The Power of Building Your Personal Brand

Jack Suess: Welcome to the EDUCAUSE Integrative CIO Podcast. I'm Jack Suess, vice president of IT and CIO at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Cynthia Golden: And I'm Cynthia Golden. Each episode, we welcome a guest from in or around higher education technology as we talk about repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as an integral strategic partner in support of the institutional mission.

Cynthia Golden: Hi everybody. Welcome to the integrative CIO podcast. I'm Cynthia Golden and I'm here today with my colleague Jack Seuss. And we are going to talk with our guests today about personal branding. So today we have with us Tonya Bennett, who is Director of Educational Technology at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. You're just across the state from me, Tonya and Shannon Dunn, who's director of Strategic Team Operations at Vantage Technology Consulting Group. Good morning everybody. Good morning.

Jack Suess: Good morning. Well, I want to say I am so excited to be meeting with you. This is one that Cynthia and I have been talking about for weeks. So the first question that I had is could you talk a little bit about what it means when you say personal brand?

Shannon Dunn: Sure. So when we say personal brand, one of the things that I really think about is how I'm presenting my professional self including and particularly my identity, right? So what are my values? What's my expertise, what's my academic background, my work background, and what are my areas of interests? This really requires us to spend some time reflecting on ourselves and what are our priorities? How do we want to present ourselves? I have to understand myself as well as how I want other people to perceive me. So that's really what I think about my personal brand.

Tonya Bennett: I agree it encompasses all of those things and it also helps you show what makes you unique and stand out as well.

Jack Suess: So as a bit of a follow up, how would you say that that manifests in some of the work that you try to present in your own personal brand as you're moving forward?

Tonya Bennett: That's a great question. So my personal brand is centered on serving, so you will see that I do a lot of service and I have luckily an unlimited amount of energy and bandwidth so I can do this service as well. So it's just really, I look for those opportunities and it helps me stand out and it helps solidify my brand. So I definitely invest my time and energy in building in that area.

Shannon Dunn: I also identify as someone who's very dedicated to service and servant leadership. And additionally, one of the things that I really think about in the way that I try to present myself is there was a time in my life when I was fully dedicated to pursuing a tenure track faculty path, and that's not where I landed. I think that worked out really well for me. But I have what I would call a squiggly career path and I've been at times self-conscious about that, but I've tried to embrace it and really share that think generalists and those of us with unique backgrounds were actually more common than we think we are. The more we share that, the more we can help people understand there's not just one path to get to any specific destination. And it also, I think brings some fun to my background and a different perspective that I can bring.

Jack Suess: Well, thank

Cynthia Golden: You. Could you guys each tell us a little bit about your background? We didn't ask you that at the beginning, but it would be good to have you introduce yourselves to our audience and talk a little bit about how you got to where you are, Shannon.

Shannon Dunn: Sure. So when I say I have a squiggly career path, I mean that it is extremely squiggly. When I started in undergrad, I thought I was going to be a physicist and I shifted to art history and in the anthropology that I pursued an anthropology advanced degree, got my PhD from Syracuse, I learned there, I was really surprised that I learned that I liked teaching. I thought I was going to be a teaching assistant just to get the financial support. And then it turned out I really loved it. So I got a certificate in higher education. Again, I thought I was going to pursue that faculty tenure track path and it just wasn't the right fit for me for a lot of reasons. So I did some reflection and I learned about myself that the thing that was important to me was education. So to attract faculty often are pursuing both education, supporting instruction as well as research.

Shannon Dunn: And the research archeology is cool, but I was really excited about education and that landed me in instructional design and ultimately in a wider IT organization where I had the opportunity to grow and learn. I landed at Vantage, a technology consulting group about three years ago after I had explored some different career paths at the University of Florida and decided I was really curious about how a lot of different types of institutions around the country tackle things like governance, data governance, IT governance, strategic planning, and outside of moving my house and my home and my family every two to three years, there's a good way to learn about those things was to explore the consulting option. So that's how I landed here.

