TASIS Foundation Board

Son of the Founder, Mr. Fleming attended TASIS in its first years and then Deerfield Academy and Harvard University, taking a B.A. in Economics in 1965. He served on active duty as a U.S. Naval Officer before going on to get an MBA in Finance at George Washington University in 1974, then pursuing a career in finance and banking in New York and Washington, D.C.. Since 2003 he has been Chairman of the TASIS Foundation.

Mr. Hicks attended Princeton University and after taking his A.B. there read for an M.A. at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He served as an officer in the U.S. Navy and on the staff of the U.S. Naval War College, and has been the headmaster of several prominent independent schools, including St. Mark’s in Texas, St. Paul’s in New Hampshire, and Darlington in Georgia. His book on K-12 education, Norms & Nobility, won the American Library Association’s award as the outstanding book on education in 1981 and has been frequently reprinted. Scribner published his and his brother’s new translation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, entitled The Emperor’s Handbook. Mr. Hicks also served as Chief Academic Officer for the Meritas Family of Schools from 2006-15. He lives with his wife in rural Montana.

Chairman, TASIS Switzerland Board of Directors
Founder, TASIS Elementary School 
Chairman, Board Campus Development Committee

Lynn Fleming Aeschliman '63, B.A. from Barnard College, Columbia University, is an alumna of TASIS and daughter of Founder Mary Crist Fleming. She has worked in many facets of the TASIS organization, managing its theater company, publications, films, and building projects on all of its campuses for many years. She served as Assistant Director of TASIS and as Chairman of the TASIS Development Board before moving to Virginia, where she ran an architectural restoration firm and served as Director of an elementary school. She has supervised major architectural restoration projects in the USA, England (all the original buildings of the TASIS England campus), Italy, and Switzerland—the TASIS campus and now the rapidly-developing TASIS Global Village Master Plan, which extends until 2032—and has run summer camps in Switzerland and France and co-directed a residential college in Lausanne, Switzerland. Mrs. Aeschliman served as Executive Director of the TASIS organization from 1996–2005 and now serves on the TASIS Foundation Board and as Chairman of the TASIS SA Board of Directors. Her two children graduated from TASIS. She is also the Founding Director of the TASIS Elementary School.

Learn more about Lynn Fleming Aeschliman.

Dr. Aeschliman has been associated intermittently with TASIS since 1971. He holds B.A., M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and is a widely-published writer (e.g., see his archive at National Review Online). In addition to teaching at TASIS, he has taught at a poverty-area American public high school, Columbia University, the University of Virginia, universities in Lausanne and Milan, Boston University (now Emeritus Professor), and the University of Italian Switzerland, where he was Professor of Anglophone Culture from 1996 to 2019.

Learn more about Dr. Michael Aeschliman.

Chairman, TASIS England Board of Directors

Mr. Gonzalez has been associated with TASIS since 1972 in several instructional, administrative, and executive roles. A graduate of Phillips Academy Andover, he holds a B.A. from Harvard University in Visual Studies and studied architecture at the Harvard School of Design. He was Chairman of the Art Department at TASIS, was Administrative Director of the TASIS Schools for 20 years, served as Interim Headmaster of TASIS England in 2004, and has also served on the Governing Boards of all three TASIS schools, including the Puerto Rican school TASIS Dorado, which he founded. His two sons graduated from TASIS England. He lives with his wife in Puerto Rico, where he is president of the TASIS Dorado School and restores houses through his company, Design & Build.

Mr. King graduated from the University of Southampton with a degree in Economics and Accountancy and then qualified as a chartered accountant. His career has included extensive experience in the accounting profession, specializing in audit and advisory work, and also in banking in a number of finance, compliance, and audit roles. He has experience in the education sector, gained initially from 25 years of voluntary service as a Governor of a local primary school, 20 years as Chairman. He subsequently served as Bursar/CFO of TASIS England for eight and a half years, retiring at the end of September 2017 when he was appointed to the Board.

