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Right or wrong, I probably identify most with Obi Wan Kenobi. I think of him as someone who, though mistakes were made, you know, sees himself as someone who is shepherding the next generation along. And that is one of the great joys of being a leader in this field or any field I've been, is I take so much joy in seeing my team succeed.
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Welcome to the PM Podcast, brought to you by Evertrue Studios, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators and change makers in fundraising, philanthropy and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. In this episode, we speak with Karen Isbell, Vice President for College Advancement at Kalamazoo College. Karen previously served as Associate Vice Chancellor and Campaign Director at the University of California, Irvine, where she helped lead the university's $2 billion Brilliant Future campaign. Before that, she held the senior leadership roles at the University of Michigan, contributing to the university's five billion dollar plus Victors for Michigan campaign. She began her career in arts administration with roles at the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Goodman Theatre, and today serves as chair of the board, the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra. A former president of apra, CARE has been a national voice in advancement for many years. We begin our conversation with a glimpse of where it all started, how her talking and singing as a child earned her the nickname Radio within the Family, hinting early on at a life shaped by music and communication. I did want to start by just asking you a bit about your own origin story because we've talked in the past, but we've not really talked about that. So take me way back. You're from Detroit, correct?
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Yes, I born and raised in Detroit and it was one of those things from a very young age I had decided I was going to be a doctor. And so if you asked anybody in my family before the age of 18, they're like, oh, Karen's going to college and she's going to be a doctor. And that was kind of my view of who I was going to be in the future growing up. And I went off to college and was in a pre med program, but I started taking some music classes. So I've always been a singer and that has always been a part of sort of my identity as well. And I remember my high school music teacher, in fact, at one point saying, you should, you know, why don't you? You should be a music major when you go to college. And I just kind of laughed. I was like, oh, that's crazy. I'm going to be A doctor, you know, like, haven't you heard? You know? And I got to college and I started dabbling in a few music classes and I said, you know, I could be a music major and still be pre med. And so I did that for about two years and by the end of my sophomore year I was like, yeah, no, I don't want to, I don't think I want to be a doctor. Like many pre med students, organic chemistry was the thing that I was just too scared to even take it. And I skipped over it and went to physics instead. And then I was like, okay, something in the world is telling you that this is not the path that you actually want to be on. And so I, and I really did want to be a music major. Like, just devote myself to studying music and maybe performance and all of those things. And so I spent most of my sophomore year terrified of telling my parents that. And I finally broke it to them at the end of my sophomore year. And my mother, God bless her, said, oh, I saw this coming. And I was like, what? You know, and you know, because she knew that was such a. Music was such an important part of my life. And so she was not surprised at all. And she said, you know, you're going to do what you're going to do and, and, you know, we'll see where it leads you. My dad, on the other hand, was livid. And how are you going to feed yourself? What are you going to. This is crazy, you know, and so, and to this day, you know, maybe not so much. Many of those aunts and uncles have passed on, but even into my early adulthood, when I was doing okay for myself, they would say, oh yeah, it's really too bad you didn't become a doctor. They would still,
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B
okay, so, so where did the, where did the original thought come from though? Do you remember? I mean, was it like when you were a tiny, you were a tiny kid and you just thought like, elementary school?
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A
Yes, yes, I can. From the, from the age of seven or eight. Eight is probably the age I think about it most. And I would march around at family get togethers and tell them how I was going to be a doctor. And, and it just kind of got into the family consciousness that that was something that I was going to pursue. So like I said, even long after those days had passed, I would go to family gatherings as an adult and they would lament even after I became an assistant vice president at University of Michigan. And they were like, oh, that's nice. This really would have been great. If you'd become a doctor, okay,
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maybe they all really needed a good physician and that's why they just. They just said they trusted your bedside manner.
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And did you like to have someone in the family go down that path? I don't have any other physicians in my family. That would have. That would have been a sort of a watershed moment, I think. Yeah, exactly. And so, so I got it. And I was also like, okay, y' all need to let it go. I let this go a long time ago. So. But. So I did follow that path and got a bachelor's degree in music at Harvard and then went on. I had decided I wanted to be an opera singer. So I went on and.
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B
Wait, before we go there, when did the music start for? Because often that is something that happens with the family. It's not like this. I want to be a doctor. Maybe it's, you know, you go to church. That's where it started for me. Or it might be that you went to a summer camp or so. When did music become a feature of. What is your first memory of that?