Cynthia Golden: And Tonya,

Tonya Bennett: When I started out, I started out in finance. So I worked for the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, which is now the NASDAQ, and I spent a lot of years in there and I thought that I was also going to be a broker or do something big in the financial industry. But what happened was I hit a wall in my career trajectory and they told me I needed more degrees. And so I started to look for places to get degrees and I stumbled upon Penn, which I work for now because I found out that there's a thing where you can work and get a degree. So I'm like, oh, this is a win win for me. And so I started my career path at Penn and I did development, which I found out was not for me. So I moved over to academic affairs and student life, which I loved because again, it was a role that was service.

Tonya Bennett: I was helping the students get through their program. And in that role I started to liaise and advocate for certain IT initiatives for the students. And I realized that I liked it. And believe me, this is not a shameless plug, but IT people all went away to this thing called EDUCAUSE and I was like, well, where is everybody from it? And they're like, they're at EDUCAUSE And then they came back and it was EDUCAUSE. EDUCAUSE! And I was like, man, one day I'm going to get an IT job and I'm going to go to EDUCAUSE. And so fast forward a few years, I landed my first IT job and one of the things that I asked in my interview that was very important was can I go to EDUCAUSE? Because that was really a goal for me, but along the way I had set goals of things that I wanted to do in my path, and so now I'm six years into my IT career and I'm looking for other things as well to move my career path forward. So my trajectory and my thoughts and ideas had changed. I wanted to be A CIO.

Tonya Bennett: And so maybe one day I will, maybe one day I won't. I'm still figuring that part out.

Cynthia Golden: Well, thank you. It's really interesting to hear how people get where they are. And if we come back to personal branding, you both had to sell yourself into your new roles. And so I'm thinking about is personal branding to you the same thing as your reputation or are you thinking about this as marketing yourself?

Tonya Bennett: I can go. So for me, personal branding and reputations, they go hand in hand, but they're not quite the same. Personal brand for me is curated. So I actually have a professional personal brand and I actually have a not professional personal brand. So the professional personal brand is curated for the things I do in service and the speaking engagements that I participate in and the things that I know and want to share with my network about it and leadership and inclusivity along those lines. Then my personal brand is I'm a traveler and I love to explore, so I want to see all the sites and things. It is very curated and it is to show the world who I am in that area. Then my reputation, more of what people observe of me and they do observe my brand. So showing up every day is a reputation, but it's not really a brand. So I can separate the two in that way.

Shannon Dunn: Yeah, I agree. They're related, but a little distinct still. So I think when we're marketing ourself, that relies on a lot of our own actions, but when we talk about our reputation, that's how we're known either in our local community, our professional communities, and a lot of that relies on how we've worked with folks. So that could be how we've worked with folks at an institution. For me, it's how we work with our clients, but it's also, Tonya and I both have mentioned service. We're both really, really dedicated to service opportunities. It's how we work with folks through EDUCAUSE community groups and advisory committees and all of those opportunities that we get. So we build a reputation for who we are and how we show up and how we help people and what our interests are through those interactions and those relationships. But I think the marketing ourselves is a little more reliant on our own agency and our own actions.

Jack Suess: So I'd like to ask just a little follow up on that, and that is that I think you're right in that reputation and brand are different, but they are interrelated in the context that if somehow your reputation isn't aligned with your brand, it's really hard to be building that brand. So in that context, if you're a difficult person to work with, but yet you're considering yourself a team player as part of your brand and sort of great at building teams, but everyone knows you as someone that's difficult to work with, it's really hard for those two to sort of overlay. And I'm curious if you would agree or how do you try to help people understand that certain parts of your activity aren't in alignment with brand, and in a way you almost need a trusted friend who can be telling you, Hey, what you're doing isn't what you're trying to be saying about yourself. Do you have ways of getting that feedback?

Shannon Dunn: Yeah, I think the trusted network that we surround ourselves with, and hopefully that includes our supervisors and the people around us and above us in the organization and also the people on our teams. I hope that everybody is seeking feedback. It can be hard to give feedback, it can be hard to receive feedback. I love Kim Scott's radical candor for that. I don't love the title of the book. I love the book though. I think that's a great reminder that caring about people and investing in people is giving them feedback and giving them the opportunity and the capacity to grow. But I think one of the exercises that you can do is to ask someone to look at your presence in a space. So look at my posts in an EDUCAUSE community group. Look at my LinkedIn posts and my profile. What is your impression from looking at that alone? What do you think my priorities and values are? What do you think my expertise is? And reflect on that. Take it at face value. Don't argue with them when you ask them to do this exercise for you, they're being helpful. And take that in and review that for alignment. What you think you're putting out, what you think you're presenting about yourself.

