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President Waldron Participates in Panel on Women and the Presidency at American Council on Education National Women’s Leadership Forum

President Kathleen Waldron was invited to serve as a panelist for the 86^th National Woman’s Leadership Forum of the American Council on Education (ACE), held December 2-4, 2015 in Arlington, Virginia.

Waldron discussed her personal journey to the presidency as part of the panel, “Lessons from the Lives of Women Presidents,” along with Tuajuanda Jordan, president of St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and Cynthia Lundquist, president of Cankdeska Cikana Community College in North Dakota.  Forty senior level female deans and vice presidents attended the forum, designed to shed light on the presidency and the different paths to leadership.

As part of her comments, President Waldron offered her thoughts on leadership.  "Leadership is not telling people what to do," she said. "It is presenting a problem that needs to be solved, asking smart people to offer solutions, gaining consensus on how to resolve the problem, and then empowering people to act. But if consensus and action cannot be achieved in a reasonable amount of time, then the leader needs to make a decision and move forward."

The ACE National Women’s Leadership Forum is one of a number of the organization’s programs designed to foster greater diversity and inclusion in higher education, particularly within the senior leadership.