the uplift
elevating and amplifying women's voices and issues in higher ed.
the uplift
“I’m not successful if my people are not successful": a conversation with Mayra Olivares Urueta
Brimming with wisdom, experience, and a fierce resolve to shatter stereotypes, Mayra Olivares-Urueta captivates us with her mission to dismantle institutional barriers and create a more inclusive future in higher education.
Readings and Resources:
Olivares-Urueta, M. (2022, March 28). From at risk to at promise: Fighting fiercely for the community college students we have to safeguard the futures they deserve. Teachers College Record, Date Published: March 23, 2022 https://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 24015
Olivares-Urueta, M. (2021). Mamis rising: Challenging the narrative of who belongs in community college administration. Journal of Applied Research in the Community College, 28(2), 79-92. https://www.montezumapublishing.com/jarcc/issueabstracts/fall2021volume28issue2
Olivares-Urueta, M., & Allen, T.O. (2021). Community colleges leaders’ role in nourishing student success at HSIs. In R.T. Palmer, D.C. Maramba, T.O. Allen, & A.T. Arroyo (Eds.),Exploring the unknown: Understanding the work of student affairs professionals at Minority Serving Institutions. Routledge.
Other episodes you might like:
Episode 67: Teaching is An Act of Love. So Is Leadership.
Episode 22: Feminism is Optimism, with Elise Robinson.
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
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One of my favorite leadership traits is when a leader is committed to lifting everyone around them. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to a talented leader who lives that commitment in her leadership and in her teaching. Mayra Olivare Durueta works to remove institutional barriers and ensure the success of all students, especially historically marginalized and excluded populations, with a special focus on Latina populations. An experienced higher education professional and executive in community colleges, mayra is a published scholar, practitioner and leadership consultant. She currently serves as executive in residence in the higher education program and director of the Bill J Priest Center for Community College Education at the University of North Texas in Denton. In 2018, mayra was named an American Association of Women in Community Colleges 40 under 40, and in 2020, she became a fellow of the Aspen Institute's Rising Presidents Program. She's going to make an awesome president one day. She's a former president of the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education, tachi, a former institutional coach for the Hope Center for College Community and Justice, and currently serves as faculty in residence within the Community Colleges Division of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. She volunteers for multiple educational community organizations locally and nationally and, as you'll hear in our conversation, she is the proud spouse of Alejandro, and mommy to Isabel, olivia and their fur baby Luna.
Speaker 1:I can't wait for you to meet Mayra. Hey there. Welcome to the Uplift podcast, where we talk all things leadership for women in higher ed. I'm Carol Shabryus and I want to help make your leadership path a little easier, a bit brighter and a hell of a lot more fun. Here at the Uplift, we mash up real stories, real feelings, real theory and occasional f*** bombs, all to help you become the kind of believing, awesome leader you would love to follow. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump in, mayra. Welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1:I love your research and I was hoping we could start there. So you've written two pieces in particular from your perspective that influence how you think about yourself as a leader. Can you start by talking about your mission as a leader and how those pieces that describe kind of aspects of identity fuel that mission?
Speaker 2:Sure. So first of all, it's funny, right? Because you don't realize you're a leader.
Speaker 1:Until there you are right, and you were there or your mom's like you didn't
Speaker 2:realize you were a French club president, you were this in elementary school, you were this in high school. I have grown into leadership, kind of in a very generic way, right, like we all kind of do. You take roles in schools. When I went to college, I took roles in college and organizations and that's where I kind of saw the lack of women leaders, specifically at my university, my alma mater, and then noticed the lack of diversity within the leadership, even in the males that were there and part of me and I'm going to use a word in Spanish and I'll translate it I am a terka, so that means I'm very stubborn. Right, in Spanish, women and you know Spanish language is very gendered. So I'm a terka by nature, I'm a stubborn person by nature, and so if you tell me I can't, or if I see that people like me haven't, I'm like that's what I want to do. In a way, I guess I like to break barriers and break stereotypes, but it's not just in a matter of I want to break things.
