 Welcome to another EDUCAUSE community conversation. I'm John O'Brien, the president of EDUCAUSE, and I'm thrilled to introduce you to our two guests today. We have two recent former leaders of the EDUCAUSE WIPAC Initiative. And WIPAC is Young Professionals Advisory Committee. And both of these wonderful colleagues have a lot to say about that. So I'm going to introduce you to Sarah Buzka and Bea Bimeniz. And with that, I'll hand the mic over to Sarah first. And Bea, to talk a little bit about where they're from, Stanford and Northwestern, and a little bit of their history with WIPAC. Thank you so much, John. I'm so thrilled to be here with you and with Bea to talk about the WIPAC. As John said, my name is Sarah Buzka, and I'm a senior relationship manager at Stanford University. So what does that mean? Really, it means a lot of things. I think me and my team wear many hats, but we specifically work a lot on strategic initiatives. So what does that mean? That means working on large-scale, university-wide initiatives that are kind of complex, that need extra grease, that need a lot of experience, expertise, strong understanding of higher education, technology, and the services we provide in this ecosystem. I've been in that role for almost three years now, and I don't like to pick favorites, but this has been my favorite job this far in my career, aside from being the chair of the WIPAC for three years. There you go. Yes, and with that, I'll hand it over to Bea. Thank you for that. You're a good point, already. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah and John. My name is Fessie Menez, and I work as a learning engineer at Northwestern University in the West Coastal area. And my role in titles and with being that is about technology and teaching and learning. So I work with the rest of my team, wonderful people, about on projects that relate the learning management system, but also everything that relates to education and technology. Thank you. Thank you. So both of you are active on your campuses. Obviously, you've taken this wonderful role as leaders of this emerging, I'll say emerging, young professionals have always been there. When I say emerging, it's the name of a podcast I've recently learned about, Rising Voices, the voices of young professionals being heard more often and a little bit louder and organizing around that. So what would you like those folks who are listening to consider themselves young professionals to know about what it's like to be a young professional and how to make that journey a little more navigable, maybe start with there. Yeah, no, that's a very interesting question, John. I would say that for young professionals out there trying to get into IT and higher education, I would say to be very open-minded and to be willing to ask questions. Sometimes with the higher education, what happens is that either we work inside us sometimes or we work in our own space. And sometimes we are not fully aware of what's happening outside or what's happening outside the university even. And I feel like working in this space is so important to be afraid of asking questions. And I think it's a field where everywhere you go, especially around other cause, if you ask questions, you would find a ton of people willing to help. So that's an amazing opportunity out there that for me in my past, I wasn't fully aware of. So I would say that that's kind of the key. And I would say that I wouldn't be able to get here without all the people who helped me in the past. But I think it's an amazing field to work in, especially if you are not afraid of being innovative and ask questions and ask for help. I will get to Sarah in a minute. I love what you said, especially about asking questions. I was just in a conversation today with someone. And we agreed that curiosity was the primary job that we're looking for. I mean, especially going forward when AI takes over everything, like what are the characteristics that are unique and that curiosity is everything. So I love what you said about asking questions. But it leads me to ask another question of you, which is, what do you do as a young professional when your voice isn't being heard? Oh, that's a very good question. Well, I'm very stubborn, but I wouldn't say resonate. I think I can attest to that. But I would say to be patient. Sometimes working in this field, you have to be a little bit patient. I feel like sometimes moving the needle takes a little bit longer than maybe another field or working for other teams. So I would say, for me, the best, what really helped me is, well, to be, especially in my case, working as a learning engineer, I work a lot with faculty. So my main focus is to help faculty to adopt technology and try to adopt technology in a pedagogical way. And I have a trick, and it's just a trick out there, that I call ego management, working with faculty when I was feeling like, oh, maybe you know, like, usually faculty or instructors, they tend to do their own thing. And if that works for them, they don't have the incentive to try new things or to be innovative. But in the moment they see something else out there that is innovative and is working well, they reach out. They try to adopt that music as well. So having maybe a couple of people who can be your promoter or your allies is very helpful. So in the moment that you find those, just take care of those folks, those people can be within your domain or out there. It can be instructors can be. I feel like working in this field, it's so collaborative. So it doesn't need to be your boss. It doesn't need to be your manager