Aimeclaire “AC” Roche
President
Cranbrook Educational Community, Bloomfield Hills
Employees: 900
Revenue: $88M
Last fall, starting her fourth full year in charge of her educational community, Aimeclaire Roche, who goes by “AC,” oversaw another successful academic cycle for Cranbrook Schools. Yet even during this June’s commencement ceremonies at the landmark Bloomfield Hills institution, she couldn’t be blamed for occasionally casting her eyes forward.
Roche, president of the Cranbrook Educational Community, is already looking ahead to 2027 — the year that will mark the centennial of the Cranbrook Foundation, which was established by George and Ellen Booth.
The foundation endowed an elementary school, separate high schools for boys and girls, an art academy, a science institute, and Christ Church Cranbrook. All were built and continue to flourish on the country estate the Booths acquired in 1904.
Rather than planning a fireworks extravaganza for the anniversary, Roche is preoccupied with larger pragmatic and philosophical questions.
“How do we expand our programs?” Roche asks. She thinks of the Horizons Upward Bound college-readiness program for students from the Detroit Public Schools.
In 2024, there were 41graduates. Of the cohort, one was joining the U.S. Navy, and the rest were indeed college-bound. Horizons Upward Bound started about 60 years ago. “How do we ensure that program continues to thrive?” she asks.
The other point concerns maintaining and enhancing Cranbrook’s “thought leadership,” as she expresses it. “How do we make sure that we continue to be a nexus, a place where incredibly thoughtful scholars and creators and scientists can come together?”
Making her mark by solving these and other questions would satisfy Roche, who came to Bloomfield Hills in 2018 as director of Cranbrook Schools, and advanced to president of the Cranbrook Educational Community in 2021.
Previously, she spent nine years as head of school at The Bishop’s School in La Jolla, Calif. The little-known connection between Bloomfield Hills and La Jolla is that The Bishop’s School was founded in 1909 by Ellen Booth’s aunt, Ellen Browning Scripps, co-founder of The Detroit Evening News — today’s Detroit News.
“I have this phenomenal exposure to two different institutions that come out of the same family and (are) commitments to education,” Roche says.
Growing up in Pittsburgh, Roche was inspired by her parents, who were first-generation college graduates. With their encouragement, and the help of “amazing, caring, dedicated” teachers, she learned ancient Greek and Latin in prep school at Exeter Phillips Academy in New Hampshire.
She went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Harvard University and Columbia University, respectively, and observed that the devotion to Classical languages — sometimes called “dead” languages — is only possible with the assistance of skillful teachers. She says it made her determined to help pass on the knowledge she had gained.
“I was, I think, tuned into being an educator from (the time I was) a very, very young kid,” she says. “If there was any sort of surprise for me, it was that schools are really communities and are more than the life of your single classroom; they’re the life of all of those classrooms, and all of the things that happen on the field or in other venues. All of it, together, makes the experience.”
If Cranbrook offers its own twist to the formula, it comes from the institution’s emphasis on interdisciplinary experience and lifelong learning. The Booths’ “bold founding vision” places Cranbrook as “this kind of beacon in the community” that coming generations would keep improving.
A good example of the interdisciplinary approach is seen in the weaving program established in 1928 by Loja Saarinen, whom Roche calls one of the “amazing women creatives connected to Cranbrook.” Loja managed the institution along with her husband, Eliel, the Finnish architect who was Cranbrook president, and decided to create textiles that complemented his designs.
It turns out that weaving is more than artisanry; it’s a metaphor, too, and now Roche casts her eyes back to Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus who worked her loom during his years of wandering, as described in The Odyssey.
“The very act of weaving is so emblematic of what any of us does, pulling the threads of a complicated tapestry and pulling them together to make that beautiful whole,” she says. “Of all the characters in the world of Cranbrook, I actually see her (Loja) as so emblematic of Cranbrook at its best.”
Assuming Cranbrook’s presidency meant moving further from the classroom and into the tedious depths of fiscal and financial oversight. Roche looks after the Cranbrook Schools, Academy of Art, Art Museum, Institute of Science, Center for Collections and Research, and the Cranbrook House and Gardens.
The task of managing all of the departments isn’t too daunting, she says, noting it’s the work that allows all the other initiatives to go forward. And she doesn’t necessarily find financial administration, infrastructure considerations, or fundraising efforts to be harder than teaching.
Contributing in this administrative way to the exhibitions, educational programs, and tours gives her “great joy,” she says.
Meanwhile, Roche shows signs of becoming a thoroughly entrenched member of the greater Detroit community. “For me, personally, I’m just so excited about what’s happening in Detroit as a city,” she says.
With her husband, Nathan Costa, an organist and instructor of Latin, she enjoys following the Tigers, Red Wings, and Pistons. They also visit independent artists in their studios and, on another scale, occasionally take in “something as grand as the DIA.”
The Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix was in the offing in early June, but IndyCar racing isn’t the kind of pro sport Roche follows. Nevertheless, numerous Cranbrook alumni have achieved a high rank in the auto industry, so she’s forward-looking when it comes to other aspects of automotive culture.
“You’ll always find me on the berm at the Woodward Dream Cruise,” she says of the school’s main entrance north of Lone Pine Road. “I think that’s the most unbelievable local event ever.”
