Leaders on Leadership featuring Dr. Mary Dana Hinton, President of Hollins University

Episode Transcript

Jay Lemons:

Hello and thank you for listening. I’m Jay Lemons. Welcome to Leaders on Leadership, brought to you by Academic Search and the American Academic Leadership Institute. The purpose of our podcast is to share the stories of the people and the forces that have shaped leaders in higher education and to learn more about their thoughts on leadership in the academy.

I am truly delighted and honored to be joined today by Dr. Mary Dana Hinton. Mary currently serves Hollins University as its 13th President, a role she has held since 2020. Prior to joining Hollins, she was the President of the College of St. Benedict in Minnesota for six years. Mary is noted for her commitment to educational equity and for being a proponent for the liberal arts. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and has been a part of the faculty of the Council of Independent Colleges New Presidents Program. As well, I’m delighted to share that Mary has a forthcoming book entitled Leading From the Margins. I’ll ask more about that after we get started.

In 2021, Mary was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an organization established more than 240 years ago by the nation’s founders to honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and to engage them in advancing the public good. Mary is on the board of directors of numerous organizations and often speaks on topics related to liberal arts and to inclusion. Mary earned her Ph.D. in Religion and Religious Education with high honors from Fordham University. She has a master’s degree in Clinical Child Psychology from the University of Kansas, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Williams College. She is the recipient of the Bicentennial Medal from Williams and also has honorary degrees from Misericordia University and the Massachusetts College of Arts and Sciences.

Welcome, Mary.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Hi, Jay. Hello, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to spend some time together today.

Jay Lemons:

Well, it’s a special pleasure. And I want to note that we’re recording this in the third week of August, and it reminds me of Ian Forster’s notion that April and August are the cruelest months. And I think this particularly applies to higher education where in August, we’re getting everything geared up and in April, everything has to be concluded. And so it’s a special, special commitment that you’ve made to being with us. I am just curious, would you share with us what have you been up to today?

Mary Dana Hinton:

Well, Jay, it was a fairly typical college president Monday, I will say. It’s a Monday. I had the privilege this morning of preparing breakfast for our entire facilities and grounds team, and I start with that. It’s lovely, and we’ve done this. I have done this a number of years. But usually, I’ll be honest, I cater it or something. But over the last several months, and maybe it’s a COVID consequence, I’ve started to realize that the best thing you can give to people is your time and to speak to them with your own, if you will, love language. And for me, that language is cooking and feeding people.

And so our facilities and grounds team, they make Hollins a wonderful place year round and I really wanted to thank them. So this year, instead of it being our normal catered affair, I decided to cook for them. And it was a really wonderful, wonderful morning. We laugh. We share recipes. We just enjoyed being together. So that was work, yes, but it was a lot of fun.

I then had an investment committee meeting of the board, which held some good news so I was excited about that. Our cabinet meeting was immediately after that, and we have some big projects as we open the next academic year. We are having a conversation. And then this evening, I will go and grocery shop because I’m going to cook for our entire faculty on Wednesday. So we’re going to have a faculty cookout, which I’m also really excited about for the same reasons I mentioned.

But I want to, if it’s okay, I want to go back to your starting premise, Jay, of April and August being the cruelest months. So last April, I decided I just didn’t want to embrace that idea anymore, that April could be the best month ever if we recognize that April and May for Hollins is when we celebrate the reason why we exist. And yes, there’s a lot to do, but really the busyness of April and May is the culmination of an entire year or an entire academic career. So I really tried to build in some things to sort of fend off April is the cruelest month, and you know what? This week is awesome. Our new students come on Saturday, everyone’s back by Monday, and it’s a terribly busy week. But what a privilege it is-

Jay Lemons:

Indeed.

Mary Dana Hinton:

… to be able to start this journey with students, with new faculty, with our team. So I’m trying to mentally reframe it as recognizing it for the privilege it is to do this work. And I’m attempting to maintain a posture of gratitude throughout this month.

Jay Lemons:

I love that and I appreciate it more than you will know. I do think August has a distinctively different quality.

Mary Dana Hinton:

It does.

Jay Lemons:

All the Hollins University sports teams are undefeated as of this moment.

Mary Dana Hinton:

100%. And we will remain so for quite some time. I have no doubt.

Jay Lemons:

Every student. I think about Benjamin Zander’s great book, everybody begins with an A.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Right.

Jay Lemons:

And so the promise of fall is awesome.

Mary Dana Hinton:

That’s right.

