Leaders on Leadership featuring Dr. Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, President of Oakland University

Episode Transcript

Jay Lemons:

Hello, and thank you for listening. I’m Jay Lemons. Welcome to Leaders on Leadership, brought to you by Academic Search and the American Academic Leadership Institute. The purpose of our podcast is to share the stories of the people and forces that have shaped leaders in higher education, and to learn more about their thoughts on leadership in the academy. I’m really thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Ora Hirsch Pescovitz. Ora is the president of Oakland University. She has more than 30 years of leadership experience spanning academic medicine, the pharmaceutical industry and higher education. She brings a remarkable breadth of knowledge to her role as president at Oakland. She’s a renowned pediatric endocrinologist and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Pescovitz has authored over 190 scientific publications and is widely recognized for her contributions to education, healthcare, and leadership. Her career has included executive roles at Indiana University, University of Michigan in the Eli Lilly company.

Since arriving at Oakland University she has prioritized student success, diversity, equity and inclusion, sustainability and community engagement while enhancing the university’s national profile and entrepreneurial spirit. Ora, who earned her medical degree from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine is the recipient of countless awards for research, teaching and public service. She also serves on many national boards and is chair-elect of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Her late husband, Dr. Mark Pescovitz was a renowned surgeon at Indiana University. She’s the proud mother to three children, three in-law children, and nine grandchildren. Her partner Dr. Daniel Walsh is a cardiologist in the Corewell Health System. Ora, thank you so very much in the midst of all that you have accomplished and the busy life that you lead, I am grateful for your willingness to spend time with us here on the podcast.

Ora Pescovitz:

Jay, I’m so happy to be with you. I’m delighted that we’re having this chance to chat.

Jay Lemons:

As am I. Well, Ora, one of the goals of the program is to ask leaders to do some reflection. Something we don’t do necessarily very often or very well for very understandable reasons, but to think back on the pathways to leadership for you, with the hope that someone else may be inspired. Ora, I want to just open up the space for you to share with our listeners and talk about some of the people and the events and the opportunities that have forged you as a person and as a leader. And again, you are one of these boundary-crossing leaders from academic medicine to industry with Eli Lilly and then back to the heart of a comprehensive institution and a great research institution at Oakland University. So, talk with us about what has happened to you and how this journey has unfolded.

Ora Pescovitz:

Well, Jay, I think we’re all products of our backgrounds and our upbringing. And I guess in my case, I don’t think I would be where I am, were it not for my family. I definitely believe that I’m a product of the family that I grew up in. And I did grow up in a very unusual, I think, and remarkable family. On my mother’s side I’m first-generation. My mother grew up in Stalinist Russia under very difficult and dire circumstances. She grew up in Siberia during World War II in extreme poverty and starvation. By the time she got to the United States and throughout the rest of her life, she was very proud to be an American and loved America, and wanted her four children, I’m the oldest of four with three younger brothers to have all the opportunities that she never had the opportunity to have herself, including, and very importantly, higher education.

My father was a prominent rabbi, and was very active in the Civil Rights Movement, and it was in my father’s offices on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., that Martin Luther King and others drafted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And I accompanied my parents when I was a young child to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his, I Have a Dream speech. My parents had a very lively home. They hosted people from all religions, all cultures, all races and all backgrounds on a regular basis to our home for dinners.

And they included the four children even when we were very young in these diverse conversations and encouraged us when we were very little to listen. But as we got older to participate. And my parents never agreed on any political position, and they encouraged us to debate as well. And so I grew up in this very lively home with a diversity of views and thought and encouraged to develop a great deal of tolerance for many viewpoints and many things. This infused my outlook on life. And my parents encouraged all four of us to both pursue very extensive higher education careers, and careers of service for all four of us. That really was true, and I think that it impacted what my brothers and I do today.

Jay Lemons:

Wow, Washington D.C. is really your hometown.

Ora Pescovitz:

Yes, absolutely.

Jay Lemons:

That’s marvelous.