Speaker 2:It's in a why haven't we right? Like exploring the why, and so I think my leadership comes from a place of wonder, of like why we haven't, why we don't still in 2023. And now that I have daughters, it's like, oh my God, I have to break these walls down for them because I don't want them to hit them as hard and as bad as I have right. So I come from a place of opportunity. I come from a place of wanting to make space for my girls, wanting to make space for those that are coming behind me. I still have many years to work, but if I can make it easier for the ones that are coming behind me, I want to.
Speaker 2:The other thing is we don't make leadership opportunities for everybody to be successful.
Speaker 2:We're really hindering opportunity for our students to be successful.
Speaker 2:So, you know, we talk a lot about reflectivity and how children and youth make their goals and projections about who and what they'll be based on, who they see being those things, and our students still don't see themselves in their leadership.
Speaker 2:Our students still don't see themselves in the boards of trustees, you know, and so part of it is to like exploring my leadership, like I said, is about wonder, but also exploring why these systems are what they are. And then I'm trying to identify ways, little pores, into which I can insert opportunity, not only for myself but for other women who are minoritized and just minoritized and historically excluded people in general, but bringing that narrative into the scene right. So that's why I've been intentional and very thankful for the publication opportunities I've had where I've been asked to talk about my time at administration and just to talk about what we need to focus on when it comes to our students and leadership going forward. So that's kind of a bit about the context that helps to center what my leadership is grounded in, and it's a barrier breaking and empowerment of those who have not been empowered.
Speaker 1:Can I ask you, can you give us the thesis or the nutshell of the mommy's rising, challenging the narrative of who belongs in community college administration?
Speaker 2:Sure. So this came in part from my reading Cheryl Sandberg's Lean, in which I felt was not very something that I could relate to as a Mexican-American woman and a woman of my social class either. So it was kind of a response to that in a higher ed field, but also experiences that I had and things that I did to myself. I don't think we realized how much we as women put limits on ourselves and what we can achieve based on our family goals right, if we want to have families and all of that. And so I had a hard time seeing myself as an executive leader because of the familial goals that I had, and so mommy's rising tells the story about how I put barriers on myself and then remove them, but also how folks were putting those barriers on me, maybe not realizing that they were right. So there's a story in there about a supervisor who had decided they weren't going to extend an invitation for professional development, you know, out of the state, because they thought I wanted to stay with my children and I was like no.
Speaker 2:I need a break for my children. And also, why would I delay my progress? Right? One of the things I do take away from Cheryl Sandberg is that women delay themselves by 10 years professionally in advancement opportunities because they self-select out of opportunities because they're going to have children.
Speaker 2:So part of this was also there's recommendations for supervisors of caregivers, there's recommendations for boards, there's recommendations for executive leaders who are, you know, entertaining the idea of the promotion of women who are caregivers, to not rule us out, like not count us out of the opportunities to be a leader, but also not to count ourselves out and not to put ourselves out of opportunities because we want to have kids. And last, that part of this was also talking about the ways that I have found support so that with my caregiving responsibilities, I'm able to balance an executive level position and not hide the fact that I'm a caregiver and not hide the fact that I'm an executive to my kids. You know they have an understanding of what mommy's role is, but also at work, I think it humanizes a person when they also see you as something other than the executive. So that's another piece that I included in there for people like everyone else, with concerns like everyone else and we have the potential to lead. I think especially more fiercely once we have kids or once we're caregivers, because it seems like everything's so much higher stake, because pieces of your heart are now impacted by these systems that you're leading. So that's in a nutshell what I talk about there.
Speaker 1:I love that. I want to share with you something we have in common. So I, when my kids were young kind of preschool and just starting school I was running a consortium in the Twin Cities and my kids went with me to all the campus events at all five colleges, and they knew some of the presidents by name. They knew the people running the colleges. And one day we pulled into a parking spot and my daughter flicked the parking tag hanging from a rear view mirror and she said what's this? And I said, oh, it's so that we can park for free. And she said well, I hope we can park for free and we do so much work here.
