Your Strategist Is In with Dr. Loren M. Hill

What kind of leader are you trying to be? And perhaps more importantly, are the people around you actually choosing to follow your leadership—or are they simply complying with it?

In this episode of Your Strategist Is In, Dr. Loren M. Hill sits down with Dr. Gregory Pennington for a thoughtful conversation about leadership, buy-in, opt-in, and the power of meaningful dialogue. Together, they explore what happens when leaders move beyond simply getting people to agree and instead create the conditions for people to genuinely engage, participate, and take ownership. They discuss the importance of conversation, trust, relationships, and intentional leadership—and why effective leadership is not simply about having the right answers or holding the right position.

This conversation invites you to look beyond traditional ideas of leadership and consider the kind of leader you are becoming. Are you creating buy-in, or are you creating genuine opt-in? Are you leading through authority, or through connection and conversation? Whether you are leading in higher education, an organization, or your own professional life, this episode offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on how you lead, how others experience your leadership, and what it takes to create meaningful movement together.

Dr. Loren M. Hill is the founder of Acclivity™️ and a Senior Executive Consultant for Transformational Leadership in Higher Ed helping Higher Ed leaders lead with clarity, courage and purpose. 

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, an APA Feminist Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, RAND Faculty Workshop Fellow, and member of Psi Chi, she also serves as Resident Psychologist for KBLA Talk 1580’s Urban Family Focus talk radio. 

Dr. Hill specializes in helping women, BIPOC, and first-generation professionals gain clarity, confidence, and leadership impact. She helps you survive and strategically navigate higher ed leadership without losing your career, credibility, or sanity.

If this resonates, you can schedule a Higher Ed Leadership Strategy Call to think strategically about your next steps - click here to book a free no obligation call 

************************
→ Subscribe to YouTube
→ Subscribe to the Newsletter
→ Subscribe to Substack
→ Connect on LinkedIn
→ Conne...

In this special sixth-season conversation, Dr. Loren M. Hill welcomes back Dr. Patricia Arredondo—the first guest on Your Strategist Is In. Together, they reflect on the relationships that shape us and the power of being seen, affirmed, and supported.

Dr. Arredondo shares how her work with women creates space for connection, collective mentorship, and reflection on the legacies of women ancestors and changemakers. Their conversation explores what it means to feel a sense of belonging, especially when navigating leadership in institutions that were not designed with women in mind.

Loren and Patricia also discuss the pressures women face to work harder and take on more, the importance of setting boundaries, and how women can honor their responsibilities without losing sight of themselves. Through reflections on culture, community, and the women who came before us, they consider how meaningful relationships can strengthen our leadership and help us move forward with greater clarity and self-trust.

This episode is a reminder that being seen is more than being noticed. It means having spaces where our experiences are recognized, our voices matter, and we can draw strength from one another.

To learn more about Dr. Arredondo visit: Patricia Arredondo, EdD | Arredondo Advisory Group
https://www.arredondoadvisorygroup.com/patricia-arredondo-2

Dr. Loren M. Hill is the founder of Acclivity™️ and a Senior Executive Consultant for Transformational Leadership in Higher Ed helping Higher Ed leaders lead with clarity, courage and purpose. 

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, an APA Feminist Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, RAND Faculty Workshop Fellow, and member of Psi Chi, she also serves as Resident Psychologist for KBLA Talk 1580’s Urban Family Focus talk radio. 

Dr. Hill specializes in helping women, BIPOC, and first-generation professionals gain clarity, confidence, and leadership impact. She helps you survive and strategically navigate higher ed leadership without losing your career, credibility, or sanity.

If this resonates, you can schedule a Higher Ed Leadership Strategy Call to think strategically about your next steps - click here to book a free no obligation call 

************************
→ Subscribe to YouTube
→ Subscribe to the Newsletter
→ Subscribe to Substack
→ Connect on LinkedIn
→ Conne...

Leadership growth rarely happens in isolation. In this episode of Your Strategist Is In, Dr. Loren M. Hill sits down with Dr. Cedric Williams for a thoughtful conversation about what it really takes to grow as a leader while staying grounded in who you are. Together, they explore the role of community, strategic thinking, self-awareness, and meaningful relationships in navigating leadership and professional growth. The conversation highlights why having the right people around you matters—and how community can provide perspective, accountability, encouragement, and opportunities for growth.