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You know, I think I. Some. Some of my family would say I probably came out of the womb singing. And my mother, you know, had. She would attest, zero music musical ability. Neither did my father really, but my mother really couldn't carry a tune. She just couldn't. And. But I do remember I had a cousin when I was younger. I had some cousins who were almost as old as my parents because I have a number of aunts who are significantly older than my mom and one of those cousins. I remember when I was maybe about five or six, and I was running around doing whatever five or six year olds do, and he used to call me Radio. That was his. His nickname for me because he said, you're just always going. You're always singing and talking and singing and talking and talking and singing. And so he just called me Radio.
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So what kind of music was your thing when you were a kid? Because that's not. You went into a whole bunch of different range of music, which we'll talk about. But what were you. What was going through your mind?
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Probably a lot of the. I mean, there was certainly pop music. So, you know, I listened to the things my parents listened to growing up. A lot of R and B music and. But also the Carpenters. My parents had some fairly eclectic musical taste. So a little bit of Stevie Wonder, a little bit of Karen Carpenter, and I sang a lot in church. So, yes, it was, you know, that was probably, you know, my first sort of choral experience and opportunities to, you know, get the solo and things like that. And then I went off to summer music camps as a. As an adolescent. And through my high school years, I went to Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp one summer and fell in love with that and talked my mom into letting me go with their international choir to Scandinavia between my sophomore and junior years. And. And I sang in high school, and I sang in multiple choirs in high school, and I did plays and, I mean, musicals and things like that. So it was just always. It was just always running in the background. It's always been a part of what I do. And so now, even though I don't do that professionally, it's certainly something that whenever I get a chance, I'm still singing a chorus here in Kalamazoo. And it's the thing that keeps me sane when all the other things are driving me nuts.
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B
It sounds like there's maybe a number of firsts in here, too, both for yourself, but maybe even for family, because you said that you would have been the first doctor, at least that you're aware of, in that extended family. What about Harvard? There aren't a lot of us in our families who end up going to Harvard. I have a Yale graduate in my house. I certainly didn't get into Yale. So was that also new for your family, to have a Harvard?
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Oh, yes. Yeah. There weren't a lot of college. We had a few college graduates in our sort of immediate family. The family I grew up spending time with, cousins, aunts, uncles, and all of that. And my. Both of my parents did graduate college, but both in later life as adults, you know, after their kids were grown. So. So that was a big deal. I think my grandmother was mortified that my mother was letting me, you know, go all the way across the country to. She didn't. She didn't like planes. She didn't. She was. She hated it when I went to Scandinavia in high school because I was flying. Not only flying in a plane, but flying over the ocean in a plane. That was like a big no, no. So, yeah, that was a big deal. And that was a point of pride, despite the fact that I didn't come out as a doctor.
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B
And you just kind of glossed over the experience because I guess we don't all dwell on our college experience. But you were talking about doing music then, and so I know that you were in a number of different choirs there. One I think you're still engaged with now, right, at Harvard. Harvard, Radcliffe.
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Well, I. I affiliated with them. I don't I did a couple of things in college. I sang with an acapella group, the Harvard Radcliffe Veritones.
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B
Right.
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And I had the opportunity. They just had a. Their 40th reunion, which, when I joined the group, it was the second year of his existence, and it was a startup acapella group full of basically, I won't say rejects, but rejects from another one of the other mixed acapella groups. And we were all like, well, so we would never have imagined that that group would still be there 40 years later. So to have had that experience this past fall of going back for the 40th reunion, the two student. Well, they're grown people now, but the two folks who founded it as students during their freshman year, when I joined, when they were sophomores, they were there and talked about how that group started. And just to see more than 100 of us showed up for this reunion and all gathered with the current group on stage. So that was a lot of fun. Singing in an acapella group is a very fun and unique experience. And all I can say is the students who are doing it now, oh, my God. Stuff they're doing now, we couldn't have even imagined. Acapella has transformed itself in the last 30, 40 years. It's went from, you know, barbershop quartets and simple doo wop to the stuff you see on Pitch Perfect. And I was like, oh, this is crazy, right? So we felt somewhat inadequate. The old folks there on stage with
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them, when you were there, I think it was seeing the size of the department, all the different alumni that you were engaging with. Big in every respect, but you could have gone anywhere. Why Michigan?
