–

Harry Le Grande
I think the thing that I’d still, that I’d still worry about, is burnout, because it is a very, very it’s all in, right? And I think many professionals now don’t want to give it the time that it takes to really kind of marinate in this work, to really if you want to get it advanced quickly. And I think one of the reasons why I’ve been called out of retirement so much is because there’s a skill set gap that you might have the academic credentials, but you don’t have the experiential credentials in order to do the work. And so I do think that people need and I used to tell people that I used to tell at these conferences, these these institutes, not everybody needs to be a vice president. Not everybody’s equipped to be a vice president. The price you pay to get there is greater than price you pay to stay there. And so when you decide to do this kind of work, your whole family’s involved. My wife’s awakened by the middle of night calls just like I am. It’s used to tell me, why am I on payroll? Because when they call you at two in the morning, I’m getting that I’m waking up as well. And so I do think that that that’s, that’s, that’s huge. That’s going to be a continued thing.

Glenn DeGuzman
Glenn, hello and welcome to another episode of Student Affairs now I’m your host. Glenn De, today, we are continuing our ongoing series of Student Affairs legends, and I am joined by someone who I had the honor to work for at the University of California, Berkeley, Harry Le Grande, Harry was a former vice chancellor at UC Berkeley, now Vice Chancellor Emeritus, served as an interim vice president for several universities in the California State University system. And in my opinion, and in so many other people’s opinion, is an incredible storyteller and trusted consultant for so many of us nationally. So Harry, thank you for joining us today.

Harry Le Grande
My pleasure and happy to be here.

Glenn DeGuzman
Yeah, I’m super excited and and I think this is going to be a phenomenal episode, but really quickly, let me just kind of do our, do our introduction promotion. But this is Student Affairs NOW, and student affairs now is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside an adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. If you want to get more information on this episode or check out our now hundreds of episodes. Check out our archives at studentaffairsnow.com this episode is also sponsored by two groups. One is Huron, a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible solutions into practice. And then this episode’s also sponsored by evolve, confidently align your dei values and intentions for transformative action. Discover this personalized cohort based virtual experience for higher ed senior leaders. Again, I’m your host. Bland Guzman, my pronouns are he, him, his. I’m currently the Associate Dean of Students and Director of Residential Life at the University of California, and I am broadcasting from Livermore, California at the unceded lands of the Ohlone peoples and now, drum roll everyone. Harry Legrand, Hi, Harry,

Harry Le Grande
good morning. Glenn, how are you?

Glenn DeGuzman
Oh, I’m excited to be here. I think it’s been a while since I last saw you. So, in person, so, but you know,

Harry Le Grande
I’m broadcasting from our vacation place up here on Bainbridge Island, Washington, up near Seattle. So beautiful. It’s a little overcast. They’re talking about rain. So it’s kind of unusual, because we normally go up to Seattle during this time to get some wind. It’s perfect, but it’s been we had a thunder, a crazy thunderstorm over the weekend, it was really kind of frightening. It looked lightning and stuff. So, so glad to be here this morning.

Glenn DeGuzman
Well, I’m glad you’re here. I’m totally glad to hear so let’s go ahead and introduce you to sort of the audience. You know, Harry, you know, obviously I got to work with you at UC Berkeley. Your professional journey now, to me, spans four decades, and I think when we were working together at Berkeley, it was between, it was like 11 years, 2005 I think 2016 and I also got to know you a little bit more intimately than other folks, in the sense that I was one of your champions when you became an ACA diamond honoree in 2016 so I got to really dive into your resume and your Vita and talk to you and whatnot, and so I would just love for you to kind of like expand and tell, tell the audience a little bit about your career and life journey as I mean, you’re a leader, you’re a mentor, you’re so much more to so many people, but if you can just kind of give us a snapshot.