Speaker 1:And I started to answer about the work I did and then I said wait a minute, we do so much work here. And she said, oh, I do my fair share. She saw herself like living alongside a mother who knew high powered folks and she just inserted herself into that life and it was only because they were able to see like the job I had that required me to move around so much among those campuses. Let her see me as an executive in a way that I just feel really fortunate to have been able to show her.
Speaker 2:And how powerful for her to see you in those roles. I think it's so empowering for them to see that mommy is. First of all, they're calling you a doctor. What are you a doctor of? You know, and in the pandemic, you know, my girls were very young but they got to sit here. As I presented to our chancellor, as I presented to presidents, I had conversations with my colleague VPs. They love Dr Julie, they love Dr Kenya. They knew these people and they wanted to see them. They asked for the girls whenever we were having meetings.
Speaker 2:But something a silly ass.
Speaker 2:My youngest saying mommy, I want to work like you at a school because I want to wear dresses like you do to school.
Speaker 2:You know, as someone who has studied college, going in access, any way that I can build your desire to go to college, to build your college knowledge and then build your professional aspirations, is fantastic. So part of me is like, why aren't we doing that? We're more than just our kids. But also how fantastic that my girls now say they want to be a judge. And it's not like a big deal to think about going to law school because mommy and puppy went to. You know, do all these things so and I have to get credit to a male supervisor that I had for even like inserting my children into my work and in the pandemic we didn't really have a lot of chance to have a choice right, but he would bring his daughters to campus and seeing him do that was really powerful for me and, I think, gave me permission to do that also. So how wonderful that you and your children had the opportunity to do the same.
Speaker 1:And you're right, it was welcome. People above you really do set the tone for whether that's an acceptable practice. Let's back up a little bit. I'm taken by this idea of. I mean, you mentioned wonder and you mentioned opportunity, but you also kind of indicated that you've always stepped into leadership roles and never really thought much of it. So at what moment, or was there a moment when your eyes were open and into that sense of wonder, as you as a leader not just me being in the French club or not just you doing those things as part of your daily? You know the way you go about the world, but what happened that? Let you start to really see yourself as a leader.
Speaker 2:So, as you're asking me, I'm thinking of a very pivotal conversation I had when it was my first community college role actually, and Tahira Fulkerson is this lovely human and she was part of my interview process for the director role I held at the college eventually. But when we were interviewing she asked me and this was the final interview process she asked me if I had ever considered being a college president and it took my breath away, but I came back and I said, well, can I just get this job first and then we could talk about whatever else I'm happy to consider. And thankfully I was selected for the position and she put that scene in my head. And it's not like we don't think about being superheroes or being these big positions, but then it takes someone planning the little plant and seeding it and watering it and nurturing it. And she planted the seed for me in a very real way. And so a couple of years into being at that campus, I actually started to apply for fellowships, for leadership opportunities that would help set me up for executive leadership positions at community colleges. So I say that's the point where I first explored I'd really saw myself as having an opportunity, because she saw that in me and she said it People see things.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I've been guilty of this and I'm quiet, no more.
Speaker 2:But I see things in people and I will name them.
Speaker 2:You know something as simple as there was a sweet young man that helped me at discount tire the other day. His customer service and just the manner I would say bedside but car side manner was just impeccable. And I said have you ever considered becoming a doctor? Because the way you are engaging with me here would be fantastic as bedside manner translated, you know, and how awesome that you could maybe do that what you're doing here or there. And he was like wow, I never thought thank you so much, man, so I don't, you know. Hopefully I planted something in him that will get him you know other places and not that working at discount tire isn't any way bad. He was helpful and keeps me safe. But she saw that in me and having her verbalize that and then write letters of support for me, for fellowships, and then even put money, put money, she bet on me and that I think was worth more than anything. But she nurtured our relationship and followed through with what she had seen in me leadership-wise yeah, she's my redwood.
