In 1997, Garry Kasparov lost a chess match to IBM’s Deep Blue. The easy story was that the machine had won and the human had lost. The age of human superiority in chess was over.

Kasparov saw something different and asked a more useful question: What if the future of chess was not human versus machine, but human plus machine?

He called it advanced chess, or centaur chess. And when skilled amateurs using ordinary computers began outperforming both grandmasters alone and machines alone, a new possibility appeared. The strongest player was not the human. It was not the computer. It was the quality of the partnership between them.

That is the question now facing higher education.

AI is no longer a distant technology conversation. It is entering the daily work of institutions — finance, enrollment, advising, research, communications, planning, operations, and student support. The question is not whether AI will matter. It already does.

The leadership question is different:

• How do we use these tools without surrendering judgment?
• How do we increase capacity without weakening trust?
• How do we move faster without losing the human connection?

This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel sits down with James Taylor — global keynote speaker, former music industry executive, and one of the leading voices on creativity and artificial intelligence — at the WACUBO Annual Meeting in Las Vegas.

James works with leaders around the world on what AI means for creativity, work, and organizational life. In our conversation, he offers a useful reframing for higher education business officers and institutional leaders: the future of leadership is not simply management. It is orchestration, openness, and curiosity.

At a time when institutions are under pressure to do more with less, James reminds us that technology alone will not create the future. Leaders will.

But only if they learn how to create stronger partnerships between people, tools, judgment, and purpose.

Links and Resources

• James Taylor's official site
• WACUBO (Western Association of College and University Business Officers)
• Teibel Education Programs

In a moment when higher education finds itself pressed on all sides—demographics, policy shifts, the financial realities of running institutions—this live conversation from the EACUBO Annual Meeting offers something increasingly rare: clarity grounded in humanity. Howard Teibel invites Bill Guerrero and Nico Washington to reflect not on strategy alone, but on the personal philosophies that have shaped their careers and their impact.

Bill shares how his journey from first-gen student athlete to seasoned financial leader has always been driven by a single metric: student impact. His willingness to “follow the puck” toward the real challenges facing institutions reveals a mindset that embraces change rather than fears it. Nico brings a complementary perspective—rooted in her early years balancing work, education, and parenthood—that centers empathy, intuition, and authentic connection as core leadership tools. Together, they illuminate the often-unseen emotional and relational dimensions of the CBO role.

Across discussions of Ikigai, institutional partnerships, and the myth of certainty, the conversation becomes a guide for leaders seeking purpose in the midst of volatility. What emerges is a portrait of leadership defined not by hierarchy or job titles, but by curiosity, confidence, and a profound commitment to the people and communities higher education serves.

This episode challenges listeners to rethink how they approach professional change—and to consider what it means to lead as a whole human being.

At first glance, the idea seems almost too ordinary to merit investigation: every workplace has a layer of tasks no one celebrates. Coordinating committees. Taking notes. Ordering refreshments. Keeping the machine running. These responsibilities rarely lead to promotions, and yet they quietly shape careers. Laurie Weingart, Carnegie Mellon professor and co-author of The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work, has spent years tracing how this hidden layer of work forms—and who ends up carrying more of it.

Laurie sat down with Howard Teibel at the EACUBO Annual Meeting 2025. She takes us through the simple dinner between colleagues that turned into a research project that exposed a predictable pattern: non-promotable tasks tend to cluster around women, not because women are less assertive, but because norms inside organizations subtly nudge these tasks in their direction. Once you see the mechanism, it’s hard to unsee it. The distribution isn’t random. It’s structural.

Howard and Laurie explore what happens when you give language to something everyone feels but few people label. Suddenly, decisions that were automatic become deliberate. Employees can negotiate what they take on. Leaders can notice who they’re asking. And men—who often don’t realize the imbalance—can take part in recalibrating the system rather than watching it operate in the background.

The conversation lands in a place that feels like an invitation: when organizations make this work visible, people gain the freedom to direct their energy toward tasks that develop them, not deplete them. The result? A clearer sense of how talent is used, grown, and valued.

