[00:00:00] Speaker A: I've always believed that the concept, the strategic thinking behind anything is what you need and you need other people to be part of that in order to or other experiences to be part of that to kind of feed your ingredient list or give you a bigger spice drawer.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Welcome to the EdTech Connect podcast, your source for exploring the cutting edge world of educational technology. I'm your host, Jeff Dillon, and I'm excited to bring you insights and inspiration from the brightest minds and innovators shaping the future of education. We'll dive into conversations with leading experts, educators and solution providers who are transforming the learning landscape. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss an episode. So sit back, relax, and let's dive in.
So I am excited to bring another guest to EdTech Connect podcast. This is Tracy Halverson. She is the CEO of ADAO and with over 25 years of agency leadership and digital marketing innovation. She is with edeo, that's a marketing and communications agency that partners with clients in the sustainability, cultural, educational, electoral politics, nonprofit and emerging market sectors. Throughout her career, Tracy has worked with clients such as Yale, the International Spy Museum, Brown University, the Cooper Hewitt, Design Museum, mica, the Walters Art Museum, Bucknell University, among many others. She's a pro at solving problems through creativity and innovation, transforming teams and guiding organizations through complex landscapes, with a focus on brand messaging and digital marketing. As a contemporary painter, frequent writer and speaker on topics related to human psychology, creative expression and cultural transformation, she brings a unique perspective to her projects. And I have to tell you a quick little story about Tracy. And then I've got to see some of her agency's work already and I can't release the name yet, but I don't think it's live. But when I saw this presentation, not just the work that her agency was producing, but it was the way she presented the work to the client and the options and the thinking behind it. You'll probably hear about it really soon what she's working on, but it was really impressive to see. So welcome, Tracy.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Well, thanks for having me, Jeff. Happy to be here.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Well, after that reading that bio, like, you've worked with an incredibly diverse range of clients from universities to these cultural institutions like this International Spy Museum, which I can only imagine what that is. But outside of work, what's the most exciting or unexpected place where you found inspiration for your your art and your leadership?
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Well, it's interesting because they kind of inform each other. So I think my art practice informs a lot of What I bring to work and leadership, and I think my art practice is informed by, you know, it kind of all feeds up. So what I use to try to stay inspired just as a creative person and the way that, that informs how I look at problems or how I look at interactions with clients or teammates, it all stems from, I think, a foundational, just strong belief that creativity and curiosity kind of have to be there from the beginning.
That's not the place you want to end up as the last step in your process.
But so many things have inspired me and helped me change course along the way. And a couple of them are doing things that are outside of my comfort zone, just kind of compulsively or just being very dedicated to that. And that might mean having conversations with people about things that I could very easily say, I know nothing about this. I don't have any business having this conversation. But at the end of the day, you know, I've always believed that the concept, the strategic thinking behind anything is what you need and you need other people to be part of that in order to. Or other experiences to be part of that, to kind of feed your.
Feed your ingredient list or give you a bigger spice drawer, I guess, to work with.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I think I try to spend some time doing something creative a few times a week and that gets my brain going. And yeah, it's. Your diverse background is really interesting to me. But let's drill into higher ed a little bit. Like recently I hosted a webinar with Harvard and Brown. And you've worked with these schools like Yale and Brown.
What are the biggest challenges you've observed in these huge, decentralized, siloed environments in your role?
[00:05:26] Speaker A: It's kind of the nature of larger organizations of any type to start to become siloed and fragmented and everyone splinters off with their own agendas and their own priorities.
