Navigating Higher Education Leadership: Systems, People, and Intentionality

Written by Esen Gokpinar-Shelton

Program: RCD Emerging Leaders Program | Guest Speaker Session

Facilitator: Dr. Maureen Biggers

Guest Speakers: Kristy Long (Associate CIO & Chief of Staff, Univ. of Oregon) & Von Welch (Former Associate VP & Center Director, Indiana Univ.)

In Research Computing and Data (RCD), technical expertise is usually where everyone starts. We build our reputations on mastering infrastructure, winning cyberinfrastructure grants, and keeping complex systems running smoothly. But as technical professionals step into management and executive roles, the core challenge shifts completely: the most intricate systems in higher education aren’t technological; they’re organizational and human.

Our RCD Emerging Leaders cohort recently met for a candid session facilitated by Dr. Maureen Biggers (former Executive Director for the Center of Excellence for Women and Technology at Indiana University). We were joined by two seasoned leaders who shared the real story of how they navigated the move from individual contributor to executive strategist:

• Kristy Long, Associate CIO for Infrastructure & Chief of Staff at the University of Oregon (with prior leadership roles at Penn State and UW Bothell).
• Von Welch, former Associate VP for Information Security and Director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University (with prior leadership roles at NCSA and Globus).

Here are the central insights and direct reflections from their journeys.

The Shift from Competence to Access and Sponsorship

Early in her career at Penn State, Kristy hit a wall that almost every high-performing technical professional encounters: realizing that doing exceptional, flawless work simply isn’t enough to advance. In technical disciplines, we are conditioned to believe in a meritocracy where code quality, uptime metrics, and ticket resolution speak for themselves. Her breakthrough came when she recognized that career trajectory at the executive level is driven less by technical output and far more by strategic positioning, relationship networks, and institutional access.

“I learned that just being competent and doing a good job does not get you ahead. I learned about relationships. I learned about networks, I learned about sponsors. And really, this was the 1st time in my career where I understood how access works and that that wasn’t available to me previously. It helped me understand who got invited into rooms, who got stretch assignments, and who got sponsorship.”

— Kristy Long

What makes her experience so instructive is how deliberate she had to become about building her own space. Guided by her mentor Robin, Kristy learned to analyze institutional power dynamics—including navigating historical “boys’ clubs”—and recognized the sharp distinction between mentorship and true sponsorship. While mentorship provides advice behind closed doors, sponsorship requires an established leader actively spending their own political capital to advocate for you when career-defining stretch assignments are assigned. To position herself for those opportunities, Kristy had to actively audit how she spent her daily working hours, rejecting low-visibility, non-strategic tasks that frequently default to women or quiet contributors.

“She taught me that there is a boys’ club, but as she put it, we also have our own club… I learned not to do office housework, like offering to take notes, and to make sure that notes were spread across the team—little tips and tricks like that in order to make sure that I was seen as a leader.”

— Kristy Long

By stepping back from “office housework,” Kristy freed up critical bandwidth to focus on broad institutional strategies, ensuring her time and visibility aligned directly with senior administrative goals.

Leadership as a Practiced Skill Set for Introverts

If Kristy reframed the mechanics of institutional mobility, Von Welch completely dismantled the persistent myth that effective executive leadership requires an extroverted, charismatic personality. With a 35-year career in cyberinfrastructure that began in the weeds as a network engineer at NCSA, Von originally stepped into management defensively—simply to shield his technical team from poor, disruptive leadership.

“I am a diehard introvert. Anything you see from me… that looks like leadership, I learned. There’s no natural born leadership here… Everything I learned over the course of my career, either formally or informally. And the key point of me telling you that is, you can learn it too.”

— Von Welch

Rather than trying to reshape his core personality, Von approached human management with the exact same analytical rigor he brought to complex technical architecture. He realized early on that team members do not respond to an executive’s internal intentions; they respond strictly to observable behaviors. This realization forced him to evaluate how his default physical expressions and communication rhythms were being interpreted across his department.

“My resting face, I figured out, was often interpreted by my staff as a scowl, even though I just meant it as neutral. So I had to learn to smile more… people perceived me differently than was going on inside of my head. I started learning a lot of these behaviors and realizing that my behaviors meant a lot more to my staff than my thoughts. They couldn’t read my mind.”

