What if some of the most important moments in leadership are the ones you could never have planned for? Higher ed is navigating enormous change—financial pressures, shifting enrolment, evolving expectations, and uncertainty about what comes next. So what does it actually look like to lead when there is no perfect roadmap? In this episode of The Educator Experience Podcast, Salli Carter sits down with Dr. Bill Shiell, former President of Northern Seminary and Senior Strategist with BrightDot Fundraising Advisors, for a wide-ranging conversation about leadership, fundraising, failure, hope, and responding to the unexpected. Bill brings more than 25 years of experience helping organizations and institutions navigate challenge and change. During his time as College President, he reinvented the institution’s educational model, sold its 28-acre campus, launched an on-demand training platform, increased enrolment during the COVID-19 pandemic, and helped raise more than $21 million for operations and new initiatives. But some of Bill’s most powerful leadership lessons came from the moments that weren’t part of the plan. In this conversation, Bill shares what happened when, just 60 days into his presidency, the institution ran out of liquidity to pay its bills—and why experiences like this changed the way he thinks about strategic planning, failure, and leadership. Salli and Bill explore what it means to leave room for the unexpected, why leaders need strong values to ground them during uncertainty, and Bill’s concept of “losership”—embracing failure, loss, humility, experimentation, and getting back up as part of the leadership experience. They also explore a side of higher education that doesn’t always get much attention: fundraising. What makes someone want to invest in an institution? What problems are donors actually trying to help solve? And why might hope be one of the most powerful stories an institution can tell? The conversation also challenges the traditional idea of a career ladder and considers what happens when we think of our careers instead as a growing portfolio of experiences, skills, relationships, successes—and setbacks. In this episode:Leading when circumstances don’t follow the strategic planFundraising and donor relationships in higher educationWhy donors respond to hopeFailure, experimentation and “intelligent failure”Bill’s concept of losershipCreating room for the unexpected in institutional planningLeading from a grounding set of valuesWhy careers may look more like portfolios than laddersFinding opportunity in difficult and unexpected momentsEarlier this year, Salli also sat down with Bill’s colleague at BrightDot, Bill Crouch, for another conversation exploring fundraising, leadership, and higher education. 🎧 Watch/listen to the conversation with Bill Crouch: Reflections of a College President Together, these conversations offer two perspectives for anyone navigating the realities of leadership in higher ed at a time of significant change. Connect with Dr. Bill Shiell: www.thebrightdot.com Connect with The Educator Experience: www.theeducatorexperience.ca Subscribe to The Educator Experience Podcast for conversations about teaching, learning, leadership, and professional growth.
