Selected engagement
Higher Education · Community CollegeLeadership & New DirectionStrategic Planning Lead + Stakeholder Engagement
I was brought in at the start of a presidential transition to design and lead a strategic planning process across the full institution. I gathered current reality from students, faculty, staff, and community partners, then facilitated the leadership team and new president through the decisions the moment was actually asking them to make.
The turning point
The college had served its region for generations. What it needed now was a clearly stated reason to believe in the next chapter.
The arrival of a new president is one of the most common turning points in higher education, and one of the most frequently mishandled. Momentum is easy to perform and hard to earn.
This institution chose a slower, more durable path: build the direction with the community that would have to live it.
What was at stake
My role
I was brought in to design and facilitate the strategic planning process for the college's new chapter.
I served as the neutral party who could ask uncomfortable questions of a new president, a long-tenured faculty, and an invested community without any of them feeling handled.
How I approached the work
I began with an honest look at where the college actually stood. What were students experiencing? What did faculty believe about the college's direction? What did community partners, funders, and local employers need? What had been quietly failing? Aspiration written on top of an unexamined baseline does not survive.
Staff, faculty, students, and community partners were not surveyed for validation. Their input did not inform the strategy. It became the strategy. That distinction is what made the plan defensible when hard tradeoffs arrived.
The facilitation with the new president and leadership team was structured around choices: who to serve most deeply, what to stop, and what numbers they were willing to be held to.
Every pillar was tied to named enrollment targets, retention goals, and partnership commitments, so the plan could be tracked rather than admired.
The work
Current reality assessment
Student, faculty, staff, and community listening to establish an unvarnished baseline.
Institution-wide engagement
Facilitated sessions across the full institution and its community partners as genuine co-authorship.
Leadership definition sessions
Facilitated the president and leadership team through mission, strategic foundation, and priority tradeoffs.
Publication and launch
Built the Strategic Foundation into a document the institution could publish, communicate, and act on.
What changed
Tangible outputs
Organizational shifts
The takeaway
A new leader's first strategy is really a test of ownership. If the institution can explain the direction without naming the president, the plan will outlast the transition.
Cecilia Stanton Adams
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If your organization is navigating a transition, integration, strategic shift, or alignment challenge, let's talk about what this moment requires.