Note: This interview originally aired on February 6, 2023 as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together Podcast, appearing live on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The transcript of this podcast episode is intended to serve as a guide to the entire conversation, and we encourage you to listen to this podcast episode. You can also access our summary, along with helpful links and audio from this episode.
[begin excerpt]
Bridget Burns:
Right before I left, I cashed in all my political capital and told the presidents that this was going to happen to us, whether we were part of it or not, which, yes, I think eventually was going to happen. It was going to happen eventually, but it was probably several years down the road. They agreed, and they were like, "Okay." And so I actually got to go and push for that legislation and get it passed, making it so the former foster youth got their zero unmet need basically was covered by the institutions. And then later, I think two years later, I was giving a keynote speech and two former foster youth, two girls were standing on the side of the stage, and they were coming up to talk to me afterward, and they were crying and they'd told me like they'd gone to college because of that.
Doug Lederman:
I think you can probably do something like that again for --
Bridget Burns:
Oh yeah, no, I mean, but it's like how do you top that? So when people are --
Doug Lederman:
Especially at that age.
Bridget Burns:
Raising $40 million, the 118,000 additional graduates, building the alliance, all these incredible things, the great people worked really hard without that moment.
[end excerpt]
Bridget Burns:
Welcome to Innovating Together, a podcast produced by the University Innovation Alliance. This is a podcast for busy people in higher education who are looking for the best ideas, inspiration, and leaders that will help you improve student success. I'm your host, Bridget Burns. Each week I partner with a journalist to have a conversation with a sitting college president, chancellor, system leader, or someone in the broader ecosystem who's really an inspiring leader. And the goal is to have a conversation to distill their perspective and their insights gathered from their leadership journey. Our hope is that this is inspiring and gives you something to look forward to each week. This episode, my co-host is Inside Higher Ed co-founder and CEO, Doug Lederman.
Each week I typically team up with Doug to interview a sitting college president or chancellor or leader in the field, but today is different, and so I have submitted myself for the hot seat so that we can talk about the hundredth episode of the Innovating Together Podcast, which today that's what this is.
Doug Lederman:
And I have the privilege of turning the tables on Bridget and subjecting her to the treatment that we usually give to the leaders. So before we get to Bridget's own story, let's talk a little bit about the podcast itself, how you got it started, why you got it started, and we can then go into a little bit about what you and the higher ed community have learned from it.
Bridget Burns:
So the Innovating Together Podcast, which we often do episodes, Weekly Wisdom, Scholarship to Practice, Innovation Spotlight -- I'll back things up, and I'll explain Weekly Wisdom, which I guess really starts it, which is right around the time of COVID kicking off, we, one, knew that people were super bummed out and that there was a palpable sense that people were looking for optimism and leadership. And it really depended on the institution that you were at, whether you were getting that kind of leadership, because not everyone is a compelling leader. And we wanted to try and elevate and amplify the voices that had a vision, because remember how scared we all were.
So that's happening, but there's also this other thing happening, which is the alliance has existed now for at this seven, eight years, and people have asked us to expand for a long time and we haven't because it would be opening up an experiment in the middle of it. So we'd been the original 11 for a long time, but we had secretly been identifying campuses that we wanted to potentially include when we had surpassed our public goal of 68,000 additional graduates. And so, long story short, right in the middle of COVID, right when we start doing Weekly Wisdom, part of the reason for it was that we had identified the institutions we wanted to add, but we needed to vet and interview those presidents and chancellors. And it's very difficult to get those meetings without signaling that we're looking at you. This was a subversive way for us to be able to interview and talk to and learn from leaders who we were considering including in the Alliance. That's where the show starts. Over time, it evolves because it turns out it's striking a chord with an audience that we know matters and we wanted to serve.
Then about a few months in, people started clamoring and saying, "Can you please record an audio version?" I think that the best entrepreneurs out there are obsessed with their audience and just let them lead. And for me, learning from our audience what questions they want to hear, the leaders they want to hear from, and they wanted an audio version, then you create what your audience asks of you. And so that's where this started, is basically the folks at home told us exactly what they needed. So now here we are, and it's wild to think it's been 100 episodes.
