Whatever I know about higher ed enrollment management, I learned from Nanci Tessier. She’s one of those people who should have her own podcast with topics like “How to Talk About Predictive Analytics as If You Love It” or maybe “Tuition Discounting Basics for New Development Officers Trying to Raise Scholarship Money.”

Nanci stopped by recently and we did a quick photo shoot for an announcement her company made this week.

Several years ago, in one of those regular reorgs that happen on college campuses, she found herself in charge of communications and marketing. Not long after, I found her at my office door when I was leading the college’s Institute of Politics. She wanted me to return for a second tour of duty in the department I’d left. Messaging 101. Know your audience. She came to me. She didn’t send me an e-mail. She didn’t have her admin call me. She arrived in person. It worked.

Yesterday, Nanci was named a principal in the Art & Science Group, a firm that does deep dive research to assist colleges, universities, and independent schools trying to make the best possible decisions on complex issues. They figure things out like whether a major investment in X will impact strategic priority Y. It’s that reliable, quantitative, actionable data that presidents and boards like to have before authorizing a significant spend or policy change. And, if I’m being honest, it’s the hard data that makes we creative types a little nutty when we just want to get moving on an idea for something and someone suddenly says –

Excuse me, do you have the data to support that concept?

You know the one, the quantum physics professor who is now on the Integrated Marketing Committee, the committee I’d just been lobbying to have disbanded.

Nanci taught me many things, and diplomacy under pressure was one of them.

Pass the donuts please.

She also explained to me, better than anyone had previously, how U.S. News & World Report tweaks its formulas so it can keep selling magazines, how those algorithm tweaks move the goalposts just enough to shake up the results, sending presidents and deans into tailspins faster than I can consume a row of Chips Ahoy! during a Downton Abbey binge. And, of course, several in that tailspin head straight for Communications and Marketing, requesting their own magazine or trifold brochure to dispute the findings.

But, of the many professional things I learned from Nanci, one stands out and that is what I call the Aretha approach to management. Respect the expertise of the people you hire. Nanci respected mine. She never called me into a meeting and said –

Here’s what I need you to do and I want it to be this size or this format.

Instead, she said -

Here’s what we’re up against and here’s what the data is telling us about the target audience. Here’s what we need to accomplish. Can you give me two or three of your best ideas, timelines to complete them, key messages, and cost?

I knew I had her confidence before I even left the office. And she always made sure to ask how it would impact other work in the pipeline, including that of her fellow vice presidents. Respect.

When she asked me to come back and lead the office, she said –

I really need your expertise. I just don’t think the way you do, but I do think we’d be great together.

We were.

Nanci, Aretha, and Me