Sarah Spreitzer: Welcome back, listeners, to dotEDU Global Voices, a short series highlighting the experience and insights of women leaders in higher education that were featured in the new book
Spotlighting Female Leadership: Strategies, Stories, and Perspectives. I’m Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff of Government Relations here at the American Council on Education, and I am joined by my wonderful colleague Devorah Lieberman. Hi, Devorah.
Devorah Lieberman: Hi, Sarah. I’m so delighted to be with you again.
Sarah Spreitzer: And this is... I’m kind of sad. This is our last episode. If folks haven’t had a chance, I really encourage you to go back and listen to our first two episodes, where we feature two amazing women. The first, Gülsün Sağlamer, who is the former rector of the Istanbul Technical University. Then the second one was Sue Cunningham, who is the president of CASE. Really great conversations.
But for this last one, we are going to be talking to Silvia Giorguli, who is the president of El Colegio de México. I will let you introduce her, Devorah. Unfortunately, I was unable to join this conversation, but I’m looking forward to listening to it. I really think that this is an important episode, not only for her experiences as a female leader. But going into the next presidential administration, going into the 119th Congress, where there are going to be a lot of conversations about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or the DACA program. How are we going to support immigrants during a time when policies are going to turn to deportation, and things of that matter. I was really sorry to miss it, but I’m looking forward to hearing about this conversation.
Devorah Lieberman: I agree with you. When everyone listens to this, the information, the insights, the perspectives that Silvia brings in this podcast are important for all of us to hear and heed, because she’s got an academic background and tremendous experience in this area.
She’s been the president of El Colegio de México since 2015. She brings great, great background, experience, and insight to this position that she talks about in the podcast. I also found it very interesting that, as a female president, she really represents the themes that emerged across all 10 chapters in the book
Spotlighting Female Leadership. She talks in this podcast about her resilience, about her focus on mentoring all individuals, but in particular she had a special passion for mentoring women. She talks a lot about having a higher purpose, and she talks a lot about the imposter syndrome, and always feeling like she has to work hard to be good enough.
Because of her background, she’s a demographer, she’s a professor. Before she became president, she was the director for the Center for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies. Everything Sarah spoke about with what’s going on with DACA and Claudia Sheinbaum being the new president, the first female in the new administration-
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, the first female.
Devorah Lieberman: It’s amazing. The first female president in Mexico. Here’s Claudia Sheinbaum, the first female president, who’s dealing with issues of immigration from Mexico to the U.S., and we have a new administration coming in here in the United States. She speaks about the Mexican new administration, the U.S. new administration, but she speaks about it not just an emotional perspective, but truly an intellectual perspective that sheds new light for all of us on how we can look at this issue.
Sarah Spreitzer: Great. Let’s turn to that conversation with Silvia now.
Devorah Lieberman: I’m absolutely delighted that we have today with us President Silvia Giorguli, who has been the president of El Colegio de México since 2015. President Giorguli studied in the U.S. She studied at Brown. She also studied at her own university. Her areas of expertise are not just her own presidential leadership, but she has expertise in international migration from Mexico to the U.S. That is going to be of great interest to all of us and to her own audience in Mexico, and we’ll touch on that a little bit in our conversation. Silvia, welcome. We’re delighted to have you here with us.
Silvia Giorguli: Thank you, Devorah. I’m very happy for this opportunity and for this space to share some of my experiences.
Devorah Lieberman: Let’s jump into some of our questions. Tell us, were you the first woman who was appointed to the presidency at your university? If so, what was that like? Or the second woman, or the third woman. And how did this shape your approach to leadership when you first became president?
Silvia Giorguli: My institution is a research university. It was founded in 1940. It is concentrated in social sciences and humanities. I mention this because usually social sciences and humanities have a higher participation of women than other disciplines. In fact, about half of the faculty are men and half of the faculty are women.