Ora Pescovitz:

If I think specifically about how did I get to pursue the career that I did, as a child of an immigrant, I think I had many of the sort of qualities and characteristics that many children of immigrants had, that my mother in particular had very high expectations. So there was a lot expected of us. I went to public school, but when I was in ninth grade, I thought I was going to become a pianist because I was seriously following a musical career. But when I was in ninth grade, I took a class called Research and Development.

I didn’t know anything about research and certainly didn’t know what development meant, but I know why I took that class because I was the only girl in the class, and I was very interested in boys as a teenager of ninth grade would be interested in. And that class really changed probably the trajectory of my life because I decided after taking that class that I would want to become a physician scientist. And I was still interested in boys, but I also learned that you could pursue a career as a research scientist because I had the opportunity to do this independent study class, and I was in the backyard of the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, and that’s where I did that study and decided I was going to become a doctor that pursued research, and that’s really what I did after that.

Jay Lemons:

I can’t help but ask, do you still have either of your parents with you?

Ora Pescovitz:

My parents died within the last few years. They died in their 90s, but they were a huge influence on my life.

Jay Lemons:

No doubt. And consequential citizens that contributed to one of the great movements of our lifetime and perhaps one of the more significant ones in human history. Wow.

Ora Pescovitz:

Yeah.

Jay Lemons:

And to have been there when Dr. King gave that speech. That is…

Ora Pescovitz:

Well, my dad was really quite influential. My dad had the pens Johnson gave him for signing the Civil Rights Act.

Jay Lemons:

Wow.

Ora Pescovitz:

My dad was really quite prominent in a number of different things. So he had quite a illustrious career.

Jay Lemons:

Wow. What was his congregation?

Ora Pescovitz:

He was actually the founding director of what was called the Religious Action Center. He didn’t have a congregation. He actually served in a national role. He actually gave the eulogy for Dr. King in Washington for the Jewish community when he died, he was a close friend of Dr. King.

Jay Lemons:

Wow. Wow. What do you remember of the assassination and those incredibly sad days?

Ora Pescovitz:

I don’t remember specifically that, but I do have some very interesting memories. I have one memory when Dr. King called my father to come to the march on Selma. And I have a very clear memory. I was probably six or maybe seven years old, and I remember that my father called my mother and said that Dr. King had called him and said he had all the denominational clergy coming from Washington, and it had just been Bloody Sunday, and he needed clergy to come from Washington. And he had a priest and he had a Methodist minister, and he was looking for a rabbi, and they had already had those murders in Selma.

And he said to my mom, “Martin called, and he needs a rabbi.” And I was in the kitchen with my mother. My mom said, “Well, Dick, you’ve got to go.” And I remember tugging on my mother’s shirt and saying, “You can’t let him go. He’s got four little children and people were killed.” And my mother said, “Your father has to go. This is his work.” And I remember there’s a wonderful picture of these clergy boarding the plane from Washington. It was in the Washington Post. I’ll show you the picture next time I’m with you of the clergy boarding this plane. It’s a famous picture before they went to Selma.

And when they arrived in Selma, my dad was then taken to the Brown Church in Salem. And when he arrived, Dr. King was preaching from the church. And he saw my dad and he said, “Dick, you’re here, you’re next.” And so my dad then gave the sermon at Brown Church. And he wasn’t prepared to give a sermon. He didn’t know that he was going to have to give the sermon. So he gave a sermon that he says was the most important sermon he ever gave in his life. And when I see you, I’ll read it to you.

Jay Lemons:

I would cherish that. Thank you so much for sharing all of that.

Ora Pescovitz:

Yeah, it was an important period. But I will say that it also impacted my life because I do remember as a child that my father was criticized in our neighborhood, and I do remember that we had some swastikas painted on our driveway. And I remember once that our front yard was actually toilet papered, and there was racism and antisemitism during that time, much like there is today. And my father was a target of some of his activity.

