Exceptionally Good: Leaders for a Better World
We bring you in-depth interviews with exceptional leaders who drive toward a different bottom line — leaders from health care, philanthropy, non-profits, education and rescue services who are doing exceptional work for the good of the world. Exploring their origin stories, their leadership journey and the lessons they learned on their path -- sometimes the hard way -- we bring you close to understand how exceptional leaders tick.
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Exceptionally Good: Leaders for a Better World
29. Dr. Zach Shirley — Brotherhood Built Me: HBCUs, Identity, Evolution, and the Work of Belonging
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This episode I'm delighted to talk with Dr. Zach Shirley — a nationally recognized leader in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
Dr. Zach currently serves as Vice President of DEIB at Cambium Learning, where he shapes strategy, drives organizational change, and equips teams to build more inclusive cultures. But to understand how he got there, you have to go back to a kid in high school — nerdy, scrawny, overlooked — who thought he had nothing to offer the world.
What changed everything? An HBCU and a fraternity.
Dr. Zach is a proud Dallas native and a proud life member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. — and he'll tell you simply: "My HBCU and my fraternity saved my life." What came from that experience was not just a career. It was a calling.
For sixteen years, Dr. Zach built a remarkable career in higher education — as a student affairs administrator, Greek life director, and mentor to marginalized students across some of the country's finest universities. He built departments from scratch at Texas A&M University–Commerce and the University of Cincinnati, sat on the board of the Association for Fraternity and Sorority Advisors, and had his name on a national fellowship. By any measure, he had made it.
And then, at 40, amid a pandemic and a moment of honest self-reckoning, he walked away from it all.
In this conversation, we explore what it really costs to leave an identity — not just a job — behind. Dr. Zach shares the fear, the grief, and the hard-won wisdom of that transition: from higher ed to EdTech, from certainty to growth, from warrior to something wider. He talks about the twin brother who walked the same path beside him for decades — and the phone call he made the day everything changed. He talks about what it means to evolve rather than bury who you were.
And he shares a Kirk Franklin lyric that wakes him up every morning with a question worth asking:
When I die, what will they say about me?
Will the work that I've done been enough to have helped someone?
Dr. Zach also shouts out a remarkable organization doing critical work: Innovation for Equity (IFE) — a network of changemakers committed to disrupting the status quo and transforming the life outcomes of Black learners of all ages. He recently joined their board and is a proud graduate of their Senior Leadership Cohort. Learn more and support them at innovationforequity.org.
This episode is for anyone who has ever wondered whether the identity they built is the only one they're allowed to have — and anyone striving to use their many many talents and skills for social good.
Dive in!
Dr. Zach's LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zevanshirley/
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Producer, editor and host: Ryan Maxwell
Theme music: Ryan Raddatz
Guitar music: Adeline’s Guitar
Credits/Outro Read by: Adeline, Advice and Jess
The views shared on this podcast are those of my guests and the host and do not necessarily reflect those of any employer past or present.