Harry Le Grande
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. I think the thing we always tell students, what’s your elevator speech? And I’m not sure if I ever had one, but I am a storyteller, and so I think I tend to can go long winded, because there’s just so much stuff that bumps in my head as I’m having a conversation about that. But let me just start to say I’m first generation college. I grew up in San Bernardino, California. My parents, my dad worked with Kaiser Steele, so the blue collar worker, and was raised in the segregated south, and so education was not something they were. They were able to pursue to the same extent that I was, but their whole thing with my sister and I was that we were going to college, and I don’t even think they knew what that meant. And he totally, in many ways, went to college more for them than we did for ourselves. Unfortunately, my parents have been deceived for a really long time. I’m my mother, almost our daughter just turned 40, so my mother’s been at 39 years, and my dad died a week before my 40th birthday, so he’d been gone a minute too. So unfortunately, they were never present to really see you know what I was able to accomplish as an adult for the most part, I think they passed away while I was still working in student housing, so I knew I wouldn’t go to college. Had a couple of friends who went to Irvine from high school, and they came back and were raving about the campus, and I was. I fell in love with it just by hearing their story. So I want to go to UCI without really ever visiting it or knowing anything about it. I knew UC Riverside was too close, so I didn’t want to go there, but I wanted to be pardoned up a way that my parents wouldn’t just roll up on me. I’d have some independence. But I was also an hour drive at the time from home, so if I needed to get home for an emergency, I was actually able to do it. And I’ve been a pretty active undergraduate. Amazingly enough, I became a ra my sophomore year, which was the first time Irby had actually had sophomores in the RA role. And one of the associate deans there at one point said to me, Bob Gentry, kind of one of my mentors, in many ways, was the one that said to me, Hey, you should look at student appearance of the career. And for some reason, I knew people worked on the college, but I never put two and two together, thinking, oh yeah, I guess these are jobs, because I was on the track of becoming, at first, a teacher. I thought I was going to teach school. I thought I was going to be a kindergarten teacher. Then I did a student teaching stint at nursing school, I thought, okay, I don’t have the patrons for that age group, so that’s not a good thing. And so then I decided doing the RA thing. And my degree is actually in social ecology with an emphasis in mental health. So I thought it was going to become a counseling psychologist. And so during my Irvine experience, I mean, I did the army thing. I did the summer orientation, which they call Charles. Thought I did. I was an administrative intern, the Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs office. I was a community student advisor. I actually wound up getting UC or my outstanding student award from the Alumni Association my senior year. And thought, okay, counseling psych might be a program. And as I was getting ready to graduate, I was like, Okay, what am I going to do? So I actually applied for a job in housing at UC Santa Barbara, and I actually got hired as a head resident. So I was in San Rafael Hall. And you know, this was like the mid 70s, I think 7576 and I had my first encounter with a transgender student, or her mathematite student, and a couple of other things that we really hadn’t even talked about from a conceptual standpoint. And I decided to apply to the counseling psych program at Santa Barbara. And so I went to an interview, and I thought, I can’t do this. I hate this. I don’t think I can live in people’s poems all day, every day. And so then I put my eggs into College Student Services Administration degree program at Oregon State, and actually wound up going there. And interesting. You know, my graduate assistant was in housing, so it was really cheap for me to go to graduate school. They waived my out of state tuition. I had, I had my room and board taken care of because I was a resident director, I got a stipend. My fees were like, $58 a quarter my first year, and $60 a quarter my second year. And so graduate school was inexpensive. I actually made money on graduate school while I was still paying off my undergraduate loan from a robot. So so it was a kind of an amazing opportunity. And so that really kind of, I’ve had so many people that have passed my lives that I think it has had an impact. And so, you know, fast forward, I went to Santa Barbara, got a graduate assistantship. My first job out of grad school was as Director of Housing sit and Dean of the small private school in Oregon called Pacific University, which was only about 1100 students, but it also had an optometry school and a physical therapy school. So there were really only about 800 undergraduates at the time, and a large population from Hawaii, for some reason. And I remember they didn’t pay very well, but it was my first job, and I actually had been offered a rep and director job at University of Washington because one of my former supervisors from Irvine was now director of ResLife at UW. And so I actually said yes, but I got married the second half of my second year of graduate school, and my wife hated living on campus, so the stop at Pacific opened up, and so I went up saying, Okay, this is a live out job. It’s a director’s job. Let me take that. And so then I had to call you Deb, and say, I know. I said, Yes, I was coming, but I’m gonna need to rescind that, because I’ve gotten married, and my wife doesn’t like living in and so I’m gonna have to do something different. So you know, that’s one of the things that take you never to do, is you don’t want to, like, slam a like, slam a door. So I was here a couple of years, and then I got to call up in that same supervisor, saying, hey, Harry, we got to live out job. Now we’ve just created these area coordinator positions southwest campus and Northeast Campus. And would you be interested in coming here and working for us in that role? And you would supervise rd, rds. You would live off campus, you have an office, blah, blah, blah. So we went up. I said, Okay, so I wound up moving to Seattle, living in Bellevue, and had no desire to really leave. I thought, Okay, this is cool. My sister and her husband had. I’m up to go to graduate school at UW. And so I was doing that, this the area coordinator thing, and enjoying my life there. And we had a one year old kid, and so my wife’s parents were in San Diego, and mine were in San Bernardino, and they’re like, Hey, can’t you get our grandson closer to us? You know, you’re so far away. And I actually had applied for a job at Western Washington, up in Bellingham. What goes further north? I’m almost to Canada now, and I said, Okay, this job at Berkeley’s open, let me apply for the job at Berkeley. And amazingly enough, I had an interview, and they flew me down. I should have known, because they put me up in a residence hall. I slept in a residence hall, and I remember that, and I looked down and I could see, like, a pair of underwear, and it gets a bit underneath the bed and the cross of me. And then I got panicked, like, okay, maybe I sleep in my clothes. I mean, is this room really clean? But it kind of in my mind said, Okay, if I come here, I’m gonna have to, we’ve had to really work on this. This what this actually looks like. So 13 months at UW and then I leave and go come back to California. And, you know, Berkeley’s been an amazing opportunity for me. I came here with Student Affairs Officer too, and did it as the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs.

Glenn DeGuzman
That’s an incredible story, and it’s so funny you mentioned, like, when they took you in for an interview at UC Berkeley, pitching a result. I don’t think we still do that. No, I’m teasing, but I know we still put a lot of candidates in our halls when we have the availability for that’s that’s an incredible story. Ari, like your journey, I keep thinking about, you know, I know I knew I knew this before, because we’ve chatted, but I know your your time at UC Santa Barbara, because I, too, am a gaucho and and it’s interesting. And I don’t think you know this because I was recently at CSU, Cal State University Fullerton, where you sort of serve the sort of like an interim by chancer out there. My daughter attended UC Fullerton this past year. So we were in the orientation. I was talking with the Director of Housing, and we were like connecting and like talking about you. So it’s sort of like, you know, it was really kind of significant, kind of cool to just be able to see, like, your your legacy and your the blueprints that you have placed so in so many different places and locations so very, very cool. Now, no,

Harry Le Grande
it’s interesting. I’m sorry, go ahead. Oh, go

Glenn DeGuzman
ahead. Go ahead.

