How to Advance Your Career as a Higher Ed Career Services Leader

Meredith Metsker:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker, and today I am joined by Dr. Audra Verrier. She’s the associate vice provost of Career and Professional Development at Loyola Marymount University. Thank you for being here, Audra.

Audra Verrier:

Thanks, Meredith. I’m excited to chat with you today.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m excited to talk to you today about a super important topic and that’s leadership, specifically how to advance your career as a higher ed career services leader. And I think this is top of mind for a lot or all of our listeners, but it’s hard to know where to start or how to plan or how to prepare for a leadership role in higher ed or career services. You have worked your way up to an associate vice provost role after over 12 years in higher ed and career services. So I know you have a ton of firsthand knowledge to share, and I’m just super excited to dig into this topic with you.

Audra Verrier:

Thank you. I get questions about it a lot, so I’m happy to share and help others, especially young women that are in the field that want to grow into this type of role.

Meredith Metsker:

Before I get into my questions, Audra, is there anything else you would like to add about yourself, your background, or your role there at Loyola Marymount?

Audra Verrier:

Sure. I think that this role I’ve been in for about a year and a half at LMU. And this is Loyola Marymount in LA. There’s a lot of Loyolas, so just so everyone’s clear on where we are. And I never expected to be in LA. So I think your career journey can take you to a lot of different places. And at some points there’s going to be pivotal decisions that you have to make, and this was one of those pivotal decisions for me and my family.

Meredith Metsker:

What went into that decision for you, knowing you were going to be moving to LA, taking on this big role?

Audra Verrier:

At other points in my life, I think it would’ve been just an easy yes. I had moved before across the country. I grew up in New England and landed in Northern California. This decision wasn’t just about me. My husband and I had to really think through what would be the best decision for our family. And at the time when I was recruited for this role, first of all, I wasn’t looking, I was recruited. So that was interesting and I’m happy to share more about that and how you can connect to recruiters and use that as an advancement tool. I had thought maybe I’ll wait until the next year and then I’ll start looking for a new role. I wasn’t ready to make that move because I had four month old twins at home.

Meredith Metsker:

Oh my gosh.

Audra Verrier:

And I have an older child as well, a little more than two and a half when I got recruited. So it was a really interesting time. I was like, “Yeah, I’m just off of maternity leave. I’m just back in my role. I don’t know that this is the right time for me, but I’m really intrigued by this place and this job in particular.”

If it had been another place or another job, I may not have been as interested in uprooting my life at that particular moment. But we did it and we moved here when the twins were seven months and they just turned two. And my older daughter’s about to finish her last year of preschool here on campus in the children’s center. So everything’s going well and everybody’s growing and happy.

Meredith Metsker:

All right, so I know we’ll get more into your career path here in a minute, but before I get into the more specific questions about our topic today, I do want to kick us off with a question I ask all of our guests and that’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Audra Verrier:

So I’ve thought about this a lot and my team and I have had a lot of conversations about this and it really is our overarching theme right now at LMU and within the career and professional development realm here. It is what we’re striving to do. My end goal with Career Everywhere is not just that it’s in every place that students show up, but that it is an intrinsic part of their experience so that there is no way that they can miss it. And even if it shows up everywhere, if they still have to opt in and choose to take an action, they may not leave LMU graduating with that career readiness that we really hope for.

Now without creating a requirement or another credit or another piece that has to go on their transcript, how do we make it intrinsic to their experience? uConnect is one of the ways that we’re hoping to do that, and we’re launching that this summer. So we’re deep in the process of creating our site and really building a virtual career hub that can serve our entire community because you find a lot of gaps when everything is in a lot of places, but it’s not actually looking at each and every single population.

And in building out our new virtual career center, we really have to think about each student and really what is their persona? Who are they? What are the characteristics? How do they engage in material? And they’re all different. If you’re an adult learner graduate student who lives away from campus and is in a hybrid program, your experience is going to be very different and you have to have those virtual pieces. But again, if it’s just there, but we don’t help them walk through the door, how do we know that they’re going to really achieve what we hope they’ll achieve?

So intrinsic is the word for me, and then just to follow that up, sustainable. We can’t just create something and hope they come. We have to have it built into the infrastructure systemically in the institution. And when I say systemically, I don’t use that word lightly because that means we have to tackle systemic racism at the same time and make sure that things are truly accessible and equitable for all of our students.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that emphasis on systemic there in your answer because I think that’s truly part of what it’s about. Yes, it’s about engaging the whole ecosystem of the university to make sure career is, as you said, intrinsically involved there, but it’s also about making it systemic, and again, tackling those issues, systemic racism, sexism, everything else that goes with that.

All right, well that was some awesome Career Everywhere discussion there, but now I would love to dig into our topic today, which is again about advancing your career in higher ed career services leadership. So you shared how you came to be at LMU, but just to give us some more context, can you walk us through your career journey, where you started, where you’re at now, what did that path look like for you and so on?

Audra Verrier:

My career path in higher ed is fairly unique. A lot of folks that I’ve worked with over the years in higher ed came up through a few specific pathways, especially on the student affairs side, which I don’t report to right now and I’ll describe that a little later. But the student affairs side, most people think, “I need a master’s in higher education. That’s going to be the path I take.” A lot of people who are really aiming for career development or career services think, “I need a counseling degree.”

