Creating Purpose-Driven Leaders with Brooke Elliott

Jack Sharry: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us on this week’s edition of Wealth Tech on Deck. With this podcast, we celebrate four years of bringing you conversation with some of the best and brightest in our industry. 185 episodes, 22,000 listeners, and 55,000 downloads. I think that says it all. As a niche podcast, we seem to have struck a chord. We want to thank our listeners for your support and interest and to our guests, you really make the show. Thank you for all we’ve learned from the many fascinating conversations we’ve had. And of course, in keeping with our desire to mix things up, as we look at our industry from different angles, I’m very excited to have as our guest, someone who is not in our industry, but thinks like we do. She thinks outside the box. Her name is Brooke Elliott. I first saw Brooke on LinkedIn when she was visiting our friend, Aaron Schumm. Aaron is a shining light in our industry, as you know. Achieving incredible success as the founder and CEO of Vestwell. We’ve been fortunate to have Aaron on our pod as a guest on three different occasions. Vestwell keeps making leaps and bounds forward as they shake up the workplace retirement space with one innovation after another. Brooke Elliott is the Dean of the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Aaron is an alum. Let me read what Aaron’s post had to say. This is a few months ago. “It was inspiring to sit down with W. Brooke Elliott of Gies College of Business at the University of Urbana-Champaign at the Vestwell headquarters. She shared her vision of guiding students to discover their self-purpose and focus on living authentically. Reflecting on my own journey, I wish I had received such mentorship earlier in my life to pursue the dreams with clarity. Embracing a purpose is now a daily conversation at the University of Illinois. I’m eager to witness the impact the future graduates will make on the world. Dean Elliott, welcome to WealthTech on Deck. Great to have you here.

Brooke Elliott: Thanks, Jack. It’s great to be here.

Jack Sharry: So Brooke, you became dean of the business school last year and you are the business school’s first woman dean. As I read about you, I found that you are someone who breaks the mold in so many ways as an academic, as a leader, and as an executive. So I want to hear about all that. We’ll get to that. But let’s start with what really caught my eye and that Aaron found so inspiring. Tell us about your vision of guiding students to discover their self-purpose and focus on living authentically. I love that.

Brooke Elliott: Yeah, yeah, no, it’s great. And so in the Gies College of Business, we talk all the time about business on purpose. And individuals ask, what does that mean? Because a lot of times business and purpose isn’t linked. But what we’ve found is we want to create amazing leaders who move into business and really have an impact and have an impact on their community, on their state, and their nation. We’re a land grant institution. And so part of this purpose really comes out of our mission as a land grant institution. But whenever we really think about what types of alums do we want to produce in Gies, we want knowledgeable alums, those who have the latest skills, but we also want to create alums who understand what their purpose and passion is and how to align business education with that passion. We really believe that if you align those two things, then our graduates can have an amazing impact on the world and also be extremely happy in making that impact. And we think those two things are really, really important.

Jack Sharry: That’s great, love it. I’m gonna ask you some more about that in a minute, but let’s talk a little bit more about the day-to-day of what you do and curriculum and all that good stuff, programs. So if you’d share with us how this plays out in the curriculum and programs you oversee, and true to our tech roots, I read that you have a rapidly growing online program. Please fill us in on all the above.

Brooke Elliott: Sure. And so when we think about purpose and how we weave it throughout our curriculum, I mean, our namesake is Larry Gies. And he talks a lot about why he decided to make such a philanthropic gift to the University of Illinois. And he really is the driver behind the why. And so he encourages all of us, faculty, staff, students to identify what is your why.

and use Gies as really a mobility, like how from a social mobility perspective, how can they leverage education to really live out their why and have that impact? And so part of it is from a co-curricular experience, just the types of opportunities that we provide students. We really believe in experiential learning and experiential learning is part of every single program that we offer in the Gies College of Business, whether in the undergraduate or graduate space. And through that programming, we’re again aligning students’ knowledge and skills with real opportunities to make an impact. And part of what’s embedded in our curriculum is an opportunity for students to explore and not just an opportunity, but really a prompt to explore what their passions are and how they might identify opportunities to make an impact in the community. I would love to call out one course in particular. And so we have a series of common experience courses in our undergraduate curriculum. And so, freshman take a common course. As an example, they take a course around professional responsibility and ethics because we really want to set their frame whenever they’re entering into business education. In their junior year, they take a course and it’s called Business in Action. And so every single student works on a live client project. Then the cool course, I think what really ties it all together, in the senior year, they take a course and it’s actually called Crafting Your Purpose. That is the title of the course. And the students form groups themselves and then they identify a purpose project in their community and they use the knowledge and skills that they built over four years with us at Gies to actually go out and make an impact in their community. And so that’s something that I think really differentiates who we are. And also, really provides an opportunity for students to live out what we’ve been talking about those entire four years. And so it’s amazing to see how proud the students are of the impact that they’re able to make, even as a student, right? They haven’t even left us yet.