Jay Lemons:

And yet as a leader, you want to set the context of the year right. And you want to be sure that those welcomes to campus to all of your new faculty and staff and student colleagues go well. And so I thrived in this time of year, and yet I have to admit, I wish we’d had this conversation 30 years ago because oh, come April, my experience of the campus is energies are ebbing. Not everybody has an A. Not every team’s undefeated. People sometimes are a little cranky. But that reframe of we should think about April as that time where the promise and the benefits of the educational experience at Hollins is blossoming. And you’re right, our buckets get refilled when we get to commencement. But it’s that period right before breakthrough, that reframe.

And this is what makes you such a special leader, Mary. Leading with a heart of gratitude I think makes a huge difference. So God bless you, and may the beneficiaries of your love language truly enjoy the fellowship, and may they also have grateful hearts for your leadership.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Thank you. If they find this year is filled with success for them, whether it’s our facilities or faculty or in my cabinet, if they meet with success, then Hollins meets with success. And if Hollands meets with success, then I meet with success. And so leadership, I have a little sticky on my desk. It says, “Investing in people is investing in hope.” And I hope that I’m a purveyor of hope. So taking care of your team really means a lot.

Jay Lemons:

Well, for those folks who may not know. If you are on Interstate 81 heading either north or south-

Mary Dana Hinton:

That’s right.

Jay Lemons:

… and find yourself around Exit 146, as I recall.

Mary Dana Hinton:

100%, that’s exactly right.

Jay Lemons:

Oh, there you go. That’s what a decade of driving between Wise and Charlottesville and Richmond will give you. I still remember it 20 years later.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Remember that, yeah.

Jay Lemons:

Take yourself off the highway and let yourself drink in the beauty of the Hollins University campus. It is one of the most beautiful campuses in the country.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Thank you. We are very fortunate. And you’ll know it’s us because you’ll see our horses out. You can often see our horses from 81. So you are welcome. We are proud to be a campus that the community can access. And welcome. I would love to see you, Jay, as well as all of our friends who are listening.

Jay Lemons:

Thank you, thank you. And you never know where I might show up. I had the chance to give a little teaser. Tell us about your new book, which I really, I love the title. I love this notion of Leading From the Margins, which feels incredibly important in the work that I do now. And while the progress is slower than I want to see and we all hope to see, Leading From the Margins, say more about it.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Happy to. This notion of Leading From the Margins is one that I started toying around with, I guess as early as 2018. I did a Ted Talk about it in 2019, and I have heard so much of my life as a Black woman who grew up poor in the rural south. I just kept hearing that I wasn’t enough and that I’m not cut out to be a leader. And I heard so much from the world about what I couldn’t do. And lots of people hear that to this day, and folks get marginalized.

And there’s this overriding notion that if you’re someone from the margins, it may be because of your race, your sex, your sexual orientation, your gender identity. It could be your economic background. It could be any of those things. But there’s this notion that if you’re from the margins, your success is determined by how well you access and thrive in the center. So I just often felt like I had to be something or someone or value things that were focused on the center, but they weren’t the things that mattered to me. And I just really was found myself, Jay, wrestling with this idea of how come I have to fully change who I am and what I value to be taken seriously?

So I began to think about the strengths that you develop within the margins. And I began to question, why don’t people talk about the value of being in the margins? And the things that you learn, the margins hold their own value. So I really began to get clearer about this in 2019 and talk in my Ted Talk about the fact that in my life right now, the center’s really no longer my goal. I am happy to go through the center, but my goal is really supporting those in the margins. My goal is helping those who have typically been, quote-unquote, “marginalized” recognize their value and that you are enough as you are. I say this to my students all the time, “The culmination of your experiences brought you to this point. And at this point, you are enough. So how do you lead from this moment going forward not being judged by a set of criteria which you had no influence on developing but being judged by what matters in your heart and in your mind and what influence you want to have on the world?”

So Leading From the Margins, it’s not what you would say, it’s not a, quote-unquote, “academic” book because I wasn’t really trying to speak to that per se. I was trying to speak to a young person, maybe in an assistant director role who’s thinking, “What if I want to do something more but I’m being told I’m not enough?” So this book is written to that person. It’s written to sitting presidents who find themselves wondering, “How much more do I have to contort myself and my values to be successful in this role?” So it’s a little bit of my personal story and a lot based on my experience as a leader and wanting others to embrace who they are as they are.

Jay Lemons:

Wonderful. Forthcoming from the Johns Hopkins University Press in when? 