Those things are true and they can be very beneficial, but that wasn’t my pathway at all. So I’m a success story that is here to tell all those other folks who are interested in pivoting their career or I thought I was going to do something different, you can still make that possible in higher education if you want that. And I say that to other people too because career paths go in lots of different directions. They’re not always linear. And for our grad students, especially our young professionals, you can still pivot and make a decision that puts you on a different course.

So my course started all the way back to my undergrad. And why I’ll start there is because I was a student employee. I was on a lot of financial aid. I worked every work study hour. I got every work study dollar I could get. So I was an RA, I worked in the advancement office. I processed donations. I supported donor events. I worked in the president’s office one summer. I worked in the mail room. I think I got all the jobs there.

So that’s quite a few different functions at the institution and I didn’t know it at the time, but that really is where my higher education journey started. I started to understand the different capacities of different areas of campus, the different leadership roles, how people worked within those roles. And then I was also a student leader both as an RA, but I was also president of the women’s issues group. I played soccer. I was a co-leader for alternative spring breaks. So I really just dove right into the richness of higher education and college. And at the time, I was pretty sad to leave because I was like, “What do I do now?”

So after I graduated, I went and did a full-time internship with Partners In Health in Boston, and I was on the development team there supporting their fundraising initiatives, and I also supported a young girl that had come from Rwanda to get cancer treatment in Boston at Mass General. I thought my career was really going to go in that direction of international health and development, and so that’s the way that I went with my graduate program. I went to the school for international training, their graduate institute, and my master’s is in organizational management, master’s of science.

After I went through that program, you have to do a practical experience. Most of my peers went all over the world to different countries. Some of them still live in those countries and never came back. Some of them work for the UN and travel all over the world, dropping aid in international locations that are in war zones. There was this moment for me when I was deciding am I going to go abroad and where am I going to go? I mentioned financial aid. I was a low income student and it was a point where I said, “I don’t know that I want to take out any more loans. If I go abroad and I have some credit card debt and I’ve got these loans already, how am I going to manage this over time?” And I said, “I don’t think I’m ready to go.”

It could have been a lot of other things. I think psychology, family fear of being abroad and away from everything that I knew, but I wasn’t ready and I didn’t do it. And an opportunity came up to work in higher education where I would be able to work with students in community service, service learning, and alternative spring breaks at the University of Maine. And I took that role and haven’t looked back really.

So that’s where my journey in higher education started and I was able to actually create international alternative break trips there. I’ve had the real honor to be able to do international work within the higher education sphere. Nothing was lost in that. All of those transferable skills were able to be applied here, but having the organizational management degree behind me and then directly applying that through practical experience in higher education.

And completing my capstone while I was in the higher education world, that was where everything came together for me of, “Okay, I’m going to be a leader in higher education administration and what is my journey going to look like?” From UMaine, I went to Brandeis University in Waltham. There I was on the academic affairs side and worked on experiential and service learning.

So I think those two roles are really important because they’re all about the experiential learning, co-curricular process and how critical that is for students. To me, it’s not an add-on, it has to be a part of your experience. So when a student comes to us now in their fourth year and they’re looking at what their career journey is going to be and they haven’t had practical experience, they haven’t done anything experiential and they haven’t had a job, it’s really hard to put together a professional portfolio for that type of student.

So you don’t necessarily have to have the job if you can do the experiential pieces. If you can get into the research and you can do some programs or projects where you’re … I think service and service learning is obviously a great pathway, but there’s other options. And then academic internships and really applying what you’re learning both in the real world and in the classroom. Those are all critical career and professional development pieces to me and in my personal journey.

I haven’t even said anything about career yet. Really [inaudible 00:13:24] career path, that didn’t happen until later. I came to California to do my doctoral work in San Francisco, and that’s when I started working in the career space. I was a career and community engagement manager for a very small school. So I had both components and I started to weave together and integrate what those look like for a student in their experience. But that’s what set me on the journey of being in the career space, and then I just continued to grow from there.

So talking about advancement and leadership in my career, I started as a coordinator. I went to academic administrator to a manager, to a coordinator again, to finally a director. It took me a while to get to that director title. Then I was able to push that into another director and then an AVP role eventually.

So a little bit about me, I haven’t talked about Sonoma State yet. That’s where I was most recently before LMU. I was there for over five years and I held technically three different roles while I was there. So moving within that institution, taking on different responsibilities, jumping in to be of support to an entire area under student affairs during COVID.

I was working on creating the virtual space and Zoom room and drop-in and how are we going to check students in and what is this going to look like for our student population across all advising, not just career. It’s simple now when you think about it now, but in the moment when everybody feels like everything’s on fire and how are we going to do this, it felt like a big lift.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m curious, so to confirm, at Sonoma State your most recent job title there was a director level. Is that correct?

Audra Verrier:

Yeah. So two director level positions before this AVP role.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. So I’m curious, looking back, what was the biggest adjustments or biggest differences between that director level and the AVP role?

