John Wilson Jr. has earned three graduate school degrees from Harvard. But what he experienced outside the college classroom should prove far more valuable as he tries to remake his undergraduate alma mater, Morehouse College, which has fallen on tough financial times.
Wilson, who became president of Morehouse a year ago, discusses some of the non-academic lessons that super-charged his drive and ambition while growing up in Philadelphia. He then had an extensive career in college fundraising and administration before getting tapped by the Obama administration to run the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Of the nation’s 105 HBCUs, Morehouse is the only one dedicated exclusively to educating black men and developing their leadership capabilities. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Atlanta school’s most famous graduate, is one reason Wilson, 56, decided to attend Morehouse in the 1970s. Now, more than three decades after graduating, he’s charged with leading the effort to revitalize it. On Friday, Wilson will get officially inaugurated even though he took the helm early last year.
Q: Who influenced you early in your life?
A: My perceptions of leadership came from my mom and my dad. My mom was a teacher and my dad was a preacher. The spirit and the mind were always the two arenas for growth and change.
Seeing my dad in action on the pulpit as a little kid was extremely powerful for me. My first perception was from his ability to use words to literally transform people right before my eyes. I saw people who looked sad, listen to him and, as a result, experience joy.
My mom was not a big fan of mediocrity. In the third grade, we moved to suburban Philadelphia from the city to a predominantly white environment. My mom said there is an expectation for you to perform less well in school. My three siblings and I were taught that is wrong. We were expected to perform better or we were going to be in trouble at home.
Q: Any other early influence?
A: Growing up in the late '60s and early '70s, there was a race pride that we had. So we wanted to show our white classmates that we're smarter than you. You think I'm dumber because of all these stereotypes. But I'm going to get better grades and I'm going to do more with my life.
I was driven to do that just to counter the negative assumptions.
One time in my 11th grade trigonometry class, I was having a problem with a concept. I asked the teacher, who was white, for an explanation like other kids had done in the past.
He said, “you can’t understand this.”
I was enraged. I got up and walked out of the room during class. This is what racism is. This guy is not giving me a chance.
To his credit, the next day he apologized. That made it better, but it didn’t make it alright.
I got that math concept and I got the rest of his class. I needed to show him that he wasn’t just wrong to me. I needed to perform so he wouldn’t do that to anyone else who looked like me.
Q: You performed well in high school and then went to Morehouse and Harvard Divinity School. How did you get into education?
A: I wasn't sure if I was called to college leadership or the pulpit. I went to Harvard Divinity School. There, it became clear to me that I was drawn more to education than to church leadership. I finished my master's degree at divinity school and then did a master's degree and a doctorate at Harvard in education, focusing on black colleges.
After I graduated, I got a job at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in money management. Then, the school launched a capital campaign and I wanted to learn how to raise money. So I knocked on the door of the head of corporate development and told him I wanted to learn about fundraising.
For whatever reason, he took a liking to me and said, “I’ll mentor you.”
I was 26. Honest to God, I really didn’t know what a capital campaign was. But I took that step to knock on his door and he responded. You’ve got to have chutzpah. You’ve got to believe things are possible.
Q: What did you learn about raising money that helped you at MIT, Georgia Washington University and now Morehouse?
A: It's just about having a conversation. If you're knowledgeable and excited about what you're doing, and have a value proposition — something people will find investment worthy — that's all raising money is.
My name was on the map after I raised $2 million for an endowed chair in mechanical engineering at MIT.
Q: How did you do that?
A: I reasoned that a lot of MIT grads are CEOs. I got a list of the potential retiring CEOs (who went to MIT). Then I did research to find MIT board members at their companies. I knew about the ol' boy network.
I called board members saying, “wouldn’t it be a great retirement gift to give the CEO an endowed chair” at his alma mater.
They said it was a great idea and the checks started rolling in.
Bonus questions
Q: What did you learn when you worked as executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities from 2009 to 2012?
A: I learned that there are always going to be counterforces out there. True leaders know how to manage the people who are against you as well as the people who are for you.
What I learned when working for President Obama and the White House is that it is worth a try to turn people — your detractors — around. But once you give it your best shot, you have to focus on your signal (message).
You have to figure out a way to increase your signal-to-noise ratio. You’re always going to have people who make noise. Don’t worry about noise reduction. Worry about signal amplification.
Q: Some people believe that historically black colleges and universities are losing their relevance, given all of the other higher-education options today. What’s your response?
A: The United States needs 8 million to 9 million more college graduates by the year 2020 in order to have the most educated, skilled and diverse workforce in the world. We know statistically that we can't reach that goal without HBCUs, which currently graduate about 35,500 students a year.
That number needs to move north of 50,000 per year to help this country surge to No. 1 status. We slipped back to No. 19 and we can’t get to No. 1 without HBCUs.
Q: How are you dealing with the many challenges you face at Morehouse?
A: There are significant challenges. I became president at a difficult time for this institution. When I came in the door a year ago, I immediately recognized we had a cash flow crisis and worked to increase revenue and decrease expenses, which included layoffs.
Enrollment has declined from 2,900 in 2007 to 2,200 now. We’re spending about $100 million a year and we have an endowment of about $130 million. That’s bad. We should have about a billion-dollar endowment. We need to pay our faculty more, increase student financial aid and build a better infrastructure.
What I bring here is the end of the grievance narrative. We can either lament over our brokenness or we can imagine this new definition of institutional strength. We need to do more and better fundraising with the philanthropic marketplace.
We’ve shaped African-American male leaders in numerous fields. We are making a difference, especially when you consider the peculiar crisis of the African-American male. A recent report said one in three will spend some time in prison. This is crazy.
Morehouse is an antidote to that. We are worthy of investment. We can gradually address this crisis at a faster rate than others.
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