Mary Dana Hinton:

In February. February 24, it’s due to be out and I’m super excited about it. And most of all, I just hope it encourages someone.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Well, congratulations on that. And in some ways, it’s a perfect segue to first question I’d love to jump into with you. And that is really one of the goals of doing this podcast is to try and help illuminate the pathways of people like you. And I’d love for you to share a little bit of the story of who and what shaped you into the leader that you are. And so you gave us a little kernel that you were born in the south, but pick it up from there and talk about the things that really have forged the person you are today.

Mary Dana Hinton:

I’m going to try to talk about it. And I’ve not done this before but I’m going to try to talk about it by people who influence me.

Jay Lemons:

Beautiful.

Mary Dana Hinton:

And so anyone who’s ever heard me say anything knows that my mother was probably the single biggest influence in my life. My mother who worked so hard every day of her life to provide first and foremost an education for her children. My mother was born in rural North Carolina in 1926. And if you know your history, you know that that means she was not afforded a lot of opportunity in this world and was forced to leave school in eighth grade and wanted for herself desperately a formal education. And it was denied to her, systematically denied to her. So her great pride in life, I think, was making sure that her children got an education.

And so I mentioned my mom first because a lot of how I think about education is based on the fact that I grew up in a home where you were told an education is the most important thing you can do to change your own trajectory, but it was also required that we also change the trajectory of others who weren’t able to get an education. So my mother developed in me this deep sense of inquiry, but also service. So yes, you can go and learn whatever you want to learn, Mary, but how are you going to deploy that in service to others?

So that’s what I heard growing up. We grew up very poor in rural North Carolina. I tell everyone I went off to Williams College with a Jerry Curl and a southern accent. Those were my two assets, and got to Williams and found out neither one fit in particularly well. And so I really wrestled as an undergraduate with understanding my place in the world and thinking about what does it mean to be someone from my background with access to this level of privilege? And a lot of my leadership today is framed around what I wish I had known and my telling young people what I wish I had known so they can be successful.

My mom was my first influence. Right next to my mom is a woman named Betty Cooper. Betty Cooper is the woman my mother cleaned for. And the two of them conspired to get me out of a unfortunate public school situation and into a private school. Betty and Marshall Cooper paid for me to go to St. Mary’s, which changed my life. It wasn’t because I was super smart or had a great voice or any distinguishable challenge as far as I could tell, but they looked at me and said, “We believe that you deserve the best education you can get.” They knew how much it meant to my mom, and they paid for me to go to private high school for 11th and 12th grade. And that changed my life. I wouldn’t have gotten to my aforementioned alma mater without them.

So I think a lot about people who change your life almost incidentally. I don’t know that… To this day, Betty Cooper says she didn’t do anything, but she changed my life. And I think about how-

Jay Lemons:

Absolutely.

Mary Dana Hinton:

… we can do that every day for young people. So they start. I have to mention my undergraduate advisor, Laurie Heatherington, with whom I text all the time. What does it mean to have a faculty member who believes in you, who gives you opportunity, who invites you into their home? And so she is, in my mind, the ultimate faculty member. She is an excellent scholar, but Laurie saw potential in me that I couldn’t see in myself. And that’s what I try to bring to my students today.

So we’ve got my mother’s deep commitment to education, the Coopers’ willingness to extend themselves to support someone’s dreams, and Laurie’s ability to see potential where I didn’t see it for myself. And those things come together. And I had a long career before I got into higher ed. Half of my career was in K-12, but I think those are the three people who most impact my leadership on a daily basis. There’s a fourth person I should mention, and this was someone who said to me at New Presidents School,

“When you were the president, it’s really important that you not confuse who you are with the office of the president.” And that was you, Jay Lemons, who said that in a talk 10 years ago. And I think about that every day as well.

I am a steward in a moment in time. I need to do it to the very best of my abilities. But Hollins existed for almost 180 years before I got here. My job is to make sure it can exist 180 years into the future, and that I represent an office that’s so much bigger than one person. And I have to do that with pride and with excellence and never forget that it’s not about me.

Jay Lemons:

Well, I will only say amen. And it’s easy to me to see a sort of commitment to leading with gratitude and just your reflections on your mother and the Coopers and Laurie. Thank you for sharing those stories.

Mary Dana Hinton:

And Jay Lemons gets in that as well.

Jay Lemons:

That’s truly humbling but deeply appreciated. Thank you.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Absolutely.