There are moments in a career when a small interaction—almost forgettable at the time—reshapes how a person thinks about leadership. For Mitch Wein, one of those key moments came during a meeting about selecting an architect, where a simple vote turned into a lesson about transparency and the value of explaining the reasoning behind our choices. That experience became the backbone of how he approaches strategy today, whether inside a college cabinet room or at the senior table of the Brookings Institution.

In this conversation with Howard Teibel recorded live at the EACUBO Annual Meeting, Mitch talks about his transition from higher education to his role as Senior Vice President for Finance and COO of a national think tank and how the two worlds mirror each other more than most people realize. Both require long-term thinking, both rely on evidence and principled debate, and both demand leaders who can see beyond the immediate decision to the ripple effects it creates. Mitch describes the way Brookings brings data and rigorous analysis to the public policy sphere to help people understand the trade-offs that sit beneath every major issue.

Howard and Mitch explore the pressures facing higher education—from public perception to financial resilience—and the importance of sharpening institutional focus rather than trying to be all things to all people. Through it all, Mitch returns to a theme that threads his entire career: leadership is less about asserting a direction and more about cultivating the conversations that help people understand why a direction makes sense. When leaders invite that kind of participation, decisions become clearer, strategy becomes more coherent, and the work feels connected to a larger purpose.

Leadership inside a professional community rarely looks like leadership on an organizational chart. It’s quieter, more relational, shaped by volunteers who balance full workloads with the desire to support their peers. In this episode, recorded live at EACUBO 2025, Howard Teibel talks with Romayne Botti and Sara Thorndike about the transition from one chair to the next and what it reveals about how the association continues to adapt.

Romayne describes a period marked by post-pandemic uncertainty: members juggling expanded responsibilities, vacancies that never got refilled, and a growing appetite for learning that happens in shorter bursts rather than at multi-day workshops. Sara reflects on the importance of saying yes—and the equally important discipline of saying no—while recognizing how opportunities inside the association helped her find her footing as a leader. Both speak candidly about the connections they’ve built through EACUBO, the decisions that have reshaped how professional development is delivered, and the need for flexibility as the industry recalibrates.

Howard guides the conversation toward the deeper value of this work: the ability to learn from peers, to test leadership instincts in a supportive environment, and to experience the kind of candor that is often hard to find inside one’s own institution. The result is a conversation about continuity and change, and about the sustained effort required to steward a community through evolving expectations while staying rooted in its purpose.

In 1877, the first college "major" was coined at Johns Hopkins. The catalog for that year is a dense read, though short; courses toward the baccalaureate only required two years of study and then—presumably—a job. That catalog has hardened into something else today: a system that prizes credentials over curiosity, standardization over discovery, and completion over connection.

In this episode, we sit down with Ned Laff and Scott Carlson, co-authors of Hacking College, and our own higher education strategist Howard Teibel, to ask a simple but urgent question: what are we really preparing students for? Drawing on decades of experience in academic affairs, journalism, and institutional change, our guests lay out an alternative framework—the “Field of Study”—that puts students back at the center of their education.

We talk about advising as design instead of compliance, about pilot programs that quietly rewire entire universities, and about the faculty and leadership required to shift the system without burning it down. And we hear stories—personal, institutional, and philosophical—of what happens when students reclaim the blank spaces of their education and begin to connect the dots on their own terms.

This is a conversation about possibility. And about how, even in the face of inertia, the path forward is already being built—one desire path at a time.

We explore... 

• Why the traditional college major no longer matches real-world work
• The Field of Study framework: structure, stories, and student agency
• How advising can shift from checklist to compass
• Institutional inertia and the myth of undecided students
• Why reform doesn’t have to mean top-down revolution
• The hidden job market and student-designed experiences
• What happens when we reintroduce joy, risk, and meaning into higher ed

Links & Resources

• Hacking College by Ned Laff & Scott Carlson
• Scott Carlson at The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Ned Laff at The Chronicle of Higher Education

For years, finance in higher education has worked quietly behind the scenes—essential, but rarely seen as a force for change. Budgets got balanced, reports got filed, and institutions moved forward... slowly. But what happens when that model starts to crack? When rising costs outpace tuition revenue, and the math that once worked no longer adds up?