Audra Verrier:

I think I want to expand on your question just a little bit because the coordinator role then to a director role, then to the AVP role because in many of my jobs and roles, I didn’t hold the director title, but I was in a director level position in a lot of ways. I was a manager of people. I oversaw budgets and for a variety of reasons, those roles were not director titles.

Part of that at Sonoma State is being in the CSU system and those of you out there in the CSU system, I understand, and I know that there’s other systems like that across the nation, but this is the largest one. It’s fairly complex and bureaucratic and the roles are classified in certain ways. And to be a director, you have to be an administrator 1 or 2 or above, which means you have certain responsibilities within the institution.

And so while I was overseeing and supervising folks, I wasn’t their direct supervisor per se, and I wasn’t ultimately responsible for the budget. However, that happens in a lot of different places. I mean, I think it gets complicated, but it doesn’t have to be so complicated. But there’s hurdles you’re going to have to jump over if you’re in one of those situations where the classifications are not clearly aligned with the role that you actually are holding.

So the biggest things between the jump between director and AVP is I think the level of responsibility and complexity. As a director, I was overseeing a smaller team, a smaller budget. But then I jumped to, I actually worked with the Upward Bound Programs for one year at Sonoma State, and that’s where I really saw a major difference is just the level, the amount, the expansion of your responsibility in terms of supervising other director level people, supervising grant funding or other donor funding into the institution, much larger budgets. When you’re at the million dollar budget level or more, there’s just so much more complexity to managing that budget. It’s not just simple ins and outs all the time. There’s a lot to think about.

Other pieces here that are different in the AVP role is really being able to sit at the leadership team of the vice provost of enrollment management. So that’s where I report up to at LMU, which is pretty unique for career services and also sitting on a leadership council for the provost. And you would think I have his ear all the time and I don’t. So it’s like you still have to go through the proper channels, and I still have to work very closely with my direct supervisor, the VP of enrollment management, to really access senior leadership. But I get much more exposure and opportunity to build relationships with them than I did in a director role.

And I think it’s different at each institution what access an AVP has or doesn’t have. And as an associate vice provost, I have more access and participation in certain senior leadership things on campus than the provost would.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Yeah, that’s super interesting. So speaking of this high level leadership role that you have now, what advice would you give to anyone listening to this podcast on how to advance their career? Let’s say they want to reach an AVP level role like you have.

Audra Verrier:

I think mapping it out, really knowing where you want to get to and not playing it by chance. I’ve been very specific with my mentors and my supervisors that I do want to grow and advance and in what ways. And that doesn’t mean I said, oh, I want to be an AVP at LMU, but it was more of a general, I do want to advance and grow into a leadership role. I know I have the capacity and the drive to be able to do that. I’m passionate about supporting not just the students, but when you’re in a leadership role, you’re supporting all of the staff and the faculty and the community around this learning environment for our students. I love coaching people, but especially young professionals and folks who have a graduate degree or have gone on to continue to a doctoral degree.

I think mapping it out and really being specific enough that you can say to somebody, “How did you do X? I need to know about this piece of your career journey.” And then building your mentorships so that you are seeking out mentors that have gone through those potential pathways that can give you that guidance. Also with the caveat that they’ve had a certain path.

One of my mentors was the vice president of student affairs at Sonoma State. He really wanted to guide me towards that. He said, “Don’t get locked in to career. It’s too much of one pathway.” So his guidance was, “Don’t go in this direction of an AVP of career because then you’re just going to be in career. I think you really should go towards VP of student affairs and be more well-rounded and holistic in the student experience.” That’s not what I chose to do.

So you have to both have those mentors and have those deeper conversations, but then also be able to discern within yourself, what is it that I truly want and what opportunities are presented to you. I didn’t have an opportunity to go into an AVP role in student affairs, and frankly, when I look at them and their descriptions and the level of responsibility, I don’t really want that particular role.

I do want to be in a leadership role, but I don’t want to be called at 3:00 AM because somebody is burning popcorn in the building again. And those are not the emergencies that I particularly want to deal with in my life, especially as a mom who had children later in life. I’m in my 40s now with very young children. It would be really impossible for me to balance both worlds if I was on call 24/7.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m pregnant right now at 33, so I will be figuring that balance out very soon as well.

Audra Verrier:

Yes, you will. And we’re all in it together.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes, yes, absolutely. So as career leaders are trying to create this map, mapping out what they might want, what should they keep in mind as they think about their futures or just try to plan for that career advancement?

Audra Verrier:

Make key strategic decisions with the support of your supervisor and your boss’s boss about what training and development do you need, and that’s not just attending a conference. What very specific things can be the key markers that are going to help somebody decide that you have the level of professional maturity to reach that next role? And you want to have great relationships with your supervisors and have those really great references and people that are willing to not just be your mentor or your reference, but be your sponsor.

I had a student recently who worked for us temporarily, and it wasn’t quite the right fit for him to stay on permanently. And so he had to go after his six-month temporary assignment out of the role. We were all sad to see him go, but I really wanted to make sure that I was supporting his career journey. He wants to be a lawyer, so this isn’t necessarily the best alignment for him. It could have worked, but I kept at helping him. I kept at trying to find the right connections, the right people that I could introduce him to, and ultimately was able to refer him to a job at a law firm. And so now he’s working there.