Jay Lemons:

Of course he would’ve been. Well, the amount of tumult that it feels as if we see in our contemporary society does take me back. And we’re about the same age. I have for whatever reason, surprisingly salient, strong memories of the anxiety of that era and of that day, of the excitement about change and a spirit of enlightenment, but also, there was a lot of fear and there was a lot of violence in that period of our lives too.

Ora Pescovitz:

Yeah. And I think that when you have been through something like that or you grow up in a certain way, it does help you sort of solidify your own values. And it has sort of allowed me to not question my own positions on many things.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Let’s move the conversation a little bit to talking about leadership. I like to ask people, “What in your mind makes a good leader?” And by good, I feel like I’m trying to reclaim that word from not meaning something less than great. Not meaning grade B, but good as in virtuous, as in effective, as in someone who’s really made a consequential difference.

Ora Pescovitz:

So I have actually thought about this for a long time, and I have looked at leadership in many fields, and as you indicated, I’ve worked in a number of different spaces. So I don’t think that these qualities and characteristics that I’m going to mention to you are unique to higher education. I have really considered this across every industry, every field, to every space. And I’ve come to the conclusion that what differentiates extraordinary leaders from ordinary leaders. So I actually think there are what I’ve called eight Cs, eight qualities and characteristics that extraordinary leaders have when they have all eight of them. I think good leaders, or average leaders have some of these, but I would say that the extraordinary leaders have all eight of these.

And I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and I’ve actually talked about it when I’ve had the opportunity to talk about leadership. And I’ll just tell you briefly what I think they are. And in a way, we’ve already touched on one of them. The first one actually, I said they’re eight C’s. The first one actually doesn’t start with a C, but it has a C. The first one is what I call a moral compass. And in a way, we sort of alluded to this, if you’re a religious person, this might be your north star, your sense of religion, what drives you, but it is your sense of right or wrong. And again, if you’re religious, it’s your sense of religion, but it is your sense of morality. It’s your sense of knowing right from wrong. But I think there’s a lot more to this.

And I think the second one is compassion. It’s the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes and feel what they will feel. Third, I would say it’s courage. And today, I would say in this day and age, when we’re facing, for example, attacks on higher education, it’s the ability to stand up for what we believe and not be afraid to speak out. That’s an example.

Fourth, I would say it’s contribution. It’s the importance of being able to, like my parents used to say, have a life of service, be willing to make a difference and contribute. I love the fact that Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “Isn’t it amazing that no one has to wait even one day before making a difference in this world?” And of course, she was only 16 when she died and never really got the opportunity to actually make that difference that she wrote about, and yet her diary went on to make this incredible contribution.

Jay Lemons:

Love it. Yeah.

Ora Pescovitz:

Fifth, I would say it’s commitment because all these other things I’ve talked about in a way are just words, but commitment is the brute force. It’s the work that you do. It’s the actual hard part of it. It’s the actual what you get up in the morning and you actually do. It’s the actions.

And then fifth and sixth are really about community. It’s recognizing the fact that we’re not doing these things alone. So the first of those is communication. What we’re doing now, the fact that we’re part of a community that is sharing and articulating our messages and recognizing that we do not do what we do alone and we are communicating together. That is a critical part of leadership. And then along with that is collaboration, because a great leader just doesn’t do it in an egocentric way. They’re collaborating with others.

And then finally, the one that I call the spicy sauce, what really differentiates an extraordinary leader from an ordinary leader is creativity. Really amazing leaders see the same thing that ordinary people see, but, they do see it differently. They can differentiate things and do things in a creative, innovative, entrepreneurial way and are truly creative. So when you put all those together, that’s when you have extraordinary leadership, really good leaders, good leaders, average leaders have many of those. But the extraordinary leaders, and by the way, it’s also true for extraordinary institutions, have those qualities and characteristics. And to me, I think that when you see all those together in one, that’s what really makes an extraordinary leader.

Jay Lemons:

Really appreciate that. It feels to me as if you’ve got something interesting for another day, maybe another season of your life where there might be a leadership book.

Ora Pescovitz:

Yeah, I’ve thought about it. I have talked about this in some other settings. So yes.