Harry Le Grande
No, I’m just saying it’s just interesting. You know, you I guess, you know, I never really had any idea what my what my reputation was, or what my value was. I mean, by the time I left working, I was freaking tired. I was like, oh, man, this is 35 years. It’s time to go right and and so I was really fine going into retirement. I thought this is really going to be okay. Financially was good. I was glad I had the last 10 years, roughly the Vice Chancellor, so that really helped with the pension and those kind of things. And so I really wasn’t looking to continue working. And I think I had been home, had been off a year, and I got invited to the UC black Administrators Conference, and I think we could UC Irvine at the time. And so I remember going there, and unbeknownst to me, they had decided to name an award after me, the Harry Legrand excellence in Mentorship Award. And I’m sitting in the audience, and they’re kind of doing this thing. And then I see Thomas Power get up. Everybody’s kind of talking about this individual. And then they said, you know, in recognition of Carrie’s lost service, we’ve decided to create this mentorship award in his name. And each year we will identify an African American professional in University of California who doesn’t has demonstrated excellent mentorship. And I remember asking, you bet so why me? Right? And she says, Kerry, we can see your handprint on people you’ve mentored. A lot of people talk about it, but we don’t really see the action. And we can name the people that you’ve had some impact on. David Serrata, cure, Bradley, Jamie Riley, there was just the list kind of went on and on. And I again, I never really thought about it in that capacity. And luckily for me, I’m still alive. I said, got to get an award named after me, and I’m not dead. And they invite me every year to the conference to hand out the recipient of my award. And so I just attended this year’s conference with at UC San Diego, and it’s just been one of those things, and it kind of went on hiatus for a couple years when the pandemic hit. But I was really fortunate to give the award to Walter Robinson before he passed away when he was at Davis. And so that was very timely. And so I just felt, I felt okay, that there’s, there’s something to be said about that. And again, you don’t, sometimes don’t see yourself going other people. Will see you. And I think one of the issues with around the whole area of social justice, for me and being a black man coming into a professional when I moved to Berkeley, the entire management team at housing was white, and except for the dining services director or manager at Unit Three, was Mildred Stratford, and so he was the only other person that was kind of a management trip. And then I come in there as a student affairs officer too. It’s just me an administrative assistant, but so many of the staff that were doing custodial work or food service work for people of color. And I remember, as I promoted, they would tell me, we told them, one day there’d be somebody that looked like us over all of this, and we’re just so proud of the fact that you’re kind of in this role. And I never I took that seriously. I took it as a heavy responsibility, and I took that okay, I need to continue to lift people up, and I don’t care about your ethnicity. I just want to know if you are a good person and you want to do work, and how can I go about helping you do that? And I know there was talking about eight or nine times that I would kind of admit to, when I knew I was going to retire, Julian, Ledesma, provisio Mejia,