So I think that one of the challenges I've seen is when there is a lack of strong leadership from the top. So if you have in a higher ed situation, if you've got a transition between presidents or leadership, if the school is going through any kind of crisis, that's sparking a lot of disagreements amongst leadership, that can be the biggest challenge. And the problem is if you're already siloed, that you don't really know where these conversations are starting or ending and kind of like who's steering the ship. So one of the. I always see projects go the the best when you have everybody who needs to be part of the team at the table. From the beginning, all in agreement of what the major challenges are and what the objectives are to overcome them. I don't know that it's ever going to not be a problem when you get so many people with all, you know, with so many different concerns and like higher EDS are so complicated. They have so many different audiences to be thinking about.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: So, so when, so when we acknowledge that right there, they're so decentralized, these silos in even, I mean the R1s up to the ivies are really not going anywhere. And everyone kind of acknowledges that. So how do you see technology playing a role in that collaboration with these disconnected departments I see at the lower, at the state, mid state schools, they are often able to somewhat centralize. But with marketing and IT at these large universities, what's your take on how tech can help them?
[00:07:27] Speaker A: I think it's a complicated question and I think every organization obviously is different. But one of the challenges is that technology is changing so quickly, increasingly so.
And you've got organizations that are historically kind of slow to adapt change in any case.
And I think a lot of times there are mandates in place and kind of requirements to stay or remain within a certain platform that might be a legacy platform. And only a few people have the keys to start that old bus running.
And so it becomes a big bottleneck, I think. So I do think some policies and cultural shifts around empowering independent departments and teams to do a little bit more experimentation and take more ownership over some of the technology choices that they're using or exploring would go far. Right. Because you'd have teams feeling more empowered to go out and do research and make decisions.
You wouldn't feel like you had to always go to like one. You know, if everything's being held by the IT department and everything has to be a request, and then it's just, it slows everything down.
So I think that tech can help by embracing a good cadence to how you start to introduce change versus maintain any kind of legacy or contractually obligated software that you have in place and really think about the best technology that you can bring in at this point is technology that kind of forces you to pay attention to your audience more than to your internal structures. I mean, that's still a classic problem I see everywhere is that everyone kind of communicates about themselves, about how they're structured. They organize their information in a way that only makes sense to internal audiences. And I do think that technology is getting smarter at positioning itself on behalf of the needs of what that communication or marketing Effort needs to be doing if it is, you know, I mean, that's where I focus. Right. Is usually on marketing, external communications.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah, you've, you've kind of hit on my next question, like getting into more of what I recently saw, what some of the deliverables and really brand identities you've created for your, for your client. So I guess what I'm wondering is how do you improve and this is what these clients are coming to you for, like rebranding. What they're really trying to do is improve their external engagement and external and internal. But how do you improve that external engagement with students and this broader community? You know, you can go into your like design perspectives or your, you know, what, what's the, what's that golden kind of piece we need to really think of when we're.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Well, I think it's multi pronged.
I mean, first of all, just stopping and thinking, you know, who going ahead and realizing like the worst thing you can do is try to be all things to all people, like the movie, everything everywhere, all at once or whatever. Like, don't do that. That's not the reality we're living in. So unfortunately you do have to make prioritize decisions about who you're going to talk to and who's the most important to be engaging with.
And I think that takes a lot of, a lot of buy in, a lot of internal buy in. So I also think this is why you're never going to see the death of agencies or consultancies or outside partners. Because I think it's so hard when you're inside an organization to affect this kind of change because you're already drinking the Kool Aid, for lack of a better term. You're already in the system, you're in the machine. You're seeing things through certain lenses. You are anticipating obstacles and pushback. And there's a lot of pressure that can be relieved by bringing in a partner, especially a partner that really wants to engage with you, not just on a technical implementation, but on a strategic initiative and can come in and work with the stakeholders and work with the community while they're also helping you make sure you're focusing on that audience and what they or those audiences and what they really care about. What are their concerns?
How are you speaking to them?
How are you conveying your brand appropriately?
And you know, modesty is lovely, but there are some things that I think people almost get too modest in talking about.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Yep, I see so.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: And higher eds are great. I mean all of these cultural orgs Nonprofits, there's, there's a modesty level there that's like clarity is not bragging.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: You know, prioritization, having a strong strategy and having very specific, you know, agendas and targets and all of that strategy does not mean that you are, you know, being cutthroat or ruthless or that you're, you know, tooting your own horn when it's not warranted. Because really you shouldn't be talking about yourself as much as you're talking about your audiences.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Right, right. That's a great lesson. That might be the pull quote for this. For this.