For me, it was very surprising because, before me, there had only been one other woman candidate to be president, and she was not appointed. So yeah, I was the first. The second woman to decide to try to present a proposal and enter the process for the nomination of who will be leading the institution, the second candidate and the first one to be appointed as a woman. The other thing that, for me, was very surprising was not only I was the first woman president, but before me there hadn’t been any women in the high academic managerial positions. No bi-presidents. Not only no president, but no bi-presidents in academic affairs and international affairs. The second bi-president, that is the second figure after the president.
It was very surprising for me to find how women had been excluded or had not participated in this area, even though they were half of the faculty. I had been before, also, the first director of my center. I’m a demographer, so I’m a faculty at the Center for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies. Before being president, I was for six years chair of my department. The first woman, also. Although, the founding person of the center 60 years ago was also a woman, her story was totally erased during the blur.
I think I never thought about what it meant to be a woman and go into the process until I was named. Right after I was named, I received this great flower arrangement with orchids from another woman president, Sara Ladrón de Guevara, who was then president of a very large state university, Universidad Veracruz. And I went, “Ah, thank you, how nice. She doesn’t know me, but she sent.” Then I understood why she was sending me that. Because when we started attending the meetings of presidents of universities, we were the only two women. She was glad there were at least two.
Now, I have said that was nine years ago. Now we have a large group of, well, large, 20, 25 female presidents. So that has changed in the last nine years, although it’s still less than a third of the universities are leaded by women. Large, public universities here in Mexico.
Devorah Lieberman: That’s fantastic. It’s interesting, Silvia, since we’re having this conversation. When, in 2011, at the University of La Verne, when I was first announced as the president and they brought me out on the stage and all the faculty were filling this entire auditorium, in the front row, it was almost all women sitting in the front row, and they were crying. I was like, “Why are they crying?” Then after I was introduced, and I realized in 120 years-
Silvia Giorguli: Wow.
Devorah Lieberman: I had been the first woman. These female faculty had been waiting for someone with whom they could identify gender-wise. Very, very interesting that it wasn’t top of mind for you until someone else reminded you, “This is significant.” Fascinating. I think that’s probably true of many first women in their positions.
To go onto another question related, Silvia. As you were moving up in your career as a faculty member and an administrator, and now as a president, did other people recognize leadership potential in you that you might not have recognized in yourself? So that they could pull back the curtain and say, “Silvia, you have a lot of potential in you. You should continue to move forward with your career.” Did that ever happen to you?
Silvia Giorguli: Yeah. Probably not related to gender, but yeah. When I returned to Mexico after finishing my PhD, at Brown University, as you mentioned, when I returned to Mexico and I started my academic career at the Colegio de México, I started right away not only as a professor but also doing academic management. I was coordinating our academic program, our master’s in demography and then the PhD in population studies. Then I became director, chair of the center. A lot of my trajectory has been linked to this discussion about how an institution is working, the place of the institution in the context of higher education in Mexico and at the international level.
I come also from a family of teachers. I have also, not at higher education but at lower levels. But also, I have always been surrounded by this discussion about education and what we need for education. It’s not only that I was doing my research and teaching my classes but thinking on all these structural ways of how to organize and how to make better, more efficient processes within the, in this case the Colegio de México. Or how to move forward in changes, for example, updating our C-levels, or increasing the international exchange, or opening new research topics.
I think that that was something I was doing, and I liked doing. I like it a lot. But there was always a group of professors with me, talking about all these topics. Especially two of my mentors, who are women, and who had been my professors when I was studying in the master’s program in demography at Colegio de México. I think they guided me a lot in two issues. One, in how to balance my academic work, my research, with the academic management, which is really a challenge. The second one on how to navigate all the environment, and the political relationships, and the institutional culture that was all new to me.
I think when I decided to go into the process to became chair of my department, it was because some of the faculty in my department told me, “Well, you know these ideas that you have been pushing, they sound interesting. They sound like the way we need to go. You should put them all together in a project and present it to the council that decides who’s going to be chair.”