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You know, I think. Well, at the time, there was. There was something between that time at Chicago Symphony and Michigan. And that was seven years that I spent as the administrative director at the Chamber of Music Society of Detroit. So when I joined the Chamber of Music Society in 1999, they had two and a half staff. And when I left there seven years later, they had five staff. So we doubled in size, that team. But that was really the. The bridge job that I had, because that job was a sort of jack of all trades job. I. It was a lot of internal administrative work. It was some annual fund work, it was board relations work, it was patron relations work, front of house, back of house, box office. All of those things that, you know, I was sort of overseeing for this organization and, and I developed. That was the time I think I sort of became comfortable in my own skin in terms of having genuine and meaningful and you know, nice interactions with, with constituents of the organization that I worked for. Because we were so small, there was, there was nobody else, you know, there was the president and me and our assistant. Eventually there was a development director. And so that was, that was time very well spent for me because it helped me figure out how to be a grown up in some ways and how to interact in the professional world with folks at all. You know, different levels of wealth and different levels of energy and famous musicians from all over the world who came through our doors and just helped me build a lot of confidence. And so when I went back then to the University of Michigan and they were looking for a director of prospect management, which ultimately up being a role that oversaw the entire prospect development team, my brain was just completely rewired by then. And the way that I thought about it, the profession had also dramatically changed in seven years. So I needed a crash course on how's this thing work these days. And folks were starting to talk about prospect development and prospect management in ways and the technology had changed all of those things. So stepping into that role at Michigan then where you had a community of 600 folks who worked in advancement across the entire institution, they became my internal constituents. So I spent the next 11 years figuring out how to develop relationships that got us where we needed to go with our internal folks so that they could do that same work with our external folks. And so as I worked with that team and eventually with the entire development services team, reporting data and gift admin and all that, it was all about how, how do we as folks who are on the operational side of things, develop relationships with our internal colleagues in the same way that our internal colleagues develop relationships with our donors? And how do we. Because when I got there, there was this sense of, oh, I'm just a lowly researcher. Those gift officers don't really have time to meet for me, but maybe if I just kind of, you know, do some really hard work and slip it under their door and they'll be good, you know, I was like, okay. So that had to go by the wayside. And that team is now has become exceptionally entrepreneurial in the way they approach prospect development work and the way they work with folks across campus. And so I'm incredibly proud of that. But that was just another sort of step also in my evolution as that portfolio at Michigan over 11 years became larger and larger and I realized I was still hungry for more because then I wanted to get out. I was sitting in all of these meetings with the vice presidents and our senior team. And I was like, I want to be out there talking to these folks and because I feel like I could make a difference. And I, I know enough about how this process works and, and that was a hard transition for me when I realized that I wanted to move closer to the front lines because I had spent most of my career, at least in higher ed, sort of in this sort of behind the scenes type of work. And that was hard for the leadership there to see that I, they let me dabble a little in some of those activities and working a little bit closer with, with donors and volunteers. I raised one major gift in the time that I was at Michigan from a donor who I think was unhappy with a lot of other people. And they're like, well, sure, you can go and see if you can make anything work.
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B
What?
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Right. Like, well, they're mad about this. They're mad about this. So if you want to go talk to them about this project, go for it, you know, and, and it, and it worked. And that was lovely. And so that was my first taste of that. But I think it also dawned on me that if I really wanted to stretch my wings further in that regard, I was going to need to leave Michigan. And I thought, well, I'll step. I. But I've never been a major gift officer. And so for a long time my, my mindset and the mindset of many of the headhunters and whatnot search firms I talked with was you having never been a major gift officer, even though you've done all of these other things, was seen as a deficit. And I thought, well, I would like to be a campaign director. I had worked very closely on two major multibillion dollar campaigns at Michigan, very much in the weeds, working with campaign directors. And I thought, well, if I. That could be a sort of a leaping off point where I could sort of marry the operations with working more closely and make my way to the front line. And so I, you know, I took a position at University of California, Irvine as the campaign director there with the expectation and the conversations with the leader there that I'm so excited to help plan and develop and launch this campaign. And then I look forward to then being on the front lines of asking folks for gifts to support that. And so that had been the plan. We launched the campaign in 2019. It was two plus solid years of really hard work trying to coalesce this large research university around a single set of messages. Very rewarding and also helped me also understand some things about that institution that I hadn't asked when I got there, that was like, I was starting to think, well, this is not quite the right fit, but I'm loving the work. And then Covid came and so kind of had a wet blanket thrown over the launch we had had just a few months before. And then my leader was like, well, what we really need is some help now on the operations side of things, so maybe you could go over there and do that. I was like, no, that wasn't the deal. The deal was that I was going to then build out a portfolio, and I was going to start getting in the trenches with the rest of the gift team, the major gifts team. And I had a team of major gift officers that I was managing at that time and was really excited to do that work. And it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen in. In the way that I had hoped. And at the same time, being 2,000 miles away from family, my mother became ill, all of those things. And so it was just. I needed to. I needed to be closer to home. And the opportunity came of colleague and friend of mine, Shelby Radcliffe. I'll say her name. I always tell people who had a similar origin story started out in prospect research, went through a campaign administration, and had landed her first opportunity as a vice president for advancement at Occidental. At the time, she called me and she said, just so you know, I put your name in the hat. I used to work with the president of Kalamazoo College when he was the provost at Occidental, and he's looking for a vice president. And I told him he should talk to you. And I was sort of like, you know, so. And I wasn't at the time thinking of moving back to Michigan, but, you know, as those conversations started, and I was very excited to work with him as a human being because he's the most amazing boss I've ever had. I will just tell anybody who asks. I was like, oh, I need to get serious about this opportunity. And it seemed like the stars were aligning because I really realized at that point I needed to get home to be closer to my mom. And so that happened fully, virtually a whole executive search process that happened on Zoom in 2020 and moved back during the pandemic to southwest Michigan and have been here for the past five and a half years and love it. And my beloved president is retiring in a few months, and I'm so sad.