Speaker 1:What a great thing to have someone who bets on you. I think one of the. I mean, we're notorious in higher ed for not really developing leadership pipelines on our campuses, but we're also not expected and even rewarded for nurturing the leaders who might be coming up through that pipeline. I was listening to an interview the other day with Ginny Rometti, who was CEO of IBM. She was saying that back in the day, you know, when you and I were babies she was a new manager and one of the things she was evaluated on was whether she nurtured the people who reported to her. And I thought I've been in leadership roles for 25 years. That has literally never once been on annual reviews. Yeah, I mean either. But what a great thing Like if we go around as leaders thinking that one of our jobs is to bet on people right, yeah, beyond the hiring process, right Like.
Speaker 2:It's great that you thank you for the trust. And then what Right right, we're notorious in higher ed too. We're also like welcome. See you later, tom from the house. Thank you.
Speaker 1:And if you do, you're out, right, Right right.
Speaker 2:But I think realizing how codependent we are also, I think, has made me the type of and also having had that right has made me the type of leader that likes to cultivate opportunity for those that I get to work with, who get to, I get to supervise, and I'm intentional in saying who are my colleagues, because you know, learning about hierarchy I definitely appreciate, you know, a flat chart Whenever we can have it. I understand sometimes you know you need the pyramid depending on the situation, but I can't be successful if my people are not successful and if I'm not in tune with that. That's problematic, but you're right, we are. I think now there's more succession planning because everybody's tired and jumping ship. I mean, I'm like trying to hold my classes together. You know I have classes of masters and doctoral students who are higher ed professionals and I'm like don't leave Because there's any. Why they question why they're doing it. They're in grad assistantships and they're like is this worth it?
Speaker 2:And the salaries aren't cutting it.
Speaker 1:And where you know where will there be jobs and will those jobs be reliable and will those institutions be around? And yeah, there's so much. Well, that's a beautiful segue. Let's shift to teaching for a minute. It's one of the things that caught my attention when I was first getting to know you was that you have, to my mind, because I have an academic affairs lens you have a backwards trajectory. Many people in academic affairs start as professors and move into leadership roles. You started off as a leader and you're pivoting more recently into some teaching not giving up the leadership, but also adding teaching. Talk to us a little bit about what you're discovering about yourself and your students as you get to teach them.
Speaker 2:Well about myself. This is silly, maybe, but that I need to trust what I know more than I do and that books don't hold all the truth. You know there's so much value and lived experience and I say this to my students but it's one of those things where I need to work better at applying it for myself. And I'll give you a case in point my first semester teaching. I'm in my third year teaching full time, which has been really fantastic. But my very first semester I had a leadership class, a leadership development class, and I was so nervous just thinking you know they're going to say she doesn't know what she's doing. Why is she teaching us anything? And my husband, who's not in the field I was having this conversation about how you know, afraid I was to be seeing like a fool up there and he was like why You've been leading like you are the perfect person to teach a leadership class because you have been doing it.
Speaker 2:And it took him saying it a few times and you know how it is like with our close loved ones. You're like I need to say that because you love me. But one day I trusted my instinct. I was like man, this book is good, but I am bored out of my mind reading it, much less trying to think of like what activities to do with my student, because I like activity. I don't like to lecture, I want them to be, I need them to be involved, we need to be doing the learning together, right, co-creating. And I put the book aside and I had like 30 minutes before I had to be in the class but I just sat down and started looking at notes from previous jobs that I've held and I wrote up for case studies in 30 minutes and I went in and said, hey guys, this is what we're doing today. I gave everybody the case studies. Everybody had 20 minutes to look over them and you know, come up with solutions using theory, right, that we had been reading to back up their decision for how they would handle it. But that was the most fun and I think that's when I was like oh, I do know what I'm doing, so it has been really interesting. After having been through a doctoral program in grad school and then having all this experience it has, it's really neat to be able to relate to the students examples from the field about why this is important and where this is applicable.
Speaker 2:Last week we were I'm teaching a student development theory class right now. It's one of the classes I'm teaching this semester and I again I was like we need to move. I like we need to do something different today and what I did was we were reading over racial identity development. Well, I had them leave me for 30 minutes, I broke them up into groups and I said go and see where you see all these different racial and ethnic identities represented on campus. I just want you to visually look for them. And then they came back and we talked about it and I said imagine the messaging that we sent to students on our campuses when we say we want you here, we value you, and they see themselves nowhere or they see themselves reduced to a sentence right, if you're an Indigenous student.
