A Safe Place to Grow and Take Risks: Robyn Pennington and Lori Seager on Volunteer Leadership at WACUBO
Somewhere this weekend, someone who runs a university finance office will spend their Saturday rebuilding a set of trail steps they'll never climb. No one's paying them; the hikers who use those steps in three years won't know their name. They do it anyway — and they'll tell you it's the clearest thinking they do all year.
That instinct runs under this whole conversation. Robyn Pennington — Chief of Staff for Business & Finance at California State University — is completing her term as WACUBO's president; Lori Seager — CFO and Vice President for Finance at Colorado College — is stepping into it. They join Howard Teibel at the moment of handoff, in a season when higher education is being asked to justify its own worth. It's terrain Howard knows from the inside: Teibel Education spends its days helping institutions navigate exactly these transitions.
Together, they reframe succession as something more generous than replacement, describe a volunteer community that's become a place to try things and get them wrong, and land on a real surprise — that the most valuable mentorship sometimes runs uphill, from the newest people in the room to the most seasoned. For anyone weighing whether to step into something they're not sure they're ready for, it's a convincing case for saying yes.
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