It’s a moment of reckoning—and an opportunity.

In this episode of Navigating Change, Pete Wright is joined by Michael Gower, Andrew Simpson, and Howard Teibel—three leaders who are reimagining what’s possible when finance steps out of the back office and into the strategy room. They’re not just managing numbers; they’re reshaping mindsets.

Together, they explore a bold idea: that financial health isn't just about closing budget gaps—it’s about leadership, influence, and building a future-ready institution. Through the lens of the Rutgers University case study, they reveal how finance can become a catalyst for innovation rather than a barrier to it. They talk about navigating resistance, sparking breakthroughs, and embedding financial thinking into the DNA of decision-making.

So what does it really take to shift from financial survival to sustainability? Can higher ed let go of outdated models before it’s too late?

This isn’t just a conversation about money. It’s about power, persuasion, and the future of higher education. Because the real question isn’t whether universities can afford to change—it’s whether they can afford not to.

Links & Notes

• Adopting a Financial Strategy
• Financial Strategy Policy

The opening speaker at the 2025 NBOA Annual Meeting will be Kyle Scheele, who is known for cooking up wild ideas that many people back for laughs and for learning. NBOA President and CEO Jeff Shields discusses with Scheele the process behind some of his outlandish projects and about being creative in the workplace. “I don’t want people to be like me,” said Scheele. “I want them to tap into their own creativity, wherever they may be working.” That might be anything from devising a financial plan to reconsidering the organizational chart. In addition to being a celebrated speaker, Scheele has published four books, one for adults: How To Host a Viking Funeral: The Case for Burning Your Regrets, Chasing Your Crazy Ideas, and Becoming the Person You're Meant to Be, one for teens: We Put A Man On The Moon: Thoughts on Living a Better Story, and two children’s books.

The Net Assets podcast is a partnership between NBOA and Teibel Education Consulting, with hosts NBOA President and CEO Jeff Shields and Teibel Education President Howard Teibel. This show is made possible thanks to the generous support of Community Brands.

You can also read a web article based on an excerpt of this podast episode, published in November 2024.

This week, Pete Wright and Howard Teibel dive deep into the topic of weak communication practices and their consequences in organizations. Howard, drawing from his extensive experience working with teams and leaders, shares insights on how miscommunication often stems from focusing on passing information rather than producing action and exploring assessments.

The duo discusses five key consequences of weak communication: mistrust and lack of listening, working in isolation, blame-shifting, people not making offers, and building consensus over-commitment. Howard emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between assessments and assertions, encouraging individuals to back up their assessments with evidence. He also highlights the transformative power of making offers, which enables innovation and engagement at all levels of an organization.

Throughout the conversation, Pete and Howard stress that merely knowing these concepts is not enough; embedding these skills into an organization's culture requires practice, repetition, and a willingness to embrace discomfort. They invite listeners to reflect on their own communication practices and consider how adopting these principles could lead to more effective collaboration and accelerated change within their teams.

Being of service. This is at the heart of the roles we play in higher education.

At the 2024 WACUBO Annual Conference at Disneyland in California, leaders and practitioners in administration came together to explore how they can Dream, Lead, and Inspire others to serve the mission of our industry. Lupe Valencia, Deputy Chief Financial Officer and Chief Facilities Officer at the University of Texas at El Paso, recently served as President of WACUBO and just turned the reins over to Michael Clune, who serves as Senior Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer at the University of California San Francisco.

Howard sat down with the two of them at the annual conference to talk about service and what inspires them about being part of this extraordinary association committed to providing professional development and networking opportunities for business officers serving higher education in the West. 

Don't miss the opportunity to consider participating in next year’s Annual Conference, taking place on the Big Island of Hawaii! You won't want to miss this experience!

Learn more and start planning your trip right here!