or your colleague. But if you find that kind of support, speak to it, and try to spread the word around those maybe things that you would like to change or try to demonstrate how to afford or to do that innovation or that change, that for me, that would be mine. That's good. I'll just say that that's good. I trust you that that's good advice for young professionals. I can also say that's good advice for a senior in executive positions as well. And the only thing I would add to it is, yes, patience is required. And if you can be patient with a smile on your face, you get bonus points. And that's not always easy, but recognizing that we're an enterprise that is not known for its speed. And if it's absolutely crucial for you to get stuff done on a weekly timeframe, higher ed may not be the choice for you. So you become to grips with a slower moving engine. But one that still has many other charms as well. Sarah, of the long-awaited, Sarah. Thank you. I'll jump back and answer your former question. I think I have two messages for young professionals, one for current young professionals in higher ed and the other for prospective young professionals in higher ed. But first, for young professionals right now coming into their career, many of them are Gen Z coming out of college during a pandemic who have not had the opportunity to have some of the internships and training and job transition that many of us, at least millennials like myself and our predecessors have had. So I think that can really create a sense of uneasiness and feeling like you don't belong or questioning what you're doing, why you're doing it, what you want to do with your career. And my message is to those folks who might be struggling, you belong here. And it's totally normal to be struggling and to be feeling that way. And it's OK. And to prospective young professionals coming into this space or if you're even considering it, this is an amazing career to have. Something I'm in grad school right now and something one of my professors said to me last summer on how he advises his undergrad students is to really have them consider your overall life and work-life balance and what you want to get out of it. More so than just focusing on finding the next job or the first job that's going to have the highest salary. Consider what really makes you happy, things that drive you, things that interest you. For example, if you're someone who really likes having flexibility and autonomy and has really great ideas and wants a lot of space to be able to kind of create and work with really smart people, well, higher ed is like the perfect job and the perfect ecosystem for that. Like nowhere, I think, in the world do you have as much flexibility as you do working in higher education, really in almost any capacity. There's just so much flexibility for learning and innovation and creation. And it's not as sometimes as stifling and as gruesome as working in a private sector job 80 hours a week can be. So don't let a flashy salary distract you from the things that you really want. Yeah, it's fascinating to me that the biggest broth to bring people to work at a campus is that you're on a campus. I mean, what an ideal place to be. I mean, even at my point in life, when I go on a campus and I step onto that quad, I just, it just makes me smile every time. It reminds me of some of the best years of my life being in a place, well, now, and I'm just gonna make a guess that you are both at home. Yeah. That's true. Correct. Well... At home, in a pain, actually. I don't know how to make anyone want to. Maybe even more to my point, because when people can, you know, nowadays the ideal workplace is to not have a workplace for some people. And it's gonna, it's just a really interesting dynamic for higher education. What is the draw? And I think, Sarah, it's so great that you reminded people of that. And the other thing I wanted to ask about, just because we keep throwing around young, young, young, young, professional, does being part of a young professionals group have an age range? Age is just a number, John. No, you're young at heart, John. We can see that I would sound cray yet. I'm guessing by the answers, you don't obsess about what your age starts with or ends with. It's a question of are you, if you're interested in supporting young professionals, which I gotta say, as you've been talking just up until now, this is all new. Like, we didn't, you know, when I was coming up through organizations, we didn't talk about this stuff. Right. Yeah, you know, we acknowledged this group of employees is just getting started. And this group has been, and the academic structure has like gradations, you know, assistant professor, and an associate professor and so forth that I think it's just so important that we talk about it. But WIPAC stores are open to anybody who wants to support and talk about this group of employees. Is that accurate? Definitely, yes. And, you know, getting back to your question on age, because I think a lot of people, you know, are curious to know, okay, well, what's the range, right? If you had to pick a range, what would it be? So I actually did some research on this and of some of the young professional related groups or communities across the United States, at least, most of the ages are between 21, early 20s and 40. Some cut it off at 30, some to 40, I would say probably 40 is at least for us in higher ed, where we typically curtail things. But for folks who are listening who have attended the EDUCAUSE annual conference in the recent years, and even last year, we created a new sticker and kind