Doug Lederman:
The other trend that I think it fits into more broadly is, you mentioned it a little bit, but the leadership is a lonely job in higher education and a lot of places, we don't do a fantastic job in the industry with professional development and with helping to give people a sense that they're part of something larger, and that there are people elsewhere dealing with some of the same issues and concerns and questions. And in these conversations, you haven't been focused on problem solving exactly, except it's almost personal problem solving. We're not trying to solve institution's problems here, but we are helping people understand how people lead, how they get through the day, especially during the pandemic, and some of those conversations around leading during that time were pretty remarkable, I think.
If you had to tease out some of the things that have struck you the most about these dozens of conversations, I have a few thoughts on that, but are there things that have jumped out at you?
Bridget Burns:
I've just been really inspired by different leaders who I didn't even know yet. This, for me, has exposed me to a variety of voices and vantage points that, for me, I've soaked it up in terms of the leadership lessons. I can think of examples. There's one that I often go back to, and it is that one in early COVID where Michael Crow talks about that we're just sailing, that these are choppy winds, these are intense seas, but it's just sailing. The day-to-day work of leadership is still the same. It's the nuts and bolts, it's the same bone structure, it's just the conditions that change. And for me that was a pretty profound thing, which as someone who gets to work with him all the time, he'd never shared that prior.
Also, I would say I've been very surprised by certain leaders' willingness to talk about themselves or not, and who's turned down invitations, and who has sought them out. That's been really interesting. The folks who reach out and who let me know that they listen to this podcast when they're getting ready in the morning and that this is their form of professional development. So it's very much struck the chord of addressing that underlying palpable sense of loneliness that I often perceive in this space.
So, I don't think I'm answering your question directly, but I will say that related to it, I think that underlying all of the work of the alliance is trying to accelerate ideas, because higher ed is very obsessed with the boundaries of our own institution. If you raise your eye level up and look around and scan the horizon, the thing that I have noticed throughout my career most consistently is that we all have the exact same problems. They have different shape and size and modality and all that stuff. The texture's different, but it's the same stuff. It's how you spend your time, it's what to put your focus and energy on. It's this sense of loneliness, of "Am I the only one who's had to figure out how to do this one thing?" Where I go between institutions, I just consistently, whether it's because of isomorphism or whatever, we're all struggling with the same stuff.
And so creating a space where people can realize that they are not alone and in fact they're not the only ones who struggled with that, for me, is part of what's been missing in higher ed. And for us, we just want ideas to spread faster. And one of the ways it spreads faster is if you are less defensive and protective and have that sense of scarcity, like, you have to own your ideas, that people are more generous with their wisdom. I think that we will therefore be a better place, we'll be a better workforce, we'll be more effective. So that's the vision behind it.
Today's episode is sponsored by the University Innovation Lab, which is a digital ecosystem designed to help higher ed professionals just like you and I, accelerate innovation with a wide array of tools, trainings, resources, and community, all in one location. If you also want to drive change and advance student success on your campus, but feel like there aren't enough hours in the day, and frankly you don't always know where to start, the University Innovation Lab can help. It was created with tools and templates and professional development uniquely generated by the UIA. The Lab helps student success, administrators and innovators advance student-centered change and improvement more effectively with more clarity, collaboration and impact. To join our wait list, go to theuia.org and click the resources page.
Doug Lederman:
The way I would answer my own question is I've been most impressed and moved by the people who have shown some vulnerability. The people I've been most impressed with, and won't name names, people with humility who have expressed true surprise that they've gotten where they got. And again, that's not to say that people who have been targeting moving up or whatever, but I think the people who feel fortunate to be where they are and who acknowledge that and acknowledge what they don't know, some of those people have really struck me.
Bridget Burns:
Yeah, I'm kind of a junkie for advice and how you actually physically do this thing. What time of day do you wake up? What's your morning routine look like? What kinds of conversations do you try and make yourself have to make sure you're really doing the right work? All this. So the people who've gotten into that nuts and bolt stuff, that's been fun for me. And sometimes people will share something in a prep call prior, where I, having the trust of presidents to go live on the Internet is a lot. And so part of it is, I'm trying to assuage any concerns so they realize I'm not going to pull "got you" questions. But in those private conversations, sometimes they will share things that they don't share on the show. They need that coaxing of vulnerability because there is this posturing and rigid, wearing your dad's suit vibe for that job sometimes, where it feels like people put on the presidency and they're trying to act presidential. But the most presidential moments have been ones, people are showing their true heart and they are being the most human. I think that you've seen that in many episodes, just like you said.