Jack Suess: So why is it become so important in today's workforce to be thinking about brand and reputation?

Shannon Dunn: I think one of the reasons is that we're really conditioned, I think to seek connection and relationships with each other. Tonya mentioned personal brands, and I use certain platforms like Facebook and Instagram that are, I think as closed down as I can get them because they're where I want to share personal things, things about my personal life and also just personal networks, personal relationships. And I try to draw a fairly distinct line there, but it does reinforce that desire to connect with folks. And then once you do attend something like an event or a training, then you do want to maintain those relationships. So I think then we're seeking ways to do that outside of something like email. It's not a really great way to support those relationships. So we look at places like LinkedIn or I used to use the platform previously known as Twitter, and we look for ways to find that connection, reinforce those relationships, maintain those relationships. And I think that gives us the opportunity to communicate not just with those individuals, but more broadly about those relationships, about our wins and our interests and our values. And one of my favorite things about those platforms is that they can help us boost other folks and elevate and support others and sponsor people to help them build their own personal brands or professional brands and hopefully give them some new opportunities.

Tonya Bennett: I agree. I totally agree with everything that you just said. And it's very important too that people, back to your other question, know that they can rebrand and reposition themselves and it's okay to rebrand and reposition. I've rebranded so many times and I am undergoing a new rebrand, so you just wait to see the next iteration of what my brand will become. But it's very helpful in the sense that it helps people to see get opportunities. So now if I wanted to look at another career path and I want to draw in speaking engagements, I start to read the articles, I start to comment on those and I start to connect with people in that new area, my new target area where I want my brand to go, it's very helpful. And also creating opportunities for yourself. So I've gotten invitations to serve and on speaking just because of my brand and who I am, because people are like, oh, well this person, she likes this or she knows this, or she has expertise in this. I got drawn this opportunity to speak on this podcast was actually one of the things that came to me because of my strong brand. So it definitely is in today's workforce, a good tool to draw in and get other opportunities to get your message out to share, to help others to also connect, amplify network. So they say your network is your network worth, so if there is some truth to that, then also having your personal brand is useful and in today's workforce as well.

Cynthia Golden: So that's interesting. You've both been in the nonprofit and the for-profit sectors. And do you see a difference there in maybe how branding is seen or how it could be useful?

Tonya Bennett: I definitely have. So being in higher ed and working for an institution, I see that they're more mission driven and for the institutions they're more aligned there. Where in the for-profit world, it's more profit driven, more efficiency costs and competitive edge driven. So if I were doing my brand for industry, I would focus and hone in and elevate those kind of skills and those interests in my brand because that's what drives industry. And then for higher ed, I would focus on how I am dedicated to the mission and I align myself with the goals of the institutions and the values of the institutions. So I would break those two into those different sections and I would go for my targets there. So it's interesting because I do believe the target audience for both probably live in some of the same places, like for instance, LinkedIn. So the target audience for higher ed is LinkedIn. And I would also use LinkedIn to target my industry people as well. And X, I was Twitter user, so that's also a platform that I used to get established. And I also saw a lot of branding for industry and higher ed there as well. So social media is a good tool too for higher ed or industry to reach a target audience, which is really important because people need to see your brand, so you need to get out there.

Shannon Dunn: Yeah, I totally agree, Tonya. I think I am going to add a little asterisk to how it works for industry, and that's only because of where I landed. And I'm so grateful that I landed here because I think I landed in a really special place. And here I think yes, we're a business, we're a vendor. We do have to make the business model work, but we also are able to align our values with the values of our clients very much with the mission of higher ed research, teaching and service. And I'm really grateful for that. I know not everybody has the ability to land in a place like that. So I'm really grateful. And like Tonya, I used to use Twitter. I did miss the icy of Twitter. I started using Twitter when I was attending events and I haven't found the replacement for that since I moved away from it.