Jay Lemons:

Well keep thinking on it, and I would love to support you in any way possible.

Ora Pescovitz:

Well, maybe we could do that together, yeah.

Jay Lemons:

There you go.

Ora Pescovitz:

Yeah, no, I have thought about, a lot of these things I’ve thought about for some time.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. Well, that’s really wonderful. When you’re creating your own team of leaders, because I wholeheartedly agree with you that leadership is not an individual sport. It’s a team sport. When you’re building that group of people that you work with, what do you look for in those leaders?

Ora Pescovitz:

Well, first of all, I do look for many of these things that we’ve just talked about, and I do try to find people who have many of these qualities and characteristics, but there are some additional things that I seek. I want people who are willing to take risks, and are unafraid to fail, because I myself have failed at many things. And I think that failing is fine, and I do have some basic principles that I have basically felt are really important for success. So I’ve looked for those things and I try to really aim for that. With my team, I have really focused on several really key things. One is, I have what I call Rules of Engagement with my team, and I’ve tried very hard to get the team to follow these Rules of Engagement. I have to say that I haven’t always been successful in getting the team to follow these rules, but it’s very important to me to get the team to focus on these.

And there are five rules of engagement that we try to focus on, and some of these are based on some basic principles that come from Patrick Lencioni’s book on Rules of Engagement that we have then tailored for my team specifically. But they’re based on some of those principles. And maybe I could just share with you how I look at those, because I think you’re very helpful when you sort of think about how a team has to function.

The first one is, that the team has collectively, each of my team members has their own team. Because they each have their areas of expertise, but collectively, the team has to be focused on achieving a defined set of results. And they have to be really determined to focus on achieving those results. And we have to agree on what those results are. But in order to achieve those results, there are four other things that they have to be really determined that they’re going to do well, and it’s very hard to get to those.

So the first one of those others is very difficult to get in a team, and that is trust between the members of the team. And I have to admit that when you have, for example, a cabinet, a president’s cabinet, it’s not easy to get those team members to trust one another. Very often, they’re so focused on their individual results that they’re not willing to focus collectively on the team’s results. So that’s a really important component of the Rules of Engagement, is to allow them to trust one another.

The next component really is a commitment, and I talked about that when I said about the qualities and characteristics of an individual excellent leader, but they all have to be committed to achieving the collective results. And that means that they have to say, “What is their responsibility? What are they committed to?” And then they have to agree to the next piece, which is accountability. What are they accountable for, and are they going to hold their team member accountable for both what they’re individually going to do and what the other team members are going to do?

Finally, the last part, which is the most difficult part, and this relates to something I told you about my own childhood, conflict, because conflict is actually a very desirable thing on a team if you know how to manage it. Because constructive conflict, spirited opposition, where you disagree on a team, where you’re willing to embrace it and you say, this is really great that we disagree, but how are you going to manage that disagreement? And if we disagree on either the result itself that we want to achieve or how we’re going to get to that result is a good thing at the beginning of a discussion, but it’s not good at the end.

So in other words, it’s great to have everybody have an opinion about what result are we trying to achieve or how are we going to get there? But after everyone’s opinion is expressed and everyone feels that they’ve had a chance to be heard, then you have to stop and reach agreement that you’ve already heard all the views, you’ve had the spirited discussion, you’ve heard the conflict, and now it’s time for the discussion to be over. And it’s time to agree, we’ve heard the disagreement and now we’re all going to agree to move towards the result, and the discussion is over now. That is a really difficult thing for teams to get to, and if you have a high functioning team, you agree on those rules of engagement.

Jay Lemons:

I’m thinking back to your earlier words. It sounds as if your parents had great ability to do that. If I recall your saying, they very often had divergent views.

Ora Pescovitz:

They did.

Jay Lemons:

But they knew how to come together, it sounds like.