Doug Lederman:
Definitely. And that's the thing. I'm not talking about vulnerability, I'm just talking about vulnerability like, "Man, this is hard." Or, "Here's how I got through this period when I was dealing with this." And it is, it's a really emotional vulnerability more than anything else. And I just think this is an interesting analogy, and I agree with it. I'm not surprised they trust you that a little less likely to trust me as the mean, evil journalist sometimes. But I think I've been able to show that I can contain myself.
Bridget Burns:
Oh, you definitely have it. Part of what I'm trying to do is ask them to please not bring the talking point version of themselves.
Doug Lederman:
Yes.
Bridget Burns:
Because I am so tired of seeing these cardboard versions of the presidency where people are only talking about their institution or talking about the certain things that they talk about. And I'm just like, that's fine. But this is about wisdom. This is about sharing insights that you've learned that are probably not something that is already on a poster somewhere. So it does take trust for them to get there, but sometimes they will come in, and their team has prepared them to do that. And I'm like, "Please don't, and please don't talk more than two minutes at a time." And again, if you stay obsessed with serving your audience, they will tell you what they need. And we can look at the viewership numbers, and we know what questions they like, and we can see what people engage with. And for me, this is about serving them in those advocacy moments. I'm also making sure they know Doug's a good guy. He's not going to --
Doug Lederman:
He can bite, but he rarely does.
Bridget Burns:
Rarely, rarely.
Doug Lederman:
Let's turn the tables on. You like to ask people whether they've learned more from a positive example of leadership or from a negative one. And I'm curious how you answer that question.
Bridget Burns:
If you'd asked me before age 30, I would say I've learned a lot more from negative because I had worked with a lot of presidents by the time I was 30. I think I'd worked with probably close to 20 college presidents at the time. And I have definitely learned what not to do and how not to engage and how not to inspire people from certain examples in my mind. Once I met President Crow, which I think I was 34, I had reached this point where I had seen a lot of examples of leadership that got your blood pumping, visionary leadership had been missing. I had a lot of questions about whether he was for real. I had questions about a lot of things. Watching him and observing him over the course of a year during my ACE Fellowship was profound for me about leadership because he was for real.
And also just watching someone go through the gauntlet of the day of that role and then how they managed to treat people. The way that he always helps people see a much bigger idea than they could possibly fathom. He's always looking way beyond the horizon. And it's an invitation for all of us to see ourselves in that alternate reality together. That's why it's defined not by who we exclude, by who we include and how they succeed. And it doesn't matter what the kind of conversation he'd be having, every moment he's lifting your chin up and you're seeing a bigger idea. And that is one of the ways to lead that I've tried to emulate that honestly was missing. It's missing in a lot of places.
I've seen a lot of presidents, I remember coming into the ACE Fellowship, really, with a very clear point of view that I don't think is wrong, which is there are a lot of people who have managed or administrated their way into the presidency, and they are a good manager or good administrator, but there are actually very few true iconic leaders, people who have a clear, compelling vision, get you excited and enrolled in that vision. I would say that's probably one of the most profound lessons I learned was that leadership is a real thing. It is actually something you can emulate. Whenever I'm struggling with figuring out what the next vision is, that's when I know I need to spend some time in reflection so that I can lead effectively.
Doug Lederman:
I don't know how much people know about what you do in your current leadership role at UIA, but you are in this slightly strange position. You work for a bunch of presidents, but you also lead them, pull them in --
Bridget Burns:
Lead from behind.
Doug Lederman:
Yeah, exactly. So talk a little bit about that role in your work with a group of leaders. You are trying to help them move in a common direction, but not by telling them what to do. But talk a little bit about what that has taught you, helping to lead or work with leaders has taught you about leadership.
Bridget Burns:
The most important characteristic that informs the work I do is curiosity. I have a genuine desire to understand people, what makes them tick. I don't believe I need to be understood, but I really deeply desire to understand other people. Everything about our work has always been rooted in: start with empathy. Spending a lot of time in and around institutions and observing the leadership roles that I've had the privilege of observing, again, I saw time and time again and I see that now that they all have the same problems. And what I want to understand and I try and focus in my work is being obsessed with identifying what are the big challenges and what are the things they need to deliver. And what I do is I'm like a shuttle diplomat and a weaver between all of them. I match-make. You have this problem. Well, guess what? X president also has that same problem. You're not alone. Let's get you to get together.