Shannon Dunn: I shifted over primarily to LinkedIn and I don't really love the way it feeds us information, but it is, I agree with Tonya, the best place to engage, both with higher ed and with a lot of industry folks. It's this giant pool that we're all in together. I do also think that folks should think about other digital spaces where they can share and engage places like EDUCAUSE community groups, certainly events and any other kind of industry or professional organization event where you can get together and meet people, share information present, participate in community groups or something very similar.

Jack Suess: So we've begun talking a little bit about the tools and about how to be thinking about it. Are there any sort of thoughts that you have for someone who might be wanting to sort begin to get into this space as to resources that could be a good starting point? Or are there any suggestions that you have for avoid doing this, whatever this may be? On that one,

Shannon Dunn: I think to get started, one of my best recommendations would be to find a few people who you think are doing this well and pay attention to what they're doing maybe for a few weeks. Just keep a little log, make a diary, look at what they're doing. You don't want to emulate someone else. You want it to really be authentic to yourself. So if someone else posts to LinkedIn twice a week, is that the right cadence for you? I don't know, you've got to feel that out. But find people who maybe have similar values, similar areas of expertise or experience who again you think are exemplars in the space and start to identify why you think that they're really good about it. Is it the length of their post? Is it the information that they're providing? Is it the value? Is it that they're starting a conversation with a post and they're showing how to bring people together, connect around a concept?

Shannon Dunn: What is it that makes you feel like they're doing it well? And start to identify some ways where you can start to explore that and test it. And don't be afraid of failure. So as you're building your network, particularly on LinkedIn, you might not get a lot of engagement with your posts. That's okay, just start doing it so you feel more comfortable. It feels less intimidating for you, and the more that you practice, the more you'll learn what works and what doesn't. And from there, I think you can identify some specific priorities. Do you want to grow your connections? Do you want to grow your network? Do you want to grow engagement with your posts? Do you want to make more posts about something that's really meaningful to you? What are your priorities? So those would be my top recommendations.

Tonya Bennett: I agree. Those are super important and things that I did when establishing my brand and rebranding. One thing is helpful to do is to brainstorm your brand identity. So what do you want the appearance of your brand to be? What do you want your values to be? What are your aspirations? So once you actually take some time to figure that part out, it would be very helpful. Then you can seek the inspiration of people who align with those things that you've brainstormed. And you can find those on social media. You can find them on LinkedIn, you can find them through the ed. Cause communities, you can find them in a lot of the places. Use your use your access to find those people. And as Shannon was saying, to follow them and see what they're doing. And then as you follow them and after you've established what it is you want after brainstorming and you follow the people that you think are good or strong or have good brands in this area that you feel like resonate with you or you can align with, then you should start to engage with content.

Tonya Bennett: So content that aligns with your passions. If one of the people you're following posts often, then you can start to engage with that content and then even to create your own content as well and be active. So start posting, start liking commenting. If you're not at the level where you feel like you have enough to say and you're posting, you're just getting started. But start liking, start commenting and start making those connections. It's easy to send someone a message and say, Hey, I saw your LinkedIn post, I found it very interesting. I'd like to learn more from you. Or are there ways that we can connect for the future or So it's okay to start reaching out to people to start making those connections if you aren't, or asking for intros from people that to introduce you to people in this area or in the places where your brand is going.

Tonya Bennett: And then focus on adding value to others. So what value is your brand that you're creating bringing? So make sure your brand is not just taking, but it's also giving and contributing to the community. And then establish your presence and just show up in all of those ways that I shared by liking, commenting, posting, amplifying others messages, even reposting and saying, Hey, read this great article from this person. Found it interesting, wanted to share. It could be that simple just to start to get yourself out there and start to connect with the people and in the community and the places where you want your brand to be.

Jack Suess: So I'd like to ask a follow up, and I had a friend who used a LinkedIn sort of brand consultant, and so there are those sort of things. Do you recommend it? And in the case of my friend, they were thinking that they wanted to potentially go on into a different kind of position and they thought that they would really need to be building up their brand, and so they thought they got a lot of value out of the activity and helping them understand how to be improving. But I'm just sort of curious if you think that makes sense or under what circumstances.

