Higher Ed Icons

Higher Ed Icons

Celebrating the pioneers, thought leaders, trend setters, and change makers in higher education marketing. With your hosts: Voltaire Santos Miran and Mallory Willsea.

  1. 8 hr ago

    Episode 13 - Your Mission Won’t Save You When No One Is Coming

    Myla Edmond got tired of hearing that students don't read. So she put 35 people in a room and counted every general message the university sent an incoming first-year student in one year. The number was 273. Myla is senior vice president at EducationDynamics, where she helped build the fractional CMCO offering and now serves as the interim marketing leader institutions bring in when they're between hires, or unsure they want one. She's also a published poet. Her career thesis is one word, congruence: the gap between who an institution says it is and who it is, and whose job it is to close it. In this Icons episode, Myla explains why marketers are the mirrors, why she'd rather change the institution than the copy, and why she stopped attaching herself to the outcome. It's a conversation about what awareness is worth when nobody has to act on it, and what a marketing leader owes an institution that has been raised to wait for someone else to decide. 🔑 What You'll Take Away Why "students don't read" is a sentence that leaves you with nothing, and what she found when she stopped accepting it The 273-message audit: how she ran it, what it exposed, and why it didn't survive her departure What to change when the institution and the message don't match, and why she picks the institution every time Her honest answer on fractional CMCOs: transition coverage done right, or a trial no other VP has to pass The question she asks before every piece of work, and the 65-page magazine it killed Her read on the industry and the 3 things institutions keep waiting for someone else to do

  2. 8 Sept

    Episode 12 - Brave, Brilliant ... and Broke

    In 2009, Ravi Jain pitched a 60-second video series to Boston College and got told you can't tell a story in 60 seconds. He said let's try. A Boston College Minute ran 8 episodes a year for over a decade and taught a generation of higher ed marketers what campus video could be. It was years ahead of Reels and TikTok, and it wasn't his first one. In 2002 he made an interactive web sitcom that got recognized at SXSW before YouTube existed. Then a talk show shot from his car during his commute, which earned a Webby nod in 2007. He's taught at Northeastern since 2004, sits on CASE faculty, teaches AR/VR at MassArt, and picked up an MBA from BC 16 years into the job. Ravi walks Mallory and Volt through where the 60 seconds came from, how a pilot got approved on an iPod Touch with a pair of headphones, and what it cost to be the guy funding the future of campus video on a shoestring budget. He gets into the year he learned what an Instagram Story was, from a colleague, in 2017. And he lands on AI with the least breathless take you'll hear this year. 🔑 What You'll Take Away Why constraints made his best work, and what disappears when production stops being scarce How a 60-second format got approved with no data or committee The case for building your next thing as a rebuttal instead of a bet on a platform His position on AI in creative work, including the one thing he says you always have to disclose What 25 years of "this changes everything" actually taught him

  3. 25 Aug

    Episode 11 - Getting Loud About Hospitable Experience Design

    Everyone in higher ed agrees a website should treat people well. So why do many websites fall so short? Joel Goodman has spent close to 20 years closing that gap. He ran Bravery Media for 13 years, named a framework — Hospitable Design — and evangelized his approach across the field through talks, podcasts, and client work.  The idea is simpler than it sounds and harder than anyone admits: a website isn't for the dean who wants his photo up top. It's for the 17-year-old trying to find out if you have her major and whether she can afford it. Joel grew up around the hospitality industry  and built a career arguing higher ed should treat that person like a guest and create a space for them that’s welcoming, attentive, and anchored in care He walks Mallory and Volt through where the instinct came from, why an idea everyone nods along to still doesn't get built, and what AI search does to a philosophy that rests on the person showing up. He's still the critic he's always been, still hoping for better despite the optimist that he isn’t, and still finding the next problem to name … and solve. 🔑 What You'll Take Away Why "treat people well" is easy to agree with and hard to build What the restaurant floor teaches about higher ed web design Why the homepage's real job is to get people off of it as quickly as possible The three questions every prospective student asks first Why the obvious idea stalls inside most institutions What  AI search does for the concept of hospitality, and why the fewer visitors who still reach your site matter more than ever