So it’s not just saying what I think he should do or what I see in him, but how can I actually help make those connections, give that reference to somebody in real time, not wait for somebody to ask you to give the reference, but here’s what I see are really positive qualities in this individual. I think they’d be aligned for this type of role. This is what they’re seeking. And when my colleagues said, “Oh, I know somebody that’s hiring for a law firm,” it was an easy no-brainer for me to say, “Oh, he’s ready to go.” And within a week he was in that position.

I think finding those people who are willing to go out on a limb for you, keep doing the work with you and really being your advocate. And it’s hard to find those people sometimes. You might think you have that person and then you don’t. And just having the knowledge that as you’re growing through your professional roles and advancing, if you’re advancing within one institution and you have a mentor or somebody you consider that could be a sponsor for you here, there’s a lot more at play than just nominating somebody for a role.

You have to consider the entire institution. What are the priorities of all the cabinet level members because those are all competing commitments for what you’re doing and what you’re asking to do? And then each cabinet level member has an entire division under them with different departments with competing priorities and commitments. So it’s never an easy answer. It’s never a simple 1, 2, 3. And if you feel like you’ve seen people that it is an easy pathway, know that there’s a lot behind that and sometimes it’s a little bit of timing and synchronicity.

I think we all have to have patience at certain moments when I see people like I am, this urgency to move forward, to advance in your career, and not wanting to wait forever. There’s moments where you just have to sit back and be patient and then be ready for what the next opportunity is or the next move that you can make or the next key thing you could do that would add to your toolkit, your set of skills that you have that you can offer.

And then finally, you’ve got to get experience with budgets and people. You have to be able to start by dipping your toe into those things, even if it’s something small. Apply for grants, go get some money of your own that you can develop a new program, create an initiative. Even if it’s $10,000, you were able to seek out funding, apply for it, receive it, execute that program, report back on that funding. Those are all key skills that you need to have when you’re budgeting. And that $10,000 can then be leveraged into a hundred thousand and a million. You’re using the same skills even as the numbers get bigger, but you have to have that experience with those skill sets.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. And I imagine if you do successfully get a grant, you will need a team member to help you execute on it. So there you get some people management as well as the money management. Okay, that’s a great tip.

Audra Verrier:

And people management is at two different levels. You’re not necessarily going to get all the experience in people management that you need to have until you’re in the role because if you’re not directly supervising a professional staff member and you’re only supervising other students or your colleagues in a project management type leadership role, you’re not going to have to deal with all of the HR, legal, finance, payroll.

There’s a lot that goes into hiring a person, managing them, helping them through their professional growth. If there’s any kinds of challenges or things that they’re not doing well in their role, if you need to do any kind of performance management or growth management, those are all things that I’m still learning. There’s new experiences that are happening all the time.

And people are unique individuals that are humans first and have all kinds of things going on in their life, whether they need leaves of absence, if they’re going to have another child and grow their family, if they have a disability. There’s all kinds of things that are going on behind the scenes that are confidential that you’re not going to know about until you actually supervise people.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. So let’s say a career leader, they want to move up to a role that would involve people management, but maybe they’re having trouble getting that experience. What are some things that you would recommend they do to get relevant experience or prepare for an interview where they need to show that they can do people management?

Audra Verrier:

I think twofold. You can get some skills beforehand that you may not be directly using, but indirectly. I think part of my learning journey around that was through my own supervisors and talking to them about what I could talk to them about, because a lot of things are confidential when you’re supervising somebody.

For me in those roles where I was supervising but not technically their supervisor, that gets tricky because I’m the one working with that person all the time. So I am seeing their performance and what their outcomes are, and I’m expected to report back on that to this upper level person. And so that’s where I got a lot of experience in how do you have those conversations, keep things confidential, share what I can share from an objective place as much as I can, and then hear the feedback of those other leaders.

I also think that working with grad students, you’re getting closer than working with undergraduate students because they come with lives. They’re adults, and there might be a lot of other things going on that gives you that experience of working on the HR personnel side. And then you can do some training. You could take a course or a certificate program. You can do that through things like LinkedIn learning or Udemy or Coursera and hear from other people what their experiences are, what their struggles are.

Some of what I have learned is through my colleagues in leadership programs I’ve gone through. Here’s a particular experience I’m going through, or I have this staff member who’s struggling with something, and being able to hear those stories and case studies you can think through, what would I do at my institution? How would that go and who would I talk to or how would I troubleshoot that particular situation?

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Yeah, I love it. And on this vein of very tactical advice, as career leaders are looking to advance or maybe even interviewing for a higher level job, how can they advocate for themselves and negotiate in terms of those promotions, pay raises, benefits, other professional development and so on?

Audra Verrier:

So this is tricky in higher ed. We’ll talk the real, real. It’s not available for everyone. Negotiation of your salary is not always available. Depending on the university system, you’re within, the particular campus you’re at, the leadership of that campus at that time, the leadership in human resources, it’s all going to go very differently.

What I would say is keep negotiating, keep advocating for yourself, and even when you know that it’s not possible because of some kind of ranking or classification or role or title, you’re going to keep working on that. And if you realize that you can’t do what you’re trying to achieve in a particular institution, that’s when you need to make a pivot to another institution. So plan for that in your career.