Speaker 2:And now we're acknowledging, right, that we are on Indigenous land, so being able to get them out of the class and to see and to feel the things, now that we've looked at this theory like this is why this matters and this is why we're talking about it, because we know students feel excluded and, yes, there's microaggressions and microaggressions. But how are our environments and our institutional contexts also telling people they don't belong? And walking around for 30 minutes with your classmates and I gave them a set of questions you know they had to answer to kind of keep it all so they weren't just like strolling around, they had to come back with intentionality and answers questions I posed. But that is fun for me, like being able to get out of the print and to go and see it and feel it. That's super fun. So that's a benefit I have from my experience and how I'm able to apply it to what could be boring reads. I mean, let's be honest, you know you really got to love this stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope you turn that into a book for your field. I hope I'm going to look for your book of case studies to come out in the future.
Speaker 2:I need to write it. There's a few books. I say now I'm like, oh, there's a few books in here, I just need to sit down and write.
Speaker 1:So you know someday so, as you were talking about your students and I was thinking about the ways you are encouraging genuine experiences and interaction with the theoretical concepts on your campus, I'm wondering, if you can when you think about your students and what you see them doing, what are you really optimistic about for the future of higher ed when you look at these young professionals who are coming into the field?
Speaker 2:I love how much more in tune they are with the ills of society, as horrible as it is that they have experienced them. They are awake in ways that I wasn't at their age, that I think it's definitely taken me longer and thousands of dollars of grad school and counseling and all kinds of things, and they're so creative. I think part of my hope is that we don't beat that out of them once they come into the field, because part of what I've experienced is the educational system as a whole is about acculturation and assimilation More assimilation than acculturation, right, and so I think we don't have employees who are critical thinkers because we don't teach critical thinking until you flip a switch from undergrad to grad school, because I would even say in undergrad, we're not even doing that as well as we could be.
Speaker 2:So part of me is really hopeful that we haven't they haven't lost all of that. I see them creating community in ways that are really powerful and I think, again, that really helped to light up their creativity and nurture that. And they're also in community with folks that help to affirm their other identities, which I think is also really powerful. The things I get to read about them in their papers it's a lot. They're sharing a lot and I want them to keep the vulnerability of all that and I'm excited about how they will be creative problem solvers with all they know and all the tools that they have.
Speaker 2:I don't have all of the tools they have. I don't even have a TikTok account, so there's ways that I know I'm not connecting with our current undergrads now, but I'm excited for how they will be that bridge for us and really hopeful that we don't stomp all over that this little garden of beautiful plants that we have growing, because it could be very disheartening once you're done with school, grad school and you go into the field and it's just not what you hoped for or expected. But they're so creative and they're so loving and they're so in tune with, again, what hurts them the most, you know, with what they feel the most love for, not only in themselves but in society. I want them to keep that. If nothing else, that's the thing that drives me, so that's hopefully the flame that continues to burn that helps them to keep on trying and failing and learning, and trying and failing and learning again.
Speaker 1:I think I first noticed this with undergrads, with the Florida students Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, and I remember watching them lead protests and talk and thinking they're so powerful and they're so articulate and they're so willing to bring that public. If that's really this next generation of undergrads, like that's immensely powerful. And if those are also the students now that are moving into graduate school age and I think about even just what the last few years have given us in the world. It's kind of beautiful to think that the people who are training to be our next leaders are learning to lead without that facade and what that could really transform for us in the landscape of higher ed.
Speaker 2:And you know they part of my hope, but also my caution, is they see through the BS. So institutions can claim to be minority serving, hispanic serving, minority welcoming, but they live in the systems and they see how that is not actualized and operationalized. So part of what I'm also doing is teaching them what the system is, because I don't want you I mean as much as I wanna flip a table sometimes that doesn't get us anywhere. We need to learn the systems so that we can professionally bring up the things that we see, these issues, and not just bring it up but propose solutions. Right, because that's another thing. Oh my God. As a manager I was like please don't come to me with a complaint if you don't have a solution.
