Jenny Whittington Solo Risk Manager Scholarship Winners

In this episode of URMIA Matters, Michelle Smith, URMIA’s Executive Director, sits down with scholarship winners Rowela Lascolette of Hood College and Michelle Powell of Florida Polytechnic University to explore the unique challenges and opportunities of being a solo risk manager in higher education. They share their career journeys, lessons learned from the URMIA Annual Conference in Las Vegas, and practical strategies like youth protection programs, risk committee engagement, and scenario planning. The conversation highlights the value of networking, education, and community support, while offering tips for applying to the Jenny Whittington Solo Risk Manager Scholarship and staying active in URMIA’s resources and events. If you’re a solo risk manager, you don’t want to miss this valuable episode! 

Show Notes 

• URMIA Scholarships 
• URMIA Annual Conference Scholarships - Jenny Whittington Solo Risk Manager Professional Scholarship 
• Give to URMIA - Donate to support the future of higher education risk management 
• Spencer Educational Foundation 

Guests  

• Rowela Lascolette, Hood College - Director of Business Services 
• Michelle Powell, Risk Manager - Florida Polytechnic University 

Guest Host 

• Michelle Smith, Executive Director - URMIA  

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!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jenny Whittington: Hey there. Thanks for tuning in to URMIA Matters, a podcast about higher education, risk management, and insurance. Let's get to it. 

[00:00:14] Michelle Smith: Welcome, URMIA friends. My name is Michelle Smith, Executive Director for URMIA, and it is my pleasure to welcome two distinguished members of the URMIA family and colleagues and our YoPro community, Rowela Lascolette from Hood College, and Michelle Powell from Florida Polytechnic University. The two of you have at least one other thing in common. You are both recipients of the Jenny Whittington's Solo Risk Professional Scholarship. Rowela is awarded in 2025 for the annual conference that just occurred a few months ago, and Michelle won the 2024 award for that conference. And we'll put a link to that award in the show notes, so folks can learn a [00:01:00] little bit more about the criteria. We'll put another link to our fundraising efforts in conjunction with the Spencer Educational Foundation, and we encourage all of our listeners to give to URMIA to help fund these opportunities for future annual conferences and solo risk professionals. 

But in short, the Jenny Whittington Solo Risk Manager professional scholarship provides $2,500 to a solo risk professional from an URMIA institutional member to attend the URMIA conference. The scholarship covers expenses such as registration, hotel stay, travel, and other related costs. The scholarship was created in honor of our longtime URMIA executive director, Jenny Whittington, who started as a solo URMIA staff member and as a tribute to her extensive contributions over the years and to our organization, we did this scholarship and this award starting in 2024 upon her retirement. So, thank you both for [00:02:00] joining. To get started, I'll ask each of you to introduce yourselves. And Rowela, would you go first?  

[00:02:06] Rowela Lascolette: Sure thing. My name is Rowela Lascolette, and I'm the Director of Business Services at Hood College, so I'm so glad that you guys invited us to be here.  

[00:02:17] Michelle Smith: Thank you. Michelle? 

[00:02:19] Michelle Powell: Yeah, thank you, Michelle. Yeah. I'm Michelle Powell from Florida Polytechnic University, and I am the risk manager here. 

[00:02:25] Michelle Smith: Thank you again, both for being here with us on URMIA Matters podcast. Could you tell the audience a little bit more about your higher education risk management journey? What's your role now, and and how did you get there? Michelle, would you like to go first? 

[00:02:42] Michelle Powell: Sure. Yeah. I've been in higher education for just over 10 and a half years. All of that time has been spent at Florida Poly. I initially started in admissions here, worked my way up to serving as our director of admissions, and then just over two years ago. [00:03:00] The decision to try something new and was, have been enjoying the time, but made an unexpected turn into risk management and so I've been working in the position of risk manager for the last two years. 

[00:03:15] Michelle Smith: Awesome. Thank you.  

[00:03:19] Rowela Lascolette: And I can talk about my role, and it's another similarity. That's another similarity between Michelle and I because I started at Hood in 2015, which is also over 10 and a half years ago, and I started my journey as the assistant to the vice president for finances. And so again, serving under the CFO exposed me to a lot of different things. And when I completed my MBA, he added risk manager and my title, and most of that is insurance Risk Management Committee. And then a few years later changed my role [00:04:00] with, you know, changes in staffing into director of business services, which still hosts risk management. So that's my journey.  

[00:04:10] Michelle Smith: That is a unique title in our membership for sure. So, what's it like to be the solo risk manager on your campus?  