Something similar happened when I finished my time as chair. It’s exactly I was finishing my period as chair, and group of faculty came to me and said, “Well, you should try to present all these in a project not only for the department but for all the institution.” I thought that it was important doing it, even if I was not designated or elected among all the candidates to be president of the institution because I thought that it was a way of opening these new discussions within my institution.
I have to say that when I started the process, we were six candidates for the process of electing a new president nine years ago. We were six candidates. I was the only woman, and I was the only one below 50, to say it in a way. I think that it was not only an issue of gender but also an issue of generational change in terms of the projection of the institution for the future, to what we would understand as the future of higher education in Mexico.
Devorah Lieberman: Wow. Your answer to my question, it cut across age, gender, mentoring, coaching. All of it is a wonderful package that brought you to the position you’re in today. Thank you so much for that, Silvia.
Related to that, as you talk about mentors and coaching, and that you had mentors when you were moving through the ladder, or moving up your trajectory. Do you see yourself mentoring others similarly as they’re moving up their trajectory, or not?
Silvia Giorguli: Well, you were saying that it happened when we were appointed, that we were not expecting to have these projection because we were women. I think that it’s something that still surprises me all the time.
For example, we have some programs for female leadership in different areas at our Colegio de México. For me, it’s very surprising to have this discussion with the young students. We have a program with high school students. We have all these questions from the young female high school students, or young undergraduate students, asking me about what it means, this female leadership. That is something surprising for me, but I always like to do. I mean by that, I always attend these meetings and talk to other women.
But the other thing that I think was very interesting is that, as I mentioned, after I was appointed, some other women presidents were also appointed years later, and we started forming this group. It has been very interesting for me to have this group of women presidents in Mexico. It has become a group to talk about the policies regarding gender imbalances within our institutions, the eradication of violence, how we work and deal with conflict today, within our communities, to talk about the culture of peace and restorative justice, to discuss about academic issues that are very basic, such as ... Well, not basic, but more open or more cross-sectional, such as the impact of artificial intelligence in what we do and what we’re changing, the changes in the labor market. I want to define that it’s mentoring, but it’s a group that works together and that has also communication with other young women entering academia. That will be part of the way I see it now.
Devorah Lieberman: Beautiful. Silvia, just to shift gears a little bit. You’ve been in this presidency, your current presidency, for nine years. Congratulations on that, because, as we know, presidencies are not, as we say in the U.S., a walk in the park. They’re not easy. It’s a roller coaster ride. There’s the ups and the downs, the successes and the challenges.
Thinking back to your nine years, if you could think of one great challenge that you had, either a moment, or a period, or an issue, and if you could give us your thoughts or your advice on how you dealt with that.
Silvia Giorguli: Again, I would say that I don’t say this like a personal thing. I have a very good group of people around me and we’re working together.
But for example, when I started as president, we had ... Our student population is very small. We have 500 students, mainly graduate students, and very few undergraduate students. It’s a very selective process and very demanding programs, the ones that we have.
When I had just started in 2016, 2017, the female students organized this movement called Unidas Colmex, a female group of students. Colectiva, we call it in Spanish, colectiva estudiantil. They started something called the Me Too at the Colegio de México. At the Colegio de México, it also happens. It would be at the Colegio de México, it also happened. It opened something totally that was not in the discussion or had not been seen before. It’s not that it was not there, but it was not made visible. The students made it visible in a very assertive way, I would say.
The good thing is that, by then, we were already working on a gender model that had several dimensions. In terms of promotions, for example, in Mexico we didn’t have this part of the maternity clock for women in academia. Or we were not looking at the issues of the difference in the men and women and trajectories, or what was happening within the classroom. The students brought out all these discussion. The community was shocked, surprised, I think. There were a lot of tensions, for example, between the students and the union. We have a union of administrative workers. I think it was a very challenging process.