Shannon Dunn: I have not used that kind of service jack, so I really don't know. I have heard from some folks that similarly that have experienced it or reached out for that type of consultation support that they found it valuable. Some folks haven't so much. Ultimately, I don't know that we can't rely on that to be what gets us to the next step. It's one part of what gets us to the next step. I do think that there are folks who are expert users of these platforms who if you can access those folks, whether it's through hiring a consultant or if they're in your network, that can be really helpful. So if you're looking to be more power user of whatever platform it's that you're using, if you can find some of those folks to learn about how they're using it and some of the backend data. So LinkedIn provides a lot of interaction data that helps you understand what types of posts posting at what time of day can drive different types of engagements. So there's a lot of information like that. If you want to become a power user, I think you can definitely learn that from an expert. I'm not sure, I'm not about the consultant. Maybe people can share with us what their experiences have been.

Jack Suess: Oh, thank you both.

Tonya Bennett: I'm a do it yourselfer, so I did my brand myself, but I did have a consultant for full transparency look at my LinkedIn because I did want to take it to the next level. And the interesting thing that the consultant shared with me is that LinkedIn had changed the way they do the skills. So they had increased it from 50 to a hundred and you could tag the skills directly into the positions, which was a change that I wasn't aware of. And so the consultant helped me in that area. So sometimes it may be beneficial to just have an expert set of eyes, look at your brand and see where you're going just in case you've missed anything.

Cynthia Golden: And if we come back to that idea that we were talking about, how do people get started? The questions that Jack asked, it seemed to me, I heard both of you say that your colleagues as well as the professional organizations and the tools are all really important. And I have two kind of thoughts in this area. Two questions. One is how much time do you think a new person would or a person who hasn't focused on their brand before might need to be spending on this? And then the second one is, how many people or what percentage of people in the average IT organizations do you think are paying attention to their personal brands? So just curious what your thoughts are on that

Shannon Dunn: For time. I think it really varies. So if you haven't been on a platform like Twitter X or in community groups or on LinkedIn, you're going to spend a fair amount of time just seeing what's out there, but you've got to figure out how you want to present who you are on a platform like the edco community groups or X, it's a short space, right? So on edco, you've got your bio on X, I don't know, you have a very short number of characters to present who you are on LinkedIn though, it's essentially your resume or cv. You can link to presentations and articles. You can write your own articles and publish them on LinkedIn. So it really depends on how you want to build that profile for yourself.

Shannon Dunn: That could take quite a bit of time. I think a lot of the time that once you've got that down, folks should think about how often do I want to be on this platform, engaging with the content, how much time do I want to spend? As Tonya mentioned, creating my own content, putting that out there and maybe set a goal for yourself, maybe to check in on it at least once or twice a week, maybe more frequently, if it's really a priority for you, it does take some time to think about and make really thoughtful posts. That's one benefit I think, of moving toward LinkedIn and away from X, because I'm not sure if we were all being particularly thoughtful about what we were posting to X, but I also, I wish that I knew Cynthia, how many people in an average IT organization have maybe a LinkedIn page.

Shannon Dunn: I don't know. My impression is that people start to prioritize this when they're ready to really focus on their career path or when they have an opportunity like an EDUCAUSE, a particularly impactful ED cause conference experience or for me it was before I ever went to an EDUCAUSE conference. I went to the learning technology leaders training and that was life-changing for me. It was incredible and I wanted to stay in touch with people and LinkedIn seemed like a really good place to do it, and so I spent a lot more time on that platform after that.

Tonya Bennett: I do agree with what you said. I wish I knew too how many people worked and looked and develop their brand. I do go to a lot of networking events and the first thing people say is, oh, let's connect on LinkedIn. So I'm hoping that those people have got their brand up to date, but maybe not. Maybe it's just a way to build connections and networks because people use LinkedIn for different reasons. I use LinkedIn to showcase my brand. So it's probably different for folks who just use it to build connections and find vendors or find other things or just read articles. So I think a lot of it depends on what they actually want to get out of it and how they're actually using it. For people like me who are like, yes, this is the place that if you want to find out about me, this is where you go.