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B
What was that experience like moving back after making that move to California? Because, again, it seems like that's. The Midwest is Your is your home.
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A
It is, it is. I think there's something clearly that keeps drawing me back here. Southern California is beautiful. Absolutely. We had bought a house in Mission Viejo and we, you know, I loved. We were 20 minutes from the mountains, 20 minutes from the ocean. And you know, it was idyllic in many ways, crazy expensive. But realized that there were, I'll be honest, after 3 years, 24, 7 beautiful weather gets boring. It does it really. I'm sure there are people who agree with me, but as someone who grew up with four seasons, I was like, oh look, another sunny day, you know. And so I would get excited at stupid little things. So in January I might find a sun stubby little, you know, six foot maple tree on a median. And it had changed it, its leaves had changed and that I'd get excited about that. But you know, compared to, you know, the lush green forests of Michigan that I was so used to, I realized I was missing that as well. I also realized that having the opportunity to work for a smaller organization, because I got asked a lot during the interviews, oh, you've worked for Michigan. You've worked for, you know, one of the UC schools. Why would you want to work for this tiny liberal Lords College in southwest Michigan? And I said, actually, honestly, the lure of this work is to be closer to what I'm the end game that what we're raising money for is, is can be a powerful thing. When you're at a big institution, there's a lot of exciting things to choose from and a lot of things in competition with one another. And so sometimes thinking about, you know, okay, well that's great, we've got an academic medical center, so we've got to raise money for that and we got to raise money for the museum. And we've got 30 different special specialty centers and all of these other things. Whereas, you know, what's at a small school like this, it's very. You're raising money for students, you're raising money for faculty, and if you get lucky, you're raising money for, you know, infrastructure like a dorm or a, you know, science building or something like that. But there's a lot, there's a lot less noise in the system. My office overlooks our quad, which is the first time in any of my higher ed jobs I've been closer than two miles away from the main campus. And so you're a lot more connected to what you're talking to donors about every day and how you're engaging them. And so there are students here who know me and that I know when commencement comes around and they're like, come meet my family and let's take pictures. And none of those things would ever have happened at those big schools in the kinds of roles that I was in. So that is very rewarding. And then just to be able to talk over and over and over again with so many alums around the country for whom they feel that this was a trans, the transformational moment of their lives. And they will sit and they will tell me stories and then they'll cry a little and they'll laugh and they'll just. I, it's, it's really special. It's just a special place.
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B
So what makes it that kind of special place? It's not just the size and proximity to the quad. I mean, what is it? That's the special character of K college.
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A
We spent a lot of time talking about that because we say we wish we could bottle it up and spread it around. I think part of it is definitely the size. This is a school where our alums and our current students, they're in classes, I mean all of their classes, not just one or two of their classes, but where they are one of, I don't know, tended at max 20, more like 15 students in a class. They're not working with a bunch of teaching assistants. They are talking directly on a daily basis to their faculty. And the faculty here are focused on the teaching and learning experience. Some of them certainly have research and other scholarly pursuits they're focused on. But that is not unlike at a big research institution where their performance is based on how much of this outside scholarship they're doing. And a lot of them spend very little time in the classroom. This is the core work of the faculty here. It just creates a very different kind of atmosphere and the relationship. I have met so many alums who are still really close friends with professors they had 30 years ago and they've been to. And you know, the faculty, they'll go to their weddings and they're their former students, godparents and I mean like so, you know, they're for their kids. So you know, it's just that kind of a close knit community. There's also a shared ethos amongst our. Kalamazoo College is really well known for its study abroad programs, which it's less so now. And the world keeps making that a little bit harder every day right now. But you know, if you, if I talk to my alums, you know, 30, 40 years ago, 20, 30, 40 years ago, probably 95% of our students spent some time away study abroad. And so when the entire campus, for the most part, is having that shared transformational experience that study abroad provides, as opposed to being one of, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15% of a class that might go away and do study abroad, it's just part of the package and that. So they are. So a lot of them are bound by that across multiple generations. We'll have alumni events around the country, and it's very typical that, you know, if we bring the president out, you know, we'll have an event where we've got graduates from the class of 66 and graduates from the class of 2024 in the room all together mingling and having that some of those shared common stories. So it's also, I think certainly these days, it tends to attract a student body that they like to think of themselves as quirky and a little off the beaten path. And so they kind of share some of that shared ethos as well.
