The President’s Office has experienced a number of staff changes this semester as W. Taylor Reveley IV begins his first academic year as president of Longwood University.
Three new staff members in the President’s Office include Executive Assistant Kay Stokes, Chief of Staff and Advisor to the President Justin Pope and Vice President for Strategic Operations Victoria Kindon.
Four staff members that were previously members of the President’s Office now currently work in a building behind the Health & Fitness Center. These four staff members include Brenda Atkins, who previously served as executive assistant to the president for governmental affairs and special projects; Jennifer Sawyer, who previously served as executive secretary; Diane Easter, who previously served as special assistant to the president and director of events and ceremonies; and Jeanne Hayden, who previously served as executive assistant to the board of visitors.
Now, Atkins currently works as vice president for Commonwealth Relations, Sawyer works as executive secretary for Commonwealth Relations, Easter works as director of Major Programs and Hayden works as executive assistant for Commonwealth Relations.
While considering whether or not there are always new staff changes in a president’s office when a new president steps in, Reveley said, “It depends,” but later added, “I think if there’s a rule of thumb, the answer would probably be ‘yes.’”
Sawyer, Easter and Hayden are working for Atkins in what Reveley describes as “a much more focused way.”
He said, “I’ve always had my eye on giving the whole academic and administrative structure a fresh look, and so it was back right when the school year was starting that I decided that this current structure was going to be the thing that was going to get the university positioned best for the future.”
Reveley described Atkins’ role as engaging with the Commonwealth of Virginia regarding government funding for Longwood.
According to Reveley, Atkins, Sawyer, Easter and Hayden are also currently building a speaker series in the hopes to attract more people from the Longwood University community, the Farmville community and Longwood alumni.
“There really hasn’t been a full opportunity to just take a top to bottom look at how Longwood fits together academically [or] administratively since Cormier started in 1996, which interestingly enough is the year that most of our rising freshman were born in ... and so in a real way this is almost the first full opportunity in almost two decades to just give things a fresh look at how things fit together. What’s going to be important in 2013 and 2023 is going to be different than 1996 and 2006,” Reveley said.
As for Stokes’ credentials as a new staff member, she has experience working at Hunton & Williams, a Richmond law firm. She has also worked at the Governor’s Office as part of Linwood Holton’s Administration.
“She has interacted with some of the most important organizations around Virginia and around the country,” said Reveley.
Reveley added that Stokes is “just a delightful person” with a “wonderful and long career.”
Dr. Tim Pierson, vice president for Academic Affairs, added, “[Stokes] has a very rich background as well ... She’s got a high level of expertise.”
Pope worked for the Associated Press for 14 years, first working as a General Assignment Reporter for two years before working as Business Reporter for two years and finally as National Higher Education Reporter for the Associated Press for nine years from 2004 to 2013. Pope was a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan from September 2010 to May 2011, “stud[ying] the challenges of mass-scale higher education in the U.S. and abroad, and models for higher education to support journalism,” as written on his LinkedIn account.
Pope has a Bachelor’s degree in History from Princeton University and a Master of Philosophy in Economic and Social History at Oxford University.
Describing Pope, Reveley said, “He has developed just the most splendid knowledge of higher education as a sector and different trends across the country [and] a splendid base of contacts throughout the country in higher education.”
Pierson described Pope, saying, “He has an impressive background. He’s an impressive young man, and I’ve worked on a few things with him already. So, I think he’s going to be a great addition to the office.”
Currently, Pope lives in Michigan with his wife and family and plans to move to Virginia in January 2014, according to Reveley. Pope has already begun to work with Reveley and has made trips to Longwood University, his first being the Longwood University Board of Visitors meeting in
September. Kindon has gained much of her experience with non-profits. Her work experience includes senior project manager at SNL Financial, vice president of Product Management at NGP VAN Inc. andDirector of Strategic Projects at Network for Good.
“She is one of the country’s real experts in the application of ‘big data’ methodologies to the non- profit sector, and she’s spent her whole career as a leader in high tech firms, advising non-profit organizations,” Reveley said.
Reveley added, “Her real claim to fame, though she’s not an intensely political person and her firm is right at the heart of building the presidential campaign’s databases and facilitating the Obama campaign, both of them, the ’08 campaign, the ’12 campaign, became so acclaimed for.”
Reveley said Stokes will “help with our marketing just overall getting the name recognition of Longwood around the country higher and higher.”
Pierson added,” [Kindon] is a person who has really been - there’s this term that’s been thrown a lot this year - the big data business - and her area is going to look strategically at the whole area of student success, assembling that so we can best make use of the data that we have to really in some sense employ our efforts for student success and reach those goals of retention and graduation for improving those.”
As for the possibility of adding more staff, Reveley said this is not likely, adding that “salaries at Longwood have been stagnant over the last decade, and it’s important to me — building on something called the Compensation Task Report from last year — to be attentive to that over and above what we might do with new positions.”
Regarding the future, Pierson said, “I’m excited, and I’m very open to taking a new look. I’ve worked under several different presidents, and I think every leader has new things that they have to bring and a new perspective, and I think President Reveley has brought that, and he’s implementing some of the things that he thinks will help us even be a better institution.”
Ultimately, Reveley said, “I’m really excited about the future. It’s a great team that we’ve got in place right now to have people of Justin Pope’s caliber, Victoria Kindon’s caliber, Kay’s added to the great set of folks that we’ve already got administratively and academically, it really does give me great courage about the things that we are going to be able to do.”
*With additional writing by Editor-in-Chief Becca Lundberg