Harry Le Grande
someone who had left David, some others, and I had invited them out to my house for lunch, and I kept asking him, and nobody would ever come. And so I went to Ken, my executive assistant. I said, Ken, maybe the Vice Chancellor, asking them is too much of a thing, so maybe you can set it up and they’ll come out if you invite them out to the house, and we’ll do this Saturday morning brunch. But they finally showed up, and I remember asking them, I’ve been asking you guys for two years to do this. Why were you so hesitant about accepting my invitation? And they said, quite frankly, Harry, we heard a lot of people talk about they wanted, they’re interested in our careers. They want to sponsor us. We really just didn’t think you were serious, because we had so many people that we’ve tried to invest time in, and they see more invested in their own career and then really promoting ours. And I remember telling Julian and professor, I said, it’s great that you want to be down with the people, but you want to be at the table where decisions are made in order to really have impact. And I think a lot of times being at a cabinet level position, people think, Oh, they’re talking about us. Well, you really they’re really not. But I think what I’m able to what I was able to provide, was a realistic experience. I knew enough about how operations work to be able to talk to that, but I also knew enough about students, and I’ll never forget when, when Chancellor, Birgeneau, you know, how I wound up being vice chancellor was kind of an interesting story, because I’ve never, I’m never a self promoter. I feel like my work should speak for itself. And I remember Ronaldo Padilla was Vice Chancellor, and I you should take the month of July off for vacation. And before I left, her now, called me in and said, Hey, I’m going to announce that I’m going back to the faculty, and you’re going to be on vacation with this. And comes out, but I didn’t want you to be surprised when you got back, so you kind of get the early, the early, the early notice. And I just happened to say to him, I know this isn’t Berkeley’s way, because it’s always been a faculty member, but is there any chance that somebody like me would ever have the opportunity to be vice chancellor? And kind of looked at me like, What? And he goes, I don’t I don’t know, but I’ll talk to the chancellor about it. So I forgot all about it, so I went on vacation. I get back in August, the first day back, and now calls me and says, Hey, I think we’re going to do it. But what are you talking about? He goes, Oh, I brought it up to the chancellor, and he brought it up a cabinet, and people in cabinet were ecstatic that you would consider being the Interim Vice Chancellor. So I think the chance is going to call you today, or next couple of days to talk to you about this. So I was, I was like, gobsmacked. I would feel like, wow, this, this, I don’t. I wasn’t expecting this at all. Right, no, goes on vacation, and that’s Monday, I don’t hear anything. Tuesday, I don’t hear anything. Wednesday, I don’t hear anything. And then Thursday, I can’t said the chance was on the phone for you. And he goes, Harry has said, No, spoken to you. And I said, Yeah, he did briefly before he went on vacation. He goes, Well, he’s put me in a really awkward position. I’m like, oh, have you had you know, is there something else going up? No, no, no. It just if you, if you make a salary request and I can’t honor that, we’re going to be in this really funky place. So do you do you trust me to do right by you? And I was like, Well, I don’t really know you, but you seem like an honest person. So sure. I mean, I trust that you’ll do right by me. And so that’s how the interim vice cancer position came into be. And I remember so many people steer peers say, Oh God, finally, somebody who’s not a faculty member who understands what our work is. We don’t have to train this person. And for me, it was like. So I know many people said you created a mini Student Affairs and Housing. I mean, your organization was so enormous there, with everything from a design unit to academics spinners, right? And so my thinking was, how much of this is going to be transferable to the student Vice Chancellor position, because Bernard, when I moved in there, I said, this guy has no budget. I have more budget in housing than he entered the vice chancellor. So let me try to see how I can maximize our resources and do some of the things that I was able to do in housing, and I knew that they had for years, had traveled for Student Affairs people they weren’t able to do natural conferences. I always kept money in housing to keep people professionally developed, because I could, that’s how we kept current and you so I really wanted to make sure that no matter how bad the budget got, we all always had professional development money available, because our students are constantly changing, and we need to know what’s current and what’s happening. And know what I found was the kind of the kind of the rest of Student Affairs had kind of stagnated, and the housing people had really kind of advanced when I moved over into that role. So those are just kind of some of the things that kind of had, I think, staked the way I’ve, I’ve approached my work, and probably the only other thing I would say, and I’ll let you get back to your questions, if you say I’m storytellers, I’ve got 1000 of them. About 1997 I was doing, I did a lot of consulting. So Stanford was one of the campuses I was consulting for, and I was on this consulting team for residential and dining enterprises there, and one of the CO consultants with a vice president from Disneyland resorts. And so he and I got paired together on this project, and we worked together for like, I don’t know, two or three days, and we were done. And then the next day, I get a call from him from Disneyland. He’s like, hey, Harry, would you ever consider coming to work for us here at Disney, and I’m like, to do what? And he’s like, I don’t know, but maybe we can create a job for you. And then I thought, Oh, I guess corporate America can can do that, right? So he, he invites me down to meet with this team. So I spend a day. They fly me down there, put me up in a hotel, rent me a car. I spent a day meeting with this team. He was over hospitality services, I believe, and about a few weeks later, he calls me and says, Hey, I kind of got a hiring freeze, so I really can’t do anything right now. And I was just like, well, I have a job. I wasn’t really looking for job. I’m just flattered that you even considered me, right? So about a year to that for the day, he calls me DNS, so hearing this is Mike, am I hiding Mike? He goes, Hey, couldn’t talk to you. Talk about you to the Vice President for theme park operations, and she’s got a direct position called director workforce initiatives, and she would like to talk