Jack Sharry: Sure, sure. So tell me, you don’t have to name names for sure, but give me an example of a purpose project. In other words, what might a student have taken on and what did they do about it and what were maybe some of the outcomes.

Brooke Elliott: Yeah, so it really ranges from some of them identify businesses or opportunities in our local community. Some actually identify opportunities back in their home community because they feel very passionate about making an impact in their home community. So we have a local not-for-profit. Our students actually partnered with that not-for-profit to develop a marketing plan because for that not-for-profit to be sustainable, they have to ensure that the community understands the services that they provide, the goods that they provide, and also they need to be able to attract volunteers from within the community. And so, they didn’t really have the resources to invest in bringing a marketing firm in or bringing in a high profile consulting firm, but our students actually are amazing, right? And so they went in and had a really big impact. And then you can see, the local not-for-profit actually rolled out many of the students’ recommendations. And so it’s great to see that because it has a continual impact in our community. And so that’s one example, but a lot of them do focus in the not-for-profit space. There was actually, we had three students that created a series on financial literacy, and they called it the Bro’s Guide to Financial Literacy because it was three male students. I mean, they made it really fun though, right? And so, and it was a way in their community what they saw is that there were a lot of individuals who didn’t have financial literacy and they thought, for social mobility to occur within their community, that was a missing piece. And that’s something that they thought they could contribute back to their community. And so it was really, really cool to see.

Jack Sharry: And so what kind of feedback do you hear from alums at this point or students as they’re going along? How do they characterize their experience?

Brooke Elliott: Yeah, the feedback is really amazing. So, as freshmen, whenever students show up, they don’t quite know what it means. Probably the most common question I get from our freshmen is what is business on purpose? And so I talk about it and I talk about what it means to me. But then by the time they’re seniors, they really start to understand what it is and why it’s important. And even a few years out. And so if you get it… you talk to alums that are two and three years out, that’s when you really start to see the impact because they really have had more of an opportunity to reflect. They’ve had an opportunity to start in their career. And the fact that we’ve prompted them to think about aligning their purpose and really their values with what they’re going to do professionally. And it starts to have a profound impact. And you can also see they start to take different paths than what maybe a prototypical business student would have taken. We have a lot of entrepreneurs and so it’s, you know, it’s, really, really cool to see. So the student feedback is amazing. The alumni feedback is, just outstanding. And, know, Aaron shared a little bit about how he felt like he wished he could have experienced something like this. And that is the feedback that we get from alums is they’re so glad that we’re talking about purpose and impact with our students, you know, when they’re 18 to 22.

Jack Sharry: Exactly. That’s great. Love it. Now I also know that you’ve got a, I think it’s huge, if I’m looking at the numbers accurately, online program. Talk about that.

Brooke Elliott: Sure, yeah, so we have a portfolio of online programs in the graduate space. We have three fully online degrees and a portfolio of 13 fully online graduate certificates. That portfolio started with a fully online MBA. We launched that in January of 2016. We started with 114 students in January of 2016. At the height of the pandemic, we were over 6,000 students. And right now we’re pretty steady state at just under 5,000 students in that MBA program and then across the entire portfolio we have about 7,000 learners that we serve all over the world. Those programs are amazing because those programs really embody our land grant mission. So we designed the programs to be high quality, flexible, and affordable. And so we offer an MBA for under $25,000, which is really unheard of. We broke the mold for graduate business education in January 2016. And in all honesty, others haven’t moved into the market. I think, you know, think it is… people ask me why, like why has no one else moved into that space? But for us, it’s mission driven. We really believe in expanding access to high quality education. It’s been amazing, like the stories that you hear. We serve individuals who traditionally wouldn’t have been able to pursue a graduate business degree from a top institution. So we have farmers, we have active duty military, we’ve had an individual who is in Cirque du Soleil, we have entrepreneurs. It is really the, I mean, we serve individuals from all types of different backgrounds. And so it’s diversity in it’s very broad as sense, right? And lived experiences and it creates such a rich learning environment. So those programs have been so amazing.

Jack Sharry: So a question about what you’ve learned in the process of the online program. All of us that are listening to this are observing us, those that will see the clip that will be posted on LinkedIn. Will see us having this conversation. So much of us are doing just what you and I are doing, looking at each other. You’re in the middle of Illinois and I’m in the middle of Boston having hopefully a useful and productive conversation. What have you learned about learning online and learning, distance learning or I’m not sure what the appropriate buzzword is for what you all are doing. But what have you learned in that process that might be applicable for those of us that are spending so much time on a headset and a screen in front of us?