I guess the difference there is somebody who is really locked into their geographic location and you only have one place that you could work at and you want to stay in higher education, you’ve got limited options, then you’re going to have to advocate for yourself on that particular campus. And I know folks like that in Sonoma right now because that’s one of only several campuses that are within driving distance. So for people who their lives are there in Rohnert Park or Santa Rosa in that area in Sonoma County, they have to be able to advocate for themselves within the roles in that particular system.

And a lot of patience. I know folks that have to have a lot of patience. And sometimes it can get frustrating because you feel like, well, that could happen or this should happen. And again, there’s so much going on behind the scenes with the budget and all the levels of leadership and people who are making decisions around those things.

So how do you advocate for yourself and negotiate even in that situation? You keep trying. You make good relationships with your supervisors. You have to practice the skills to be able to do it and have success with it in the future. So talk to your boss about that. Can I negotiate with you even if we know that we’re not going to be able to make this move right now? Here’s what my goals are and how much money I would like to be making, what types of responsibilities I’d like to have. Set up a structure of what those goals would be and how you want to take steps towards them. And then find where you can make those things happen for yourself, even if it’s not the traditional thing you would think of. You might have to be creative in taking on more responsibility.

I definitely in all my roles took on larger projects or more responsibility or leadership in certain things, even though I wasn’t going to get a raise, I wasn’t going to get a title change. But also you want to think critically, is this going to make a lot of sense for me? Is this going to be one of those things that is really a key marker for somebody in the future that would be hiring me? So the things where you’re collaborating across different departments and divisions. You’re bringing more people together. You’re doing something that’s a community initiative that is going to have impact institution wide. You join the strategic planning committee.

One of the things I did when I didn’t have a lot of access to a lot of money management is I joined the president’s budget advisory council. I got a lot of good insight into what does the budget look like for this entire institution? You start thinking very differently about your department when you understand everything that goes into the bigger picture.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Yeah, I love that. I worked in higher ed way back early in my marketing career, so I can definitely relate to bumping up against the classification issues when trying to advocate for a raise or a promotion. It’s definitely a different beast than the private sector.

Audra Verrier:

And so keep sharpening your salary negotiation skills no matter what. You can do that online through AAUW has the Work Smart program and you can go through a course that would teach you, it’s all free, how to actually go through a salary negotiation, what research you should do. So when you can do market research on what the salary of your role is and should be and how it might be growing in the future, you’re going to be armed with a lot more data.

The key thing is you’re not going in asking for a raise because I’m having a baby, I need to buy a house, I want to take more vacation time, whatever it is. It’s not about your personal life, it is, but when you’re going in for the negotiation, it’s about what does the institution need, what business need am I going to serve or find solutions to, and how do I help achieve that by getting an increase, a promotion, whatever it might be.

Meredith Metsker:

That makes a lot of sense. I want to go back to something you mentioned too and that it’s advisable to take on more projects or more responsibility, even if it doesn’t directly immediately lead to a pay raise or a promotion. It clearly worked for you because you were headhunted. You were recruited, and it sounds like you were ready for that next level because of all the preparation that you had put in.

Audra Verrier:

I was ready. I had been recruited one time before for another position, and I didn’t get as far in it. I think that was an experience that taught me some things about how to be ready for the next time. But I also, one of my mentors had said to me, “Go for the bigger roles. Just apply. Go through the process, interview. Even if it’s not something that you may think is the right thing right now, you need to get the practice and understand, get this feedback loop going. What are the gaps that you need to address? What are the needs that you need to address within your professional persona and brand and skillset?”

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s great advice. Never hurts to get that practice for sure, and keep your options open. I’m curious, aside from, of course, compensation, it’s a big one, are there any other benefits or things that you would recommend that career leaders negotiate? For example, I was talking with Claire Klieger of Swarthmore at NACE a few weeks ago, and she was saying that she actually negotiated for uConnect in her interview for her role. She negotiated for budget for technology. I’m curious, have you run into that? Is there anything else that you would recommend career leaders consider when they’re negotiating?

Audra Verrier:

So twofold. I think what Claire did is very strategic. I’ll start on the personal side and then go to more of the professional goals you might have within a role. Personally, the most you can negotiate is at the time of hire. You will have the most leverage at that point because they want you, they’re ready to hire you and you have their ear for making this a really mutual, beneficial, reciprocal relationship. You get what you need when you hire me and I get what I need to be able to join this position in this institution.

Whenever you’re within an institution, even if you’re going from one role to another laterally or moving up, if you’re moving between departments or divisions, you’re never going to have as much leverage. An example is there’s certain rules. Even at a private institution like this one, we don’t have the same rankings and classifications in HR as a public institution would, but there are internal cultural agreements and rules that institutions set.

So for example, if somebody is taking on an interim role, it’s a 10% increase. While you have additional duties, you can get up to 10% additional in your salary for that particular year for some kind of temporary assignment. So there’s going to be that kind of rule everywhere. They might all look different, but there’s something that somebody set at some point. They came to an agreement to ensure that there wasn’t going to be some kind of crazy inflation for certain people going into different roles.