Then, it was just starting. I think I was starting my second year as president. We were already working on a protocol because we didn’t have any protocol on sexual harassment at Colegio de México at all. We were starting to write it. Of course, what happened with the students pushed us to make it faster. To make all these changes, and all these normative changes faster. But it also implied a lot of work, in terms of defining a strategy to talk with all the community. To sit down and talk with the female students, with the whole student community, with the unions, with the professors, with the faculty, with the different organs that we have that make the decisions, for example in terms of normative changes.
For me, that was new. I’m a professor; I’m a demographer; I’m not a facilitator or a conflict management expert. For me, that was new. But I think that we were able to build collectively, to make an institutional change, to open channels to many different activities, seminars, groups. And to try to make ... One of my worries was how to make a change that would be rooted within the institution and not something that would be changed, for example, once I leave. Because I think that it’s something that needs to be rooted and taken into account, valued by the whole community. I won’t say that we are done, because every day we learn something. Every day, we learn that we need to change things.
Finally, what I would say is that also, what happened there was also happening at different times in other universities. It was great that we were able to form a big group of universities and talk about all these issues and how we were handling them. I think I’m very proud now that our protocol was one of the first ones to be elaborated in Mexican institutions. And now, many other universities ask us for our protocol to use it as a model. Of course, it cannot be automatically translated because each university has its own particularities. But I think we are happy also for becoming leading actors in this discussion in higher education in Mexico.
Devorah Lieberman: You were talking about the political process on your own campus. Let’s kick that up to national. Here in the U.S., and right there in Mexico, we both have new political climates. New leadership and new climates in both of our countries. Since demography and migration is an academic expertise of yours, in these new political climates, how do you, and we look to you and your expertise, how do you think about and what are your predictions about Mexico-U.S. migration in the future?
Silvia Giorguli: Yeah. Well, if we’re going straight to migration, I would like to say that I myself am very happy that we have, for the first time, a female president in Mexico. One of the things that she says, the phrases that she mentioned throughout her campaign, but especially after she was elected is, in Spanish would be, “No llego sola, llegamos todas.” Which means, “It’s not only me who is getting here; it’s all the women, that we are getting here together.”
I think that is a very powerful message, in terms of female leadership. I know that there’s a very high expectation of what she can do, in terms of gender balances or imbalances within Mexico. There’s a lot of support, I think, from a lot of women organizations and other women leaders, including us, the group of female presidents in universities in Mexico.
Regarding migration, migration always surprises us. Even for us, for demographers, that we like to project into the future. We see large changes in terms of migration responding to political situations, to climate change, to violence, to economic setbacks. What is the future of it? What may be happening in terms of migration in the future? I think that the few certain things that we know is that migration will continue. Migration is something that has been happening since the beginning of the humankind. I would say that it’s part of our DNA.
That the flows are changing and that if 10 years ago, the main issue was Mexico-U.S. migration, the migration of Mexicans in the U.S., and I would say people from the U.S. migrating to Mexico, because Mexico has the largest population of Americans living outside the U.S., now we have a more complex scenario where you have other flows coming to Mexico. Mexico was not prepared to manage all the new flows that are coming, so Mexico has also the challenge of how to manage in an orderly, safe, and regularized way, the flows that are arriving here, how to integrate them.
For example, the U.S. has been discussing for a long time the integration of migrants. There are a lot of pathways, for example. Especially education, I would say, is one of the main pathways of integration and inclusion of migrants into the American society. That is something that we need to learn today.
I think that universities, we do play a role in what will be coming. I like to say that we have a population of students that we share. That there is a part, in terms of protecting and walking with our student communities. 10, 15 years ago, we saw a large return of Mexican migrants to Mexico during the Great Recession in the U.S. There were many challenges, in terms of how they were reintegrated in their communities of origin, because many of them had left when they were two or three years old. Or many of them were born in the U.S., and were returning with their parents who were either deported or returning voluntarily.
We have also a large legal migration going on, on both sides. I don’t know whether it will increase. In Mexico, although we say that we will never have the levels of migration that we saw in the year 2000 and 2004, I am not very optimistic regarding issues such as the violence in Mexico, which is making people move. Of course, moving to the north is always one of the options. They have families, connections, many of them have even a legal status.