Ora Pescovitz:

Yeah, I mean, they always canceled each other’s votes. I mean, they didn’t agree to vote the same, but they agreed on how to raise their children. So in other words, they disagreed on many things, but they agreed on many things. But when it comes to moving an institution forward, you can’t have what I call the meeting after the meeting. You can’t have everybody on your leadership team say, “We’ve agreed to follow this path.” And then have people afterwards say, “We all agreed to do this,” but then leave the meeting and say, “But I really didn’t, and I’m going to sabotage it.”

Jay Lemons:

Yep. Yeah. A certain outcome is spinning in circles or going backwards when that happens. Ora, one of the important audiences for our podcast are those about 140 or so participants in the AALI leadership programs, people who have been tapped, identified and supported and encouraged to think about taking up leadership in higher ed. I would love to hear your advice for them.

Ora Pescovitz:

Well, I have several principles that I have personally followed for how I pursue my own goals. So maybe I’ll just tell you my own way I pursue my goals.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah, perfect.

Ora Pescovitz:

And I have followed this basic principle for a few decades actually for myself, and this is pretty much what I do. I set very high aspirational goals for myself. I call this shooting for the stars, and I set a goal, which I know that sometimes I plan to achieve, but I might miss and I do everything in my power to achieve that goal or those set of goals. And then I set about a plan to achieve that goal or that set of goals. I don’t have necessarily too many, but I will set a plan to achieve that goal. Now, I probably already alluded to this. I have missed that goal or those set of goals several times in my career. I’m happy to share with you a few examples of when I’ve missed.

So when I’ve missed, which I have, I then have what I call a Plan B, and I call that miss, in my mind, I call that a moon landing. Because I missed the stars goal, and then I end up on a lower place and I call that a moon landing. And what I sometimes say to people is, “If you want to tell people that that moon landing was your miss, go ahead. But otherwise, you could tell people that you were aiming for a moon landing.” And people will say, “Well, that’s great.” I’ll just use one example for you from, you went through my bio a little bit when I became the CEO at the University of Michigan Health System, that’s a really big job, $6 billion health system, 37,000 employees, that’s a pretty massive job.

Candidly, it’s bigger than the job I currently have. That was the moon landing for me. I took that job when I didn’t get another job, and a lot of people thought, “Wow, that was a big accomplishment.” But in reality, I ended up in that job because I didn’t get another job, and many people know the job I didn’t get. But lots of people think, wow, that was a really great job you got, it was a big aspirational goal. But when I took that job, I did everything in my power to do that job as well as I could.

And of course, that is something that you put your heart and soul into, and you do the best you can do. So that’s what I mean by saying you take that moon landing, and if you say to somebody, I got a moon landing, what are they going to think? Wow, what’s wrong with the moon landing? That is amazing. So being flexible and resilient and hitting your moon landing and excelling in that is really important. And so that to me is a very important approach to how you pursue your life. And yet there comes a time in every person’s journey where they will find that they’re maybe not achieving what they wanted to achieve and where they’re not happy in what they’re doing. And I believe that successful leaders must be happy, or else they will not be successful in their role. And so I do have some principles about what they should do if they find themselves unhappy in their role. And I call this Ora’s Rule of the 4 P’s. What do you do if you’re in a job, and you find yourself miserable if it happens?

Because at some point you might find yourself here. And then I think a leader needs to say, and if we’re talking to AALI leaders, if they find themselves like that, first they have to figure out why are they unhappy? What is it? Is it their environment? Is it their circumstance? Is it their salary? Is it their spouse? Is it their boss? What is it? Because if they can figure out the thing that is making them unhappy, then they have to go to what I call the first P, And that is to push, to really do everything in their power to lobby, to push, to change that thing that’s making them unhappy. Let’s say it’s their salary. Let’s say I once had somebody that worked for me who had to have a window in her office because she needed light to be productive. So when she figured that out, I was able to get her a smaller office with a window, and that made her happy. That was what she needed.