of slogan where we're talking about, you know, being young at heart. So that's what I said to you, John, right? Like, it's meant to be inclusive while still giving folks a voice and giving folks who really identify maybe in that 21 to 40 age range, you know, a place where they can feel seen, but it's not meant to be exclusionary whatsoever. And that's been, I think, one of the biggest honors that I've had, at least, in serving on the YPAC for the past three years and leading it has been to really, you know, open up this conversation more. Like you said, John, you know, all of us share in common that we have started our careers as early young professionals. And we all know what it was like when we were starting off with no money, either straight out of college or straight out of high school, trying to figure out what we're doing, trying to make it work, living with parents, living in basements, living in cars, maybe apartments, right? It's just such a really hard point in everyone's life during that stage. And I think it adds another, you know, layer of challenges on top of the work that we're trying to do. Not that other generations and other groups of folks don't have that, but it's something that we can all rally around because if we're not supported, it increases the likelihood of us feeling or leaving higher ed or not knowing what we're doing. And you know, for us in higher ed, I think it's been no secret that hiring has been a problem and getting that talent to come here has been a problem. So how do we combat that? And I really believe like young professionals are the future of this profession and will be determining how we survive over the next few decades here. I was reading a New York Times article recently that said 45% of Gen Z feels that a high school diploma is all that you need to be financially secure in life. And so if this new generation, half of them, half of a swath of a population thinks that they'll be just fine without a college degree, well, what incentivizes them to work for colleges and universities? What does that mean for a talent pipeline? Well, no professionals are our future. That's a mathematical certainty. But Matt, notwithstanding that, it's also, I think more than ever, I think I've had more conversations with senior leaders on campuses about how they struggle to bring in people, to hire people for jobs that are so hot right now, you know, cybersecurity professionals would be just one example. But, and so I think there, many of these folks are talking about turning their attention to growing leaders from within. And that presents a huge opportunity for young professionals. And so, you know, I've always said, and here I'm answering my own question, but I'll give them for one moment to say, right, what? If I were to ask myself, John, what could young professionals do to position themselves most effectively? There's a part of me that would just say, everything, everything you both said, but also just be open to the universe. Because I go back and I think of the, the two or three critical junctures in my career where I, a door opened and I went in, were ones I never in, never could have planned for, ever would have planned for, that it was, it was being ready for that. And so I think young professionals could, you know, feel like they know what the pathway is and it's always good to have a pathway, but you have to be open to what you don't seek timing. And, you know, my spouse's advice to the kids was always, if you wanna be successful, make yourself indispensable. And I think that's every bit is true as you're making your way through a career environment, just because there's so much need for talent. If you just are clearly the person who's curious, asks questions about, and is dedicated, that makes all the difference in the world. Yeah, John, that reminds me of like a quote that Barack Obama says, and he was recorded in a video saying his advice to young people was, just learn how to get things done. And I think it's so true, just have to learn how to get things done. It's so true, and also it's so important to don't be afraid of failure. Sometimes we pick to a plan, as you said, don't like life throws a ton of opportunities that you never expect, but also like don't be afraid of failure. Sometimes we, at young professionals, we have a company in mind and then you fail, but that's always a learning process. It's always a learning process. Even when you have a senior role, it's always about, you know, trying to have a learning mindset in how to improve every day. And to communicate what you learn when you fail is, you know, fail, dust yourself off, but then tell whoever is disappointed by that, what you learned and what you're gonna do differently next time. And I have to say, one of my favorite things is when I open up my email and I have somebody apologizing for something because I'm sort of a collector of apologies. I love a really good apology and when somebody needs to write a letter of apology, I always tell them this is an opportunity to assert the kind of leader you are. It's easy to assert your leadership when you're in charge of stuff that's getting done, much harder but much more memorable when you assert your leadership in failure or in something you did wrong. And so be sure to send me one of your good apology letters when I'll add it to my collection. Maybe I'll write a book on apology sometime. And listen, we've talked a lot about young professionals, but I think young professionals will, for a voice to be heard, it has to be listened to. So what, when you look at some of the people who are senior