"When we brought Kevin in to work with our department chairs, I wasn't sure what to expect — we had never done any campus-wide leadership development before, and I wasn't certain our chairs would engage with it seriously. What I found was someone who understood immediately the particular dynamics of campus leadership — the relationships, the shared governance culture, the way decisions get made. Our chairs came away with tools they could actually use. The conversations we'd been having for years about leadership expectations suddenly had language and structure around them. It changed how I think about faculty development at the institutional level."
Vice-Provost for Faculty Affairs
Liberal Arts College
Leaders we've worked with include
Four ways we support campus leadership
Developing each leader
For chairs, directors, and deans moving from faculty peer to campus leader. We help them build a clear leadership identity, see beyond their own unit to the college and university, and handle difficult decisions and conversations with confidence.
HOW WE HELP
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Leadership cohorts (on-site or virtual)
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New-leader onboarding (individual or cohort)
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1:1 executive coaching
A cohesive leadership team
For deans’ councils, chairs’ groups, and cabinets that meet regularly but rarely do work only they can do together. We start with a validated team diagnostic, then help the team put the right conditions in place: a clear shared purpose, the right people at the table, working agreements that hold, and the support to sustain them. Strong collaboration follows from strong design.
HOW WE HELP
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Team diagnostic and debrief
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Leadership team retreat (on-site or virtual) to reset purpose, membership, and working agreements
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1:1 or team coaching throughout the year
Strategic direction
For units that need a strategic plan their faculty own, one that elevates what makes the unit distinctive, aligns with institutional priorities, and is built to be implemented. The work can extend to mission, vision, and values, and to bylaws and structures that fit how decisions are made.
HOW WE HELP
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Strategic planning facilitation from launch through implementation
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Faculty and staff survey and listening sessions
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Communications plan and change readiness assessment
Culture through change
For merged or reorganized units that still operate as separate parts. We help rebuild trust after a difficult change, give faculty real authorship of what comes next, and equip leaders to guide people through it.
HOW WE HELP
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Facilitated faculty and staff conversations
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Coaching for the unit's leaders
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Change management support: readiness assessment and communication planning
Representative Work
Language and culture school · large public R1 university, Southwest
Turning priorities into results at scale
A new director of a school teaching 20 languages faced declining enrollment, a shrinking budget, and units that rarely worked together. Over one academic year, we turned her four priorities into specific initiatives, restructured faculty and staff meetings as working sessions, and established defined roles, weekly staff reports, and a procedures handbook. Language enrollment rose 47%, and the school’s budget increased with it.
Art and design department · public R2 university, Southeast
Moving strategic planning out of a silo
The department's strategic plan was assigned to a single committee and had little connection to the work of its other committees. Over one spring, we worked with the chair to give each of five standing committees a written charge for its part of the plan, then carried the work into curriculum: a common two-year core across three degrees and explicit BFA candidacy standards.
Sciences and public health school · regional public university, Midwest
Building one school from four programs
Four years after a reorganization merged four departments, the school still ran as separate units, each with its own bylaws and no school-level committees. We designed a year-long process with the school's new director that brings faculty from all four programs together to set a shared vision and hiring priorities, aligned with the college's five-year planning framework.
What Leaders Say
"Kevin led an engaging and insightful session on conflict management for department chairs, helping them understand our own conflict styles and how to navigate challenging interactions with others. His approach was practical, reflective, and filled with valuable strategies that we can apply immediately. His understanding of the role of chairs was immensely helpful. A fantastic session!"
Heba Elsonbaty
Director, Organizational Development
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
"I engaged Kevin to share his expertise with a group of deans and academic leaders. He offered practical and helpful tips to help these leaders push back against a culture that expects instant responses, re-route decisions landing on the deans' desk that should be solved by someone else, actively manage their calendars and protect time for the deep, strategic work that really moves institutions forward. Everyone identified an action they could implement in the next week in one of these areas, and personally, I've already seen the benefits."
Nicki Nabasny
Founder, Beleza Advisors
"As someone who specializes in collaboration, I value his spirit of working with others to bring out the best. He knows the educational terrain and what is necessary to bring about positive change and achieve expanding goals."
Pamela Pyle
Fmr. Faculty Senate President
University of New Mexico
How We're Different
20+ years leading change inside higher education
Cornerstone was founded by a faculty member and campus leader with more than twenty years at public and private R1 institutions. As a director and dean, he led significant enrollment growth at two institutions, opened a $44M performing arts center, and guided teams of more than 100 faculty and staff through new academic programs and accreditation reviews. The decisions our clients face are ones we have made ourselves, within shared governance and with limited resources.
Trained in the methods we use
Our coaching, facilitation, and change work rests on real-world experience and formal training. Credentials include ICF Associate Certified Coach, Prosci® Certified Change Practitioner, Certified Advanced Team Coach, and Gallup-Certified CliftonStrengths Coach, with further preparation through Harvard’s Management Development Program, a fellowship with the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership (Georgetown and Arizona State), Stanford’s d.school, and facilitation training.
A creative approach to leadership work
Our approach to teams comes from a career in the performing arts, with some of the finest ensembles in the world. Great ensembles are designed, not lucky: a clear purpose, the right players, shared standards, and defined roles. We bring those principles to campus through highly interactive sessions where participants work through real problems together, set the standards they will hold one another to, and leave owning the result.
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