You know, I'm looking at your client, your sectors you work with or that you have. And I'm curious what. You probably see some lot of similarities with your different, you know, electoral politics, clients, clients, sustainability, all sorts of non profits. Can you think of some, like, differences or even similarities you see within your different sectors? I'm so in high red. I'm just, I always like to draw parallels with other, other industries or kind of point out what you see.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: Well, it's been really interesting since, since joining adeo, I've gotten much more exposure around their traditional client base, which has been a lot of elected officials and a lot of clients who are looking to navigate, you know, choppy legislative waters, for lack of a better way to kind of explain it. It's like crisis comms navigating, you know, laws and politics and bills and things that are, you know, and elections as well as emerging markets. Right. So markets where there aren't any clear rules and the plane is being built while it's in flight and that's in major, sort of, that's in stark contrast to a market like higher ed or even other culturals or nonprofits tend to move a lot more slowly, a lot more cautiously, and haven't had to deal with much change traditionally. And so I think what's interesting is seeing how the clients who are in markets where they have no choice to figure it out and always be looking for what's next because the road is so new or it's being so disrupted that I think it can start to inform how these traditionally more stabilized or conservative markets can handle what I do think is an increasing level of disruption that's starting to hit some of these places that I think felt a little bit protected or immune from really having to really having to like, define themselves and be clear about their value.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. Yeah, I agree with all that and I think so. I've always, I've been in higher ed for so long. And I've always thought, gosh, higher ed is so far behind. We need to keep up with, you know, we're always being compared to the private sector. You know, we realize it's not really fair. It's, it's, they have a much simpler mission and more money and all that. But I've also worked with government agencies. And so when I started working with government agencies, I saw, wow, when you have something mandated where people have to go to the DMV or they have to go get this done, like those, those organizations are really struggling because they don't quite prioritize the user experience or because you have to go get it done, you have to do it. And so I almost, it almost helped me see, like, okay, am I in higher ed? They're not. We're not as far as behind as the rest of the world. But do you see that being like, is our other sectors even more brand conscious and really on top of the user experience? Or is it kind of like not much of a difference in higher ed?
[00:16:36] Speaker A: I mean, I think if you look at big consumer brands, you know, like Nike or Apple or, you know, brands like that. Right.
I mean, they're going to be the best sort of beacon to study or to follow. And I think that they have, in that sort of very consumer focused market, found ways to engage with clients or clients found ways to engage with their audiences, where their audiences are engaging, you know, whether it's influencer marketing or, you know, more AMAs, ways to engage, to kind of pull the curtain back. And always, yet, you know, always doing it still in a way that feels very much like it is that brand. It is.
People are representing that brand's vision and mission when they are engaging in these, all these little offshoots, you know, the ecosystem of interaction and opportunities to do that is just exploded.
So I do think that more traditional markets have been slow to understand the value of that or to figure out a strategy to kind of let that, you know, it's like an octopus with 100 arms figure out how to kind of manage that level of fragmentation in all of these different places that people are now. They're not just in one or two places and they also still are in the places that we should not consider pointless. Like email.
It's like good old email is just a goldmine in terms of engagement. And I don't know that it's being leveraged as well as it could be in a lot of cases.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: There's a lot of noise you know, there's a lot of noise to, it's like, which signals do you pay attention to? And it depends on who you are and who you're trying to talk to.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Right, right.
So, you know, when I, when I watched kind of your presentation recently on the work you were presenting, I really thought, like, there's so many schools that need what you provide and I know you probably do much more than what I kind of saw. I'm kind of curious as to how the sausage is made and that what, what goes on behind the scenes when you engage with the school. And maybe it's a bigger project, bigger than, you know, just a rebrand, but like you need to get, create a ui. What are some of the activities you undertake? What is that like for, for a school if they're kind of looking to really get that help from an outside perspective?