Tonya Bennett: I put a lot of time and energy at the beginning and it's iterative. It's not like, oh, my LinkedIn's done. Just like I said, I had a consultant look at my LinkedIn and tell me how I could improve it. And then I went back and added my skills and started tagging them to positions that I held. So it's an iterative process. And my header, it has changed, my tagline has changed, and this is all this year, and I've been a strong user, so it definitely is not a light lift, so I'm not going to sell it as one. Even though I'd love to say magic poofing, you have this phenomenal LinkedIn page. It is not a light lift. You really have to be delivered and dedicated to it and you need to update it and put your content, like your wins. So when you win things or when you're featured, so you update your feature. So I try to make sure that I do that every year with whatever thing I'm working on or I want to be highlighted because it is the support of my brand. So I am very dedicated to honing in my LinkedIn, but for others who it's not holding up their brand, and maybe they can be a little less deliberate and spend a little less time.

Cynthia Golden: Well, and don't you think some people also need to become a little bit more comfortable with promoting themselves? That's really hard for a lot of people,

Shannon Dunn: A hundred percent. But this is a place too where we can maybe boost each other. So we try to sponsor each other and tag each other. Tonya and I actually do this a fair amount so you can interact with people's posts, but also share them forward and tag them. Then when you find that someone is doing a presentation or has published something, then just find that independently and tag them and share it with your network. That helps boost them in your network and maybe connect with some new folks.

Jack Suess: That amplification is definitely unique in the social media sort of space of being able to take something and then have other people be able to share it and build it and see it grow. And so that's a great use case. I was going to ask a question though that, and I'm sharing my age, I think in asking this question, but it's around the question of connecting on LinkedIn versus calling someone up and having a conversation with that person. Because historically, our community is one where if someone says, Hey, I'd like to talk to you, they'll take a call with you and you can reach out and you can talk, and a call is a different back and forth than let's connect in LinkedIn and follow each other. We're not really having a conversation and building a deeper relationship. We may be aware of each other. Where do you sort of think about how you're strategic in trying to build deeper connections and where you want to keep lighter connections? And do you do this sort of still pick up the phone, write someone, pick up the phone, let's talk or have a video or do something. I'm just sort of curious how you think about those older school sort of ways of connecting, so to speak.

Shannon Dunn: Do you want to go first, Tonya? Sure.

Tonya Bennett: So I still do some of the older school methods of connecting. I do virtual coffees, virtual chats with people that I do meet on LinkedIn or at conferences or wherever I meet them, especially if I find out that I can help them in some way or they can help me, we can learn from each other. So I have a couple of coffees actually scheduled this week. Just virtual coffees of people who are in higher ed that are technologists and who are working on some things that I'm interested in. So I do still, yes, meet with people and do calls. I think LinkedIn helps me find out where they are because it's anyone and everyone that's on there, so you can find out all the people. And if I meet someone in passing or I lose their card or something, it also helps as a backup plan to like, oh, I went through this training by this person and I looked him up on LinkedIn and I added him on LinkedIn and I'll be bothering him about some more information later on as we go.

Tonya Bennett: But I honestly did. And so I think LinkedIn is now, if we want to go old school is the phone book. You will. So it's the phone book. It's a directory where you can find a lot of people in a lot of areas and connect with them or look them up and make a connection. But then, yeah, you have to foster the connection if it is one that you prioritize. So right, you can't connect with everyone for everything, but you can have knowledge of them. But if it's something or an area that you're really trying to help or serve or grow in, then yes, you do foster those connections by actually connecting.

Shannon Dunn: Yeah, and like you, Tonya, I spend a fair amount of time every week in those calls and those relationship calls. I mean, Jack, we can't replace the actually talking to a human with I think miscommunication. I think there's a value to that, and we've added this value where we can see each other now when we're talking. I was a person who I hated picking up the phone, even to order a pizza for something about the phone was really intimidating for me. I still don't really love it. Zoom is a lot less intimidating for me. I can see the person, I can react maybe to some body language, to some other indicators that I don't get over the phone. So I love that part of it in that part of the more meaningful relationship. I don't think we'll ever be replaced by this networking and presentation of our brand.

