There is only one CFO on a campus, and everyone is looking at them.
Bruce Hoeker was 29 when he took a college vice president job knowing almost nothing about higher education. In this episode of The Dataliction Podcast®, John Staub talks with Bruce Hoeker, chief executive officer of the Association of Business Administrators of Christian Colleges, about why isolation is the quiet danger in leadership and why connection is a survival skill rather than a soft one. Bruce tells the story of the conference attendee he found crying alone in an emptied room, and the sentence she gave him: I thought it was just me. He explains how an email listserv taught him the job, why he tells business officers to lift their heads up and leave the building, and where an AI chatbot stops being useful. Higher ed CFOs last about seven years, by his count. The ones who leave their desks tend to run the strongest schools.
Chapters:
00:00 I Thought It Was Just Me
00:22 Meet Bruce Hoeker and ABACC
01:12 A Vice President at Twenty-Nine
02:24 The Woman in the Empty Room
03:27 Only One CFO on a Campus
05:33 Learning the Job From a Listserv
08:22 Why Higher Ed Runs on Committee
09:26 Everyone Is Looking at You
10:40 Seven Years and Out
12:36 The Job He Was Designed For
17:00 Checked Boxes Are Not the Reward
20:53 Lift Your Head Up and Leave the Building
25:26 Where the Chatbot Stops Helping
29:44 Too Busy for the Thing That Would Help
Connect with the host and guest:
John Staub: / john-staub
Bruce Hoeker: / bruce-hoeker-a1778028
ABACC: https://www.myabacc.org
Book a free call with the Dataliction team: https://dataliction.com
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