At a moment of growing inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster our most vulnerable communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2024, Impact Next — a new editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Scott Pulsipher, president of Western Governors University — an online university that utilizes a competency-based learning model to provide advanced education for working professionals.

Greg Behrman, CEO and Founder, NationSwell: What brought you to this field? Was there a moment in your life that galvanized your commitment to driving bold action on social and economic progress?

Scott Pulsipher, President, Western Governors University: I was raised by wonderful parents, and there were many tender mercies in my early development that shaped my leadership. I understood early on that one of the keys to a meaningful life is your influence on those with whom you associate. 

That understanding came into greater clarity for me in a professional context when I served as head of product for a startup, when through the process of being acquired, my seven-person product and marketing team scaled quickly to 120+ individuals across the globe in less than 12 months. There was this wonderful woman, Gloria Humes, who became my assistant. Early on, she reinforced the idea that my real value-add would be in helping these individuals realize that they mattered — showing them that I saw them for all the things that they were doing not only at work, but in life in general. 

Each week, she would give me two or three names, and I would pen a personal note to them to let them know that they were seen. I started improving my ability to observe what individuals were experiencing and taking that mindful moment to handwrite a note to them, acknowledging them, recognizing them, thanking them for their contributions, and congratulating them on a milestone in life or for another notable thing.

At WGU, I am constantly asking myself how I can increase my capacity and scope of leadership to lead a whole organization of more than 9,000 people. It has connected a professional pursuit with a purposeful mission. I want to be part of making a difference in the lives of others, and WGU’s whole business is changing lives for the better by expanding access to high-quality education so that they can pursue their opportunities. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Staying on leadership, what is it about your leadership that helps you to be effective? Is there a philosophy or approach that has really helped you to be an effective leader in this space?

Pulsipher, WGU: Baked into WGU’s core principles is a very clear sense that there’s inherent worth in every individual and that, if given the opportunity, everyone has something big to contribute. I see it as my responsibility as a leader to ask, “Am I getting the best out of this individual? Am I providing the feedback they need so that they understand where there are gaps between what they’re doing and what they actually want to achieve?” 

I’m also striving to do that in larger contexts — I’m trying to figure out how to connect with the individual, even if I’m speaking in a town hall to all 9,000 of our people. I’m continually trying to discern whether I’m influencing others toward an aspiration, whether it’s advancing innovation in our curriculum or new ways to partner and engage at a local level. 

In the past, I had a tendency to quickly jump to problem solving, but now I’m increasingly finding that the best counsel or support I can give is to let people work through their challenges themselves — without those challenges, they won’t really develop in the way they need. At WGU, we’re in a unique position where that logic extends to the business we’re in. With our students, we’re trying to figure out how they can pass a particular course or demonstrate mastery in something, or persist through all of the challenges they face while they’re trying to complete their degree. We endeavor to provide the right level of instruction, mentoring, and support to help them learn and master things for themselves.

At WGU, we’re trying to change lives for the better by acting as a unifying force in the midst of a lot of diversity — we’re striving to create a place where everyone from different backgrounds and all walks of life can come here as the glorious individuals that they are and work toward the same shared goal. And, in the process, we expect that we will also change and become better than we were before. 

Behrman, NationSwell: What else about the impact strategies, initiatives, or partnership models WGU is championing feels particularly unique or differentiated? 

Pulsipher, WGU: It starts with our core principles. In general, we’re operating outside of the specific paradigm most people think of when you say the word college or university — you’ll hear people say, “These individuals are the top talent because we’ve seen them perform in a certain way.” At WGU, our philosophy is that everyone is top talent. Everyone, if given the opportunity, has something big to contribute. 

One thing we’ve deployed in this highly personalized model of education is the notion of competency versus credit hour. Competency-based education is really important, because it basically says that mastery matters more than how long it took you to master something. We focus on what it really means to demonstrate mastery. All of us are going to progress at different rates, and when you design for that, you change the variable of time in terms of how quickly individuals complete their degrees. 

The second big thing is the highly personalized student experience. This is where technology and AI become incredibly beneficial, as most learning is inherently self-directed. We’re already utilizing machine learning, and tapping into existing AI models could make it just as easy to support very specific, personalized recommendations–suggesting the optimal next steps for achieving your objectives, demonstrating mastery in a module, or determining the ideal sequence of future courses, etc.

The third thing I’d highlight that differentiates WGU is our low cost. We have a declining number of traditionally-aged students, and the working individuals whom we serve need a means to upskill and uplevel. That long-form model of education is not manageable with all of the associated costs of traditional higher ed (e.g., living, board, athletics, student life), so that’s where we leverage the internet to reach and teach individuals where they are. If you want to talk about solving the student loan crisis and making opportunity work for everyone — especially those who’ve been historically underserved or disadvantaged — streamlining costs in this way is critically important. If education is supposed to be a great equalizer, let’s prove it to be so rather than being an engine of privilege (and an example of privilege begetting privilege).

Behrman, NationSwell: Of your peers in the social impact space, who are a few whose leadership inspires you, and whom you hold in high esteem?

Pulsipher, WGU: I recently reconnected with Joe Fuller, whom I used to work for at Monitor Group. He’s thinking very deeply about the need to diversify the workforce and how we need to think about talent pipelines. I find his research and work to be very informative and effective in shaping the challenges and opportunities we’re undertaking at WGU.

Another person that I have also come to be associated with is Ted Mitchell, who was formerly the Undersecretary of the Department of Education under President Obama. He is the type of person who stimulates the innovative thinking that’s necessary at this moment because he sees where the puck is going. It’s also been a privilege and a pleasure to work more closely with Tracy Palandjian, the co-founder and CEO of Social Finance — I think they’re also doing great work. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Could you recommend any insightful resources – maybe a book, report, podcast, or article — that has significantly influenced your thinking or inspired your leadership?

Pulsipher, WGU: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin has to be one of the best biographies ever written about one of our best American leaders, Abraham Lincoln. The biggest lesson I’ve taken from it is that if you want really good, productively reasoned solutions to some of your most complex challenges, you’d better staff your leadership and your organization with those who do not think the same way you do. If you create echo chambers or look only for cultural fit in your leadership, you will handicap your best efforts to solve complex challenges. 

I’m also a big fan of Peter Thiel’s Zero to One book on innovation — it resonates with us at WGU as we are motivated by the idea that what we did in the past has to be shed in favor of what’s needed for the future. I appreciate its framework of thinking about true innovation as fundamentally disruptive.

Lastly, I really like Daniel Pink’s book, WHEN: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. The idea of timing as the one resource we can’t create more of resonates deeply — it makes you think carefully about how you’re allocating your time. This has been invaluable for me as I lead WGU; I have to be very careful about how I’m committing my time because life doesn’t stop. How will you invest your scarcest resource? It’s something I reflect on often.