Ellen Shew Holland shares insights from her long career as a higher education risk manager, an URMIA past president, and now as president of Strategic Risk Frameworks, LLC. She provides advice on how to elevate the risk manager’s role now and in a post-COVID future by helping the board identify strategic risks and opportunities, understand data that tracks the management of campus hazards, and anticipate future threats as higher education evolves.
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Ellen Shew Holland shares insights from her long career as a higher education risk manager, an URMIA past president, and now as president of Strategic Risk Frameworks, LLC. She provides advice on how to elevate the risk manager’s role now and in a post-COVID future by helping the board identify strategic risks and opportunities, understand data that tracks the management of campus hazards, and anticipate future threats as higher education evolves.
Show Notes {URMIA member login required}
Connect with URMIA & URMIA with your network
-Share /Tag in Social Media @urmianetwork
-Not a member? Join ->www.urmia.org/join
-Email | contactus@urmia.org
Give URMIA Matters a boost:
-Give the podcast a 5 star rating
-Share the podcast - click that button!
-Follow on your podcast platform - don't miss an episode!
Thanks for listening to URMIA Matters!
Jenny: Greetings everyone! This is Jenny Whittington, URMIAs executive director, and we’re here again doing URMIAmatters. Today I have a wonderful guest with me, Ellen Shew Holland. Ellen, welcome to the show!
Ellen: Thank you, Jenny. It’s great to be here.
Jenny: So, I love to start off the show by just giving a little bit of history about your relationship with URMIA and your history with higher education risk management, and I had a thought about you earlier today. I remember, I believe it was the very first URMIA conference I went to Charleston, and you introduced me to Steve Holland from University of Arizona as either your brother or your cousin or your family member, and I didn’t know either of you well enough to know how funny that was.
Ellen: We’ve had a lot of fun with that over the years, so URMIA provides an annual family reunion.
Jenny: Definitely, so yeah give me a little bit of history on how you got involved.
Ellen: I ended up literally temping my way into risk management at Georgetown University when I was making a career change and said I would stay until I got a real job 10 years later at Georgetown, and having been involved with URMIA from the ListServ that Larry started. I ended up becoming Director of Risk Management at University of Denver where I made the mistake of asking Larry how can I help.
Jenny: That’s all it takes.
Ellen: Before I knew it, I was secretary on the board for a couple of years and then I ran a couple of times to get on the board, when I got on the board ended up becoming president a couple of years later. We happened to be going through strategic planning at the time, and that was a great influence in my life in terms of my interest in strategy and URMIA provided a great sounding board to learn a lot in that area, and we hired you and it was, we’ve done very well ever since I think, so
Jenny: Yeah, what a great story you have, and I know that you have a bit of a Hoosier connection and so speak a little bit to that.
Ellen: I’m from a farm in Indiana and my family still farms north of Terre Haute in Clinton Indiana and I’m a Purdue University grad in agricultural economics, which believe it or not, econ prepares you very well for this world.
Jenny: Yeah it does, definitely. Well, we’ve always had that little camaraderie, being both affiliated with the great state of Indiana, and then the little competitiveness between Indiana University and Purdue University. I’m so happy to have you with me today, so I know we started talking about you being on the podcast. We had talked about talking about cyber, and then we were also going to talk about different things that are going on in risk management right now. So I know we got to obviously talking about COVID because um, big topic these days, and we’ve been super busy here at the URMIA national office preparing for the virtual conference, which has a lot if COVID embedded into each and every session probably. I think even when we started talking about the conference, we didn’t know how much influence it was going to have, but as it turns out it influences pretty much everything.
Ellen: Yes.
Jenny: So, I wanted to ask you, how has COVID19 affected the role of the risk manager, in your opinion?
Ellen: From most risk managers I’ve spoken with, in the higher ed industry and outside of it, we feel, several of my colleagues and I, feel that really there’s going to be a greater lends put on the risk management profession as a result of COVID. There are many things coming up that people may not have recognized in terms of the policy exclusions to having a good, solid business continuity plan ready and able to go even though this is certainly a pandemic of unique proportions, and we hope never to see it again, but I think that there will be a greater lens on risk, there’ll be a greater lens on strategy and a greater lens on preparedness.
Jenny: Yeah, I think you are absolutely right. I think this is a great opportunity for our members, and I think that’s been the theme over the last six months, is a great time for our members to showcase their skill set. They have a different vantage point than I think they ever have in a good way, I would like to think. I’m sure it’s been very stressful for many people because just this whole pandemic has been crazy stressful, so I appreciate that. What kind of tools can risk managers capitalize upon to provide effective messaging in this environment would you say?