leaders and who are veterans, how are they best supporting young, what practices do you see them doing that are supporting your work and young professionals in general? I can jump in right away. I would say, and this is just a kudos to the Ejikos community because I've found so many of my people here, but there, I don't know if I want to name names, but there's some senior folks in the Ejikos community, folks who have titles of CIO or president or something in that level who have reached out to me even in this past year and have seen my potential and have given me opportunities and have specifically and directly shoulder tapped me to take over something for them or to participate in something for them. Recently, this manifested with a webinar I just moderated yesterday actually. It was called, New to Higher Ed, Getting Acclimated. And because of this person shoulder tapping me, I then shoulder tapped folks on the YPAC, three folks actually who currently serve on the YPAC to also come along and serve and deliver this webinar. And it's just such an amazing kind of display of how we can support each other and give people opportunities. And it went so well. We had so much knowledge to share and even while we were doing our webinar, I realized, wow, I'm with a group of young professionals who know so much. We have so much experience to share, so much perspective to share that I really feel is necessary to hear and to learn from. And we had folks blowing up the chat, just saying how grateful they were, how they had learned so many new things. And it was just a great example of how one person in a senior position who could have taken that role and could have done this work again, but decided to pass the torch and give others opportunities. And that opened the door for me to give others opportunities as well. So I think my kind of challenge to folks would be, I think a lot of us who are in senior leadership positions have a lot of opportunities and access to spaces and people that others don't have. So just try teeing it up for someone and seeing how they handle it, seeing if they can do it, seeing if they're interested, inviting them to join you in meetings, to shadow, giving them a small project, spinning up a committee or an advisory council or a young professionals advisory council at your institution and giving folks some resources to see what they do. That's great. Reminds me of a story, a mentor of mine. I was dealing in a few jobs ago with an employee who was stalled, totally stalled. And I went to him and I said, what do you do with an employee who's in a stall? And he said, give them more work. But then he explained, give them more work that's meaningful, give them something to own, something that they can say, this is mine. And somebody from on high gave this to me because they entrusted it to me. So that's a really great point. Bayat, were you gonna add to this? Sorry. Yeah, little bit to add, I think Sarah went through a lot of bullet points, but I would say support of flexibility. I feel like especially young professionals, we are so diverse and especially coming from pandemics, right? Things we're so happy in so many different stories in human beings, in different places, in different positions. So I would say providing that kind of support and ask what I did a magic question, how can I support you, right? So I love when I hear that question because my needs might be different from Sarah's needs. And it doesn't mean that I'm going to work less or more or any different, but having that opportunity to express the things I need in it. And I need hearing from my managers and leaders that they are willing to listen. I think that for me, that's when magic happens. Yeah, actually to add one more thing, building off of what Bea said, I think young professionals more than any group right now, millennials certainly, I'm included in this, we love feedback, we need feedback. Even if it's bad, if it's good, I don't care what group of category you want to put it in, we want to hear because we don't learn if we don't know and we can't do anything we don't know about. So helping us early on and giving us that feedback, taking the extra minute or two to say, hey, that email wasn't very clear. Here's how you could have made it clearer. Goes a long way and we welcome that, I think more than anyone really because we don't want to look silly, right? If we're talking to someone like you, John, we want to have a well-written email. Well, it is, it's young professionals, maybe more than others, like tell me the rules. Like I just want to know what the rules are. And then I'll put the energy and creativity and curiosity into it to make it sing, but I need to know what the basic rules. You know, every time I talk to a leader of WIPAC, I always end up thinking of more work to be done. But I was just saying, it wouldn't be cool to do like a Educa's review. I want to manifest those too strong, but like five things we want our managers to do. And one of them could just give us feedback. I mean, not long, but it would be something that WIPAC members could share with their supervisors and say, this spoke to me when I read this. Here you go. Yes, absolutely. We all benefit from that. Well, anyway, the thing that I heard so loud and clear that each of you sort of woven throughout everything you've said has been the value of a community of young professionals that you can call on, rely on, complain to. Never. By itself, that would be reason for this community to be a growing and thriving one, not to mention all the other things that you have accomplished and have worked on