Episode 60: How to Normalize Diversity in Higher Education with Dr. Hilary Link, President at Allegheny College
Dr. Hilary Link is the first female President of Allegheny College, one of the nation's oldest and most innovative academic institutions. Dr. Link, who has a Ph.D., has been promoting the importance of multidisciplinary learning to help prepare Gen Z students for satisfying lives in a complex global world.
The United States, the most developed nation in the world, is leading the world in terms of social justice. Still, a woman makes just 77.5 cents for every dollar a man makes. What’s more, out of the $130 billion dollar VC funding, just 2.2% of that money went to startups led by women. Why is there such a stark difference, even today, in the age of social justice and gender equality?
The Necessity for More Diversity
Clearly, it's a massive global issue that we all need to be thinking about and tackling because equality and equal access to opportunities and careers is a social justice issue. For Dr. Link, having lived big parts of her life and her career in Europe, she's seen multiple approaches to this, and the progression is palpable. However, it's going to take time — and like many big global issues, the only way that each one of us can think about approaching it is by finding what we do in our own sphere of influence. For example, every institution, whether it's a college, company, or VC firm, needs to look at its own structures to see what barriers to gender equality there might be.
As we know, many barriers are seemingly invisible. We accept certain things as the status quo, but we all need to be looking at those and figuring out whether this is because of racial inequities, gender inequities, ethnic inequities, and so on. Are there things in place that we're not fully aware of that are presenting barriers?
The more we can encourage women to explore all kinds of fields, whether that's becoming a college leader or diving into business, the more women can raise each other up — together. It's something Dr. Link has seen in her own career, which is how people are going to start making an impact, little by little. Unfortunately, there's always the perception that when you're trying to fix a problem, the solution will seem unfair to somebody. So how do we get everybody to understand that change is happening to address the fact that women have been excluded from so many roles?
Equality Means More for Everyone
Often when trying to address these issues, it can appear threatening to certain groups of people. Part of the challenge is getting people to understand that opening up access to opportunities is not a zero-sum game. Equality doesn't mean less for other groups — it means more for everybody, in theory. Unfortunately, that's a hard concept to grasp for some people because human nature helps them stay within ideas that feel comfortable and normalized. Stepping outside of what we think is the way things have always been, and the way they should be, is a huge challenge. When you have a perception, you make decisions that confirm that bias.
There are many scenarios in which representation and diversity need to be expanded like, for example, a board of trustees, a university board, a Supreme Court. When representation is about making policy decisions that will influence the entire nation, state, or even county, representation matters to the highest degree.
At the end of the day, people think in different ways. That diversity of thought, more than anything, is really important. Representation matters — and Dr. Hilary Link is a prime example of that. Many institutions of higher learning are working to diversify their faculty and administration, because they have very diverse student bodies. Students need to see people who look like them as leaders in the classroom. This opens up young people to think they have opportunities that otherwise they simply couldn't imagine.
Different people, with their various backgrounds and experiences, bring different thought processes and different problem-solving solutions to the table. And for Dr. Link, that's what it's all about. You want to involve as many people with diverse ways of approaching big challenges and issues as possible. It does matter how and what people look like. It matters who they are, and we sometimes need to force the issue to have a diverse representation until we can get to a place where help can be given in the future. A place where those biases no longer exist.
The Effect on Families
Dr. Link is the mother of three boys, so she's in a household with only men. Her husband has been very supportive, and he followed Dr. Link's career overseas to Italy, and now to Allegheny College. She often thinks about what it means to raise young men in a household where they've seen a strong, career-oriented female figure. They've talked about it a lot, although her sons are still young: 18, 15, and 10. Having Dr. Link as a mother is completely shaping who they are as people and what they think women can do. They've never seen their mother be held back in terms of career ambition or success — and this has been extremely important for the Link family.
Naturally, Dr. Link considers it an honor to be the first female president of Allegheny College in its 207-year history. It is a very historic campus, and was the 32nd college created in the United States, back in 1815. Dr. Link relishes the role of being not just the first female president, but the first working mother who is also president of Allegheny College. It's an important model for her students — not just for her own kids, but for the thousands of students at Allegheny College as well. The best part about it is that the next female president of Allegheny College won't ever have to be questioned about it, because it will have become ‘normal’.
What Dr. Link is trying to do is get students to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see things through a different lens, from a different point of view. Change is hard and comfort is easy. Yet the rewards of stepping into a different place, whether physically or through the growth of a different mindset or different academic lens, completely opens you up to things that you never thought you would see.
After a new discovery, you also realize that you can get through it when it happens again in the future — and this brings comfort in discovery. In addition, you also gain pride and confidence in knowing that you've gotten through something new in the past, and that you've pushed yourself outside of your comfort zone. When Dr. Link thinks about her children, she knows that was also a huge lesson for them. In the beginning, they felt that moving was hard, and then they saw that they were able to create a new life for themselves somewhere totally different. That leap outside their comfort zone really opened up their minds to different opportunities.
Connect with Dr. Hilary Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilary-link/
Learn more about Allegheny College at https://allegheny.edu/
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