Brooke Elliott: Yeah, so I think what I learned, you know, in the beginning there was a lot of skepticism. There was skepticism from our faculty. There was skepticism from alums who had graduated from our programs in terms of could we provide the same quality of education online as we did residentially? I mean, that I think was a really good question. What I learned though is that the answer is yes. The quality of the education that we provide is the same quality of the education that we deliver if you’re in person on campus. We really have been early adopters of technology. Now in 2016 when we launched IMBA, Zoom was innovative, right? No one would say Zoom is innovative now, but no one was using Zoom. Now we’ve really advanced, we’ve been early adopters of AI and so we’ve really embraced technology to create an engaged learning environment. And sometimes what you’ll see is you actually have greater engagement at times in online courses than you do in in-person residential courses, because the technology allows individuals to participate and engage simultaneously via chat. And so there are, think, a lot of advantages, honestly, to online education. And we figured out how to create a really enriching learning environment that I would put up against any learning environment in any type of program.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, one of the things… I’m curious your thoughts on this… one of things I’ve learned I teach as I mentioned to you I teach at Babson College, a course… guest lecturer in a course each semester for undergrad/MBA students and I actually I think at this point, at least the last few I’ve done all the MBA classes are online and the undergrad, I was just there recently was in person but and it’s different. It was like one day after the next. I did the online at night and then the following day I did a did a in person and it is different and my mindset is different in how I conduct it. But I recognize my job is still the same is to convey what there is to be conveyed. So it’s just sort of a different purposefulness if there’s such a term for that sort of thing. Tell me about that. What learnings have you had around that way of engaging online?

Brooke Elliott: It’s interesting that you teach back to back in online, you know, in an online medium and then in a residential medium. And so for our faculty that continue to deliver in both, they do say like, it does require a different skill set. And I think in the beginning, it seemed really different to them. But like you, many of them share, like they remember that they’re there to do the same thing, right? So they’re there to communicate, provide knowledge. They’re there to learn themselves from the individuals in the course. It’s important to get individuals to engage in the content, to get individuals to engage with one another. And as long as we equip our faculty with the right tools, they can do that as well, if not better, sometimes, in an online environment. And so, it’s been honestly our very best faculty and our most innovative faculty have been extremely successful in the online environment and they also happen to be the faculty that honestly are the most successful in the residential environment as well.

Jack Sharry: It seems to me it has a lot to do in terms of the online experience to do with intentionality. I know that like so many who are listening to this discussion. I’m spending four, five, six hours a day on a screen with someone in some kind of conversation. And often it’s one-on-one and the degree to which I am intentionally listening and connecting and understanding and engaging, that makes all the difference in terms of the experience both ways.

Brooke Elliott: It does 100% and what you’ll see in different articles when we talk about our online programs, we talk about they were intentionally designed to be online. So we did not take an existing program and move it to a remote environment. We started anew and knew that we were going to offer these programs online and serve learners all around the world. And so every single design choice was with intention.

Jack Sharry: And I’m imagining people are literally around the world as they’re taking the class. Interesting.

Brooke Elliott: Yeah. We have individuals from, I think, 160 different countries enrolled in our program. So it is a truly global learning environment.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, actually the Babson student body is very international and I’ve taught students that are in India and China and Saudi Arabia that I recall they just happened to have identified themselves as that. I’m just there once a semester to have that conversation. Anyway, a fascinating topic. What are some of the other things that you guys are working on? I’m particularly interested around anything you’re doing around technology, AI, no podcast is complete without talking about AI. So talk a little bit about some of the things you guys are working on that you’re excited about.

Brooke Elliott: Yeah, yeah. So we’ve been really early adopters of AI. And so for at least two years, we’ve been talking about the impact of AI on education. We believe it all starts with our faculty. And so we started really early just creating different workshops, coffee chats, just different ways to expose our faculty to what AI could mean for education. For us to successfully implement AI throughout our curriculum, the faculty have to be comfortable with the tools. And honestly, not just be comfortable with the tools, but understand how they can use the tool to enrich that learning environment or change or improve the learner experience. And so we’ve been really focused on that from a training perspective. In terms of like the cool things that we’re doing, several faculty now have fully digital avatars. I have a fully digital avatar. It’s, I mean, it is crazy. It looks just like me. It sounds just like me. My digital avatar can speak any language. So, I have a Southern accent and so my digital avatar speaks Mandarin in a Southern accent. I mean, it really blows your mind. You know, so on the one hand, it’s fun, but it really, from an efficiency perspective and from an engagement perspective, AI is allowing us to engage with students in a way that we never thought possible. So we’re working right now on where the avatar can actually respond to student questions 24 seven. So you can imagine, I’m delivering a course, a student is engaging in my online content. They’re going through my videos, they’re going through a PowerPoint Deck and they have a question. They, instead of, sending an email or putting that question in a chat when no one is going to respond, we can actually train the avatar. We can adjust all of the course content into the avatar and the avatar can actually have a conversation with the student, 24/7. I mean, that’s, it’s really amazing.