[00:04:18] Michelle Powell: I can hop in there, Michelle. So, I am not only the solo risk manager, I'm also the first ever risk manager for our institution. And so, that has been a really fun experience to really make this position into whatever it at the university needs at that moment. Whatever the CFO thinks is a good vision for the position. So, it's been fun getting to help with all things from student travel to doing trainings for our campus community about, how to report accidents and incidents, what to do if you're in an auto accident. Just very basic stuff has been really fun the last two years, and now it's getting to transform into helping with some efficiencies and providing my expertise [00:05:00] across multiple areas. So, it's been fun. It's a lot of work being the solo person doing insurance and answering questions and advising on events and all sorts of things that fall into risk management because if it doesn't have a room or a department that it falls in, people usually say, oh, give it to risk management. So, I tend to have a, a lot of variety in my, my daily work, but it's fun and I enjoy always getting to learn something new. 

[00:05:26] Rowela Lascolette: And I think, uh. 

[00:05:26] Michelle Smith: Never a dull moment. Never a dull moment.  

[00:05:29] Michelle Powell: For sure.  

[00:05:30] Rowela Lascolette: Yes, I agree with everything Michelle just said. Especially, you know, I enjoy the variety, right? Because some days you focus on one issue, other days you're working on a process improvement. So, there's a lot of things going on, and at times it could be overwhelming, but other times I have to remember that, you know, before I took on risk management, [00:06:00] risk management is happening across campus. And so part of, you know, what I'm trying to do now and especially with our risk management committee, is trying to engage in more conversation, having people feel more comfortable talking about risk, because sometimes it's easy to forget when you're dealing with a certain risk to just keep it in your department instead of engaging in others and having a dialogue to help, you know, get more information, get brainstorm ideas, and just share resources and best practice. So, a little bit overwhelming, but I enjoy the challenge.  

[00:06:44] Michelle Smith: Absolutely. It makes every day interesting, and, and makes you wanna get up and get to work to see what's gonna be on the list today. I feel like we have some similar roles here at the URMIA office. Sometimes we're strategic and sometimes we're tasky. And when you wake [00:07:00] up that day, you may have a plan to do one, but you may have to do both. So, we appreciate that about our solo risk managers, but as you said it, it's interesting and challenging. And so, I guess maybe what challenges, Rowela, have you seen as a solo risk manager that have maybe turned into opportunity? So, you've been presented with a challenge, and you met that challenge with a particular opportunity. Anything come to mind?  

[00:07:30] Rowela Lascolette: I think the first thing that came to mind is when I started with reviving our risk management committee, and so that was in 2018. And so, part of that is, you know, looking at what was the charge, forming the charge or modifying it, getting a group of people together, start having the conversation. And one of the earlier things, and this was before I became a member of URMIA, was the [00:08:00] board wanted us to have a risk dashboard. And so, not being part of URMIA and not having a resource, Google was my best friend. And so, a lot of that, you know, trying to come up with a dashboard that would be helpful, informational, and not too much detail was a challenge. And also doing, I think one of the first risk campus-wide risk survey to the community and trying to navigate. So, what now, right? We got a survey, we got a format. What now and what are the next steps? So, I think that first year has been a challenge, just, you know, building that committee, doing the survey, doing a dashboard. And not having URMIA in my back pocket to bounce off idea, get researched, because if I had it, it wouldn't have been as difficult as it was when I was, you know, starting. 

[00:08:57] Michelle Smith: Yeah, we have a great community. That's for sure. [00:09:00] That's for sure. Michelle, anything come to mind for you?  

[00:09:03] Michelle Powell: I can't think of a specific instance off the top of my head. But really anytime I've had a challenge, whether it's like working with our student development team, working with athletics teams, or our administration and finance area, anytime there's a challenge that has come up, it's always provided an opportunity for me to really showcase my skills and what risk management can do for them. And so, that's usually kind of what I'm, I'm left with, is if I can help a student event mitigate some concerns that they have, and so they have a successful event, they don't have any issues. Now, the next time they're coming to me saying, Hey Michelle, what do you think about this? I have certain staff members that as soon as a faculty member mentions travel, they immediately say, go talk to Michelle. 

Which is great. I want to know when students are traveling. When people are traveling, and see how I can help them, especially if it's international. I wanna make sure we're doing everything correctly. And so, that's more so for me as [00:10:00] anytime that there is a challenge, I do try to leverage it and make it an opportunity to build relationships with some of the new people on campus that don't know me. Not that they have to, but being here for a significant amount of time, I tend to know a lot of people. So, any type of challenge is just a good opportunity to put myself out there and really showcase what risk management can do for the campus.  

[00:10:20] Michelle Smith: Yeah, that's definitely an advantage, having those relationships in place already. So, what a great attitude you have about being presented with those challenges. That's great. So, let's pivot a little bit. We have the pleasure of having you both attend the URMIA Annual Conference in October in Las Vegas at The Cosmopolitan, and I know you are both avid learners and I wanted to just check in, and see if you can tell us about something that you've learned at the conference that you've already started implementing or researching since you've been back on campus.  