I couldn’t give her a comparable size office, but she needed the window, and she figured that out. So that worked. If that’s what you can figure out, and that could solve it. For other people, let’s say you figure out that, isn’t it. I’ll give you an example from my own career. When I was married, I was in a dual career marriage, you talked about my husband and my husband and I couldn’t get jobs in the same city. And he said, “We finally moved to Indianapolis.” And I said, “India, no place? I can’t go there.” I mean, how in the world could I survive there? And yet I pushed and I pushed and I pushed, “Can’t we find another place?” And finally I realized, there’s no way, we couldn’t get jobs in the same city. So I finally realized he had better earning potential as a transplant surgeon than I had as a pediatric endocrinologist. And we had three babies, three children, three and a half and under. So I stopped with the pushing, and moved to the second key, and that is put up with it.

Instead of changing the external environment, I decided to change myself, my attitude, and I put up with it. And I spent the next 21 years at Indiana University, and it turned out to be the best 21 years. And I changed my attitude, and I had an amazing 21 years.

Jay Lemons:

Love it.

Ora Pescovitz:

The only thing that changed was my attitude. I changed me instead of the environment. And so you can change how you feel, and I didn’t change anything except myself. I became completely transformed. I thought I couldn’t live there, and it turned out to be the best place in the world.

Jay Lemons:

So rich, thank you for sharing. Yeah, yeah. What about the other two P’s?

Ora Pescovitz:

Okay, let’s say that doesn’t work. It turned out that second P worked for me. Let’s say you try to change the external environment, and that doesn’t work. Let’s say you try to change yourself, and that doesn’t work. This sometimes happens in marriages. You go to counseling, and you try to change him, you try to change yourself, and nothing works. It also happens in jobs. Then you have to go to the third P, which is collapse. You can’t be unhappy and be successful in your job. So if you can’t change the other person or the environment, and you can’t change yourself and be happy, then you have to leave and find another job or another spouse, because you can’t be unhappy and be successful.

And the last P is play. Because again, you must be happy to be successful.

Jay Lemons:

I love that both of those lists that you’ve shared end with creativity and play. I think those are cousins in a really wonderful sort of way, that ability to look at the world and see it and make sense of it. There’s an element of play in creativity, and there’s a way in which play can unleash creativity. I want to ask you about resilience, which you mentioned, and here I’m mindful of the extraordinary tragedy that you and your family experienced with the very unexpected death of your husband, Mark. Reflect on how at that point in your life as a leader and a mother and a grieving spouse, what was the strength you pulled on, the resilience that powered you?

Ora Pescovitz:

My husband, who was an amazing person, he was like a polymath. He was a brilliant scientist, an amazing surgeon, a great doctor, great musician and an artist. He was really an incredible guy. He was killed in a second in a car accident, driving between Ann Arbor, Michigan and Indianapolis, commuting between the two. He was driving in an ice storm, having to go to do a transplant, and also to take a photography class that he was taking with undergraduate students. So he was just this amazing person. And the father, of course, of my three children, and he was 55 years old. So in a moment, perfectly good health, his life was over, and it was tragic for my children, of course, and for me, and he was my soulmate.

And I thought, I didn’t know how I would move on. But then, I thought about how at the time I was the CEO of the University of Michigan Health System. And I thought about all the people who had it worse than I had, patients who had these horrible illnesses, widows who didn’t have the financial resources that I had, people who didn’t have the ability to deal with things in the way that I had, people who didn’t have the family that I had. And I kept thinking that as horrible as it was for me, there was somebody who had it worse. And I felt so grateful to have an incredible job, great resources, great support systems, wonderful friends and family, that I realized that, while of course I was grieving, I had no right to feel sorry for myself, really. And I just figured that the world does not stand still, and I had to move on. And I just did.

And so I gave myself a certain amount of time to grieve. And by the way, Judaism in a way has this structure to grieving. I don’t know if you’re aware of that, but it does. It’s a structure. First you have a week, then there’s a month, and then there’s a year, and it’s a structured grieving period, which actually fit with my personality too. In other words, I gave myself that time too. And by the way, I still grieve. It’s 14 years, and I’m still grieving, but not in a way that has incapacitated me. And I miss him every day, but I actually still have a picture of him sitting right here with my first child. But I just feel like it’s just something that you just must move on from. And again, as I said, so many people have had it so much worse. And life includes disappointments, tragedies, imperfections, and heartache, but it also includes amazing triumphs, discovery and great successes. And so both offer valuable opportunities for growth. And I feel fortunate to have had both.

