Robert Keasler serves as Vice President for Administration and Finance Shenandoah University in Winchester Virginia, but he started about as far from higher education as he could manage. “I started in a textile mill… I ended up in textiles for five years or more,” says Keasler. “I ended up in higher education by happenstance as well.”

He says it’s not his job to protect the assets of the university, rather to use those assets efficiently and effectively in service of the mission. That perspective has served him well in his higher education career.

“We’re entering such an exciting period in our industry,” says Keasler. “It will be stressful. It will be difficult. But I don’t know that there’s been as much opportunity for all sorts of institutions as there used to be.”