Shannon Dunn: One of the things that I would caution people about is to really think about what you want your connections to mean on a platform like LinkedIn. So you'll get a lot of invitations and you may want to vet those. You may want to just accept all of the invitations that you get. It's up to you. I think the limit is something like 30,000 connections, but I don't, and this is a very individual preference. I don't accept every connection invitation that I get. I want to know something about the person. I want to have a reason to connect with the person, and I'm a vendor, but people also try to sell me things. And I don't want to be sold something. I don't cold reach out to people to create connections on LinkedIn, and I don't want people to do that to me. I want to actually have a relationship with people. That's not the way that everyone uses LinkedIn. We all use it very differently. So when you're getting into the platform or you're starting to learn it, understand it. And it may change over time too, but think about what you want your connections to mean for yourself. Because I think Jack, to your point, some of those will be meaningful connections and some of them may just be more acquaintances and that's okay too.

Cynthia Golden: Yeah, I think for those of us who had LinkedIn accounts for a long time, sometimes it's hard to remember how did I know that person? So this is the integrative CIO podcast. So we did want to just talk a little bit about maybe what your thoughts are on a role that A CIO or that IT leaders have to play in this whole space of personal branding.

Shannon Dunn: So I think CIOs can often lead by example. There are some of the folks who I was looking to on when it was Twitter and now X. There are folks who I look to in EDUCAUSE community groups. And there are folks who I pay particular attention to what they're posting on LinkedIn because of their viewpoint for the institution as executive leaders. So their perspective about institutional challenges, opportunities and news is very interesting to me. And I think that the way that as leaders in our institutions, the way that they've branded themselves, the way that they've identified their priorities, their values, where we see them being selected for opportunities, where we see them being selected for professional and service opportunities, that can be very telling about the organizations too that are selecting them. So I think there's a lot that CIOs can do in terms of how they're leading the way. A lot of it is what they're doing. But then I think too, they can also talk with their teams about why they think this is important for their teams, for the individuals on their teams. There are some organizations that have LinkedIn accounts too. So if that's a priority for them, maybe talking to their teams about which teams should have accounts and how they expect them to operate and behave, I think that could all be really helpful.

Tonya Bennett: I think CIOs can also support by investing in professional development opportunities and encouraging their employees to go to workshops and participate in brand building and management and just to elevate and amplify their own people in their institution or other institutions. So yes, like Shannon said, lead by example. But I also think that encouragement and investment in helping your teams grow and brand themselves and show their value and what they offer and how they contribute to higher ed is very helpful. And I think it can be CIO led.

Cynthia Golden: I think that's such an important point. Thank you.

Jack Suess: Well, if I could just add a follow up, I mean, one of the things that we've been thinking about is in a world where it's really, talent is at a premium right now, and you see in the corporate side, they're heavily utilizing LinkedIn for trying to find talent. It would seem that this is part of what our community has to be doing to begin attracting talent back into higher education. And you've both talked about service, but I think one of the things that's just fabulous about the higher education experiences, you're making a difference in so many people's lives day in and day out. And that kind of feel good experience, I think is unique sometimes in our world and we don't talk about it enough in trying to be bringing back. So that might be one of the takeaways for myself is trying to be using LinkedIn a little bit more and trying to be talking about why I enjoy higher education. But if we could get some of our listeners to also be doing that, maybe we can be attracting more people back to higher ed.

Shannon Dunn: I think so Jack and I follow some of the accounts of some of our clients, and one of them, I won't say which institution it was, but their IT organization has their own account on LinkedIn and they posted a photo of their team who was managing the CrowdStrike response, and it showed the team probably not enjoying everything that they were doing, but working together well and seeming to have a good time and ultimately expressing a lot of appreciation for that team and what they were doing. And I think there's a thread there to pick up on what you just shared, where if we can show that appreciation, if we can show that the team is really important, if we can boost people, express our gratitude for everything that they do, and like you said, convey the impact of our work and the value, I think that can be really meaningful and attracting people back into higher education.

Jack Suess: Well, this has been just a fabulous conversation. I have an ask for both of you, and that would be that as we build out some show notes for this podcast, I'd hope you'd share some links or some materials that you have found to be helpful for people who you might share with on how to be building your personal brand, that we can be including in the show notes so that some of our listeners can take advantage of these resources and get started telling our collective story in higher education. So thank you. This has been wonderful. Cynthia, any closing words that you have?

Cynthia Golden: No, this has been great. Thank you so much. Thank you.