Jay Lemons:

What you said just now, thank you for your willingness to talk about this and to say all that you said and at a personal level, Ora, I lost my own dad six weeks ago.

Ora Pescovitz:

Oh my gosh.

Jay Lemons:

And the reason I share that is the Joslyn Center tracks people who have lived with diabetes. There are only 125 people in the world that since 1947 when they started keeping track, people who’ve lived as diabetics for more than 75 years, and my dad was one of those. And he always said exactly what you said. “I look at the burdens of others, and I feel so lucky. I have a condition that can be managed.” And by golly, for 77 years, he managed it beautifully.

Ora Pescovitz:

That’s amazing.

Jay Lemons:

That’s the root of around the perspective of understanding the challenges of others. Let me move into what I call a lightning round, and that means the questions are shorter, the answers can be whatever length you want.

Ora Pescovitz:

Okay.

Jay Lemons:

Who’s influenced you most?

Ora Pescovitz:

Well, I think I talked about my parents, but I do think that they are the ones that have influenced me the most. I mean, I read a lot and I’m influenced by many authors and musicians and artists as well. But if I think about it, I still think, honestly, it’s my parents.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah, I think that’s true for the vast majority of us, for good or bad.

Ora Pescovitz:

For me, it’s good. It’s good.

Jay Lemons:

Absolutely. As one of my first bosses used to say, “You can always tell people who’ve had good parents.” And I think there’s some truth to that. What book has had the greatest influence on you?

Ora Pescovitz:

I’ve read a lot of books, and so I was trying to think.

Jay Lemons:

You have?

Ora Pescovitz:

Yeah. But there’s a book that I think I really like. It’s called Range by David Epstein. And I like it because what he talks about is, it’s not just about athletes, but it’s about different careers. One of the examples he gives is athletes, that the best athletes are those that are good in more than one sport. So they have been good in multiple different sports.

And it resonates with me because I’m not the smartest person in any of the areas that I have been interested in. But I have been interested in a lot of different things. And I think that these different transferrable skills that I think I have have benefited me. So what David Epstein refers to as athletes that have been good in soccer and baseball and tennis and golf are actually more well-rounded than those that just pursue golf. And I think that when we as individuals take on many different fields and do maybe A- in all of them, we are better than if we’re A+ in just one. And so that’s really what I love about this idea of range. And so that’s what this book talks about, and I think it’s really good and I think it’s really good for our students as well.

Jay Lemons:

Very good.

Ora Pescovitz:

I also like very much along those lines, Left Brain, Right Brain, because it’s a similar sort of concept, but a lot of people know that book, and few people know this one by David Epstein, and I kind of wanted you to get people to read it.

Jay Lemons:

It’s a new one for me as well, and I’ll look for it.

Ora Pescovitz:

Yeah, it’s good.

Jay Lemons:

Do you have a fondest memory of your undergraduate experience?

Ora Pescovitz:

I was a six-year medical student, so just want to say I was in a different experience than most students that you know, so I was sort of in a clique. There were only 12 women in my class, it’s an unusual time. I mean, I was in a sort of unique group, but I loved it. Probably the best part of it was dating, I have to say. And when I tell Dan, my partner today that I was a goof off, he doesn’t believe it, because of how serious I am today. But I was. And part of it was I was already accepted into medical school as a freshman in college, but I was. I played piano in a quartet and I dated a lot. I was sort of a big flirt.

Jay Lemons:

I love it. Well, I like to ask people if they hadn’t worked in higher ed, what might they have done. You have had a stint outside in your work at Eli Lilly.

Ora Pescovitz:

Yeah, but that’s not what I would’ve done.

Jay Lemons:

Yeah. What would you have done?

Ora Pescovitz:

Well, first I might’ve been a pianist.