Jay Lemons:

I’d love for you to talk a little bit about what in your mind makes a leader good or makes a good leader? And I don’t mean by this a grade B. I mean what makes a leader virtuous? What makes a leader effective? And what makes a leader ultimately successful?

Mary Dana Hinton:

Yeah, that is a really hard question, right? Because we read leadership theory and people tell us, you have to be X, Y, and Z to be a leader. And I don’t meet X, Y, Z criteria usually. So we talked before we started taping about how we engage with our community, and you mentioned hugging students. And I do ask for consent, but hugging students is for me as part of being a good leader. What I think that translates to is a willingness to be human with everyone around you makes a good leader. It’s easy to coast on your introductions, but I don’t think my students care what I’ve been elected to or what boards I serve on. They care am I going to show up in their darkest moments? Am I going to show up in their most joyful moment? So I think being a good leader is the person who shows up in both of those situations.

It occurred to me several years ago that I think being a good leader is a willingness to be in relationship with everyone. You have the privilege of serving, especially when you may not want to be in that relationship. We’re all human so there are moments when we don’t want to be in relationship. But if you’re a good leader, you somehow manage to authentically show up in that relationship because it’s not about you. It’s about that other person that you’re on this leadership journey with. So I think that makes a good leader.

I worked with a coach and I recommend everyone work with a coach in their leadership. I worked with just an outstanding coach and I remember her saying to me, “Mary, most of leadership is managing yourself and your reactions to things and how you interpret things.” And I’ll never forget that because on most days, I don’t have a lot of control over what’s on my calendar. There are things to be done.

Jay Lemons:

That’s right.

Mary Dana Hinton:

But I can control how I react to those things. I can control whether I’m going to choose to be frustrated and angry or curious and engaged. I can control myself and my reaction to things. And I think being a good leader demands that as well. To me at the end of the day now, Jay, and maybe this is a cop out, but at this moment I would say to you that being a good leader means being vulnerable to the world around you, modeling that vulnerability, and still choosing love and compassion at the end of the day. And I know people will be like, “Well, that sounds super soft,” but I’m going to stick by it because in the world we live in right now, I used to say our students, but now I’m going to say our students, faculty, and staff, most need love and compassion. And I am in the unique position as the leader to be able to model and hopefully, albeit imperfectly, offer that to people.

Jay Lemons:

Wow, that’s powerful and beautiful. Thank you. There’s some of what I hear in you that takes me back to a book that’s now, gosh, probably 30 years old, that I really appreciated, The Contrarian Leader by Steve Sample.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Yeah.

Jay Lemons:

In some ways, what you’re saying is you’ve gotten to a place in your own journey and thinking that you’re going to do it your own way. And that’s in a neat way being a contrarian because yes, how many of us have tried to contort ourselves into these caricatures of what it means to be a leader or be in command? And I worry and wonder sometimes about those folks who struggle in these roles having contorted themselves to those ideas or images rather than leading from the heart, which is what I think I hear you are articulating.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Thanks, Jay. I think one thing that years of service gets you is you begin to realize that at the end of the day, you have to be faithful to the mission of the institution you serve and faithful to your heart so you get great clarity about lines you will and won’t cross but you also know there’s a lot of gray. There’s a lot of ways to show up in the world. There is no perfect way to show up in the world. There are no perfect people. So why not try to cultivate the best of yourself and cultivate the best in others?

And I do think that’s contrarian in some ways. We live in such a yes, no, black, white, right, wrong world, and I think it’s eating us alive, to be honest with you. I think if we don’t allow room for people to be human, to make mistakes, and to then think about the ways we can offer compassion, love, redemption. I guess I’ve just reached a point where those are the most important things in life for me right now.

I have a great team, so I don’t have to worry about the content of leadership as much as some leaders might because I know my team is on it with the content. But what a president can uniquely do is set the tone for the institution.

Jay Lemons:

Correct.

Mary Dana Hinton:

And that’s what I feel like I have to do now. I’m going to cite all the appropriate facts and figures at our state of the university or your opening convocation or whatever it is. But most of all, I want to tell people what to expect from my heart for the next nine months. And I feel like that’s the most important thing a leader can do.

