Well, thank you. So So I'm the vice president of marketing and communications at the University of North Dakota. I started with an undergraduate degree in mass communications with an emphasis in public relations. I spent the 1st 16 years of my career in the private sector doing various, um, corporate communication jobs. Um, I was a project manager. I did internal communications. I did, You know, General Marketing, Um, and my last private sector job. I worked for a 90 company that serviced K 12 school district, and I'd always been around higher at as well. And what I realized at that point was how much I loved working with educators. I really gave great meaning to me. And I felt like the work that I was doing was for kind of a greater purpose. And I realized that was really important to me. So that was pivotal. Just because when you find that purpose, you know, in in your work, it can really drive you to really want to keep doing your best. Um, at the time, I was married to a professor, and so I've been around higher ed and we moved to another for another position um, another university. And it was at that moment that I then moved into a higher ed and I took an associate vice president position for marketing and communications and just loved it. I My focus was on internal communications, PR supporting enrollment, marketing as well as Web and again loved it. I had found my passion where my skills and things that I were really good at matched my passion and purpose. And that was great. So that really made me realize that higher ed was the area that I wanted to focus my career and then eventually just kind of followed that to another university where I worked at the University of Wisconsin Madison and then landed where I am now. So you know, it's interesting. There's a quote by Steve Jobs, and I might mess it up but says you can only connect the dots when you look backwards, and I've done that exercise and see throughout my career how various experiences and opportunities I've had have all created the opportunity for the next opportunity that came along. So I have to say it's been a joy and definitely trying new things and learning what lights that firing you and following that it has been really important to me and help shape my career.

great question. Um, what my work life is like now is very different than maybe what it was a few months ago, but a ZA vice president for marketing and communications, I oversee they said, the university communications. So I'm responsible for all of our internal communication channels for faculty staff students. A swell as our public relations effort. I'm responsible for all of our marketing that supports enrollment management as well. A strategic marketing initiatives. Um, we also support in a legislative work that that's being done. We, like other institutions of higher Ed, um, get some of our funding from state legislators. So every other year, there's work that needs to be done in that area, and we need to be able to tell our story. So that's where marketing comes in on Ben. I have university ceremony event, so things like commencement falls under us. Um, so lots of lots of fun. Typically what responsibility decisions for me is I need to work with my university president and the other university vice presidents and our deans toe understand the priorities and where our needs are. So, for example, we need to know what strategic areas in our strategic plan are we gonna focus on and we tell the stories and our and our work supports that. So we do a lot of work and promoting research of our faculty. Why is that important? Because research is a critical component to ah, University enterprise. Um, it's important for the classroom and the student learning experience. So whether we're talking about it in an enrollment piece or we're doing, we're promoting our faculty and national media. That would be something that we do. But my job is toe. Understand what the strategic initiatives are and then make sure that my team's day to day priorities are aligning with those strategic priorities and then making sure that we're doing that closure of the cycle and reporting back of the outcomes of our work. Eso my time is very much in around strategy. I spent a lot of time again in just making sure that my team's priorities are aligned with strategy and they have. The resource is to get their work done and then help to remove any obstacles that might be in their way. I do a lot of work meeting with other university leadership. I do a lot of work working with the media. And then I worked very closely with local and state, um, government entities, community members, etcetera to make sure that we're building the strategic partnerships or maintaining the strategic relationships that are necessary for us to have good working relationships with all of our stakeholders. Um, what are our weekly hours like every week is different. It's not uncommon. Thio, probably a typical work week, is probably a minimum of at least 50 hours a week, if not more. Since Cove it, it's been much, much more than that. Like, for example, my first meeting was at 6 30 this morning, and it will go all day. Um, but it's it's fluid. So Kobe has been unique in that there's a lot more crisis communication, crisis decision making to be made. A lot of, you know, making sure that we're collaborating with community and healthcare entities. Um, but you know it, it varies. It ebbs and flows in a normal situation. Um, my, my days go well into the evenings because there's often meeting that night or you have City council meetings. Or maybe there's a reception for alumni or something's going on. But um the days can be long, but again it I think that's where I go back to the first question if you have, if you find great purpose in your work, you enjoy the work along the way. So it's, um it's nice. I like. I like what I dio.

so the first one of the major challenges in pain Point of my job, and I don't think this is You need to my job. But I guess in higher ed in general is for quite some time higher. Ed has had a lot of scrutiny in the mainstream media, and so I find one of our challenges is to always make sure we explain the value of higher education and why it's important and how it benefits the individual and how it benefits society. Um, s, um, the state budgets have been under fire and again, even national budgets, and particularly now with Cove it budgetary issues are front and center as well. Managing Cove It has been extremely expensive for higher education. Higher education had to pivot and learn how to do hybrid and online learning faster than higher. I typically may move historically, is that you and I were chatting before we hit the record button. We're learning how to do things differently every day, and we're doing it at a speed that's pretty unprecedented to meet the needs of our students and our stakeholders. But it's working, so I have to say, though there's some of the major challenges of my job. Um, some of the other issues are always managing relationships. Um, especially under stress. It's easy to have misunderstandings. Tensions get could make things more difficult. And so it's important that people feel appreciated. They feel understood. And that kind of leads to the second question about what approaches are effective than overcoming them. As I mentioned, telling your story and the why is really important and also being open to listen to the other person's Why. If you can understand what is causing someone, worry or anger or fear, what's driving their ass and they understand yours, you're more likely to be able to come, come together and find a path to work effectively together, going forward. So when you're talking about budgetary needs, the same thing applies right if we're talking about because it's important just for people to understand current scenario and what is driving things so one of the best approaches is to listen and take a moment to say what is driving this other person's ask? And if you're able to do that in life and try to find common ground, you will find more successive. That's that's been my experience over the years