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B
You described the president as being the best boss you've ever had. So why is that? What makes that magic possible?
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A
Well, it's funny. He is what I call affectionately a serial extrovert. He loves to be. He loves to be in front of our students. He and his wife, at least if they're in town at least once or twice a week, they're eating dinner in the dining hall. They'll go find a group of students, hey, can we join you for dinner? And he's like a celebrity on campus, so there's that. The rest of the vice presidents, we all fade into the background when we're walking across campus with him because they're all yelling and waving at him or stopping him to tell about their latest sporting activity. And he follows all the sports teams. He goes to all the arts events. So he's just very, very present amongst the student body, which is fantastic. He knows the students and their stories well enough that when I'm on the road, he can tell their stories not from something that the marketing team wrote or the communications team wrote down for him, but he sat down and had a conversation with a student and said, can I tell your story? Because this has been very moving for me. So there's that aspect of just who he is as a person in the world and makes him very, very well liked and beloved on campus in many corners. He, as a leader is also. He's probably, and I give him credit for being really the first person as I was going along my career journey, to help me understand that that thing I was talking to you earlier about that, and having never been a major gift officer was somehow a deficit in my ability to step into a vice president's role. He was the first person who really helped me see past that. And it was during the interviews, and I kept saying, well, now, you know, I just want you all to know I've done this and I've done this, and I've done all the things, but I've never done this one thing. I've never been a major gift officer. I have raised major gifts, but that's never been. I've never had a portfolio. I've never been a road warrior. And he looked at me and he said, you keep harping on that. And he said, I am the president of this college. I have never been a vice president for advancement. I've never been a cfo. I've never headed up student development. I've never headed up admission or enrollment. And somehow they still hired me to be the president of the college, knowing that part of my job is to hire all the folks who are going to bring that expertise and to lead them in a cohesive way. So I would. It would be crazy for me to expect that you have done every job in advancement to ha. And have that as a qualification for you being able to step into this role. Now, I've raised many major gifts since then. He's like. And I could see that you could do that with your eyes closed. So I'm not worried about that part. And he said, but you also understand how the entire operation needs to work and needs to perform as a cohesive whole. And that was. That was like someone sort of like, you know, they talk about the scales falling away from your eyes, and that's very dramatic. But, I mean, I think it was, again, the first time someone had articulated it to me in such a way that I understood that, yeah, I am qualified to do this job. And I thought I was, but people kept telling me, I'm not sure you are, because you haven't done this one thing. So. So that was powerful for me. But he also, as I look at how he leads our. His cabinet, all of the. The vice presidents here, he has. And we're all people now that he has hired in the last six years as other folks started retiring. So he's been here at the college 10 years, retiring in June. But, you know, he was. He turned over the whole cabinet about halfway through his tenure. And just to see the way that he ensures that he hired people and that will sort of have this similar expectation of one another. But we work so well together and we talk all the time about. It's pretty incredible that as dysfunctional as we've seen, senior leadership teams at other institutions, we've worked at what they can be, that we don't always agree with one another, but we are an exceptionally well, a functional team. We work really well together. We actually like each other. We eat lunch together most days in the dining hall with the students, with the president. And he's just kind of created this environment that we're in this together because as you might suspect, being in higher ed right now is a little rough and for a number of reasons. And so where organizations can fall into, can fail is when that senior team is at each other's throats.
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B
But you just said it's. Higher education is in difficult position for many reasons. What are some of those reasons? I mean, for those outside of it, they may not know the pressures you're under.