Speaker 2:I can't fix everything and that's why I have you beautiful people right. So it's also a matter of there's a system and there's ways for us to change the system, because I have been able to do that in little ways but powerful ways, ways I didn't expect I would be able to. So that's the other pieces learning the system but keeping that fire going in them so that they don't get disillusioned by the lack of progress. And the other thing is higher ed is a multi-hundred year institution in our country and like hundreds and hundreds of years so it's that proverbial that Titanic's not gonna change in a day. And I think also having them understand how deeply rooted the system and the foundation is and again learn the system so that that creativity, like everything they have now, can be the lifeline right, that the new blood that comes into the system and maybe starts to make it look a little different and shape a little different.
Speaker 1:It's a real Audrey Lord moment, isn't it? Where they're seeing the house. They have a totally different set of social and emotional tools that they're bringing to bear. I love that.
Speaker 2:Yes, a hundred percent. I love Audrey Lord.
Speaker 1:So let's stay on optimism for a minute. As we wrap things up, I'm interested in knowing what's happening in your reading world or your viewing world, your world, the world that informs your leadership but is not necessarily your leadership. What are you reading or watching or doing that brings you joy right now?
Speaker 2:Yes, so I am notorious for buying books that I don't read right away, but I finally picked up Adam Grant's Think Again because I was listening. One of the podcasts I've been listening to, ironically, is armchair expert with Dax Shepard, so he interviewed Adam Grant and that sparked my interest to read the new one. But I was like I have to read Think Again and I'm loving it. I think it's part of what we need in higher end right now and I love Bernay Brown podcast I listen to religiously every week when I walk my dog are smart lists. They're so funny and just ridiculous and it's a good change for me. You know to not be higher edding all the time, but smart list.
Speaker 2:I listened to your Mama's Kitchen by Michelle Norris. I love that one. That's new. Oh my gosh. I can't think of her name right now, but Elaine from Seinfeld has this podcast that's called Wiser Than Me and she interviews just women who she deems wiser than her and like. The life lessons and the things they talk about are so interesting. And she doesn't just interview actresses. I think she interviewed some authors. That I find amazing also.
Speaker 2:But anyway those are a few of the podcasts. That's the book right now. And think again, he is promoting some of the things that Bernay Brown talks about, which is like it's okay to try the things and then see that they're not good and to consider other options. How do we help ourselves not stay in this little square of this is how we've been doing it, you know. And humility he talks a lot about the power of humility, the power of understanding that we don't know everything and so how that can drive. So even imposter syndrome, he posits imposter syndrome isn't necessarily a bad thing, although harmful. Right, there are ways that we can channel what we feel through imposter syndrome to have us do things in different ways and not be complacent with the way things have been done, which, again, oh my God, every page I read I'm like, oh my God, we could apply this to higher ends. So much so.
Speaker 2:And just leadership in general right, we talk about changing, but we don't change it. And change is so uncomfortable, I know, but even there, like he has examples of, he had an example of a baseball player who understood he was kind of gonna suck for a while with his pitching because he was pitching a different way, but once he was able to really cultivate that way that he was pitching and just practice it and practice it until he became excellent. You know, that's even having that understanding. You may be doing great and it's okay, but in order to be even better, you might have to go down a little bit and retool and not be so great and then go back up again. So like understanding that it's okay to do that and ways to do that is really exciting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So humility and courage to fail, tenacity also key characteristics for leaders 100%.
Speaker 2:And then with the podcast also like the ability to laugh, like we gotta be able to get out of our heads for a bit and just laugh a little bit, because it's very intense and it doesn't have to be a heart attack, all day every day.
