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Becoming a Leader: Preparation Meets Opportunity

Haywood, Oling-Sisay, Hartung Cheng

Women leaders don’t always move straight up the ladder. Their journeys may be more like winding country roads, with no view around the next bend. What distinguishes leaders is not dumb luck but seeing opportunities, daring to grasp them, and preparing for unknown opportunities ahead.

Three women leaders shared their stories at the Wisconsin Women in Higher Education Leadership (WWHEL) state conference in Stevens Point WI in October, forming an impromptu panel when three top campus leaders scheduled as panelists could not attend.

They were:

• Zina Haywood, executive VP and provost for academic and campus affairs at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha WI

• Dr. Mary Oling-Sisay, VP for student affairs and dean of students at St. Norbert College in De Pere WI

• Dr. Rita Cheng, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee On June 1 Cheng becomes chancellor of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, which WIHE featured in a Newswatch article in April 2009 as lacking women leaders.

A teacher saw something in her Gateway Technical College in southeastern Wisconsin is part of the state’s occupational and community college system, offering more than 65 career training programs on three full-service campuses in Kenosha, Racine and Elkhorn and a center in Burlington.

In January 2006 the college created a new position, executive VP/provost for academic and campus affairs. Filling it was Zina Haywood, previously VP/ provost of Gateway’s Racine campus and interim provost at Kenosha.

Her new position involved oversight for all the Gateway campuses with responsibilities for program development, internal and external relations and strategic planning. She’s responsible for a $100 million budget, 29,000 students, more than 600 fulltime faculty and staff and 1,200 adjuncts. She is working on a doctorate in education–community college leadership at Walden University MN.

Her childhood gave few clues of her potential. Born in Chicago, she was just 10 when she lost her father to a car accident. Her grandmother and mother raised the four kids. Since the grandmother was a nursing assistant and the mother an LPN, they obviously expected Zina to become a registered nurse. But she didn’t follow their footsteps. She quipped that nurses have to wear uniforms; she loves hats but wouldn’t want to wear the same one every day.

“I got to college because a high school teacher saw something in me that I didn’t see,” Haywood said. Advised to study engineering because it pays well, she tried it for two years and hated it. Then she took intro psychology and found a passion. She wanted to work with people, not things.

“I found out where Ann Arbor was the day before classes started,” she said. She completed her fi rst year at the University of Michigan with no financial aid. Her sophomore year she got a work-study job in the financial aid office. After graduating in psychology, she stayed for eight years in financial aid at Michigan, where her husband worked.

Her next position was at Oakland University in Rochester MI, north of Detroit, while earning a master’s degree there in public administration. Oakland had an opening for associate director of financial aid but she was told she wasn’t ready. So she applied at three other schools for fi nancial aid director—and got all three.

Dartmouth’s New Hampshire location wasn’t great for her husband. Applying at the University of Indiana at Kokomo, she was warned, “This school is not ready for a black, especially a woman. You’d have a really bad time there.” In 1993 she became director of financial aid at Gateway.

Five years later she applied to be VP for student affairs at Gateway and wound up instead at Milwaukee Area Technical College. Then back to Gateway as student affairs VP, then provost of one campus, then of two. It was a short step from there to executive VP for all three Gateway campuses, but a long journey from the girl who declined to wear the same nurse’s cap every day.

No option but to succeed

Uganda was a dangerous place in the 1970s under the despotic rule of Idi Amin. Dr. Mary Oling-Sisay was still a teen, the oldest of 10 children and a graduate of Makerere University in Kampala. Her job as a news anchor for the Pan-African News Agency was too visible for her safety.

After her father was assassinated, her life was at risk. Her conservative Catholic extended family sent her to New York City with instructions to start graduate work at Fordham University, a Jesuit school.

She knew no one when she arrived in New York at age 18. For years she could not communicate with her family in Africa. She struggled and was sent to counseling. Though she speaks 10 African languages and has a working knowledge of French and Swahili, American English was hard after the British-style schools of Uganda. “My first paper was covered in red. I learned to write and spell the American way,” she said.

“I had to be successful because there was no other option,” she said. She had to rise above tragedy to model hope and possibility for her younger siblings. Later she saw to it that they all went to college; one sister was able to follow her to the United States for medical school. She got an MA in public communications at Fordham. Two years in law school persuaded her that criminal lawyers are liars; she hated it. Instead she worked as an academic advisor at CUNY’s City College and rose to academic assistant to the dean.

“Ask students what they want, fi gure out what tool kit they need to get there” was the job description that drew her into student affairs. It was a fit. She had two mentors, a woman and a man, one in education and one outside.

When she said she needed to be a VP, her boss said she wasn’t ready: “You’re a woman, you’re black, you have an accent and bad communication.” So she moved to California for a job in the offi ce of the VP for student life at California State University, Chico. She earned a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Southern California and attended the Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) Summer Institute at Bryn Mawr College.