And at a private institution, those are all negotiable too, but you’re going to have a harder time negotiating outside of whatever the role is. When you’re getting hired is the time to ask for 20% more and they might give you 10% more. Ask for 10% more and they might give you 3 or 5% more. It’s a lot easier to negotiate on things that are not going to be coming out of your annual operating budget. So you can negotiate for relocation funds. You can increase those relocation funds.

You can ask for vacation time. It could be unpaid time if you need some kind of flexibility like, “I’m able to start here, but I already have this one month European vacation planned with my family. Can I come and start, but can I take that time off?” Some institutions and companies will be able to bank time. You could use up to two weeks of the time that you’ll earn in the future.

You could also ask for things like course release to be able to teach a course, a faculty role to have some kind of appointment within one of the colleges. Those are a few things. Nothing else is coming to the top of my mind. I lost one of them along the way there.

On the professional side, I love what Claire did in thinking about uConnect. I definitely talked about those types of things in my interview here at LMU, for example. I talked about those types of things when I interviewed at other institutions, but I wasn’t in the level of position, title, or authority to be able to make those decisions when I got into the role. So then it’s a lot of collaborative work to get there.

When I came on in my role at Sonoma State, originally we were all on the same page about bringing Handshake on, and that was something we were able to do and push forward with an institution and the budget and get approval for it. But I went in my interview saying, “Y’all don’t have Handshake yet, but you should.” And they said, “Yeah, we agree. So let’s all do that together.”

So showcasing those ideas in your interview process, especially if you have to do a presentation, where have you assessed that there’s gaps or needs within the institution and what would be your proposed solution? Offering that solution in the interview process and saying, “I think to really move your institution forward from my expertise and experience, I’m going to suggest this thing and then the institution is going to have to put money behind it to make that move forward.”

Here at LMU was a different situation for me, and I’ll just describe that briefly. My predecessor, Branden Grimmett, did an amazing job here for eight years and really built up a strong foundation. So when I got to LMU, we already had all the bells and whistles, Handshake, VMock, Big Interview, LinkedIn Learning, a lot of great platforms and services that supported students.

What I immediately saw though is we didn’t have the numbers I would like to see actually utilizing all of those or utilizing them to the best of the benefit that they have available to them. And so that’s why uConnect was a no-brainer for us. It’s going to pull all these things together. It’s going to integrate them. It’s going to serve them up to students on this really nice platform that tells them step-by-step what to do, then drive traffic to all those things that we’re already paying money for.

So the institution agrees we had to go through this whole process with ITS to review that. It took us a long time to actually onboard our uConnect platform. But in the end, it was all worth it and we were able to really have critical conversations along the way. And still to this day right now, I just had a meeting yesterday, there will be more critical conversations in creating buy-in and building the culture towards this virtual career center. But I talked about all of that in my interview.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s awesome. So they knew right off the bat what your thoughts and opinions are, were in regards to that. So I’m sure that made it easier to secure the budget in the future.

Audra Verrier:

Yes. Yep.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. You have already shared a lot of very tactical advice, resources and strategies, but is there anything else that you would recommend to career leaders who want to improve their leadership capabilities or gain new skills, things like that?

Audra Verrier:

Absolutely. My personal leadership journey along with my professional journey has been two different roads that I’ve been traveling at the same time. So things that have helped me in my leadership are my own personal development. I came from a family dynamic and background that I had to overcome a lot to get to where I am and still have to manage those family dynamics all the time.

I’ve had a therapist for 20 years. I’ve gone on vision quests in the wilderness for three days with no food. I have been in leadership programs. I have been in women’s circles. I have done yoga programs, meditation retreats. All of those things are part of my own personal healing journey and my spiritual path, but they all serve me as a leader. They give me the tools to be able to pause and slow down and be mindful, to truly listen to people in their journeys, to recognize when I didn’t slow down and I didn’t listen close enough.

None of these things make you a perfect human. It’s all work that we have to do all the time. But that personal journey for me, if I was not on that pathway of really seeking to be the better person that I could be in all the ways. And again, not perfect, nowhere near it. It’s always a journey.

Now as a parent, I see things come up that are within me that might be something that was predetermined. Whether it’s my psychology, my DNA, my socialization, all of those things come into play with parenting young children. And I see the things that come up with my older daughter in particular, and I recognize those same things in me might come out at work. Or the opposite, these things don’t come out at work. I moderate myself so well in the professional sphere, but I get home and feel like I can’t hold it together anymore.

And so just that balance of always being on the learning journey, always taking care of myself first so that I can show up with capacity for everybody I need to, which is so many people every day and knowing when I’m not my best. I’m not at my best capacity right now. I need downtime. I need to take care of health or medical or wellness things, whatever it is, because that has to come first.

This year in particular, you know I’ve had to reschedule with you several times. I have been sick four times. My husband’s getting ready for a surgery. We’ve been displaced from our house and had to move three times. I have not been at my full capacity and I have several times had to sit down with my leadership team and say, “Okay, I’m not where I need to be right now. These are some of the things I’m going to have to cut out. If I don’t have to be at that particular meeting, I’d love for you to take it on.” And just really working with them in a place that’s vulnerable and personal, but not sharing everything either.

