Truly was three at the time, and I was working a lot, probably over 80 hours a week,” she said. “That’s difficult when you’ve got a toddler at home. I knew I had to be at home more.”

She then became the CFO of the Real Estate Council.

But then she learned about the opportunity at St. Mark’s.

Following the retirement of former CFO Suzanne Townsend after 22 years of service, many sought to succeed her.

Loveland had heard positive things about the school from her friends who have boys at the school.

She immediately became hooked.

“I felt like it was just the perfect combination of professionalism, high achievement and also a warm environment,” she said. “That’s something that you don’t really see in the corporate world.”

So she submitted her resume along with a letter of interest on Dec. 28, 2024.

In late February 2025, Loveland stepped onto campus for the first time for an interview with Eugene McDermott Headmaster David Dini and Associate Headmaster John Ashton.

“I was so impressed,” she said. “I just felt the sincerity in everything that they do.”

A week and a half later, she found out that she was selected to be a final candidate, with the opportunity to come to campus for a full day.

Then came the final stretch of waiting.

It seemed to be taking forever.

Finally, on April 11, her phone rang.

It was Mr. Dini, welcoming her to the St. Mark’s community.