— Von Welch

Von systematized his professional development by studying proven management frameworks, including resources like Manager Tools. Through this process, he defined a critical distinction between two forms of institutional authority:

• Role Power: Positional authority derived purely from a title (“Do this because I am the director”). Role power is a finite resource; every time an executive leans on explicit authority to force compliance, they deplete their overall leverage.
• Relationship Power: Earned trust derived from consistent, transparent human engagement. When leaders cultivate relationship power, teams execute complex initiatives not out of obligation, but because they believe in the vision and trust the leader’s integrity.

Thinking in Systems Across the University

As our discussion moved toward executive leadership, both speakers emphasized that moving to the CIO or Vice President level requires applying advanced systems thinking to institutional mechanics. Kristy, who originally trained in medicine, noted that diagnosing university budget models, political incentives, and cultural norms demands the exact same diagnostic mindset used to evaluate complex biological systems. When she stepped into her first CIO role at UW Bothell, her entire operational reality underwent a fundamental shift.

“The interesting and very cool part of having an executive role is no one tells you what to do. And they don’t tell you what to do because they can’t. That’s actually why they hired you. You need to figure out the institutional context… When I look at my time, about 70% was outside of IT, and about 30% was inside IT.”

— Kristy Long

This highlights the primary trap that traps technical managers: assuming an executive role is simply managing technical operations on a larger scale. In reality, senior leadership is an external-facing role. Success at this level requires learning the operational languages of Provosts, Deans, and CFOs, mastering complex higher-ed financial frameworks like Responsibility Center Management (RCM), and mapping how technological changes impact different academic units across campus.

“As part of thinking about inclusive leadership, it means recognizing that different parts of the institution experience decisions and change differently. You need to understand their interests, motivations, who has the power, and who can make decisions.”

— Kristy Long

Career Trajectories, Funding Leverage, and Hard Priorities

During our Q&A session, cohort members pressed into the practical trade-offs and risks involved in building a long-term executive career within higher education.

• Career Mobility (“Moving Out to Move Up”): University organizational structures naturally narrow near the top. When asked if advancement requires changing institutions, both leaders acknowledged that moving to a new university is often the most direct path to expanding your scope and taking on broader strategic responsibility. Kristy’s deliberate steps across Penn State, UW Bothell, and UOregon allowed her to systematically build executive experience across varied institutional scales.
• Grant Writing as Strategic Leverage: For non-faculty technical professionals, mastering NSF grant writing offers incredible leverage. Von shared that securing major cyberinfrastructure grants allowed him to bring millions of dollars into the university, establishing national centers and creating leverage usually reserved for tenured faculty. However, he cautioned that relying on external funding carries high-stakes risks, including navigating the painful cancellation of a $7.5M grant mid-cycle, which forced difficult personnel decisions and required deep personal resilience.
• Knowing When to Align and When to Walk Away: Von spoke candidly about navigating major administrative realignments at Indiana University. When top-level leadership changes fundamentally shifted the strategic direction of his center, he evaluated his options with clear eyes. Rather than relocating his family across the country or compromising his personal values to maintain a title, he chose local retirement.

“If you’re going to keep climbing a leadership ladder, another lesson for you is you’re going to have to figure out your priorities. And it’s gonna make you make some tough personal decisions.”

— Von Welch

Actionable Habits for Emerging Leaders

To close the session, Kristy and Von outlined high-impact operational habits that early-to-mid career technical staff can begin practicing immediately:

• Practice Complete Problem-Solving: Move beyond identifying flaws or escalating issues to management. Diagnose the root cause, develop actionable solutions, and where appropriate, take ownership of the resolution. As Kristy framed it: “Hey, I saw this, I realized this could have happened, so I stepped in and took care of it.”
• Lead with Curious, Collaborative Posture: When engaging non-technical research executives or campus deans, drop technical jargon entirely and approach the partnership with openness. Kristy’s standard approach when working with academic leaders is simple: “Help me get an A.”
• Expand Your Network Intentionally: Resist the comfort of remaining exclusively within technical circles. “If you look around at your network and it all looks like you do, that tells you you’re not looking far enough,” Von advised. Build authentic relationships across academic, business, and administrative departments.
• Build Comfort with Ambiguity: Senior leadership requires making consequential decisions with incomplete data. Developing emotional composure, adaptability, and sound judgment in uncertain environments is essential.

As Dr. Maureen Biggers neatly summarized to conclude our session, executive leadership in research computing is only 10% to 20% about technology. The remaining 80% to 90% is entirely about human dynamics, trust, and communication. While technical competence may get you to the table, mastering the human element is what ultimately enables you to drive lasting institutional change.