to you about it. So can you come down here and do something like in a cool eye conference in North Carolina? Said, I’m headed to North Carolina. He goes, Well, when you get back, can you just fly down, bring your family, we’ll protect the Disneyland Hotel and all this stuff. So I fly down. I check into my hotel room. It’s got a huge Mickey Mouse in there, cookies and milk. And my daughter’s like, Dad, take this job. I don’t care what it is. This is like, so cool. And so the next day, I have I go and I interview for this position, and so I could work for initiatives. Now this is twice. I had to tell her not all that I was going to do for a job. So he was a he was that happy. So the second time around, I go through the process, and I this typical Disney at the end of my interview. They’re like, is there anything we can do to make her stay here more enjoyable? And I said, Well, I hear the Blue Bayou has great food. And they’re like, oh, make Mr. Grant and his family reservations for the Blue Bayou and also give them private seating for phantasmic above the Pirates of the Caribbean, which I didn’t actually know there was something there, like a dessert barn with liquor. And so we go, and they told my kid, my family, they could go and send it in the park. And then my wife’s like, No, we just wait for you to get off and get down or whatever. So we go up to this, this place, and there’s a guy in front of me, and he wants to buy tokens for this. And they’re like, oh, it’s sold out. And so he doesn’t he just kind of moves over. So the lady says, Can I help you? I said, Well, I’m hearing the grant. Oh, Mr. Grant, we’ve been expecting you. And the guy goes, I want what he’s getting. And she goes, I’m sorry. He’s corporate. It’s like turning my wife and said, We’re corporate, whatever that means. Long story short, we fly home. Cynthia calls me like, a week later, said, We don’t think this job is senior enough for you again. I don’t know what that means, right? So there is a, there is a there’s a reason behind this story, but I’ll tell you when I get to the end of it. So about three months after that, I get a call from the first time i. Harry, I think I’ve got the perfect job for you. We’re building a downtown Disney like they have in Florida, and I think you’d be a great general manager. And if you could be here, if you can get down here by Friday, I’ve already set up a meeting with you, with the president of Disneyland resorts and a senior vice president for finance, and I’m like, Okay, here we go again, Disney, another trip. I don’t tell her no this time, I just take a vacation day. I’m just going to take the day off. I’m going to fly down. I have two one hour meetings. The first meeting was with the President, Paul Pressler, and he was asking me, like, Why would you leave a place like Berkeley to come here? And I said, Well, it would take one world class organization to get me to move to another. And I guess that was a good answer, because he remembered that and told Mike that. Told Mike, that was my response. So I fly home that night, Saturday morning, I’m out looking for a Christmas tree. My daughter, kids, this guy from Disney wants you to come at home, so they’re offering me this job. And I said, Okay, slow down. I now have to tell my boss that I was here on Friday and that you’re offering me a job, because he’s gonna be calling him for a reference. So I pick up the phone and I call her neuro so he had some profanity late for Mickey Mouse

Harry Le Grande
during that phone call. And interesting enough, by Wednesday of Thanksgiving, this guy’s calling me at nine o’clock. What do you know if I made up my mind and and I said, I have really more questions I have answered for so I said, Give me the holiday. Let me think about it. I got gas here on Monday. I’ll call you. Well, I don’t call fast up on Monday, so I can’t say this guy from Disney’s on the phone. So by this time, I’m pissed off. And he goes so her, what do you think? I said, I’m not coming. Wait, wait, what I I don’t know. I have a lot of questions. And before you say, no, do we need to fly to Florida? I can get us tickets. Take you behind the scenes. We can go and do Downtown Disney. I said, you know, I really flattered. If you guys think I can do something other than student affair housing. But, you know, I just don’t. I just think this is not the right move for me. So, so I don’t, I don’t go. So I told her, I’m not going. He was relieved. And long story short, six months later, they call me again. Have you fly back down there? Because it’s under construction now. And then I realized it’s an operations job, and I don’t want to do it. So I tell you all that to say Disney really kind of framed my whole customer service endpoint as being a housing person. And I remember at one point, I had gone to an Akua conference at Disney World, and they did a couple of programs there about putting a smile on your guest services and something else. And I remember going up to the Disney people after the presentation, saying, I’m from UC Berkeley. This would be great for my staff, but I can’t fly all my custodians and food service workers to Orlando. Have you ever taken this off the property? And they’re like, you know, we really haven’t, but you know, we’ll talk to management and it will get back to you. So I thought, okay, I gave my business card, and I thought, yeah, whatever. About a month later, they called and said, Mr. Graham, this is so from Disney. I’m like, yeah. They said, are we talking management? And they said, Okay. I’m like, what they said, Yeah, we can come to Berkeley. I can you, can? You cannot offer it to the campus. You can offer it to HR only, the Housing and Dining team. It’s all you can do. We’re going to send a contract. I said, Well, use these attorneys. Are going to work to the same attorney to work this thing out. Then I got the then I got the bill about how much it was going to cost. And I’m thinking, Okay, I’ve got resources in RSP, but I don’t think I’m going to spend them all this way. So I thought, let me be creative. So I thought, ah, they said only Housing and Dining people. So I opened it up to all the Housing and Dining operations in the UC system, and then I charged them a fee to attend the program, which is how I paid for the Disney people being there. So they came for two days. One day they did with with the staff and facility, the food service and stuff, and then day two is with the management and supervisor team. And people loved it. I mean, I remember, I remember Elizabeth stage, who was a performance level science saying, you know, they tell me, they give me some ideas about I was having some performance issues about what I could put in a job description. Man, I have never forgotten that that’s been so helpful for me. So I just say all that to say that that’s part of my thinking when it comes to the work that I’ve that I’ve done.