  4. 11 Aug

    Episode 10 - The Perception Cliff, the Trajectory of Streaming, and the New Creepy Cool

    In 2010, Jennifer Lonchar pitched retargeting to higher ed with “janky PowerPoint decks” and a Zappos analogy, and schools called it Big Brother. The schools that said yes rode the digital wave for a decade. The schools that said no spent years catching up. Fifteen years later, she's having the same conversation again — same skepticism, same "does it even work," same budget hesitation — this time about streaming TV, with her own name on the company.   Jen walks Mallory and Volt through what category education costs when you're early: the 3 years before real adoption, the cartwheels down the hallway over the first $100K contract, and the University of Cincinnati campaign that had a recruiter in Vietnam calling to ask why students kept showing up saying they saw the school everywhere. Then she gets into the second bet — the business partner who spent a year and a half convincing her, the 2 years of self-doubt before she printed AmbioEdu business cards for NACAC, and what it means that founding something felt like jumping off a cliff with your eyes closed even after being right the first time.   The argument underneath: branding is lead generation. Students don't fill out forms for schools they've never heard of, and if you're waiting until they know your name to show up, someone else got there first. The living room, as Jen puts it, is the new quad.   🔑 What You'll Take Away   Why the schools that called retargeting "creepy" in 2010 are the same ones struggling now and what that predicts about streaming How Jen sold digital before anyone was buying, and why being early means paying an education tax What streaming TV targeting can do at the household level Why the branding-versus-lead-generation debate is a false choice What the perception cliff is, why a Got Milk moment for higher ed hasn't happened, and who would have to fund one The doubt underneath a track record: what it took to bet on a second wave with her own name on the door

  5. 28 Jul

    Episode 9 - The J. Crew Dean, the Need for Hip, and the Importance of Vibe

    Lee Coffin made Tufts cool. Then he walked into Dartmouth and did it again. Over 30 years, Coffin turned two very good universities into two of the most wanted schools in the country. He gave the field its language — "the qualified muddle," the creative essay, the case for putting voice next to data on every application. In 2024 he made Dartmouth the first Ivy to bring back the SAT, and the rest of the Ivy League followed inside a year. He's spent the last 32 years and 100-plus podcast episodes pulling the curtain back on the whole process. If higher ed admissions has icons, Lee Coffin is one of them. We got him for the kind of conversation you only hear from someone in the top of the ninth, his words. He explains why volume is not the coin of the realm, even at a 6 percent admit rate. How he turned a test score into a story by reading it against the room it came from. Why he leaned Dartmouth all the way into rural when a consultant told him to sell urban. And what it costs to be the warmest gatekeeper in the Ivy League and still say no to 94 of every 100 students who knock. We also get into where it started: a public-school guidance counselor who looked at a straight-A kid and said "I don't have time for the smart ones," and the first-gen instinct that became a 30-year practice of translating this process for the families nobody helps. 🔑 What You'll Take Away Why a bigger pile of applications isn't a win and what selective colleges chase instead How a test score means more once you know the school behind it Why so many applicants look identical on paper and the idea ("the qualified muddle") that changed how schools tell them apart What it costs to love saying yes in a job that means rejecting almost everyone Why a student's grades and their story work as a team

  6. 21 Jul

    Bonus Episode - The Hard Things Institutions Don't Do and the Lies That They Tell