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Well, I think it depicts. My answer would have been in the past, be prepared to bite off a big chunk of pain in the butt, really wrangle. A lot of people spend a lot of time pointing a giant boat in a different direction these days.
I think that a lot can be done differently. And I think we've touched upon this, or you've heard me touch upon this.
I think that in a lot of cases this is an old example, but it's still appropriate if you've spent the last 10 years in a house with all your family and everyone has stockpiled up all their stuff in the basement, in the attic, extra rooms, and maybe everybody's, you know, pretty attached to all this stuff.
And you've got a whole lot of stuff at this point. And a lot of times the thought is we've got to move, we've got to, we got to dust off all of this, look at all of it, and then move it into a new house.
And I think that is the wrong approach to start with. And I also think that by the time you get moved into the new house, like half that stuff is going to be useless or you know, that the new house will have, you will have realized that there's not room for it all or whatever. So I do think that changing your notion of like what it means to go through a rebrand or go through a new website project, go through developing a new marketing campaign or like a new set of top level strategic communications, whatever it is that you're trying to do, how can you start that momentum sooner and start making progress on it without waiting for everything to be brought along and looked at? And a lot of that's Bureaucracy that there's an expectation of, that everyone will be consulted with and met with and talked to and. But I also think that a lot of that old process is born out of the fact that a lot of this work has been kind of hard to explain. It's hard to describe. Well, this is how long it takes to come up with good ideas, or this is how long it takes to really do some compelling design work. And, you know, you can have a great idea in the shower and you can have a great design that comes together in 10 minutes.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: I love the house example. Like, it's great.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: And to me, I think I'm hearing you say, you know, we need to be more agile. Like the old fashioned way of like just ripping and replacing things is just not really. And I've heard this from CIOs too. Like, we gotta, we gotta integrate. We have to, we can't. Wholesale changes, it's not going to happen. It's too expensive, it's too, too slow. So, so is that kind of like, do you agree with that? We're more open, agile. We need to be more agile in kind of every way.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: I mean, yes, I think more agile, but that's a tricky term that a lot of people, I think, misunderstand or they associate it purely with development, which is obviously where it came out of. But that idea of how do we move more quickly, more nimbly, more collaboratively. And I think, you know, one of the things with IDEO and the clients that we engage with and the partners that we work with now, it's much more of a partnership approach. So we're not saying, oh, we'll be your vendor and here's a, here's a price for a project.
We'll be back in a month with a whole bunch of documents for you to look at. Then we'll be back in another month for a whole bunch of meetings to have. It's, it's sort of like, how can we become part of your team and feel like an embedded partner, but still remain an outsider enough so that we can do the work that only an outsider can do? Right. I mean, I joke, we can be blamed for things.
So you can take some of the heat off yourself, but we can also, I think, infuse mutually some inspiration and some growth within the teams. I think internal teams would love to be more collaborative with the creative partners or vendors that are brought in to do things. And I'm always amazed when I hear, oh, you got this project going on over here with this vendor and this project going on over here with this vendor. Everybody's missing out on the best parts.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great way to put it.
Well, I want to thank you. Is there anything else you want to tell our audience?
This is about how long we go on these podcasts, and I just want to thank you for being here. But any last thoughts or tips of advice for institutions or anyone looking to improve their digital experience in any way?
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Yes. My bit of advice is don't expect the technology to be the solution. Right. You have to have the.
You've got to have the strategy in place. You've got to have everybody aligned at the beginning. And then what's great is that there are so many wonderful tech options to empower that vision and to really help you take advantage of all of that momentum that you start to build. But it has to start internally with the humans.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. And how can everyone get a hold of you? Tracy?
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Oh, you can find me or you can email
[email protected] and that's just hello and then a D E O. I'm also on LinkedIn, Instagram, Tracy Halvorson. You can find me. Welcome anyone reaching out. I'm happy to always talk about pretty much anything.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: Comes to this stuff.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: What a pleasure.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me on, Jeff. Bye.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: Bye.
It.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: Wa.