Glenn DeGuzman
You know, it’s so interesting to hear that story, and yeah, and I’ve heard bits and pieces, but to hear it fully like that, just sort of like I can see how that has influenced you greatly, and I’ve seen it obviously like some of your story. I’m like, Oh my gosh, that’s exactly what I experienced, because you created this sort of structure and blueprint at UC Berkeley and the profession, professional development piece that you. Mentioned, still very much a big part of why I like working at UC Berkeley, because it does continue to allow me to be state stay current on so many different things. You also spoke about mentoring and helping so many other folks advance and fit, you know, and connecting with them and really wanting to make a difference in their professional journeys, and I know that that had to come from somewhere. And so Harry, my question for you is, while you’ve helped, you know, uplift so many people, who, who did you, whose shoulders did you stand on that made a profound difference for you? You know, how did they and how did they influence you in your professional career? You mentioned a few, but if you can maybe identify a few people stories that that really just impacted you.

Harry Le Grande
Yeah, and it’s funny, because I call myself a student of observation, so I don’t know if I ever technically had a mentor or somebody I actually went to today. I want, I want to mentor me. But what I did do is that I watched, when I got to Berkeley, I said, let me see how this place works. Let me see who’s a rising star. Let me see who’s a falling star. Why is this person rising? Why is this person not doing well? How can I who is a bad supervisor? Who do I not want to implement? Who do I not want to replicate stylistically? And so even the people that I didn’t have a good experience with, I learned something from. And so it actually just helped frame my thinking. But like I said, Bob Gentry, who was Associate Dean when I was an undergraduate, was one person patch Schwab, who’s one of my supervisors. We’re still friends today. She lived up here in Seattle. She was the one that I had to turn down at UW, and then actually came back the next year and offered me that job when I was a live out job. She’s still very much in my life. I learned a lot from Steve Barclay when he came in to do food service and then took over housing. Just he was one of those rising stars that I just kind of like, okay, why? What’s happening with you? Why are you being able to be so advanced? And I think people saw stuff in me that I didn’t see myself. I remember when I first got there Ron Wright, we were in administration. We had moved out of Student Affairs, housing did, and we’re on the business side. And Ron Wright was a vice chancellor for administration, and I remember getting called into his office saying, Harry, the states giving us this or this California School for the Deaf and Blind, we want to turn it into a reserta that’s going to what could be your project. And I’m like, holy crap Batman. I don’t know anything about facilities or construction or any of that stuff. So what did he see in me that I didn’t see in myself? And so that was kind of high I was even in facilities when I came to Berkeley, I was, I was, like, I said, I oversaw re selection and and kind of Student Conduct in the residence halls. You have professional rds, any of that stuff. I mean, I created all that stuff during my time there, right? And so that was, that was a part of it. And then I think Bob Birgeneau, I mean, he was a chancellor that reached out to me, and he called, he wrote me the other day, like we need some information, and we will still get together do dinner with his wife and Ed Denton and Barbara every now and then and so, I mean, it was kind of those people that I could observe, or really have had a really good relationship with, with virgino. I could be really candid with him about stuff. It was funny because he said, you know, he’s Canadian. He went down to the to the south and protested during the Civil Rights Movement, and he were having all the student protest. He goes, Harry, I should show them how to protest. They all know what they’re doing. And I was like, Bob, I don’t they don’t need your help. It’s bad enough with what we’ve got going on. Now, don’t you get out there and start mixing it up. But it was just that kind of that kind of relationship. And then, you know, I think when I find individuals who I can see a spark in them, or there’s some level of creativity, or I can see that they’ve got the potential to do great things, I will spend my time doing that. But I I was, I saw that question that was really kind of think back, there have been so many people that I’ve that I’ve kind of encountered over time, some that work for me, and then others that I worked for and then, like I said, there were bad examples too. It’s like, okay, I don’t want to replicate what this person did, because I saw how the staff reacted to them. And so how can I go about making a difference? And you know, after I retired, like I said, I was fine sitting at home watching Jerry Springer. I mean, I thought that’s what I was going to do. And I remember I had been home about a year. I because I retired in December of 2016 and december 2017 I got a call from them, President Sakaki at Sonoma, state. And she said, So Perry, I’m in the process of searching for Vice President for Student Affairs. And Michael Young, who had been a former VC for Student Affairs in Santa Barbara, had been her interim for like he thought he’s gonna be the sixth month it had been. It was going on 16 months. He wanted to go back into retirement. So she asked. Me if I’d be willing to come in. And I said, Well, how long? She said, Well, I’m halfway done, so maybe three or four months. So that’s how I got started on the in the CSU system. So I went in. I did the from about January until March. They’d have a hard stop in April that Denise and I are headed to Italy for vacation. And he said, Okay, that’s fine, but when you come back and you chair the search for my VP for advancement, so I wind up going back as a consultant. Well, I finished with Judy in June, then I get a call from the president of Cal State Amber Dino in July, saying, Hey, Mr. Grand how are you I’m like, I’m fine to go sit. How can I help you guys? I’m trying to talk you out of retirement. You, I’m highly recommended. I’m not talking to anybody else. But you, if you don’t want to come and do this, you have to give me names of people who you think would be good. And I’m like, Okay, how long he’s like, a year. And I’m thinking, like an academic year, he goes, Well, no, I’m like, 12 months. He goes. In fact, once we hire a new VP, I’d like for you to stay on board for at least in a month and overlap to kind of orient them and kind of train them. And I said, Well, how about 10 months? How about 11 months? And so then the contract comes in for a full 12 months. And I was like, Okay. And I said, well, I need to move here. So I said, Well, is there like that housing allowance? And then I kind of think, really, at CSU, they don’t only people get housing allowance for, like, presidents, right? Well, I got a housing allowance, so, so I I moved to Rancho Cucamonga, and then I commuted every day into San Bernardino. Well, I didn’t finish my year at San Bernardino before I get a call for the President of Cal State Fullerton. This his chief of staff called and says, You’ve come highly recommended. Our VP has got a presidency in New York. We’re looking for somebody we want to take a year to try to in their office, search. We’d be willing to come here. And he goes, the President, would like to talk with you. We can set up a zoom or something. I said, No, I don’t know him. I would like to come in in person and meet him. So I drove to Fullerton. I walk in his office. The person he said was Harry Legrand, the man the myth, the legend. And I was like, Look, he goes, I had five presidents. And Cfu said I had to talk to you about coming here, being my Interim Vice President. And I was like, there are five presidents in CSU that actually know who I am. So it was kind of funny, right? Yeah. So then the pandemic hit, so I’m live on campus for six months into the last three I’m virtual, and I never really get to say goodbye to my team, other than a Hollywood square program on the Zoom, which they celebrated me that way. Then I was home for about a year, minding my own business on vacation Las Vegas. I never look at LinkedIn. I was bored. I picked it up. I saw a method from the President of California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, and he wants to talk to me about consulting. Taught my wife. She’s like, look, consulting is okay. You don’t have to go anywhere, but you’re not moving back to LA. You’re not moving back to Southern California. I’m like, okay, so I tell him, I said, I’m on vacation. Let’s talk next week. He sits at the zoom. He and I hit it on. He goes, I know he said, consult. Would you we just created a Vice President for Student Affairs here after our wasa accreditation, and they said we weren’t investing enough in the student experience. So would you be willing to come and be our inaugural VP? And I said, Well, once again, I’ve got a crew set up in December. I can give you six months my wife, I said, I need to check with the boss. He goes, Why don’t you guys fight out here? Because I said, I don’t know you. I don’t know your campus. So we flew down. It’s been a couple of days, and that’s why I wound up at Cal Arts, and I did the six months. And then he thought October. He goes, Oh, you had enrollment management at Berkeley, right? I’m like, Yeah. He goes, Well, we’re looking for a VP for enrollment management, so we get the student affairs one done. Can you just move over to enrollment management? And I’m like, Yeah, I guess. So don’t move out of your apartment on your cruise. When you come in the back mid January, you should be fine. In fact, you can onboard the two new VPS if we don’t have a selected so in the meantime, he releases the Student Affairs VP when I get back. And so I tell my wife, I don’t think I’m coming home, because I’m going to be like to go back to this VP slot. So I want to be at Cal art for another year. And then he put me on retainer. And I just went off retainer with with him last December so, and then I wound up doing a quick, probably nine months assignment at San Francisco Taylor, Vice President for Student Affairs there with her counseling, better stuff. So I say all that to say I had no idea what my value was, really but to have these opportunities where I wasn’t going through the registry or having any I hadn’t put a shingle out, I wasn’t looking for work, I wasn’t promoting myself in any way, to have these presidents find me at home and actually call me and ask me to do these. Things, and then I just picked up more staff people that are asking me to do references for them. I do letters of reference for them. More student than I’ve met that I’m now doing references for, and people just, I mean, I had to. I remember the deans at Florence and saying you have to leave. You are so refreshing. Can’t you just say? And I’m like, No, this was a temporary assignment. I’m here, and then I’m ready to move on. And I remember Cal Arts, the chief of staff there, said You’re like the President’s security blanket. He would keep you here until he retired, if you could. And I just like, No, that’s not going to happen. So I guess, from an eagle perspective, if I that’s great, but I also feel like,