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A
Absolutely. Well, there's this thing that I think schools have been talking about for the last decade or more. It's called the demographic cliff, which in its simplest form is there is fewer and fewer high school graduates coming out year over year. And so the pool of students going to college, just from a pure population standpoint, is shrinking every year. We kind of crested, I think about a year ago, and now we're on the downslide. Some of those pressures have been hitting parts of the country like the Midwest and the Northeast, faster than it has in other parts of the country. But now pretty much everybody outside of one or two spots are, you know, they're seeing that population decline. Within that smalling, shrinking. Oh my goodness. Within that shrinking group of high school graduates, fewer and fewer of them are choosing to go on to college for a variety of reasons. Some of. For some of them, it's cost. For some of them, we have a lot of political pressures now and folks telling students college is not worth it, you don't need to go. Some of the anti intellectualism that is happening in our country right now. And so higher ed certainly in the last year has been under almost continuous attack by our current administration and just trying to kind of undo, you know, literally centuries of kind of how we've done this. Were there opportunities to evolve and make changes? Absolutely. Is dismantling the whole infrastructure of how higher ed works the best plan? Probably not. But this is where we find ourselves. My own alma mater, Harvard, was under a massive attack from the federal administration last year and it was relentless. But those kinds of forces are impacting everyone and for a school like Kalamazoo College or any private institution, especially small liberal arts college, that are almost wholly reliant on enrollment on the first, and then a little bit on the philanthropy. Because what we raise in philanthropy is a drop in the bucket compared to what comes into our institution through tuition, room and board. But it's an important part of it. And growing the endowment and things of that nature, those shrinking pools mean we've got fewer and fewer students, that we are all, as in for the 4,000 higher ed institutions across the country are competing for those bodies. There's no state of appropriation to kind of make up any of the difference. It's really what we are getting from students and families. Add to that the fact that as all of these pressures on the cost of higher education, even families that can afford to pay more are often these days not willing to pay more. So they're shopping around for the quote, unquote, best deal that they can get. And so the downward pressures on what we can bring in from those, those revenues continues to shrink or be flat. So those are some of the pressures that we're all dealing with.
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B
How has that impacted you personally? I mean, not just the work, but you have to sit in the chair, you look out the quad, you see students going down there, and you're wondering probably two things, how are they going to afford it and make their way out in the world? And then also, what about those who do have a heart for education, who do believe in this kind of intellectual rigor and the community, community, which they can find at a place like Kalamazoo? How is it for you both the day to day bringing in the money, but also just weathering that.
- [36:07]
A
You know, I wish I could tell you because it varies from day to day, you know, and we have certainly, as an institution continued to deal with, I think, the other piece of that there's sort of what's happening in the world, and then we look at what's happening on all of our campuses, and it's not unique to kids. But Covid really did a number on us like it did so many institutions, because students. Students came out of that regardless. And this will follow us probably for the next 20 years, came out of that with a year or two of their learning was suppressed through trying to learn online or not going to school at all or whatever it may have been, not learning how to socialize. We're finally, I think, starting to see with students on campus now that they have. They're not in the shell that those students in the first couple years post Covid where they didn't want to even look you in the eye, we were still wearing masks part of that time. And so they just. The fact faculty kept saying our students don't know how to student well, like they're just, you know, it's like they're sitting in person in a classroom, but in their minds they're still on us. They're thinking, they've, they can, you know, put their, put the things on mute and turn off their screen and zone out. So we're sort of past that, but the, the effects of what that did for how they learn. We just had a presentation with our board this past weekend where we talked about the facts that students coming to college now are very, are anxious and they're reporting self reporting that they have a lot more anxiety and other things like that that then we have prepared to address what happened to some of their learning. Like what are there things that the faculty now have to do extra to sort of help them make up for academic things that may have, you know, fallen. They have fallen behind because of that. So coming out of COVID had an impact on our student body and the kinds of students that are landing on all of our campuses around the country today. But it also left long lasting financial impacts. And so we spend a lot of our time just figuring out how we're going to deal with, you know, those lingering effects that started with COVID but then went on through, you know, we had that massive inflation in 2022 that really, you know, rising health care costs, all of these things that how do we keep our brick and mortar institutions going? Almost all of us are dealing with massive amounts of deferred maintenance that, you know, I think in generations past, they're like, well, get some chicken wire and chewing gum and we'll make it last another 10 years. And you know, those chickens are coming home to roost. And so recognize that we may, we need to address our infrastructure. And so we've done a number of those kinds of projects on campus, but they all cost money. So. And then you, you're just hoping that this thing that you don't, you know, you don't have money for now will hang on long enough until you can either raise it or whatever it may be, because if it fails tomorrow, like, you know, we've had a few here on our campus, a few, you know, infrastructure failures that were not planned or expected that, you know, had impacts to how we do our teaching, teaching and learning and have shut down buildings for a tomb and Things like that. While we dealt with a water incursion. We can't call it a flood, though. It was a mechanical failure that resulted in 12ft of water in the lower level. I want to run classroom buildings. Right.