Or sometimes they don't get to talk to each other. But I am shepherding lessons between my institutions. Again, this is about the loneliness of the job, and it's also that everyone who is a president interacts with -- It can often feel like you have a bunch of sycophants in the echo chamber at times. And every person you interact with either wants something from you or works for you. And it's very hard to have moments where you feel like people are truly being transparent. And not because people really are trying to be manipulative, but at the end of the day, it's weird for you to be yourself with [unintelligible]. That is something that -- I do most of my work just based on this genuine care and concern for them and that this seems really like a hard job.
I don't know that I could do it, because it seems so hard. I've worked with now over probably 48 presidents and chancellors in my career. And my job now is to help them see a shared bigger collective vision, to help them, what I learned from one campus bring to another in terms of helping them be able to coach their teams, coach their institution, and push their institution to be more ambitious around student success. And I work for a board of presidents, and all this work is designed by the institutions to serve them and to help them solve their shared problems. And what I really do is always try and encourage this work to be making them slightly uncomfortable. So they're the leaders, but I just always want to, we're moving a little bit faster than they would probably want to. And that's what they expect of me, is to help them be driving and being more ambitious, whether it's about scaling, whether it's about innovating.
My job, it's a wonderful one. I'm a very curious person. I find them fascinating. These jobs are fascinating. These people are really interesting. I'm really lucky to work for such good people. I even got to choose the people I work for in some cases, and I just want them to be able to be as effective as possible.
And so the thing I'm trying to work on right now is reducing transition and turnover. It's the greatest threat to my work. It's the greatest threat to higher ed. It's the greatest threat to our students, because institutions, when they turn over a president, you lose basically five years of progress. If I had a chance to do another dissertation, I would regress institutions across the country based on presidential tenure and turnover, and I could identify characteristics of what an institution that's truly innovating looks like. And you could see that there is a very common thread. So I'm trying to help make it so that people last longer in these jobs, which are very impossible. And I think part of that is Weekly Wisdom is helping to create and shine a light on the kinds of behavior and the kinds of leaders we want to see more of.
Doug Lederman:
What are you most proud of as a leader? What have been your biggest accomplishments as a leader?
Bridget Burns:
Probably surprising, but my biggest accomplishments already happened, and it's prior to the UIA. I'm really proud of this work. I'm so proud.
Doug Lederman:
All downhill from here.
Bridget Burns:
It's all downhill. And just in terms of impact, I had a career before this where I was, I've been very fortunate. Growing up in a low-income family, getting appointed to the State Board of Higher Education when I'm 22 years old, involved in the hiring and firing of college presidents at 22, 23, become the chief of staff for a university system by the time I'm, I think, 29, 30. When I was ready to finally transition from being chief of staff of the university system, I had accumulated a lot of political capital. And I'm always very intentional about not spending my political capital. I always want to be taking care of people and not asking for favors.
So I had some, and I had been working in the legislature on behalf of the Oregon University System for quite some time. And there was this bill that always, it would always get up, but we would stop it from happening, which was around helping former foster youth have access to essentially getting their tuition paid. This is a bill that has gone around in many states. At the time in Oregon, I didn't know anything about this. This is prior to me coming into overseeing government relations as one of my side hustles. Apparently this has come up time before and many times, and the university system would be like, "Hey, if you're not going to pay for it to the state, we're not going to do it."
So I understand that, but again, I was wrapping things up. I was about to go away out of the ACE Fellowship. I had just been appointed to the Commission on Children and Families. I'd spent a lot of time understanding the challenges of former foster youth, and I had a boss who really let me do what I wanted to and trusted my judgment. Right before I left, I cashed in all my political capital and told the presidents that this was going to happen to us, whether we were part of it or not, which yes, I think eventually was going to happen. It was going to happen eventually, but it was probably several years down the road. They agreed and they were like, "Okay." And so I actually got to go and push for that legislation and get it passed, making it so the former foster youth got their zero unmet need basically was covered by the institutions. And then later, I think two years later, I was giving a keynote speech and two former foster youth, two girls were standing on the side of the stage and they were coming up to talk to me afterward and they were crying and they told me they'd had gone to college because of that.
Doug Lederman:
I think you can probably do something like that again. We'll work on it.
Bridget Burns:
Oh yeah, no, I mean, but it's like how do you top that? So when people are --
Doug Lederman:
Especially at that age.