Ellen: Going back to the items that will be really at the focus of risk management, really need to be able to, in these unprecedented times, really be able to maintain first of all the foundations of identifying risk and managing risk. People need to be able to provide effective communications to the board that says that risk should be a part of strategy now. It, over a lot of board and strategic plans from places a lot of different areas and rarely is the term risk or even risk management included in that. I believe that having a strategy also includes what are the pitfalls that occur, could occur as well as those opportunities that may occur or enterprise risk ideas that may occur to strategic enterprise risk ideas. So, we must, hopefully, be ready to answer those questions, so from that standpoint using your fundamentals about identifying risk and as Peter Drucker said in business schools across the country and the world, if you cannot count it you cannot improve it. So with the numbers that we’re tracking and we’re finding, continue to pay attention to the discipline of analyzing those numbers and your metrics and being able to drive your message with the back up of those numbers. We also are going to see certainly changes in the marketplace, we’ll see a continued increase, in my mind’s eye, of increased premiums for some time, and also your brokerages are being stressed because there are different areas of particularly if you’ve got a broker that focuses on smaller entities, restaurants, small businesses are going under, and unfortunately that’s having an impact on the staffing of some of the smaller brokerage firms. So you may find yourself having to put more work up front from your own area, or finding resources to help you with that. So there’s going to be the market, there’s going to be the strategy and being able to manage strategic risk for your board, doing the high level. WIth respect to all the great work that’s done on an ERM, I found that having a combination of the high level strategic risk so you can get something in front of your board and let them know you’re paying attention and monitoring that at all times is very important. You don’t have to go to the deep dive to each of those risks right away, but they need to know what the high level is and that you’re managing it, and you need to be able to get back to them with we’ve addressed a, b, or c. My guess again is that business continuity is going to be one of the highlights. In addition to that, some of the other tools, again, knowing your numbers, knowing your message in terms of strategic risk, knowing what the market is going to do, and then being able to apply, your numbers to an actuarial report that can help you really fine tune and budget what losses will be in future years. From there, I think you can build a good package to go to the board and be prepared to answer many of the questions that they have. And last but not least on this, the risks that were there prior to COVID are still there. So, don’t lose your eye on the other risks and all the other good work that you’ve done over the years. You have to continue to manage that in some way or another, and I know that’s putting a lot on many people. My hats off to the hard work that risk managers have been doing.
Jenny: Yeah, thanks for that Ellen. I know we’ve been preparing for the broker panel that we’re hosting on September 23rd where we have representatives from Aon and Gallagher and Marsh and then Fred C. Church and our affiliates committee that you’re a part of, helped look at the questions that we wanted the panelists to answer, and I think that’s really going to be an interesting session to have their high level thoughts on what’s going on in the market because it’s pretty complicated, and this is never you know, really happened before, but I do hear what you’re saying, I think things are cyclical so we will get through this, we don’t know exactly how long it’s going to be but we will and then all those other risks are still there.
Ellen: Absolutely, the life of a risk manager.
Jenny: So, what do you think, what does the future role of a risk manager look like given what we’re learning right now?
Ellen: First of all, be able to communicate at a strategic level to your board and effectively, work, if you’re not familiar with that, work with your supervisor to help prepare you for those meetings and be on point and concise to always look at doing more with less. Universities on average I’m hearing losses are 30-40 million no matter what size you are, though particularly if you’re a small to medium size university, do more with less, be effective and keep things moving so that your board knows that things are being managed. Third, as you said, we’ve talked about cyber security for a while. I’ve also been spending a lot of time in the internet of think space for the last year, and whether you’re working with your researchers, whether you’re working with people implementing and building digital transformation in your programs for your financial programs or other programs, be prepared to learn, continue to learn, be aware of some of those changes going forward, because they are coming, they’re here and the better off you are, the better you’re prepared to help address a greater digital world, greater artificial intelligence and that sort of thing with an eye on security and an eye on protecting and capitalizing on the data that’s collected and the devices that can help your university, the better off I think you’ll be in the future.
Jenny: Yeah, I know you just sent Gary Langsdale and I that chart about proper passwords and I was going to share it with Ronna Papesh on our staff because she creates the most amazing passwords. That’s words to the wise and we’ve been using passphrases for a long time which have a different level of complexity, which is good. But yeah, there’s a whole scary world out there that we hear about more and more everyday in the press.
Ellen: And just remember too that the human element, your staff and particularly as you’re working more from home, and that probably won’t change anytime soon, but making sure that people are securing the privacy data and that includes paper items. But secure your data. Have sixteen characters of all different kinds in your password and that’s pretty much unbreakable, but if you have five or ten it’ll be broken through within a couple years.
Jenny: Yeah that was a little alarming how quickly you could get through really simple passwords and I know I’ve rethought my own password strategy, but it’s hard to manage the million passwords that we all have to have everyday. So Ellen I never really, I don’t believe you really said what you’re doing right now personally. I know you’ve gone from the institutional side, you were the president of URMIA and now you’re on the affiliate side. Will you speak to that just a little bit?
Ellen: Sure, I’ve had a lot of fun in risk management and I very much appreciate all the opportunities, including those with URMIA, and the networking with this group of people. It's a really special group. With that said, I went into consulting two years ago and wanted to apply my skill sets to other industries, so I have worked with international mining, I’ve worked with some education groups, and still working with them, and also nonprofits, and then most recently this internet of things group and working with them to get them into some of our research entities, and that is, really combine some of my experience with the needs in risk management and then being able to apply and develop tools to be able to manage those things better, so we’re trying to make your life easier.
Jenny: Everybody will welcome that.
Ellen: It combines a little bit of design instinct that I have and creativity along with the technical that we work with. And then I also have been working a lot with startups. There’s some startup people involved with construction and agriculture and different things so it’s been a lot of fun.
Jenny: That’s great. Do you have any closing comments before we wrap this up?
Ellen: I would say that, as I’ve said to a lot of defensive driving students over the years: as risk managers, we have to grow with the changing risks in our environment and you always keep an open mind to always continually learn and continually learn from others as well, including those students. WIth that, I was advising a group of students from Purdue this summer on a project with Rolls Royce and it was amazing to hear their thoughts and techniques and learn from them. In order to be effective we have to continue to learn, so
Jenny: Very good. Thank you so much for being my guest today.
Ellen: Thank you.
Jenny: Take good care and I know I’ll be seeing you online during the virtual conference. Thanks again, Ellen.
Ellen: Thank you for all your hard work and that of the team for the conference coming up.
Jenny: Thanks very much. This is it for URMIAmatters, thank you!