Dr. Loren and Dr. Williams also unpack the importance of knowing yourself as you navigate leadership: understanding your strengths, recognizing where you need to grow, and being intentional about the decisions you make along the way. This episode is an invitation to think beyond achievement and consider what it means to build a leadership journey that is both strategic and sustainable. Whether you're leading in higher education, stepping into a new role, or simply thinking about your next chapter, this conversation offers practical insight into growing with greater clarity, self-awareness, and purpose.

Connect with Dr. Cedric Williams: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cedric-williams-phd-a5a335100/

Dr. Loren M. Hill is the founder of Acclivity™️ and a Senior Executive Consultant for Transformational Leadership in Higher Ed helping Higher Ed leaders lead with clarity, courage and purpose. 

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, an APA Feminist Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, RAND Faculty Workshop Fellow, and member of Psi Chi, she also serves as Resident Psychologist for KBLA Talk 1580’s Urban Family Focus talk radio. 

Dr. Hill specializes in helping women, BIPOC, and first-generation professionals gain clarity, confidence, and leadership impact. She helps you survive and strategically navigate higher ed leadership without losing your career, credibility, or sanity.

If this resonates, you can schedule a Higher Ed Leadership Strategy Call to think strategically about your next steps - click here to book a free no obligation call 

************************
→ Subscribe to YouTube
→ Subscribe to the Newsletter
→ Subscribe to Substack
→ Connect on LinkedIn
→ Conne...

Are you measuring your year by everything you haven't accomplished?

By the middle of the year, it's easy to believe you're behind. The excitement of January has faded, your goals feel unfinished, and comparison quietly begins creeping in.

In this special annual Summer Yay episode, Dr. Loren M. Hill invites you to stop measuring your worth by your productivity and instead celebrate the progress that often goes unnoticed.

Through personal reflections, leadership insights, coaching stories, and a few unexpected lessons from watching the wildlife outside her office window, she explores why some of our greatest victories are the ones no one else ever sees.

Whether you're leading a team, navigating career transitions, or simply feeling overwhelmed, this episode offers a refreshing reminder that leadership isn't only about achieving more—it's about protecting what matters most.

Listen in as Dr. Hill shares three powerful reflection questions that can help you finish the year with greater clarity, purpose, and intention.

▸ Download the companion reflection guide:

https://theacclivity.com/ReflectionGuideE67 

Dr. Loren M. Hill is the founder of Acclivity™️ and a Senior Executive Consultant for Transformational Leadership in Higher Ed helping Higher Ed leaders lead with clarity, courage and purpose. 

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, an APA Feminist Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, RAND Faculty Workshop Fellow, and member of Psi Chi, she also serves as Resident Psychologist for KBLA Talk 1580’s Urban Family Focus talk radio. 

Dr. Hill specializes in helping women, BIPOC, and first-generation professionals gain clarity, confidence, and leadership impact. She helps you survive and strategically navigate higher ed leadership without losing your career, credibility, or sanity.

If this resonates, you can schedule a Higher Ed Leadership Strategy Call to think strategically about your next steps - click here to book a free no obligation call 

************************
→ Subscribe to YouTube
→ Subscribe to the Newsletter
→ Subscribe to Substack
→ Connect on LinkedIn
→ Conne...

The people who always step up aren’t lazy and they aren’t confused. They see the cost — and they keep carrying it anyway. Why?

Because over-functioning is paying them something. In this episode, Dr. Loren M. Hill walks through the four hidden payoffs — relevance, control, certainty, and protection — and the quiet trade that turns your greatest strength into the thing that keeps you stuck. You’ll sit with one honest question: if you stopped carrying all of it tomorrow, what are you afraid would happen?

This is not a conversation about doing less or caring less. It’s about the difference between responsibility and over-responsibility, contribution and compensation, leadership and rescue — and learning that being needed is not the same thing as being valued.

▸ Grab the free companion reflection guide in the show notes.

https://theacclivity.com/ReflectionGuideE66

Build well.

Dr. Loren M. Hill is the founder of Acclivity™️ and a Senior Executive Consultant for Transformational Leadership in Higher Ed helping Higher Ed leaders lead with clarity, courage and purpose. 

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, an APA Feminist Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, RAND Faculty Workshop Fellow, and member of Psi Chi, she also serves as Resident Psychologist for KBLA Talk 1580’s Urban Family Focus talk radio. 

Dr. Hill specializes in helping women, BIPOC, and first-generation professionals gain clarity, confidence, and leadership impact. She helps you survive and strategically navigate higher ed leadership without losing your career, credibility, or sanity.

