Dr. Alex Johnson is a Speech Language Pathologist and the Provost at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions. MGHIHP is an independent, but affiliated, higher education institution that offers degrees in nursing, speech pathology, Physical Therapy, and many more health professions. As such it has long embraced the blend of classroom-based teaching and experiential learning that characterizes most of medical field training. This conversation reviews that effort at integration for broad lessons learned for all of higher education. It begins with a discussion of Dr. Johnson’s own history as a student and early administration positions. It continues with a focus on experiences with simulations that work in the current virtual educational environment, resulting from the pandemic but that likely will continue as part of a growing trend. We note that Dr. Johnson was President of the large American Speech-Language Association and that he received its highest honors in 2013 for contribution to the field. His current research interests and publications range from medical speech-pathology to higher education itself and they include two co-edited textbooks.