Harry Le Grande
as long as I have value, I feel like I’m making a difference, and I can see the benefits of what I’m doing. It makes sense. And I didn’t really answer your question, but I just think that all of those people that I’ve those different presidents, you know, when I thought about it, when five campuses, five presidents, five cabinets, five student bodies, five different cultures. In five years, there’s a lot, and I’m still smiling after all of that. And then, if I interject in between that, about a year I left Berkeley, I got a call from the governor’s office appointment Secretary asking me if I’d be interested in being a trustee for CSU. And I thought, Oh, that’s interesting. So I said, Absolutely, since I didn’t think I’d ever be a regent, so why not do CSU? So I wound up being interviewed by the governor’s appointment staff, and they hit me up about a couple of weeks later, saying, you know, we gotta go in a different direction, but we really, really like you. And are there any other boards or commissions you’d be interested in? And I basically said, you know, anything in the area of higher education? And so after my jam, if that’s what I like, I like working with students, being with students. So they’re like, Okay, we’ll make a note of that. So I actually forgot about it. And then about two years ago, I get a call from them ask me about community colleges. How do you feel about community colleges? I said, Well, I actually don’t know anything about them. I’ve never worked in one. I never attend one. I’ve been at one. I know they exist. I know California has a lot of them, and so they want to be interviewing me for that. And then I don’t hear anything. So I’m like, oh, okay, well, I guess that was another, another opportunity to go through an interview process with the governor, and then I’m working at San Francisco State, and I’m at the campus, and I get a call from the appointment secretary, and they’re saying, hey, Harry, this is Jay, and I wonder if he’s still interested in community colleges. I’m like, you still have my name. We don’t get rid of that stuff. No, look, we think it’s a great opportunity for you. If you go work for UC you work for CSU, you work for independent colleges. Community colleges have all these articulation agreements and transfer and they really don’t know how those systems work. So we think this is a really a great opportunity for you. So we have a new appointment secretary. Are you willing to meet with that person? Elect, you know, virtually. So we set up a meeting. Couldn’t get the technology work. We want to have about a five minute conversation. That was in like, January of last year. And then I didn’t really think much about it, and I didn’t hear anything. So I thought, okay, just like the last time, hurry up and wait. Mid March of last year, I get this call and saying, uh, Harry, this is a government employment office, or the governor’s gonna point you to the Community College Board of Governors, and we’ve got your press release ready to go. We want you to review it. If there’s any changes going to make, let us know. He’s going to give us a final K on Thursday morning, and we’ll be releasing it once that happens. And I’m like, wow, this is fast. So sure enough, Thursday morning, I get a call. It’s a go. Your release is going out this afternoon, and your first governor’s Board of Governors Meeting is Monday. I’m like, Monday. This is, like, Thursday. I don’t know anything about this. There’s no prep time, there’s no orientation, there’s nothing. So I I said, Oh, I gotta go to Sacramento. So I’m going to Sacramento on Monday. Sitting in my first Board of Governors meeting, I get an email from calbright College. Hey, congratulations on your appointment. You’re also a trustee for calbright college, and our trustee meeting is Tuesday morning. So I’m like, Okay, I just paid my schedule for Monday. Now I gotta change my schedule for Tuesday. I have to be back here for another meeting. So that’s how that went. But as I’m a governor’s appointment, I could go to I have to go through the Senate confirmation process. So this past January, I went before the the Senate Rules Committee, and they kind of grilled me for 45 minutes, and then they make a plan of recommendation to the full Senate for the confirmation, because if they don’t confirm you within a year, then you are then you don’t get you don’t get pointed. So that’s how it works out. And then, of course, I’m in a meeting in March, and I got a gator and they’re like, Hey, have your ears been burning? I’m like, no, why? Well, your name’s come up to go into the foundation board, and I. Kid, I was just like, Oh, my God, my wife is going to absolutely kill me because I’m supposed to be retired, and I just seem to be fighting more and more assignment.

Glenn DeGuzman
So I can’t imagine you ever stopping Harry like, you know, it’s so interesting to hear. And I don’t, I don’t think I even know someone who has been in such in a position of decision making at the UC at the Cal State, and now the community college system. It’s an incredible journey that you’ve had. And I know that. I know that when I think about like, you know your overall body of experience, you’ve just been places and you’ve seen things, and I would even say corporate too like so you have all these different perspectives to bring in. And I want to channel this, because we’re getting down to the last few minutes, and I want to sneak in a couple of questions and and take advantage of you. You putting on your consulting hat, and this is you speaking to a lot of the senior leaders, the mid level managers and new professionals out in student affairs, but from your from your journey and from your experience, what do you see ahead for Student Affairs? You know, we talked before we even started, about how our profession is evolving and the topics and the issues and things are shifting and changing, but given your background, given your experience, what do you see? You know, what’s coming up for our profession in student affairs?

Harry Le Grande
I saw that question. It actually made me think a minute, because Student Affairs has changed a lot. I think the pandemic had a huge impact on where we are as a profession, and really what that meant. And I think in many ways, it really kind of highlighted or daylighted Student Affairs in ways that the campus probably didn’t really think about us. Because even though we were still called upon to make to create a community, even if you weren’t on campus, even though we weren’t physically in a location, and just recently, one of the things I was in New York, and my my niece has a has a three year old, four year old, and she’s talking about how the pandemic impacted him, the fact that there was no socialization. He saw his first year, anybody within a mask. He was with him, 24/7 and so when that all got released, and he didn’t really know people other than like this. And so when you start to see full faces, there was a whole lot of stuff. And I’ve now talked to a couple other folks who have young kids who were also born during that time period. And then I tried to fast forward that to what does that mean for Student Affairs? Because there’s some socialization, there’s some adjustment periods that we may still see the residual of by the time folks reach college. And what does that actually mean? And so I do think we need to pay attention to the dynamics that that whole pandemic had on that group of kids that were born in the in the year 2020, and 2021, right? And when we fast forward to that, what does that actually look like? I think I’m also been really pleased with the fact that how many student affairs professionals have gone to be college presidents. And I remember a faculty member at San Bernardino asking me, so Harry, why is that happening? Because it used to be the provost was the the pathway. And I said, I said, I said, I think what it is, is they realize a student running a campus is like running a business. It’s like running a city. Student Affairs people are crisis managers, they’re decision makers, they are personnel people, they’re consultants, they’re facilities people. And I think where faculty are really kind of limited in their scope of what their professional work is, the Student Affairs people really are like, running the campus with the except of the academic side of it, right? And so I think that’s been part of the part of the reason I know at least the CSU, they’re like four or five presidents that came out of the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs roles in the UC system. If I think about Adela and San Diego and Thomas, Thomas Parham, who’s at Amiga, Sela, who was at Irvine, and then, like veronesia Eames, who was the vice president at Student Affairs at Fullerton into now at Cal State, LA looking at Charles nice, who just left resent to go to Minnesota to be a president there. So I do think that that’s still a big part of it. And I think what we I think what we have to continue to be is adaptable and flexible. And I think that’s what the nature of, what who we are, because our population is dynamic, and they’re they’re always changing. And so I do think professional development is going to continue to be important as students evolve, and they kind of change, and we need to, we may need to course correct along the way about the stuff that we do. You. So that’s what I kind of think, that’s how that’s what I kind of think is is on the horizon, that we need to just kind of keep our pulse on it, and I think we need to continue to be students of observation. Let’s really take a look at what the landscape looks like, and how can we impact that in ways that continue to add value to the campus. I think many times, Student Affairs people feel like we’re kind of like the stepchild of the campus. You know, we get the budget cuts right after facilities, you know, that kind of thing. But I do think that the pandemic and crisis has really elevated our the view of us, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. We shouldn’t play ourselves short and I think many times we’ve all felt like second class citizens. But when I used to think at Berkeley, in fact, the old student came here because of us. And I said, Well, I used to tell them, staff came to Berkeley because of me. I mean, there are people who leave me for parental conferences who wanted to come to Berkeley because they had had an interactive with me at a conference. And I used to tell them all the time, I’m not the person at the conference that you see on campus. So you may not want to go work for me, but in many of the Yeah, based on, you know, going to going to the African American males Summit, or the female summit at NASPA, or stuff to ACPA, the different workshops and stuff that I’ve been a part of it there. So I did think that, you know, you don’t want to lose sight of that. And I think that I told somebody once I thought housing was probably the best training ground to become a vice president, because it is so multifaceted, and it does require that you have wear so many hats in so many different occasions, and you learn how to deal with crisis. I remember campers of black, Mary Catherine saying Terry Bob always commented on how calm you were no matter what the crisis were. And you know, when I could make that four o’clock in the morning call because of a suicide attempt or something, if he’d be she pursued like, I know you’re not calling to say good morning, right? Like, no, I’m not, good morning, but let’s get let me evolve there, right? But I think it was those kinds of things that made me think, that calmness, that centeredness, that ability to pivot our skill sets that are going to continue to be important for us as the campus dynamics change.