If this resonates, you can schedule a Higher Ed Leadership Strategy Call to think strategically about your next steps - click here to book a free no obligation call 

************************
→ Subscribe to YouTube
→ Subscribe to the Newsletter
→ Subscribe to Substack
→ Connect on LinkedIn
→ Conne...

In this episode of The Strategist Is In, Dr. Loren M. Hill explores a quieter form of workplace adaptation—how environments slowly shape who we become in order to survive inside them.

Not every change is growth.

Some changes are adaptation that became so familiar, we stopped questioning it.

This episode examines:

• The difference between strategic adaptation and self-contraction
• How workplace environments train behavior over time
• Why some ideas, voices, and forms of visibility feel “safer” than others
• What happens when survival strategies become identity
• The emotional cost of constantly editing yourself to stay absorbable

This is a nuanced conversation about professionalism, political awareness, visibility, and the subtle ways institutions shape identity.

If something in this episode feels familiar—not dramatic, just familiar—that may be worth paying closer attention to.

Download the companion reflection worksheet in the show notes.

https://theacclivity.com/ReflectionGuideE65

Dr. Loren M. Hill is the founder of Acclivity™️ and a Senior Executive Consultant for Transformational Leadership in Higher Ed helping Higher Ed leaders lead with clarity, courage and purpose. 

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, an APA Feminist Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, RAND Faculty Workshop Fellow, and member of Psi Chi, she also serves as Resident Psychologist for KBLA Talk 1580’s Urban Family Focus talk radio. 

Dr. Hill specializes in helping women, BIPOC, and first-generation professionals gain clarity, confidence, and leadership impact. She helps you survive and strategically navigate higher ed leadership without losing your career, credibility, or sanity.

If this resonates, you can schedule a Higher Ed Leadership Strategy Call to think strategically about your next steps - click here to book a free no obligation call 

************************
→ Subscribe to YouTube
→ Subscribe to the Newsletter
→ Subscribe to Substack
→ Connect on LinkedIn
→ Conne...

In this episode of The Strategist Is In, Dr. Loren M. Hill explains why many highly qualified directors and department chairs are not being selected for dean roles—even when they are already doing work at that level.

The issue is not capability.
It’s positioning.

Most leaders focus on credibility inside their current scope. But hiring decisions for senior roles are shaped by how you are perceived across the institution long before a job is posted.

You are not evaluated on your potential.
You are evaluated on how you are already seen.

This episode breaks down:

•  The difference between credibility and visibility 
•  Why great performance at your current level can keep you there 
•  How positioning happens months before interviews begin 
•  What higher ed leaders must do differently to be seen at the next level 

If you’ve ever thought, “I’m qualified, so why am I not being selected?” — this episode answers that directly.

Dr. Loren M. Hill is the founder of Acclivity™️ and a Senior Executive Consultant for Transformational Leadership in Higher Ed helping Higher Ed leaders lead with clarity, courage and purpose. 

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, an APA Feminist Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, RAND Faculty Workshop Fellow, and member of Psi Chi, she also serves as Resident Psychologist for KBLA Talk 1580’s Urban Family Focus talk radio. 

Dr. Hill specializes in helping women, BIPOC, and first-generation professionals gain clarity, confidence, and leadership impact. She helps you survive and strategically navigate higher ed leadership without losing your career, credibility, or sanity.

If this resonates, you can schedule a Higher Ed Leadership Strategy Call to think strategically about your next steps - click here to book a free no obligation call 

************************
→ Subscribe to YouTube
→ Subscribe to the Newsletter
→ Subscribe to Substack
→ Connect on LinkedIn
→ Conne...

You can be crystal clear about what matters and still find yourself struggling to execute it well.

In this episode of The Strategist Is In, Dr. Loren M. Hill shares a powerful observation from a recent strategic planning session: a room full of thoughtful, capable, aligned leaders came to one honest conclusion—they were severely under-resourced.

And that insight doesn’t just apply to organizations.

It applies to how many high-performing professionals are operating right now.

This conversation explores:

• Why clarity alone doesn’t solve the problem
• How over-functioning becomes a compensation strategy
• The difference between effort and structural support
• What it means to rethink how your work is designed

This episode is not about doing more.

It’s about understanding what you’re operating inside.

Download the companion reflection guide to identify where you may be clear… but not supported—and what that means for how you move forward.

