As a higher education leader and a white male executive, I believe strongly we need to “lean in” on the topic of Inclusive Excellence (IE), particularly in the technology field.
Our guest for this interview, Dr. Melissa Woo, epitomizes the idea of leaning in. Melissa is the executive vice president for administration at Michigan State University, as well as the chief information officer, and president of the MSU Foundation. She has been a voice of strategic change in higher education at every institution to which she has served. She brings poise, inclusiveness, and most importantly, visionary leadership to a topic that can be difficult even to talk about. That is why she was awarded the inaugural EDUCAUSE DEI Leadership Award in 2019 for her actions leading to improved diversity, equity, and inclusion in the higher education IT community.
Melissa joined us on the podcast to discuss her career, her passions, and her unique challenges as a technology leader-turned higher education executive.
Some highlights from our chat:
- On why CIOs can be effective as campus executives in any role: “Anyone in an executive role really should be able to expand beyond their current executive role. We all do essentially the same thing. We’re simply over different over different parts of the campus portfolio.”
- On setting work boundaries: “I’m one of those people that believes that just putting in more time actually makes you less productive… I don’t want people watching their email at all times of the day, because I want people to have families, I want people to have lives, I want interesting coworkers. People that only do work are really, really boring.”
- On diverse representation in IT: “What’s become most interesting to me from a DEI standpoint has been on intersectionalities, and the struggles that everybody has, depending on how they might be more diverse in their background than what we expect.”
- On how diversity supports innovation: “People from different backgrounds bring something different to the table, different ideas. Innovation is all about bringing different ideas, not all of which are going to be great, right? That’s the nature of innovation, but you have to have people with different backgrounds in order to bring different ideas to the table.”
- On the workforce impacts of the pandemic: “I think after the pandemic, there are challenges and opportunities. I think there are opportunities going forward for remote work that will allow more flexibility for families to be able to be with their children more be able to care for aging parents, because they’re actually on premise at home with their families. It can also be of benefit to the employer side, because we might be able to offer more flexible scheduling for support for our constituencies. So it could be a win-win.”
- On advice for IT leaders that will help them grow: “Empathy. Understanding the feelings of their stakeholders, your coworkers, the people you report to, leads to focusing on their experience … For me experience is: How do people feel before during and after they interact with you or your services or your products? And that requires a lot of empathy.”
I hope you enjoy this conversation with Melissa as much as I enjoyed interviewing her. She has been a force of positive change in our field and a transcending leadership figure.
-TA
