Award for Service to the CIC Chief Academic Officers Task Force
Keynote Address: Hope as Strategic Infrastructure: Rewiring Independent Colleges for Flourishing in an Age of Rupture
Independent colleges and universities find themselves navigating a moment of profound turbulence: demographic shifts, financial pressures, political polarization, technological disruption, declining public trust, and growing questions about the value and purpose of higher education itself. Yet moments of rupture also create opportunities for renewal. The institutions represented by CIC have long served as laboratories of democratic learning, civic leadership, and human flourishing. The question before us is not simply how to survive the next decade, but how to reimagine our institutions so they can thrive into the next century.
Drawing on insights from the Hope Circuits project, which has engaged more than 70 colleges and universities and 50 sector organizations across North America, Jessica Riddell invites participants to move beyond narratives of scarcity, crisis management, and institutional maintenance. Instead, she proposes hope as strategic infrastructure: a practical, collective capacity that enables institutions to imagine, build, and sustain better futures.
Through an ecosystemic lens, this keynote explores how leaders across academic affairs, finance, advancement, enrollment, and communications can work together to cultivate the conditions for flourishing. Participants will be introduced to a framework for understanding institutional ecosystems, identifying the difference between collapse, toxic continuity, repair, integrity, and flourishing, and discerning how their own institutions might move toward greater shared purpose, impact, and collective flourishing.
Blending research, storytelling, and practical examples from across the higher education landscape, this opening keynote will challenge attendees to ask a provocative question: if we were creating our institutions today, what would we build differently? More importantly, how do we honor the people, values, and missions we have inherited while courageously rewiring our colleges and universities for a future that is not yet fully visible? Participants will leave with a shared vocabulary, a renewed sense of possibility, and concrete ideas for leading through uncertainty with imagination, agency, and hope. The future of higher education will not be determined by what happens to us, but by what we choose to cultivate together.