I think the most important part is how do you protect those that are more vulnerable, that will be vulnerable in the process, in the travel? And who are vulnerable, in terms of once deciding on a place to stay, how they interact with the rest of the communities. And because we’re talking about education, I think that education, the schools, the universities, play a central role there, in terms of how we communicate empathy, solidarity, how we create paths for integration for those population on the move, or children of migrants for this case.
Devorah Lieberman: It reminds me, several years ago, President Fernando León García from CETYS University in Mexico, Fernando and I co-taught a class with his students in Mexico at CETYS, my students at the University of La Verne. It was a virtual class on the perceptions of the other’s cultures, how we could communicate better together, how we could each develop greater empathy for the other’s position. The students from the U.S., we went to CETYS University for part of the class. Then the CETYS students came to the University of La Verne for another one of the sessions. We got to experience each other’s countries, and the students got to truly understand the other so that they would be better communicators with the other in the future. It just reminds me a lot of what you just said about empathy and learning, just about what’s going on in each other’s countries, so that we can be better long into the future.
Silvia Giorguli: Yeah.
Devorah Lieberman: It’s beautiful. Thank you, Silvia.
One last question that I have for you. That is, for the women who are listening to your brilliant responses on this podcast, what advice would you give to them, those women who aspire to leadership roles in higher education? What advice would you give to them? And what thoughts do you have on what skills they could continue to develop so that they could be successful leaders just like you?
Silvia Giorguli: I’m thinking the things I would have liked to hear 15 or 20 years ago. For example, I would say first to be confident, and to be confident that female leadership is different, can be different from the one that we may be used to, especially in institutions that have not had women in leading positions. To be confident on the project and on the ideas that you have and that you build, and to push forward and not feel less.
It’s something that it’s not said, but when you arrive to certain spaces, I don’t know if it happened to you, when you arrive to certain spaces and you are the only woman, it’s like the whole space tends to quiet you or to silence you or to make it more difficult to make your voice clear and loud. I think that’s something I would have liked to know, to be more confident. And to also be more confident on this part of the female leadership.
I will tell you a very small example. When I was trying to be director of my center, some of my female colleagues told me, “You know, you smile too much. You should stop smiling too much because that gives you less authority, and you need to project that you can be an authority, so don’t smile that much.” Because this was other faculty who were older than me, and I was shocked and saying, “Oh, I never thought that smiling would be a negative point in terms of leadership.” What I learned in time is that, well, it’s a way of leading in a different manner. So that’s what I would have liked to know, just to be confident in the way we’re doing things.
Devorah Lieberman: Wow. I was told the same thing. “Stop smiling so much. Stop being so nice.”
Silvia Giorguli: Yeah.
Devorah Lieberman: I was like, “How do I separate what’s part of me from my leadership, as opposed to making that a part of my leadership that gives me strength?” That’s what you did as well. I’m looking at you right now, even though we’re on this podcast, and you’re smiling. You’re a leader.
President Silvia Giorguli, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your expertise, and your honesty. That is the consummate leader, and that’s who you are. We thank you, and those listening to this podcast, they all thank you. We look forward to seeing you in the future. Silvia, thank you.
Silvia Giorguli: Thank you, Devorah, President Devorah. Thank you for this extraordinary initiative of the book that you coordinated and bringing all of our voices together.
Sarah Spreitzer: That’s a wrap for our series dotEDU Global Voices. Please remember to check out the ACE Women’s Network. It’s an amazing resource that connects and supports women in higher education all across the country, and even globally, helping them to develop their leadership skills and advance in their careers. If you’re looking for a community that’s all about mentorship, growth, and supporting women, definitely check it out. You can find more information at www.acenet.edu/womensnetwork. Thanks for listening, and be sure to join us for our regular policy-focused episodes here on dotEDU.