- [39:44]
B
Hey, it's a swimming pool. No, I shouldn't jump.
- [39:48]
A
I'll fix now.
- [39:50]
B
Okay, but you've just described the whole environment, but not necessarily how it's made you feel. Look, you've gone through this whole thing yourself from the time of the impact of COVID on you personally out there, when you're in the UC system, making your way back, watching the impact on students has an impact on you. So how have you personally weathered? I mean, obviously, the success is there, but then you have to live in your own body and your own mind every single day. So how do you go through that? How do you keep finding the juice for the next day and the next day and the next day?
- [40:29]
A
And. That's a good question. I'd say it's probably been easier for me than some of my colleagues because I get to be on. I get to be on the side of our organization. That is, I'm constantly able to fill the bucket because there are certainly days, every time we sit down and have a finance conversation, which is almost weekly here with our president's cabinet, we could be like, this is hard. It's hard to get up and like, oh, we got to talk about this again. Yeah. And we're going to have to keep talking about it and talking about it until we figure out what the solutions are. And those can be. Those can be depressing. I'll just come right out and say it. And. But we also feel like we got this. We're going to figure this out. Two things have helped. Our president, who is a serial extrovert, is also and will describe himself as an eternal optimist. So even in the face of some very big challenges, he's like, I see it, I know it, I understand it. We're going to figure it out. And that's just who he is as a human being. And so he. Maybe some of the tension now that we're feeling is just knowing this perpetually optimistic person that has been keeping our board and our team buoyed over the last several years and getting us over hurdle after hurdle is going to be leaving us. And so maybe that's where some of our collective sadness comes from. But also, I get to do this really fun work of traveling with him and going out and meeting alums and donors across the country who just have these Amazing stories to tell. And I could just sit and I. Everyone builds. Every story that they tell me builds upon my ability to tell a story to the next person. And so I'm constantly able to fill my cup with the joy and the love and the enthusiasm that these alums have for this institution. And so I feel very fortunate because some of my colleagues don't get that.
- [42:27]
B
That's a great statement about this kind of work that's true for people who don't understand it, that it can constantly refill you. But you do have another avenue for that. Before we started talking today, you told me about how you effectively have two jobs, one unpaid, of course, completely.
- [42:49]
A
Yes.
- [42:49]
B
You're devoting yourself fully to both jobs. And that's just a recent incarnation of all the work you do on the outside that keeps filling your cup, I guess musically, artistically, and that's with the symphony. But can you talk about that? Because, I mean, that's a big feature of your. Not just your time, but getting together and you know, bringing some really world class talent not just to Western Michigan, but, you know, to all of us.
- [43:15]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for reminding me. You know, I have had the great joy for the last four, five years to serve on the board of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra. They actually reached out to me still during COVID times when they weren't actually performing in public anywhere. And somebody I think from metro Detroit who knew that I had a music background and had been with the Chamber Music Society of Detroit and had served on their board, said, hey, you should talk to the new VP at Kalamazoo College. So they invited me to join the board, which I was like, yes, I have, you know, a musical outlet here in town. And it also has been great because this is a small town. Big, small city, big town. You. That would be. People can describe Kalamazoo in various ways. There's a lot of the folks overlap. So there's, you know, folks that you any, any sort of community based organization, you're largely going to see the same people as you move around town. So that's been great in helping me get to know folks in the community better, but. And then about two years ago, they asked if I would serve as the vice chair, which led to the chair role. And. And I foolishly said yes. And so as in September, I stepped into the role as chair of the board of the kso. I love the organization. It's an amazing orchestra, a wonderful team of staff. And two weeks before I started as the chair, the president and CEO announced her departure. And I was like, wait, what? So I have spent the first. My first, first six months as board chair hiring an interim and overseeing them during this time, hiring a search firm, launching a search committee, which I did not serve on, to help us find our next leader. I'm very excited that just last week we publicly announced that we do have a new chief executive for the symphony who will start at the end of May, and we'll be starting that transition. But I. I joke with our immediate past chair who is still on the board for a few more months, that he had two really easy years, and somehow I got my. His predecessor had Covid, and I get all of this transition. And he kind of had the nice quiet time in the middle, and he's the only one of us who was retired, so he had more time, but that was not to be for him. But it's been wonderful because I have made some local relationships and some of my college relationships that overlap have become stronger because of those ties. And I just love the music. I love. I have loved symphonic music since I worked for the Chicago Symphony a million years ago. And I have gotten, you know, last spring we had a watershed moment. We have a ridiculously large auditorium that we perform in. It's not our home. It belongs to Western Michigan University next door here to the college. And it's got 3,500 seats, which is way too big for an orchestra. But we filled it to the rafters when we had Yo Yo Ma perform here with the symphony last spring. So that was so much fun. I've had a chance to meet and have lunch with Branford Marsalis just recently with something else, a relationship here with the college. Met went Marsalis and got to have breakfast with him just earlier this year. So, you know, I'm getting to meet some of these amazing performers, and just being able to go and enjoy some wonderful music and be a part of the larger community is wonderful. We have an amazing education program. As our interim, who is a retired exec from Cincinnati Orchestra has shared the KSO punches above its weight in many ways. And so I'm very proud to be a representative of that organization.