Jack Sharry: This is new way to consider office hours, right?

Brooke Elliott: Yeah, it is, it is. It’s exactly right. And it’s very personalized, right? Because it looks and sounds just like me. From an efficiency perspective, we have faculty that travel all over the world. We want to ensure that we’re always able to update our digital content in a rapid way. So particularly, if you think about, I’m an accountancy faculty member, so a few years ago we had a major tax code change. And so that tax reform actually required that we update a lot of our digital assets. Well, that was very burdensome from a faculty member’s perspective because it had to be updated quickly. The faculty had to work on developing transcripts. They had to spend hours in the studio in a time where it was unplanned. With the digital avatar, we can create that digital avatar. It takes about 30 minutes to create the avatar in terms of image and voice. And then the scripts can be generated by AI and then the avatar can deliver the script. And you would never know whether it was the real Brooke Elliott or avatar Brooke Elliott. Now we believe in learner transparency, and so anytime we use a digital avatar and it actually it’s the avatar that’s delivering the digital content, we alert learners. And so we say like, this digital avatar is the intellectual property of the real Brooke Elliot. So it’s super fun though.

Jack Sharry: So tell me about that. I have to ask the inevitable question about avatars replacing faculty, but I have my own thoughts. I’m curious. I don’t see human beings being replaced, at least in my lifetime, but talk about that because that’s always a concern as AI, we’re all getting familiar with what it means and how it’s going to play out in our lives.

Brooke Elliott: Yeah, I mean, the intellectual property is still that of the human, right? And so, you know, whenever we think about, an academic, right, and an academic develops deep expertise in a given area of study. And so that’s why I think, you know, American academic institutions continue to be at the top. We attract some of the best minds and the greatest scholars from all around the world, right? And they’re able to, they have an understanding, not just an understanding of content, but it’s how to bring different pieces of information together. And then the greatest faculty member is taking that and then teaching students how to apply that in different disciplines or to different scenarios or to scenarios that we’ve never, ever encountered. So that to me is uniquely human. Even if it’s my digital avatar that’s communicating that, the information that gets ingested in the digital avatar, it’s my intellectual property, right? And so it may allow me to reach more learners because my avatar can be in multiple places, you know, at exactly the same time. But what is driving and fueling the avatar still is uniquely a human element. But it’s like, we have these conversations with faculty, right? Like faculty have that concern. Faculty are like, am I going to be replaced? I’m like, well, not as long as you continue to create unique value, and our faculty do.

Jack Sharry: I love your thoughts on this, you and I chatted a little bit prior to our call about Frances Frei, who I’m a huge fan of, and I think you are as well. She teaches at Harvard Business School. for those that may not be familiar with Frances, she’s got a wonderful TED Talk and podcast and books, and she’s worth checking out. It’s F-R-E-I, Frances Frei. In any event, and she talks about something called the trust triangle. I’m, again, a huge fan of that. And it starts with authenticity. So what I’m hearing you say and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this specifically. And you said it earlier actually that your best professors really get through to the students. And I’m going to guess a lot of that, it’s not because they know the most and maybe they do. It’s because they are authentic in terms of how they deliver. So talk about that if you would.