𝗚𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱):
https://theacclivity.com/YouCanBeClearGuide

Dr. Loren M. Hill is the founder of Acclivity™️ and a Senior Executive Consultant for Transformational Leadership in Higher Ed helping Higher Ed leaders lead with clarity, courage and purpose. 

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, an APA Feminist Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, RAND Faculty Workshop Fellow, and member of Psi Chi, she also serves as Resident Psychologist for KBLA Talk 1580’s Urban Family Focus talk radio. 

Dr. Hill specializes in helping women, BIPOC, and first-generation professionals gain clarity, confidence, and leadership impact. She helps you survive and strategically navigate higher ed leadership without losing your career, credibility, or sanity.

If this resonates, you can schedule a Higher Ed Leadership Strategy Call to think strategically about your next steps - click here to book a free no obligation call 

************************
→ Subscribe to YouTube
→ Subscribe to the Newsletter
→ Subscribe to Substack
→ Connect on LinkedIn
→ Conne...

In this episode of The Strategist Is In, Dr. Loren M. Hill explores what it means to be highly visible without always having power.

Drawing from a recent experience presenting at an international conference in Argentina, she reflects on how leadership often shows up in moments of confusion, tension, and structural gaps — especially for those who are expected to hold rooms together that they did not design.

This conversation examines hypervisibility: being seen before being supported, being included without being resourced, and being read as a symbol or representation rather than as an individual. Dr. Hill also unpacks the tension between institutional credibility and community impact, and how leaders are often required to navigate both while under watchful scrutiny.

If you have ever felt the weight of expectation in rooms where you had limited leverage, this episode offers a framework for understanding where visibility translates into influence — and where it does not.

A companion workbook is available in the show notes to help you map where you are visible, where you have influence, and where there may be gaps between the two.

𝗚𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱):
https://theacclivity.com/VisibilityInfluenceAudit

Dr. Loren M. Hill is the founder of Acclivity™️ and a Senior Executive Consultant for Transformational Leadership in Higher Ed helping Higher Ed leaders lead with clarity, courage and purpose. 

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, an APA Feminist Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, RAND Faculty Workshop Fellow, and member of Psi Chi, she also serves as Resident Psychologist for KBLA Talk 1580’s Urban Family Focus talk radio. 

Dr. Hill specializes in helping women, BIPOC, and first-generation professionals gain clarity, confidence, and leadership impact. She helps you survive and strategically navigate higher ed leadership without losing your career, credibility, or sanity.

If this resonates, you can schedule a Higher Ed Leadership Strategy Call to think strategically about your next steps - click here to book a free no obligation call 

************************
→ Subscribe to YouTube
→ Subscribe to the Newsletter
→ Subscribe to Substack
→ Connect on LinkedIn
→ Conne...

We often assume that achievement brings relief.

A higher title. Greater influence. More authority.

Surely, at some point, the pressure eases.

But what if that assumption is wrong?

In this episode of The Strategist Is In, Dr. Loren M. Hill explores what she calls “the boulder at the top” the quiet emotional weight experienced by leaders, executives, and high-achievers whose influence continues to expand.

Drawing from a candid moment in a high-level leadership gathering, Loren unpacks:

• Why the higher the influence, the heavier the expectation
• The myth of “arrival” in leadership
• The difference between meaningful challenge and structural friction
• How competence becomes baseline and often invisible
• Why excellence can feel cumulative in some spaces and endlessly resetting in others
• The structural roots of exhaustion at the top

This episode continues Season 5’s exploration of The Emotional Cost of Excellence, reframing leadership strain as a design issue rather than a resilience failure.

 Plus: Download the free companion reflection workbook to map where your effort accumulates and where it resets.

Dr. Loren M. Hill is the founder of Acclivity™️ and a Senior Executive Consultant for Transformational Leadership in Higher Ed helping Higher Ed leaders lead with clarity, courage and purpose. 

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, an APA Feminist Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, RAND Faculty Workshop Fellow, and member of Psi Chi, she also serves as Resident Psychologist for KBLA Talk 1580’s Urban Family Focus talk radio. 

Dr. Hill specializes in helping women, BIPOC, and first-generation professionals gain clarity, confidence, and leadership impact. She helps you survive and strategically navigate higher ed leadership without losing your career, credibility, or sanity.

If this resonates, you can schedule a Higher Ed Leadership Strategy Call to think strategically about your next steps - click here to book a free no obligation call 

************************
→ Subscribe to YouTube
→ Subscribe to the Newsletter
→ Subscribe to Substack
→ Connect on LinkedIn
→ Conne...