Mr. Manning earned his B.A. and M.A in English at Wake Forest University (North Carolina), where he also served as Administrative Assistant to the President.  He subsequently served as Associate Headmaster and English Teacher at Woodberry Forest School, then as Dean of Freshmen and Instructor in English at Washington and Lee University (both in Virginia). He served as Headmaster of TASIS-England from 1998 to 2001 and since 2001 has been Headmaster of Norfolk Academy in Virginia. His two children attended TASIS-England for three years.  Mr. Manning currently serves as President of the Southern Association of Independent Schools and also serves on the Board of the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Ornaghi was born in Italy. A Cum Laude Economics graduate of Bocconi University, Milan, he is an experienced real estate professional investor with a diversified background.

After graduating, Mr. Ornaghi moved to London where he spent more than six years developing the international business of a large Italian printing and publishing company. During this period, he was head of a business unit that acquired and managed important accounts with some of the most relevant publishing houses in the US, the UK, Scandinavia, and Germany. He then moved back to Italy, in the year 2000, to join the general management of the same company. He later went on to advise various Italian businesses in the fields of business strategy, international development and marketing.

In 2004, Mr. Ornaghi joined his wife Lorenza's family real estate business and together they started various initiatives in Italy, Switzerland, and in the UK with a specific focus on retail property developments and commercial property acquisitions. He also continued advising Italian and International groups in the fields of real estate investments, retail expansion, and asset management. A Swiss resident since 2012, he is now director of the Swiss branch of the family-owned real estate investment business with various property interests in Europe.

The Ornaghis have two sons who attended TASIS for many years.

Michael Ulku-Steiner has been the Head of School at Durham Academy in Durham, North Carolina, since 2013.

He has deep roots in the Durham Academy (DA) community, having begun his teaching career there in 1992 after graduating Phi Beta Kappa as a Morehead Scholar from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He served for eight years as teacher, coach, advisor and interim Director of Studies. Michael was recognized for his outstanding teaching in 1997 with the Academy’s prestigious F. Robertson Hershey Distinguished Faculty Award.

A self-professed “career learner,” Michael earned a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Duke University in 1997 and a Master of Arts in Educational Administration as a Klingenstein Fellow at Columbia University in 1998.

Michael left DA in 2000 to serve as Dean of Students at TASIS, and in 2003 he returned to DA for five years as its Upper School Director. During that period, he recruited excellent teachers, clarified the school’s focus on character education and ethics, and guided the community through an architectural master-planning update.

In 2008, Michael was appointed Headmaster at TASIS, where he served as an exemplary and inspirational leader for five years. He eloquently demonstrated at both DA and TASIS an extraordinary ability to relate to students, faculty, and families across divisions, fostering excellent teaching and an authentic sense of community.

Michael now lives in Chapel Hill with his wife, Dr. Beril Ulku-Steiner, and their two children.

Vice-Chairman, TASIS Board of Directors 
Founder and Chairman, JHS Foundation

Alexandra Heumann Wicki ’80, born in Germany to an American father and a German mother, grew up in the Ticino, where she attended elementary school and later attended TASIS for six years. She was the first TASIS graduate to undertake the IB and received several TASIS awards, among them for the senior who best represents the ideals and goals of the school.

Alexandra then studied English Philology, English Literature, and Political Philosophy at the Université de Fribourg, followed by a performing arts curriculum at Lee Strasberg in New York City. During those years she worked in the field of the theater arts and spent numerous summers as a counselor at TASIS. Her last teaching position was with the European Film Actors School (EFAS) in Zurich, where she taught for nine years. In 2000, she started a Swiss humanitarian foundation that supports students in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Alexandra and her husband Dr. Andreas Wicki live in Zurich. Their youngest daughter is currently studying at Boston University while their older daughter recently graduated from Princeton and their son from Stanford, both with honors. Alexandra has traveled extensively and is fluent in German, English, Italian, and French. She has been a member of the TASIS Board of Directors since its inception in 2005.