Bronté Burleigh-Jones

CFO, Vice President and Treasurer , American University

Bronté Burleigh-Jones is the CFO, vice president and treasurer at American University. Burleigh-Jones is a frequent presenter on a variety of topics, including finance, accreditation, communication, leadership and diversity at the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), American Council of Education (ACE) and Association of Governing Boards (AGB) conferences. She previously served as the vice president for finance and administration at Dickinson College. She has also served as treasurer of St. John’s College, and vice president for administration and finance and dean of enrollment management at Huston-Tillotson University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and an M.B.A. from American University and a doctorate in higher education administration from the University of Texas, Austin. She is a graduate of the Harvard Institute for Higher Education and the HERS Institute at Wellesley College.

Laura Woodworth-Ney

Academy Program and Mentoring Coordinator

Laura Woodworth-Ney, Ph.D., joined AGB Search in 2022. Prior to joining the firm, she served as senior consultant for an executive search firm in the higher education and non-profit sectors.  Woodworth-Ney has more than thirty years of experience in higher education as a tenured full professor, academic historian and administrator. With over a decade in the provost’s office at Idaho State University, she was the first female executive vice president and provost. Other administrative roles included vice president and associate vice president for academic affairs, and department chair and director of women’s studies. She has also taught at the University of North Texas, Maryville University in St. Louis, and Washington State University. A staunch advocate for equity and accessibility, Woodworth-Ney helped pioneer initiatives that significantly expanded the application and retention rates of Idaho’s public institutions and was honored with the 2021 President’s Medallion Award from Idaho State University.  Woodworth-Ney has served on the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education’s Western Academic Leadership Forum executive committee and as a board member of the American Association of Chief Academic Officers. An expert on the history of the North American West, Woodworth-Ney is the author of three books. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in History from Washington State University and a B.A. in English from the University of Idaho.

Sarah Leibrandt

Director, Academic Leadership Initiatives, Programs and Services

303.541.0221sleibrandt@wiche.edu

Sarah Leibrandt, Ph.D., is the director of academic leadership initiatives for Interstate Passport at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and has over 15 years of experience working in secondary and postsecondary education. Since joining WICHE in 2013, Leibrandt has led several initiatives including WICHE’s Recognizing Learning in the 21^st Century, a large-scale research study and landscape analysis of the scaling of prior learning assessment policies and practices. Sarah has also helped state agencies share education and workforce data with each other through the Multistate Longitudinal Data Exchange as a way to provide better information to students and their families while also improving education, workforce, and economic development policy. Prior to joining WICHE, Leibrandt worked for the Colorado Department of Education and Red Rocks Community College. Leibrandt earned a B.A. in Spanish from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Bryan Dickson

Director of Student Financial Services and Educational Programs, National Association of College and University Business Officers

Bryan Dickson is the director of student financial services and educational programs for the National Association of College and University Business Officers. As part of NACUBO’s Leadership Development team, he is responsible for supporting the advancement of an array of member programs and services, including educational programming for new chief business officers.
In addition, he is a staff liaison to NACUBO’s Student Financial Services Council, working on behalf of the NACUBO membership to assist bursars and student accounts staff on a national level through advocacy with federal agencies and members of Congress. Prior to joining NACUBO in 2007, Dickson was a member of the legal and compliance practice at CEB, Inc., a best practice insight and technology company in Washington, DC. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.

Wendy Kilgore

Director of Research, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

Dr. Kilgore has more than 20 years of experience as a higher-education administrator, researcher and consultant in the United States and Canada. Her experience and proficiency lie in professional disciplines related to enrollment management and enrollment services, including the use of technology, organizational restructuring, student-centric business-practice development, policy development and management of comprehensive collaboration to support enrollment efforts.

Prior to joining AACRAO, Dr. Kilgore served as state dean of enrollment services for the Colorado Community College system, which consisted of 13 colleges. Before moving to Colorado, she was the director of admissions and the registrar for the Pima County Community College district, a large urban community college headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. Her professional and consulting experience spans a wide array of institutions, including large public research universities, small, private faith-based institutions and private for-profit institutions.

James Ward

Senior Researcher, Ithaka S+R

James Dean Ward is a senior researcher at Ithaka S+R on the Educational Transformation team. His work focuses on federal and state higher education regulatory, funding, and financial aid policies. James earned a BA in economics and history from Cornell University and a PhD in higher education policy from the University of Southern California. James has published and presented work on state financial aid programs, performance-based funding policies, for-profit college regulation, institutional finance, and equity in postsecondary opportunities. In addition to serving as a research assistant in the Pullias Center for Higher Education, James was a postdoc research fellow at the University of Southern California. Prior to graduate school, James conducted research on postsecondary finance at the National Association of College and University Business Officers and served as an institutional researcher at Harvard University. As a higher education consultant for ASR Analytics and Hanover Research, he worked on projects related to institutional aid policies, program development, admissions and recruitment practices, and institutional economic and community impact.

Mary Fulton

Senior Policy Analyst, Education Commission of the States

Mary Fulton is a senior policy analyst at Education Commission of the States and focuses on issues related to postsecondary governance and works on projects related to K-12 and postsecondary student health and wellness. Ms. Fulton brings more than 30 years of experience with Education Commission of the States and has worked on numerous K-12 and postsecondary issues during her career, including student completion and attainment, developmental education and campus safety. Ms. Fulton is the lead author and project manager for several ECS products related to postsecondary governance and led the organization’s project on postsecondary administrative holds policies.

Jay Field

Quottly

Jay Field has served as senior vice president for institutional partnerships at Quottly, Inc. since 2019. He works with various colleges and universities to help them improve graduation rates through course-sharing and advanced transfer articulation. Previously, he served as chief technology officer for the California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative and as chief information officer for three California community colleges prior to that. Field has a B.A. in urban studies and an M.A. in education, both from Stanford University.

Jory Hadsell

California Virtual Campus

Jory Hadsell serves as executive director of the California Virtual Campus, a state-wide initiative expanding online learning access, infrastructure, and professional development for California’s 116 community colleges. Hadsell has also served as tenured professor of academic technology and taught in adjunct roles at the community college and doctoral level. He is passionate about the intersection of online education, technology personalization, and cross-institutional collaboration. Hadsell currently serves as vice chair of the WCET Steering Committee.

Jonathan Lashley

Idaho State Board of Education

Jonathan Lashley is associate chief academic officer for the Idaho State Board of Education. He promotes excellence in open and distributed learning as he coordinates the development and implementation of academic policy at Idaho’s eight public colleges and universities. He also leads a statewide digital learning consortium, Online Idaho, that utilizes course sharing as a means of furthering student success, faculty learning, and digital pedagogy. Lashley has nearly 14 years of experience in various higher education roles across the United States.

Joe Thiel

Montana University System