“As soon as I get bored, I look for my next job,” she said. In 2007 she became VP for student life at another Catholic school, St. Norbert in De Pere WI. She was the fi rst woman in the position and the first person of color on the president’s cabinet. Now she’s enhancing her preparation as an American Council on Education fellow for 2009-2010.

Taking opportunities

Elmwood is a rural Wisconsin village between Eau Claire and Minneapolis, with 841 people at the 2000 census. Rita Hartung grew up on a nearby farm, the oldest of six. She came from a long line of teachers. Both mother and grandmother had taught in a one-room schoolhouse.

Her parents died young from cancer. She doesn’t know why she started college. There were three nearby University of Wisconsin campuses: UW–Eau Claire, UW–Stout, and UW–River Falls. She chose Stout to follow a girlfriend.

“My friend was an artist, but I’m a quantitative person,” she said. She soon transferred to Eau Claire, where at 19 she fell in love with a student from China. Without completing college, she married and became Dr. Rita Hartung Cheng.

They moved to California, where she worked as a nanny and in a factory making false teeth. While there she took courses at City University Los Angeles. They decided to return to the Midwest, where her industrial-engineer husband took a job in Minneapolis. She trained as a clerk-typist and worked for the University of Minnesota, where she could take courses tuition-free.

Following a husband was expected in the 1970s; it was also what pushed her. When he suggested taking a class together, they chose accounting and her quantitative mind found its groove. Following her husband to New Hampshire and then Canada, she earned a bachelor of business administration degree with honors from Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec.

She did accounting work for locals there and then in Rhode Island, his next job transfer. That employer paid for her to get an MBA at the University of Rhode Island. With a growing sense of direction, she chose Temple University PA for a PhD in accounting and public administration.

Again the Midwest called her back. She’d come a long way from the small farm and all-white community of her childhood and could now reconnect from a broader perspective. In 1988 she joined UW–Milwaukee as an assistant professor of accounting, rising to a named professorship in the business school and serving as an assistant for affirmative action.

She became provost in April 2005, the second woman in that position. “I’ve done pretty much everything here,” she said. “I was uncertain if I could do a job, but I took advantage of opportunities.”

Participants’ questions

• Did you have a career plan? Should one?

Haywood: Her only plan was to be a financial aid director. “Looks and charm work for 20 minutes. After that, you’d better know what you’re doing.”

Oling-Sisay: She always had one, but it’s important to be fl exible; that’s what let her quit law school. “I always have route A, B and C.”

Cheng: She’d recommend planning, plus taking opportunities as they arise. “My career is by accident and luck, plus a willingness to try things.”

• Your paths were nontraditional. How do people on a traditional path gain that drive?

Haywood: Skills are transferable. Financial aid director was a dead-end job, but bringing three campuses together brings energy to her numerical and analytical skills.

Oling-Sisay: Internships are a key to building your toolkit. Part-time experiences can be critical to shaping who you are.

Cheng: She volunteered for campus-wide committees. “The view of the university is quite different depending on where you sit.”

• What have you done to help campus women?

Haywood: She started a WWHEL chapter last year. She also mentored a woman in nursing to take an interim position; the woman is now an associate dean.

Oling-Sisay: “At CUNY I had to very intentionally groom the next person, usually a student.” Her former students manage resident halls all over the country.

Cheng: She’s a formal and informal faculty mentor. “We’re working to submit an ADVANCE grant to connect with dynamite women on campus.”

• What’s been your experience with women hacking women? What can we do to prevent it?

Haywood: Her negative experience is with women VPs who compete for the president’s attention. “I bring them into my circle. When you respect and value and ask for their opinion, they’ll support you.”

Oling-Sisay: She decided never to report to a woman; there’s too much coercive power. If hacking happens, confront it: “I see some things happening and I want to talk to you about it.”

Cheng: “It always surprises me that women have been my worst enemies. They see it as a zero sum game.” Take charge and refuse to play, she advised.

• How has a personal challenge made you grow in compassion and leadership?

Haywood: When she came back to Gateway as a VP, a decision on the reporting structure was looming. The VPs went to the president together to say no. “I learned to give honest opinions.”

Oling-Sisay: After her father was killed, she learned to persevere and treat roadblocks as temporary distractions. “Tomorrow will be better.”

Cheng: Here parents’ early deaths taught her that she’s stronger than she thought she was. “I can dig down deep and keep going.”

Three women who are one step from the top traced their career paths—their challenges, responses and internal motivations. Look for their names at the top soon.

 Contacts: 
 Zina Haywood: haywoodz@gtc.edu ; 262.564.3104
Dr. Mary Oling-Sisay: mary.oling-sisay@snc.edu
Dr. Rita Hartung Cheng: rcheng@uwm.edu 414.229.4501