Bridget Burns:
Raising $40 million, the 118,000 additional graduates, building the alliance, all these incredible things that great people worked really hard without that moment.
Doug Lederman:
Yeah, yeah, I get it. Let's go to your usual wrap-up question.
Bridget Burns:
By the way, this is a very Bridget Burns move is that, of course, you made me tear up. Of course, most people don't know that, but yes, my emotions are very accessible.
Doug Lederman:
There you go. So best advice you've ever received about leadership that helped you in your leadership, or that have helped you be who you are?
Bridget Burns:
The thing that helped me in my career was advice that from someone who later became my best friend but was my roommate at the time. Do the job you want to do, not just the job you're given. It was the most powerful advice that I got, because my job was very defined at the time, and I wanted to do bigger things, and I saw things that needed to be done, but because they didn't look like they were in my lane, I needed that permission. And when I got that advice, a year from that, I became senior policy advisor and chief of staff of the university system. And I've been doing policy and research before that. And it was entirely because I just started doing the work that needed to be done. If I saw a problem, I tried to not do it like me on top telling people what to do, but if there was work that needed to be supported, I didn't need to be asked to do it.
If I see a problem, I try and solve it, and I try and address it. I try and do it in a way that invites people to be part of it. But that changed my career. And so the crux of the moment in my career where I could have gone down a very narrow path and I instead ended up with this incredible opportunity, which then turns into this. So that one piece, and I always give that to our fellows, especially there's a lot of work out there that doesn't have a home or a champion. And if you want to do that kind of work, then you do that on top of your job, and that's actually how you get career opportunities. It's not that you wait for someone to direct you to do those things.
The other thing that's been super powerful, be less interested in who gets credit for the work. I think that I am so much more generous and do my best work when I am not worried about whether I'm going to get credit for it. It's time and time again. You can tell when people have that scarcity mentality and they're afraid whether or not they're going to get credit, and it just makes them less enjoyable to work with, less fun to be around. When I'm guarding my boundaries, I'm not going to shoot for the moon fully. So that's important. And I would just say: always under-promise and over-deliver, be the kind of person who's known for getting stuff done and for bringing people along when you do it. Those are the things I always tell our fellows. And that's all gleaned from the wisdom of others. But I would say, sorry, I'm like, thank you with the chance for giving you a TED Talk.
But I would say I learned a lot from other places. But I did learn quite a bit from Freeman Hrabowski, obviously President Crow, I learned a lot from him around the real job of leadership. And I would say at its core, the advice is that taking care of yourself is the actual job. Because Mike told me that the number one job of leadership, it's really just about making decisions time and time again. And so the number one thing you have to do is focus on preserving your energy, because decision making is hard and leading is hard, but if you don't focus on protecting and preserving your energy so that you have the energy to do the job, then you cannot be a leader.
And Freeman Hrabowski, when you ask him the underlying issue that is the most important thing for leadership, it is about taking care of yourself. I tell the story about how he did P90X with his ACE Fellow every night, and he really believed in it. And I think that's helpful for people to give you permission to really take care of yourself. And I see it as my job. My job every day includes meditating, journaling, exercising so that I have energy, making sure I'm taking care of a peer in here, otherwise I can't be a good leader.
Doug Lederman:
I think you pretty much just answered the question about the advice you give to others as well, pretty much. Or did you wrap those into one?
Bridget Burns:
Yeah, some of the stuff I always share with our Fellows is in there. I would say the most underlying important thing is to focus on Maya Angelou's right. How people feel when they're around you is really what matters. And that when you come into any new circumstance, we have a tendency to try and describe to people why we deserve to be there. And I definitely had that insecurity for a large part of my career, because when you have some imposter stuff because of growing up in a low-income family otherwise, and higher ed's very status oriented. And so you're always going into a meeting or a conversation, I deserve to be here. I went to Harvard or whatever. And as much as you can work to quiet that in yourself and actually focus on curiosity and trying to learn about other people and being interested in them, it changes everything.
Because when I meet new people and they can tell I genuinely care about them, they will always remember that. But the braggy, boasty me explaining, "I deserve to be here because I used to be the chief of staff of blah, blah, blah," nobody likes that girl. Nobody likes that woman, so don't be her. So yeah, I would say focus on tapping into really caring and being as interested as possible. And people really want to answer an interesting question about themselves. Giving people a question that helps them, gives them the gift of contemplation and reflection, is one of the kindest things you can do. And I love doing that for people. And I also am actually curious about them. That has been really helpful for me, and I always recommend that for other people.