There’s a lot of things going on in your lives all the time. A lot of people we work with are caretakers, whether it’s parents that are aging or young children. You have your own things that you’re battling all the time. So I do lead from a place of that vulnerability and knowing that everybody comes to work with their stuff every day.

We had a retreat last week and the first thing that we did, I said, “What do you need to check in about so that we can all be fully present here?” So whatever it is that’s going on in your life that you feel comfortable sharing or putting out on the table, taking a moment to just acknowledge that, where you are, so that we can get into the good work that we’re here to do together.

And my team really reflects that back to me that they appreciate that vulnerability because then they can feel some level of safe enough to share their own vulnerabilities. And then we can work together to address those things and try to balance the work so that it all gets done and we can still move ahead. We have to acknowledge ourselves first.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m so glad you brought that up because that was one thing that stuck out to me in our prep call earlier this week was that vulnerable leadership and how important it is, not only for you as a leader, but for your team as well. Like you said, they’re bringing a whole life into this job and not only is it better for them as individuals to have that vulnerable leadership to learn from, but I imagine it makes them more productive as employees too, if they know that they can balance those things. They can check in on a personal issue if they need to, and they’re not going to be punished for that.

Audra Verrier:

Just to wrap that all up with a bow, I mean, women and people of color are still dealing with bias and adversity in the workplace and in the world every single day. My entire dissertation is on that. And so if we’re not recognizing that and people feel like they can’t bring their full selves to work, you’re never going to get the best work out of them. They’re not going to find as much meaning and they’re not going to be able to balance those things when challenges come up personally or professionally.

And higher education is not always the most supportive for these things because we have to drive so hard during the academic year. There’s always so much to do. Your to-do list is never done, and there’s not a lot of space and time to pause always. So we still have to be able to acknowledge who we are and even when we’re in those high need times for our students. So how do you use the downtime and the slow time? How do you balance it out over a year?

I heard somebody say one time, and it was really inspiring for me that there really is not a work-life balance. It doesn’t look like that all the time. It’s going to go up, it’s going to go down, it’s going to change. And so how do you look at it from the broader perspective or picture of what do you need right now and how do we spread that out over time? I don’t know if that all makes sense, but that’s what drives me is right now I’m going to have to push hard. I know I have to push these things aside in my personal life, but at another time, I’m going to have to come back and address those things and slow down on the professional side.

Meredith Metsker:

Right, and I’m sure your team understands that and as you said, they reflect that back to you because you are giving that vulnerability to them. So on that note, I think that that’s one aspect of what great leadership looks like, but what do you consider to be great leadership? What should our listeners strive for as they look to advance their careers in higher ed career services?

Audra Verrier:

I think amongst all of the things we’ve talked about, we haven’t really touched on that you still have to be a manager. And being a leader and being a manager are not always the same thing. And being a manager sometimes means you have to have hard conversations. You have to make really difficult decisions. You have to manage things that weren’t even yours to manage before you got in the role that you’re in, but now it’s yours. You have to manage people.

I think the thing that I’m still working on and growing as a leader in is really making more swift decisions, taking in a lot of information, sifting through that and making a decision and moving things forward because people are waiting for you to make decisions. It’s hard for people to be in the ambiguity. But if you have to have ambiguity, letting them know we’re not at a decision place yet. Here’s what I’m doing to take steps towards that. It’s going to take a little while. It maybe is going to be a few weeks. Maybe it’s going to be a few months. Maybe this is something we have to table till next year because that’s all part of the strategy process. But the decision-making and the management has to be in there with all of the vulnerable leadership as well.

Meredith Metsker:

Well said. It’s about that clear communication always. I’ve quoted this before on this podcast, but one thing that struck out to me when I was reading, I think it’s Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. I know it’s definitely her, but she says, “Clear is kind, unclear is unkind.” And that has always stuck with me in both professional and personal conversations.

Audra Verrier:

And giving feedback, really clear feedback to people on their performance is kind. Not giving that feedback builds on not giving feedback. It becomes unkind over time.

Meredith Metsker:

Because they’ll get it from someone else who may not be as direct or constructive about it.

Audra Verrier:

Yes, eventually.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. I want to circle back to something you touched on a little bit earlier, and that’s the bureaucracy of higher ed. There’s no secret that there can be a lot of it. How have you navigated that as you’ve advanced up to your AVP role in your career? And are there any tips or tricks you’d like to share with our listeners about navigating the bureaucracy?

Audra Verrier:

The bureaucracy exists for a reason and a purpose, and people hold to those lines for some meaning, whether it’s for themselves or for the institution. So knowing that those lines were drawn for some historical reason. I think the context you have to have before you can change it and/or work around it if it’s not something that you can change. So what do you have power and control over? What do you not at all? Really understanding where’s my place in this? What could I help shift? And what is probably not going to happen for me in my time and my leadership?

And that could be no matter what your role is. You don’t have to be in a leadership position to help shift those, I’m going to call them red lines. We call them red tape, but if we think about it geographically, we’re also really dealing with the geography and communities that we live within that were redlined thinking from an anti-racism perspective.