Brooke Elliott: Yeah, we talk a lot about authenticity in Gies because it is fundamentally tied to purpose. So, I talk about authenticity a lot as a leader. You know, when I describe myself and who I am as a leader, I talk about the importance of being your authentic self. And here I talk about the importance of creating an environment where all feel confident in bringing their authentic selves to our college. And whether it’s from a staff perspective, whether it’s from a faculty member perspective, or whether it’s from a learner perspective. Being able to be vulnerable and be your authentic self, that’s the first step to learning. It’s also the first step to fun. And so, that’s how I talk to our students I’m like you can’t learn if you’re not willing to bring yourself and I asked them I just I told them think about the most fun you’ve ever had and I asked them to like close their eyes and imagine and I asked them to think about who they were with and I’m gonna get back to trust and and it tends to be they were with individuals that they’re very comfortable with and they trust and so they start to see like me bringing the pieces together about why it’s important for them to bring their authentic vulnerable selves into the environment. But it also is our responsibility as an academic institution and as a college to create a safe learning environment. You know, whenever I think about like that is our primary purpose as an academic institution is to create an environment where all feel safe learning. And there are lot of different ways to learn. You can learn in the classroom, you learn outside of the classroom. You honestly, I mean, I’m a business school dean, but you probably learn more outside of the classroom as an undergraduate student than you do within the classroom, right? But I really believe in authenticity. Whenever you walk into our main building, which is the business instructional facility, there’s a big wall and it says, seen, heard, valued. And that is our statement about, bring your authentic self, and here you will be seen, heard, and valued. I mean, that’s really what we model everything in our community around. And then it allows our students to really, I think, be vulnerable, think about purpose, think about impact, and be able maybe to share with colleagues, with faculty members in a way that they otherwise wouldn’t. And it leads them on paths that I think they could have never, ever imagined.

Jack Sharry: Well, as we look to start to wind down one, a couple more questions, but one in particular, what’s next? Where do you go from here looking at your accomplishments over time, you’re high energy and full of many important accomplishments. What’s next?

Brooke Elliott: Yeah, so I think it’s really just to continue to drive what it means to offer learner-centric education. Whenever I think about an academic institution, we’ve done things the same way for a couple of hundred years, and we probably need to do things a little bit differently. I’m a firm believer in that education is still the greatest investment that an individual can make in themselves, that an organization can make in their employee. Despite what you might hear in the popular press about the value of education, I still believe it is the greatest investment. But academic institutions have to change. We have to think about learning in a different way. We have to think about who we serve in a different way. It’s not just 18 to 22 year olds. There are a lot of individuals in the workforce, right, who seek education, who really need that education. And Research One institutions, we haven’t been there for that population. So it’s thinking about how can we leverage all that we know about developing and delivering education, creating rich and safe learning environments, and providing it to all. Like that’s how I think about our land grant mission. It’s providing, it doesn’t, our land grant mission isn’t providing four-year credit-bearing degrees to all who desire it. It’s providing education, right, to all who desire it and are committed to pursuing it. And so I think it’s just really living out what that land-grant mission was intended to be.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. So normally I would ask key takeaways. I think you may have just summed it, but did you miss any?

Brooke Elliott: No, I think that probably is my key takeaway is, education is still where you should put your time and your money.

Jack Sharry: Yes, absolutely and make sure that you go to a place that’s all about purpose and authenticity, right? That’s great. So one last question, always my favorite, away from the business at hand to talk about you and what you do outside of work. What do you do outside of work that people might find interesting or surprising that you’re particularly passionate about or excited about? Tell us.

Brooke Elliott: Yeah, so I can share two things. I have a passion for off-road trucks, which might be a little bit surprising. So I am from… in southern Indiana, and it’s a factory town. So there was a Ford plant and a GM plant. So there was a lot of infighting in terms of Chevy versus Ford.

Jack Sharry: You were either a Ford family or Chevy family back in the day.

Brooke Elliott: I drive a Ford Raptor. So I like, we are a Ford family. Both of my uncles worked for Ford. But it really kind of just reflects who I am. I’m from a rural blue collar town. I’ll always drive a Ford Raptor. I’ll never drive anything else. I love to go off-roading. And so my cousin and I, we have a lot of fun. So that’s something that maybe is a little bit, maybe a little bit surprising about me. The other thing maybe, I do have two kids, so my other passion is my kids’ travel sports. So every weekend we’re somewhere new. This last weekend we were in Memphis, but I really enjoy it. It allows me to, you know, engage with my kids in a really special way. And, you know, I love seeing them succeed.

Jack Sharry: Sure, sure. What sports do they play?

Brooke Elliott: Our son plays baseball and he’s a senior in high school. He’s going to play baseball in college, which is really awesome. And then our daughter is an elite soccer player. So, it’s a great time in our lives.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. Good for you. So thanks for this conversation. I really have enjoyed it, Brooke, I love your energy and I love your thoughtfulness about how you do, what you do, and the way you do it. So thank you for all that. For our audience, thanks for tuning in today and over the past four years. If you’ve enjoyed our podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share what we’re doing here at WealthTech on Deck. We’re available wherever you get your podcasts. You should also check us out at our dedicated website, wealthtechondeck.com. All of our episodes are there along with blogs and curated content with many of the folks from around the industry who have appeared on the show. So, Brooke, thanks so much. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Brooke Elliott: Thanks Jack, I really enjoyed it as well.