Jay Lemons:

Thank you, thank you. Part of the reason that we do this podcast is we have about 140 people coming through our AALI programs every year. We hope over time we’ll be accessible to even more people who aspire to leadership. And I’d love for you to offer some advice to those who really may also be the beneficiaries of the book that you’re going to have coming out.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Well, but I wish I knew. I want to start with one very practical, tactical thing. And that is if you’re getting into leadership because you like the notion of power or authority or the trappings of leadership, I just want to really strongly encourage you to just pause for a minute, because the stakes are far too high for that to be the reason why. You have to recognize that you are being entrusted with the lives of young people and with a community of workers. And that’s a heavy weight. And there is no amount of money, there are no trappings that can help you to escape that. So unless you want that, and it’s a glorious weight, but unless you want that weight on your shoulders, please don’t be a leader.

I look at the turn and higher ed right now, and if you’re not willing to really accept responsibility for lives, I’ll just go back to it, that are entrusted to you, it’s not the right venue perhaps. So if you’re driven by power, I would encourage you to find. There are other places where you can get that with much lower stake. So I would say that.

I often try to tell leaders that they’ve got to be really clear on what their motivations are but also very clear about what their mission is in life. And I mean their personal mission. What is your mission? And I don’t think one’s mission is ever a job title. My mission isn’t college president. That’s the title that enables me to lead my mission and be successful with my mission. My mission is educational equity. That’s my mission in life. College president helps me facilitate completing that mission. So what is your mission in life and why would the job as a leader equip you to lead that mission? That’s a really important question that folks need to wrestle with. Why is that your mission? What has uniquely prepared you for that mission?

I would ask people about something we said earlier, Jay. Are you prepared to be in relationship with everyone in the community you serve? And if you can’t say yes, and I don’t mean in perfect relationship, but in right relationship with everyone around you, you really want to give it some thought. There’s probably no job that gives you the breadth of experiences that a college president job gives you. But I also don’t know of many jobs with as many competing demands as this job. So you’ve really got to be able to, because of the breadth of experience and competing demands, you’ve got to be a lifelong learner. And I mean that with my whole soul.

I and all of my cabinet members, every year we have to have a learning agenda because if you think you can get into this role and you’ve got all the answers, I think you’re sorely mistaken. Do you want to be a learner? Are you clear about your purpose in life? Is there something other than the trappings that’s compelling you? Those are the questions that I would ask. And that would be my advice. Ask yourself a lot of questions.

Jay Lemons:

Wonderful, wonderful. I try and speak to some of those points given the opportunities, especially in our AALI programs. And I am particularly wary of people who have what I call the higher ed version of Potomac Fever.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Right.

Jay Lemons:

My life won’t be complete unless I get to this point or I become a president. And that’s, I think, illusory and dangerous for people and the institutions that they serve.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Yeah. You just can’t sustain yourself with that because you can get into a position and if it’s not aligned with what you are, and I will use the language, with what you are called to do in this life, it will never be enough. It will simply never be enough. And so if you have Potomac Fever, you may want to get that treated before you take on this role. You have to do this almost because you can’t do anything else. In some ways, that’s how I think about this job. I do this because this is how I will achieve my mission and I can’t do anything else but this. And I love it. I love the job. I love it on the hard days. Today is a particularly great day. I love it on the great days. But it is not easy work. There are easier ways to make more money.

Jay Lemons:

Hear, hear. I want to move us into a little bit of a lightning round, just mindful of time. I’d love to hear if there’s a particular book that may have had the most influence on you.

Mary Dana Hinton:

100%. So that book is called Resonant Leadership and Annie McKee is one of the authors of that book. And it’s a book for those of us who lead through relationship and interconnectedness and with our hearts. And it talks about the joys of that and some of the very real pitfalls of that. So I would say Resonant Leadership. And then the other book, and I will confess this second book has a religious and a Christian religious undertone to it, though I think you can mind the lessons without that. It’s called Tempered Resilience. And Tempered Resilience is about the fact that to be a good leader, you have to have both nerve and heart. And so Tempered Resilience is a second book. I think those two have really, really framed my leadership.

Jay Lemons:

Beautiful. Well, how in the world does the young woman from rural North Carolina find your way to Williamstown Mass, to truly one of the most extraordinary institutions we have in this country. But I’d love to hear if you have a favorite memory of your time among Williams.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Yeah. So I can’t give you a concrete memory, but I can tell you this. Williams College helped me to fall in love with the liberal arts. And Williams College taught me that the most inclusive, the most transformational, and for me, the most meaningful education one can receive or one can offer is an education wherein you are taught how to think. And that’s what I learned at Williams College.