So you’re dealing with the bureaucracy of an institution within a community and the ties between the two. We used to refer to it more often as this town-gown relationship, which I feel like is a old framework to use. But the bureaucracy is deep and it’s relationship oriented. It’s not just the things that you see as policies, but it’s the people that were in place that might still be in place. There are gatekeepers, and sometimes those people don’t even know that they’re gate-keeping things.

I always go back to, okay, if I’m assessing a situation, I want to make some kind of strategic step in a positive direction and create momentum with this program, project, institution, whatever it might be, what is the true context we’re working within, not just what I see on the surface? Can I understand from a historical perspective? Can I interview folks who have been here for a long time and understand who are the roles and the players?

People make decisions about CPD, my department and/or me or my leadership role based on people who were here three people before me, things that happened 10 years or more ago. Those things live on in the cultural understanding that people have, the agreements that they make, and the unspoken ways that they work with each other.

And so what do you need to bring to light? What is the right time for you to bring that to light? How do we help move things along? And who are your advocates or your allies in helping to do that? And knowing you’re not going to get it all done. You’re not going to change the whole bureaucracy, so what’s the one small piece of the puzzle that you can influence?

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. I love that emphasis on starting small and focusing on what you can control rather than trying to burn the whole system down because that’s not going to work.

Great. Well, I want to start wrapping us up. I know we’re a few minutes over time. Is there anything else, Audra, that you would like to add? Any other pieces of advice? Anything else about our topic today?

Audra Verrier:

I’m available. I’d love to connect to people on LinkedIn and in person. I’ll be at the NPACE conference in December. I plan to be at NACE next year. I love supporting people in their professional journeys, and sometimes that takes on a mentorship relationship and sometimes it’s just a one-time conversation. I think if there’s anything that inspired you, I’m happy to hear about that.

Again, I’m not a perfect person. We’re all growing all the time, but I think if we can do it together and be in that vulnerability and create those strategies together and bring to light the themes that we’re all going through. A lot of the things in my journey are things that other people are experiencing too. Or your journey might be very different, and so finding the people who can understand those things. And let’s talk about them more.

You mentioned that you’re pregnant, and when I was pregnant, I realized, wow, there’s so much people don’t talk about. When you’re pregnant and when you’re having a child, when you’re going through the birthing experience, when you become a parent, there’s so much that you don’t know. And so just having those conversations and knowing that there are people out there that you can talk to about them. Even just knowing that is helpful, right? So yeah, I’m here and open to building relationships and community with others.

Meredith Metsker:

Awesome. Well, for those of you who are watching or listening, I’ll be sure to include Audra’s LinkedIn profile link in the show notes, so you can reach out to her there if you would like to.

Audra Verrier:

And I’m also in the Career Everywhere community.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes, that’s a good plug for that. If you haven’t joined already, we’d love to see you in there. I’ll also include a link to that in the show notes, but I believe it’s just community.careereverywhere.com. There’s almost a thousand members in there now, and we’re having conversations on topics like these or other episodes of the podcast in there on a daily basis. So join us in there if you would like to.

Okay. So Audra, to wrap us up, at the end of every interview, I do this answer a question, leave a question thing. So I’ll ask you a question that our last guest left for you, and then you’ll leave a question for the next guest. Our last guests were Haley Hollenberg and Josh Taylor of the University of Kentucky, Gatton College of Business and Economics. And as diehard Taylor Swift fans, they have left the following question for you, what is your favorite song on the Tortured Poets Department album? Or if you haven’t listened to it, what’s a song that brings you joy and you love listening to?

Audra Verrier:

So I think I’ve listened to some of it, but I’m really not a Swifty. I don’t follow it enough that I know the album or the song titles. I’m also the type of person that if a song is on, I know the lyrics, but I have no idea sometimes who’s singing it or where it came from. So I can’t answer that question, but I can tell you what the most fun has been for me lately is my daughter got into the Trolls movie, and so we have been listening to those soundtracks. There’s a lot of fun songs on there. Some of them are old songs that have been remade and reworked. So it’s a blast, and if you have kids turn on Trolls on Spotify in the car and just jam out, it’s a great time.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. I have been listening to, I forget what the song title is called, but it’s the one where NSYNC reunited on Trolls 2.

Audra Verrier:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

I’ve been listening to that one on repeat.

Audra Verrier:

We have been listening on repeat as well.

Meredith Metsker:

I think that’s the millennial in me. I was like, “NSYNC is reuniting. Amazing. Whatever it is, I’ll listen to it.” Okay. Well, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Audra Verrier:

I think it changed for me through this interview a little bit. I would love to know from our next guest, what does vulnerable leadership mean to you?

Meredith Metsker:

I like that. I like that. I always love asking those thoughtful questions, so I’ll be anxious to hear the answer to that one.

Audra Verrier:

Well, this has been so fun. Thank you so much for having me.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes, thank you, Audra. It’s been great having you on the show today. I know our listeners are going to get so much value from this conversation, not only with the tactical things that you shared, but again, just the vulnerabilities that you shared too, like we’re all in this together. And I just really appreciate your time and your generosity and sharing your experience and your wisdom. So thank you.

Audra Verrier:

My pleasure.