Jay Lemons:

I was going to say-

Ora Pescovitz:

I might’ve done that, but what I would’ve liked to do, I mean, I might’ve liked that, but that would’ve been hard work. Two other things I would’ve liked to do. I might’ve liked to be an architect, and one of my children is an architect, my son. And I did design and build my house, so I actually did get to do that, but I wasn’t trained to do it, but I loved it. The other thing I really wanted to do vicariously, and I did get to do this once, was be a race car driver.

Jay Lemons:

And is this open wheel or NASCAR?

Ora Pescovitz:

Indy 500. I lived in Indianapolis for 25 years.

Jay Lemons:

Of course. Yeah. Fabulous.

Ora Pescovitz:

So those are the things I would’ve liked to do.

Jay Lemons:

One of the things that I think binds our institutions together and certainly help to define the flavor of each of them is tradition. And I wonder if there’s a favorite tradition at a place that you’ve worked, served or attended that you’d like to hold up.

Ora Pescovitz:

I really love the bookends at Oakland where we do, I would say Convocation and Commencement. They’re just so wonderful, and I don’t know if we do them that differently than other schools, but I just have to say that they are so wonderful. We do have these wonderful festivals around them. We have great weather here in the spring and the fall, and so we have all kinds of events around those. But the start of the school year and the end of the school year are so meaningful to me, and I just love the enthusiasm of the students when they start. And I love the pride when they finish. And so the beginning and the end are so meaningful to me, and frankly, I treat our students like they’re my own children. I take so much pride in them. I’m a pediatrician, so I always felt like my patients were my children, and I feel like our students are my children. That’s how I feel.

Jay Lemons:

Well, that brings us back to compassion as well. That ability to embrace and to put yourself in the shoes of others. And I would tell you, for an institution as large and complex as Oakland that you have an opening bookend is probably a little unusual. And I say, “Well done.” Every place should have this ritual way of beginning the year where, “Everyone begins with an A,” as Ben Zander likes to say. Well, one of our traditions here on Leaders on Leadership is that we ask our guests to share with the listeners some of the distinctive qualities, if you will, the special sauce, the spicy about Oakland University, and how and why that is the place where you’re shooting for the stars today, Ora.

Ora Pescovitz:

Well, I like to talk about us as the University of Choice, and specifically as right now, the Workforce University of Choice. We are deeply embedded in our community as a steward of place, and we really feel that we are doing that exceptionally well. We just completed an economic impact study, and we have proven that we are making a huge impact in the community. $2 billion in 2024, really impressive. Our alums in 2024 contributed $6 billion to the local economy. And all of that is a steward of place where our alums and our graduates, over 95% of them are working in the local community, contributing that $6 billion to the local economy, which is why I call it the Workforce University of Choice. And that’s how we think of ourselves, making a huge local impact. Our students come from the local community, and they return to the local community, and it’s this cycle, which we’re very proud of.

Jay Lemons:

That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. Well, I want to say thank you to Dr. Ora Pescovitz for joining us on Leaders on Leadership. We’re so grateful to have had you here with us and to share so generously and fully on your thoughts on leadership and lots of wisdom bound up in all of your comments. And I just really want to say thank you and give you the opportunity for the final word of this episode.

Ora Pescovitz:

Well, I really enjoyed our time together, and I know that there’s a new generation of leaders coming, and I’m very excited to see what they’re going to deliver. I know that they’re going to be really inspiring and do great things, even though there are some headwinds here on higher education. I’m extremely optimistic about the future.

Jay Lemons:

What a great note to end on. Listeners, we welcome your suggestions and thoughts for leaders we should feature in upcoming segments. You can send those suggestions to LeadershipPodcast@AcademicSearch.org. You can find our podcast wherever you find your podcasts. It’s also available in the Academic Search website. Leaders on Leadership is brought to you by Academic Search and the American Academic Leadership Institute. Together, our mission is to support colleges and universities during times of transition, and through leadership development activities that serve current and future generations of leaders in the academy. Ora, thank you so much again.

Ora Pescovitz:

Thank you, Jay.