    Every institution claims students belong there. Dayana Kibilds says that claim falls apart the second you hold it up against the experience students find when they arrive. She has worked every seat this industry offers. She led domestic recruitment at Western University, ran brand and messaging engagements at Ologie across dozens of institutions, and now serves as AVP of marketing and community at Simpson Scarborough. She co-wrote Mailed It, the book higher ed marketers reach for when their email program stops performing. OnDeck Marketing CEO John Reid takes the host chair for this one.  Day’s argument: the field avoids talking about the parts that are hard, and students pay for that. Academically rigorous institutions leave the rigor out of the marketing, so students show up unprepared for the reality. Every institution names community as its differentiator, which drains the word of meaning. Getting closer to right means showing instead of telling, then letting the audience decide whether the challenge described is the one they want. 🔑 What You'll Take Away Why "everyone belongs here" flattened institutional differentiation across the field What separates institutions closer to getting brand right from the ones repeating the same claim How to pitch a pilot when there is no data and no support in the room Why Day reversed her position on print and in-school presence The audience question that sits underneath every channel decision Thank you to our founding sponsor. OnDeck Marketing keeps colleges and universities visible where high school decisions actually start—inside the school day. Their North American in-school network puts branded screens in high schools and runs digital channels that maintain consistent presence in feeder markets, so institutions don't go dark on students before they ever start searching. Learn more at ondeckmktg.com.

  7. 14 Jul

    Episode 8 - I Came in Like a Wrecking Ball

    Teresa Valerio Parrot is the person higher ed presidents call first. Principal of TVP Communications, CASE Laureate, Crystal Apple winner, PR News industry innovator, and to the leaders she counsels, the "president whisperer" — the one who can get a guarded administrator to say the true thing out loud. In this conversation, Teresa walks Mallory and Volt through what that discipline looks like when it holds and when it slips. The president who wanted to make a public statement about undocumented students, and why 5 private conversations protected those students better than a headline ever would. The call she got wrong: a team that swore no one had talked, a leak she didn't see coming, 2 weeks of her life spent putting the pieces back, and the shadow plan she now builds every time in case the worst arrives early.  It's a conversation about putting the institution ahead of your own reflection in the glass, about honesty that arrives wrapped in optimism, and about a career built by getting out of her own way. 🔑 What You'll Take Away The one question Teresa runs every hard decision through, and the moment a leader's answer tells you it's going sideways Why "go bold" almost never means grab a megaphone How to build the plan that assumes the leak, then execute like it won't happen What sitting this close to presidents for 20+ years teaches you about the job nobody wants anymore Why honesty needs a delivery system, and what a wrecking ball needs seated beside her How to carry other people's weight across a whole career without letting it harden into your identity

  8. 30 Jun

    Episode 7 - The Politics of Storytelling in a Polarized Nation

    Jack Martin came to higher education from politics. Before he ran marketing at the University of Washington, before he built one of the most admired storytelling programs in the field, he worked for Governor Kathleen Sebelius. He ran comms for a congressman. He spent the first decade of his career learning how to move audiences who didn't already agree with him. Then he walked into higher ed and noticed something. Nobody was polling. Nobody was testing the words. Nobody was asking what the public actually thought of the institution — they were just telling the institution's story louder and hoping it would land. Universities, Jack realized, are political actors operating in a politicized country, and most of them are flying blind. In this episode of Higher Ed Icons, Jack walks Mallory and Volt through what it looks like to bring a campaign operative's discipline into a major public research university and what the field still doesn't understand about its own audiences. He talks about the immersive storytelling program at UW that set the standard the rest of the field is still chasing. He talks about the Big Ten We Are Here campaign — a $1,500 ad that landed 250 million impressions during football season — and why every conference should be doing the same thing. He talks about the moment President Robert Jones tested the phrase debt-free and watched public perception of a UW degree jump twenty points overnight. And he says the thing nobody else in higher ed will say on tape: the academy is naive about politics, and naivete is costing the field. 🔑 What You'll Take Away Why universities are political actors whether they want to be or not, and what that means for how comms gets built How a $1,500 ad reached 250 million people, and what the Big Ten model means for every other conference The polling discipline that turned one phrase, debt-free, into a 20-point gain in public perception Why the job of a marketing leader is bidirectional, and why the inbound half is where the institution actually changes How to make the case for survey research when the academic side thinks the data should speak for itself What separates institutions still telling their story louder from the ones learning how to test it

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About

Celebrating the pioneers, thought leaders, trend setters, and change makers in higher education marketing. With your hosts: Voltaire Santos Miran and Mallory Willsea.

Information

  • Creator
    Higher Ed Icons
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Higher Ed Icons

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