Speaker 2:We can take a breath, just like you did. It's great to take a breath, and one of my former supervisors used to say we're not surgeons here, although I feel the intensity that higher ed is so powerful at changing and breaking, you know, cycles of poverty and everything else, but not to our detriment, right? Leaders don't have to be dying like they have been. Institutions don't have to be successful at the cost of their leaders, right? So how do we take care of ourselves? How are we humble enough to know we don't know everything? We don't want to be the leaders that I don't want to be, the leader that claims to have reached intelligence to the degree that I needed and I need to learn no more. So how do we foster all of these things?
Speaker 1:I like that shift in thinking about burnout. People experience burnout individually and we sometimes talk about it collectively as a cultural effect. But this idea that the institution is not better for damaging people and the institution's longevity is not reliant on damaging people, I think that would be really that would be worth unpacking when groups are talking about strategy planning and event planning and workload allocation, all those things.
Speaker 2:Well, and I have to say that's how I came to teaching. I needed to tap out because the rate I was going at was making me a lousy mom, was making me a lousy partner, was making me feel lousy in so many ways and at a time where many faculty were leaving because they felt like these were not spaces that were welcoming and nurturing for them, I found a respite in teaching from administration. So I get, we don't have the same goals. We don't have the same personal goals. I would not compare my experience to theirs, but I also had to be intentional with a student some time ago that was reading these blogs about higher ed professional, a higher ed professional who was talking about all their negative experiences. And so I acknowledge faculty route can be.
Speaker 2:I watch my colleagues. I mean it's a lot, it's hard and it's not well-paid, but I also know my colleagues love what they do and they love being able to produce knowledge that impacts professionals, that impacts how institutions work and run, that helps students like them. But yeah, this one student kept reading this very negative blog and I said, well, have you made the intention to go out and find a blog of someone that has a positive experience? Because I don't think you should just stay with this particular lens, right, let's explore all the possibilities and then make a decision. But anyway, I found respite in teaching and have found, I think I've been reinvigorated in my leadership because of my teaching and because people still want to do this work in higher ed. Young, bright, amazing people want to do this work still and we're not going away. So, yeah, here for the long haul.
Speaker 1:That makes me really optimistic to understand, to hear you talk about that coming generation of people who are trained to understand and work within and helps to dismantle and improve the system. I've never taught in higher ed programs as a discipline, so it's great to hear that that's who you're experiencing and who you're preparing our world for. So tell me or tell us, if we love hearing your take and kind of how you think about moving through leadership when can people learn more about that kind of work and where can people learn more about?
Speaker 2:you. So I'm pretty bland. People can find me on LinkedIn Just my full name, and I don't have a dedicated website for myself, but maybe you should consider one I'm happy to. I really am best one-on-one. I welcome people messaging me, sending me messages through my inbox and, yeah, connect with me via my UNT email. I have my personal email on my LinkedIn as well, but that's basically where you can see kind of my professional experience, and then I've made links there to other podcasts and other things that I've been a part of. If folks kind of want to get to know me and other ways, I've done a few others. But yeah, find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active there also because I'm always posting positions that are available. So if folks want to know kind of where people are looking for positions to work at, that's another place. But yeah, that's where you can find me.
Speaker 1:So I think networking your way into a job is something that we don't learn enough about and hire it, so thank you for extending that offer to folks.
Speaker 2:I can only imagine that people will be taking you up on that, yeah, and I have to say I have done some of the crossing over, like I'll post some personal things on LinkedIn that impact my work, like I posted about my girls and how they have changed my professional views drastically and radically, and again how I see those students that we work for. I see my girls, I see my family that have gone to community colleges in the faces of all of our students, even though it's I don't get to see. There's a lot I don't get to see right now, but they humanize the work for me in really important ways. So that's, that's something else people can expect to find on LinkedIn. It's a little bit about how my family influences my leadership and my work.
Speaker 1:Which takes us right back to where we started. So that's nice full circle. Yeah, so much for being with us today, maya. It's been wonderful to chat with you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for your interest and it's been a joy. I love, I love talking about all of this, so thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's it for this week. Hop on over to LinkedIn to connect with Maya and me too, if we're not connected yet, although I hope we are, but come on already. We both want to meet you. See you next time.