Doug Lederman:
We almost always close with asking people about books that they've read that have influenced them the most. A lot of the answers are leadership books, but I've been stunned by the people who've talked about Italian literature and some wild stuff. What's on your list?
Bridget Burns:
I have them right here. I have Leadership and Self-Deception and The Speed of Trust. If there's one book that you read as a leader, Leadership and Self-Deception, huge, makes a huge difference. And we always recommend that for folks, because basically your brain is set up to tell you that you're right and that other people are wrong. And it's one of the important things as a leader to understand that your mind is set up to do that and to ensure that you don't deceive yourself. Because often if I do something or I say something and there's a part of me that's like, yeah, but they were in the wrong, I was right to do that. No, no, no, no. That initial instinct, that feeling I had that maybe that wasn't the right thing, that is the instinct I need to listen to, which is to go and apologize, to own it, to be more generous. Leadership and Self-Deception, 10 out of 10 totally changes, whether it's how you lead in your home life, in your personal life, or professionally, just knowing that you have to intentionally choose not to be deceived to believe that you are always right and to actively seek out perspectives that counter that.
For me, I think in an important growth phase for the UIA, The Speed of Trust, just understanding that you cannot make withdrawals unless you've made deposits. And so building trust with people before you're asking for favors and understanding that trust is really a lubricant. It makes things move so much faster. Like Doug, you and I, if I needed something from you, we have a level of trust that we could probably move on a deal so much faster than anyone who you're trying to get to know. And just understanding that trust seems like a nice to do. It's the most important thing. And that's why I was over-delivering whenever I make a promise. Super important. I think those are the big ones that I would say were most helpful for me.
Doug Lederman:
In this special episode, great to learn more about you and spend some time, and congrats to Weekly Wisdom.
Bridget Burns:
And the Innovating Together Podcast. Thanks everybody for listening. I still sometimes, when I meet people who tell me that they listen all the time, I'm just so grateful because during COVID, I stopped listening to work-related podcasts because there wasn't a commute. People giving you their time and their attention is the most generous thing they could ever do. And I take that very seriously, and we always want to make sure that we're creating content that really serves people and helps them. And so thank you for the privilege. And thanks for doing an episode that you made me tear up, which we're so live that we can't cut it out, but that's okay. We will see you soon and be able to share with you the hundred-first episode of Weekly Wisdom and the Innovating Together Podcast.
Bios of Guest and Co-Hosts
Guest: Bridget Burns, CEO, University Innovation Alliance
Dr. Bridget Burns is the founder and CEO of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA). For the past decade, she has advised university presidents, system chancellors, and state and federal policy leaders on strategies to expand access to higher education, address costs, and promote completion for students of all backgrounds. The UIA was developed during Bridget’s tenure as an American Council on Education (A.C.E.) Fellowship at Arizona State University. She held multiple roles within the Oregon University System, including serving as Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor, where she won the national award for innovation in higher education government relations. She was a National Associate for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and has served on several statewide governing boards including ones governing higher education institutions, financial aid policy, and policy areas impacting children and families.
Co-Host: Doug Lederman, Editor and Co-Founder, Inside Higher Ed
Doug Lederman is editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed. With Scott Jaschik, he leads the site's editorial operations, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs and other features. Doug speaks widely about higher education, including on C-Span and National Public Radio and at meetings and on campuses around the country. His work has appeared in The New York Times and USA Today, among other publications. Doug was managing editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education from 1999 to 2003, after working at The Chronicle since 1986 in a variety of roles. He has won three National Awards for Education Reporting from the Education Writers Association, including one for a 2009 series of Inside Higher Ed articles on college rankings. He began his career as a news clerk at The New York Times. He grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and graduated in 1984 from Princeton University. Doug and his wife, Kate Scharff, live in Bethesda, MD.
About Weekly Wisdom
Weekly Wisdom is an event series that happens live on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It also becomes a podcast episode. Every week, we join forces with Inside Higher Ed and talk with a sitting college president or chancellor about how they're specifically navigating the challenges of this moment. These conversations will be filled with practicable things you can do right now by unpacking how and why college leaders are making decisions within higher education. Hopefully, these episodes will also leave you with a sense of optimism and a bit of inspiration.
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