in your time and leadership of WIPAC. What are you proudest of during your service? Do you want to go first, Peya? I would say what I'm proud of is the community itself and having not only colleagues, but friends and being able to have these close connections really helped me. Not only becoming a better professional, but also you all noticed I have an accent that I'm originally from a space. For me, when I moved to the US, I mean, I was coming from higher education, but it was another context and being part of WIPAC really helped me to blend into higher ed and deal with it in another way. And I have a lot of appreciation for the time I spent with WIPAC. I love that. Thank you, John. So I want to start by actually sharing a story and then I'll answer your question. So in 2016, I attended my first EDUCAUSE annual conference. I was in Philadelphia. I'd never been to Philadelphia. I was going with my boss at the time who was amazing, very plugged into the community. He actually was a former Rising Star award winner and he introduced me to the community and wanted me to have this experience. So I went to this conference with him. You know, this is pre-pandemic days, so there's so many people, so many things, so many vendors. I had never been to a conference as big as the EDUCAUSE annual conference before. And you know, I was young, 20s, super overwhelmed. I had no idea what to expect and everything that I was seeing, people, things, I didn't even, I didn't know what any of it was. And so, you know, not only was my head kind of spinning because of all these new things, but also when I was looking around, I didn't see many people who looked like me, who looked as young as I was, you know, early 20s. I saw a larger age gap. And you know, I think for us as young professionals, when we're just starting out, when we're just trying to stop the world from spinning and make sense of things, it helps to kind of find your people, right? Find someone who's in a similar stage in their career as you, who you can kind of hang on to and figure out what's going on or at least make the world stop a little bit. And I'll never forget, when I was going through the agenda that year, I saw a young professionals, CG meeting, community group meeting. I think at that point it was called constituent groups. And it was like the last time slot of one of the days, like at the end of the day, and I was like so exhausted from already doing a few days of the conference. But I told myself like, let's just go and see what this is all about. I walked into the room. There was just a handful of folks in there, but I saw some folks who looked maybe around my age. And there was this woman who was sitting at a row of chairs kind of in the middle of the room by herself. And I just put on my brave hat and walked up to her and just sat down right next to her, introduced myself, and she turned and looked at me with the biggest smile and southern accent and introduced herself right back. And she and I have been friends ever since and her name's Alicia and she works at Auburn University and she's amazing. And we've literally been best friends ever since. And I met my best friend at an Etch-a-Cos annual conference. She got married last year, we got married a week apart. I know she got married last year. I got married last year a week apart. I played my violin for her at her wedding when she walked down the aisle. And you know, that was last year 2023, right? So it's just been this long journey of us being friends from being at the conference, but I cannot tell you how impactful it was to walk into that room and just feel seen and to have someone see me and fully show up for me. And that whole room of folks, I remember Jonathan Hardy being there, Tina Papas, so many other folks who were just there. And we were all showing up for each other and it was just like this amazing experience. And from that moment, I was like, this is something special. We have to cultivate this by any means necessary. Like this cannot fail. And so fast forward to 2024 now, me just rolling off the YPAC serving as chair, I'm proudest of the community that I've helped build and foster over all of these years. It has developed, I think, more leaders, more opportunities and more conversation around young professionals, but even broader around how we all can support each other better and what that looks like. And I'm so thrilled to see it continuing. Obviously, we've launched our podcast last year. I'm also serving as co-host of that podcast with Wes Johnson who's incredible. And it's just been this beautiful opportunity to take all of that work over those years and bring so many people along and then amplify it and share it. And that's probably my proudest honor really of my career so far. So thank you. Wonderful. It's funny to say that and I never thought about it before, but it's true that if we do all the right things by our young professionals, we will make the world better and our worlds better because it means listening better and differently. It means being open and providing opportunities for growth. If any how to be a good manager 101, it would be all of those things that that's in there. So it would be a gift that would keep on giving. That's fantastic. Thank you both. This has been really enlightening even though I've been following the accomplishments. So WIPAC, since we created it many years ago, this has been energizing and insightful and enlightening and fills me with hope for the future. And that's about the best thing I could have in any given day. So thank you. Oh, thank you, John. I echo your sentiments too.