Glenn DeGuzman
Crazy. Harry, we are running out of time, and I want to sneak this one last question in, because it’s it’s usually how we end the podcast. Obviously, this podcast is called Student Affairs NOW, and I’m curious, and I’m going to narrow this question down for you a little bit. But what are you thinking about when you think about the student affairs profession? What comes to your mind, or what troubles you, or what? What do you think? What do you ponder about when you think about our field from your perspective and and let’s just, let’s, let’s just close it that question.

Harry Le Grande
I think the thing that I’d still, that I’d still worry about, is burnout, because it is a very, very it’s all in, right? And I think many professionals now don’t want to give it the time that it takes to really kind of marinate in this work, to really if you want to get it advanced quickly. And I think one of the reasons why I’ve been called out of retirement so much is because there’s a skill set gap that you might have the academic credentials, but you don’t have the experiential credentials in order to do the work. And so I do think that people need and I used to tell people that I used to tellat these conferences, these these institutes, not everybody needs to be a vice president. Not everybody’s equipped to be a vice president. The price you pay to get there is greater than price you pay to stay there. And so when you decide to do this kind of work, your whole family’s involved. My wife’s awakened by the middle of night calls just like I am. It’s used to tell me, why am I on payroll? Because when they call you at two in the morning, I’m getting that I’m waking up as well. And so I do think that that that’s, that’s, that’s huge. That’s going to be a continued thing. And I think what I would say too, we never should give up our integrity, our heart and our genuine love for students, because we are really shaping we’re shaping their minds, we’re shaping the opportunities. We’re shaping where they go in life, and as I fell with the 1000s of students that I’ve interacted with over the course of my career, the number that I’m still in contact with that call for career advice or call about some kind of thing that I never you never really know the impact that you’re having. And so I don’t want people to ever sell themselves short to know that you have value the students really appreciate you. I mean, many times I will say I learned more outside the classroom than I think I did inside the classroom, and it was probably my college experience is really what framed me more than my professors did. Right? Not to belittle the academic side of it, but I did. Think that’s that’s really where all of your cylinders get pulled, the intellectual ones as well as the social ones as well as the environmental ones. I mean, it’s all a part of what you do.

Glenn DeGuzman
Thank you. Thank you, Harry. Harry, it was an incredible conversation to just hear you tell your story you know, as someone who you know, who you know. Obviously, I feel the impact. I know firsthand, the impact that you’ve had on my professional and and my work environment at UC Berkeley. I’m still there as you as you obviously know there, still there. And a lot of the different pieces and things that you shared, you know, the values, the commitment, the buy in, it permeates. It’s still there at UC Berkeley. So thank you so much for you know, impacting my life, impacting the lives of so many others, and for the audience who got to listen to your story. So I’m sure a lot of people are going to be super excited to hear and hear you tell this story. And I learned a lot of new things, so I appreciate you taking the time today.

Harry Le Grande
Everybody thought I should write a book. I think I’m too lazy to do that. I need a ghost. I need a ghostwriter. I was just, I just read me a me a tid wills book that, oh, okay, well, maybe I could do a book, but do it.

Glenn DeGuzman
Harry, gotta do it. Alright. So, so, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Harry. But I’m really quickly I gotta, we have to make sure we thank our sponsors of today’s episode, Evolve and Huron. Evolve help senior leaders who value aspire to lean on and want to unleash their potential for transformational leadership on DEI issues, our student affairs co host Keith Edwards, along with doctors Brian Arau and Don Lee, offer a personalized experience with high impact value The asynchronous content and individual and group coaching maximize your learning and growth with focused time investment, greatly enhancing your ability to lead powerfully for social change. I also want to thank Huron which is a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice by creating sound strategies, optimizing operations, accelerating digital transformation and empowering businesses and their people to their own future by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo, Huron creates sustainable results for the organizations they serve. Huge shout outs to our producer, Natalie Ambrosey, who does all behind scenes of work to make us look good and sound good on this podcast, on YouTube and iTunes, and you can download us in so many different places. We love the support that we get from all of you. These conversations are really important to our community. Please continue to subscribe our podcast. Subscribe on YouTube. Our weekly newsletter announces new episodes each week, and if you’re inclined leave us a five star review. So again, my name is Glenn DeGuzman. Thank you again to Harry Le Grande for joining us in this legend series. And thank everyone who is watching and listening. Have a great week. Take care everyone.

–