I love the liberal arts. I love the fact that we believe that if you free mind, you can change the world. And I learned that. I learned it through happy moments at Williams. Those moments with Laurie Heatherington. I learned it in unhappy moments. And my family was like, “You are not majoring in art history because there’s no job for that,” which isn’t true. But I did not major in art history. I tell people I chose the lucrative psychology major because I knew psychologist was a job. So interestingly not a job for a 21-year-old coming out of college. And so I fell in love with the liberal arts at Williams and I’ll be forever grateful for that.

Jay Lemons:

Fabulous. How about a favorite of your around campus traditions? Either a place that you attended or have served? Is there a favorite that rises up for you?

Mary Dana Hinton:

100%. Since 1895, Hollins University students have been climbing Tinker Mountain.

Jay Lemons:

Love it.

Mary Dana Hinton:

It is a day no one knows. I announce it at 7:00 AM on the day. Now, I know a lot of schools climb mountains, but very few schools climb mountains where we are all in costumes when we climb. We spend a lot of time working on our Tinker Day costumes. We have the biggest, probably least healthy meal you can imagine at the top of Tinker Mountain. And then we roll that down.

What I love about Tinker Day is one, it’s a thread that crosses all the different generations of Hollins. Two, I love the fact that we get excited for it. So in October, students will start to ask, “Is it Tinker Day? Is it Tinker Day?” Students will try to find out. They’ll try to call. We have Krispy Kreme donuts before we climb the mountain, so they’ll call the local Krispy Kreme and try to see if there’s a Hollins offer. It’s just a day that brings us together in community as community. And I love it. And I’ve started making these outrageous Tinker Day videos that go along with it, and it’s great fun. We just have a wonderful time as a community. And you can see, as you know, better than any one, Jay, from the top of a mountain in this part of the world, you can almost see forever. And I love that.

Jay Lemons:

From the top of a mountain top, you are filled with the awesomeness of what is and with the hope of what can be. And that really speaks to all of us. There’s a love language wrapped up in that, and always good to have a good hard client. Mary, one of our traditions here on Leaders on Leadership is we close by asking our guests to share with listeners the distinctive qualities or the organizational DNA that really make their places special. And so that call to serve Hollins, tell us about the special qualities that drew you there to answer that call.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Hollins University has served women at the undergraduate level for 181 years, and I am deeply committed to women’s education. And Hollins does that through the liberal arts, which I’ve already mentioned is a calling. But Hollands is located in the rural south and continues to work on reconciling its history with its present, with its future. And I love that work. I love that work. I love asking hard questions of our past, making ambitious plans for our future. I love the students who choose Hollins. I love the students who are fourth and fifth generation legacies. I love the students who like me, have parents who didn’t even make it to high school. I love the way we think about the liberal arts here, whether it’s a wonderful creative writing major or a theater major or a children’s illustration graduate student. At Hollins we look at the world and then we deploy a sense of creativity to help the world become more and better and stronger, and in some ways a more loving and caring place. I love Hollins.

So I’ll leave you with this. Every morning, I walk up to my office building and my office building faces the front quad. And I look out there and I think about the founding mission of this institution, as fraught as it was, but it was to educate women. And I think about the enslaved who built many of these buildings. And my most fervent hope is that I am worthy of the mission and worthy of the dreams of those who built this place. And that’s what I try to do every day because it’s not about me. It’s about this institution and its mission.

Jay Lemons:

Well, Mary, I know this brings us to a wrap. I want to just say thank you. What a beautiful and exquisite way to bring us to a close. Hollins is blessed to have you, and you are blessed to be serving Hollins and thank you.

Mary Dana Hinton:

100%.

Jay Lemons:

Thank you for being with us.

Mary Dana Hinton:

Thank you, Jay. I appreciate you. Thank you for supporting me when I was just a brand new person who may have been following you around a New Presidents event. Thank you for making me a better leader. I really appreciate that.

Jay Lemons:

You’re very kind. Thank you again, Mary, for joining us on Leaders On Leadership. We are really grateful to have had the opportunity to have you with us this afternoon and to learn from your insights and wisdom. Listeners, we welcome your suggestions and thoughts for leaders we should feature in upcoming segments. You can send those suggestions to leadershippodcast@academicsearch.org. You can find our podcast on the Academic Search website or wherever you find your podcasts.

Leaders on Leadership is brought to you by Academic Search and the American Academic Leadership Institute. Together, our mission is to support colleges and universities during times of transition and through leadership development activities that serve current and future generations of leaders in the academy. Again, what a special joy it was to host Dr. Mary Dana Hinton, the President of Hollins University, on our show today. Thank you again for joining us.