- [47:16]
B
It sounds joyful. Are you finding a chance to still sing in the middle of all of this?
- [47:22]
A
I am, I am. There is a group here in town that's actually affiliated with the college, but it's not a college group per se, called Kalamazoo Choral Arts, and it used to be. It's a group that's been around for many, many decades. It used to be the Bach Festival Society, but they renamed themselves about four years ago to the Kalamazoo Choral Arts. And so I can't usually sing a full season with them, but I usually try to one or two concerts a year. We just did a really fun, fully staged performance of Carmina Burana with dancers and actors and all sorts of things about three weeks ago. And what a hoot. I really enjoyed that. And it's one of my favorite pieces to sing as well. So I can, when I can. I always have to, kind of. I have a very understanding music director who also works for the college. He's a faculty member here. So when I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm traveling with the president this week, I'm going to miss rehearsal. Personal life, I usually get a pass.
- [48:18]
B
We've talked about a lot of things and you've given us kind of a landscape of this career that you've had so far. So far. I know there's plenty to come, but there's one last thing that I do have to ask you, and that's in honor of probably somebody we both know in the sector who would have asked this question. I guess for those who don't know, I guess you're a real fan of sci fi. So I do want to know. Who is your favorite Star wars character?
- [48:49]
A
Oh, my goodness.
- [48:50]
B
Who is the one you identify with most?
- [48:55]
A
I don't know if there's any of them I could say I identify with, but oh my goodness, you asked a hard question. I would say I probably. Right or wrong, I probably identify most with Obi Wan Kenobi.
- [49:11]
B
Okay, that's great. Why?
- [49:14]
A
Because I see my. I think of him as someone who, though mistakes were made, sees himself as someone who is shepherding the next generation along. And that is one of the great joys of being a leader in this field or any field I've been, is I take so much joy in seeing my team succeed and celebrating their achievements with them. And just the other day we shared a story about new lighting in one of our theaters here on campus that we could not have done without grant support. It was fully grant funded because the college didn't have the money to do it, but it desperately needed to be done. I have a brilliant grant writer and director of corporate and foundation relations on my team, and she like 11 different grants she had to go after to cobble together the nearly $200,000 it took to do that project. But it wouldn't have happened otherwise. And so, you know, when we shared that story, I was like, yay, and like, go, Maria. You got the thing done. And so we call her the Grant Whisperer. She's really good, surprisingly, at finding money for H vac projects and electrical infrastructure, things she knows nothing about. But she's like, people are like, how did you do that?
- [50:30]
B
She's like, that's hard, right? That's very hard.
- [50:35]
A
And so celebrating that is just. And. And the achievements of my team. I've got just an amazing senior team here. Some brilliant fundraisers, some great strategists, some wonderful communicators and alumni engagement folks. And I love working with every one of them. So.
- [50:52]
B
And I know that feeling is, I'm sure, mutual. Thank you, Karen, so much for all of this.
- [50:58]
A
Yeah, it's my pleasure, Jason. Thanks for the invitation. I didn't know I had so much to talk about, but you asked good questions.
- [51:08]
B
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM Podcast. You can learn more about Karen's work at Kalamazoo College at kzoo Edu and about the Kalamazoo symphony orchestra@kalamazoosymphony.com Our thanks to our sponsor, Evertrue, the global leader in donor engagement and fundraising intelligence, helping nonprofits find, engage, and inspire their supporters. Our producer is Jack Frost, and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor, provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you liked this conversation, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And don't forget to check out our sister shows, Front Lines of Social Good and How to Raise all part of the Flag Mastermind series. Until next time, I'm Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.