The skeptic who became one of our most loyal voices.
Leslie Wilson came in wary of women's networks. Six years later, she was sending her leadership team.
She never planned to be a professor.
Leslie calls herself an accidental academic. Her career dreams did not include higher education at all. She started in engineering, excited about manufacturing and fascinated by how things are made.
Then life threw a curveball. She graduated during a downturn in Iowa's agricultural industry, and staying in Iowa meant finding new dreams. So came her marriage, a side gig building software for local companies, and an MBA.
That MBA led to teaching. Teaching led to a Ph.D. Many years later, she stands proud and humbled as outgoing dean of the David W. Wilson College of Business, a mother of five amazing women, and still the wife of an extremely supportive husband.
By her own account, she does not join women's groups.
Too often, she found, the time went to tearing one side down instead of lifting up the work itself. She is also clear that bias is not a one-way street. The biases that exist in men exist in women too.
So when she came across WIBE in 2020, in the middle of COVID and the hardest stretch of the dean's job, she had every reason to keep scrolling.
One thing stopped her. It sounded positive.
She joined. And she stayed, not for the branding, but for the people. Month after month, she listened to other leaders describe the exact situations she was living. Sometimes it was solidarity. Sometimes it was relief that someone else's problem was even bigger than hers. Always, it was the sense that everyone in the room was contributing to everyone else.
It became the first professional development she ever stuck with.
She came in for herself. She did not stay that way.
Leslie started bringing her team, men and women, because what was valuable for her was valuable for them. The first man she brought in moderated a summit keynote in his first month. Wilson College now has a leader involved with WIBE at every level.
She also watched the community grow. She joined when the focus was women. She stayed as it opened to every leader in business education, and now she recommends it to every member of her leadership team.
By the time most deans have her experience, they have stopped raising their hand.
She never did. Six years in with WIBE, with a career most people would call complete, she kept showing up. Her reason is simple. No one person has every answer, and the best ideas rarely come from the person in charge.
Take advantage of what WIBE has to offer. You'll be a better leader because of it.
LESLIE K. WILSON, RECENTLY RETIRED DEAN AND PROFESSOR EMERITUS, UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWAYour next chapter starts in the room.
Every member story began with one decision to stop doing it alone. Yours can too.
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