[00:10:56] Michelle Powell: Yeah. I can chime in real quick. Youth protection that has been something on the [00:11:00] back of my mind for quite some time. It just happened to be, I went to a great session presented by Olivia Watson, came back to campus, and it was mentioned that we wanna start doing camps next summer. And I was like, perfect. This timing couldn't have been better and was able to even connect with her after conference to pick her brain a little bit more. And have been working to, you know, actually build a, a request form that our campus community could utilize. Putting together guidance and steps for that process, because we've not typically had any sort of formal guidance on how to successfully protect youth when you do wanna have a camp or a similar type of event on campus. So, that's been really helpful to kickstart that process and, and get us moving in the right direct.  

[00:11:48] Michelle Smith: Yeah. Just one more hat that a solo risk manager wears is being proficient in all things minors and youth protection. For sure. That's great. Rowela, how about [00:12:00] you?  

[00:12:01] Rowela Lascolette: There's a couple of things that I, I started working on. One of the things is something I've been thinking about, and I started before the conference and I think Michelle. Powell was the one that made me think of it. And it's a risk spotlight, right? She was working on a training program at her institution, and I've been thinking about how do I get my risk management committee more engaged? 

And so, in July, as I started our risk management committee, which meets every six weeks, I started a risk spotlight, which is more of. Education opportunity where each risk owner gets to talk a little bit about their risk area and how it impacts campus. And so, after the conference, how I improve that is to add more cross-functional questions, so people not only hear the report out, but also start having a conversation. How does [00:13:00] their risk interconnect with my departmental risk, and so having more of that dialogue. 

The other thing that I started, or is in the planning phase, is scenario planning. Again, I feel like that's been, there was a session about it and our board actually recommended we also do it for risk management committee based on our recent top risk. So, that's the second one and the third thing is URMIA, other than the tools, and the things you learn, is the community. So, I met with a few people in that short conference that are local risk management, managers that in Maryland. And so, I've reached out to a handful, well more than a handful of risk managers using that directory too. And I now have a meeting next month. And so, we'll have our local risk manager like info session just to share, you know, challenges [00:14:00] happening in, in the state of Maryland. So, a lot of takeaways from URMIA and it's exciting.  

[00:14:05] Michelle Smith: That's amazing. I love that. I love that. So, would you say that you are team networking or team education? What do you think the best thing about an URMIA conference is? Or maybe you have a third category that, that you would put up there.  

[00:14:21] Rowela Lascolette: I think it's both. You know, I came in thinking like, you know, info session, info session, I'm gonna learn. Everything I can take it back to campus, improve our program, but then when you get there, it's like the community, the people that you meet, and the connections you made. Certainly, it's adds a lot of value. So, I'm both.  

[00:14:45] Michelle Smith: Fantastic. And you, Michelle? 

[00:14:47] Michelle Powell: Oh yeah, that's hard to choose one over the other. I feel like the education opportunities give you that pathway to the networking, 'cause you can go into the session and see, oh my gosh, there's three other people in here that I [00:15:00] recognize. So, they may too have the same issues or similar questions. Or it builds that connection with the presenter that you can then ask follow up questions. So, yeah, it's hard to say which one because both have so much value and there is so much that can come from after the fact where you do get to connect with those people. Or you can go back on the Cvent app, and you can rewatch the session if you weren't sure if you understood something. So, I don't think I can give you a, a decision on which one I would, I would be on. Yeah, I if I can. 

[00:15:32] Michelle Smith: It's a tie. It's, it's a tie. That's amazing. Yeah. I feel the same way. I think one leads to the other, and I love that you know, our URMIA network posts and conversations. The things that happen virtually the rest of the year, um, in our communities and with our webinars and things like that. Just, you know, come to life when we get together. And there's such energy at the annual conference each year [00:16:00] with sparks of inspiration, and, and reconnecting on topics and really focusing and spending some time networking with folks around a similar topic or a similar challenge or opportunity that they have. So, it's definitely my favorite time of year. It coincides with my favorite season of the year fall, and it's fun to see fall in different parts of the country as we move the conference around. 

And next year, we'll be in Philadelphia on the East Coast. So, hopefully all of your Florida friends can come up, and all your Maryland friends can come over and see us there in person in Philadelphia. So, as we wind down this episode of URMIA Matters, tell me what is up for you next as far as URMIA goes. Do you have plans for attending something or joining a committee? What's up next on your agenda, Michelle?  

[00:16:54] Michelle Powell: So, I am on the 2026 Annual Conference Planning Committee, so I'm [00:17:00] excited to be involved with that. I've not done it before, so I'm excited to see everything that goes into planning annual Conference. But I'm also preparing a couple of submissions I presented for the first time in Las Vegas, and I would love to present again. So, I'm working on those to stay involved and keep working on my presentation skills. And outside of that, continuing to be engaged in the post, and the the discussions. I know I ask a lot of questions, so I wanna make sure I'm providing some input as well, not just, it can't be all take. I gotta give a little. 

[00:17:32] Michelle Smith: That's great. Thank you for your volunteerism. How about you, Rowela?  

[00:17:35] Rowela Lascolette: For me, it's just staying engaged in URMIA through the discussion boards and attending all the community conversations and webinars that I could. Rewatching some of the other sessions from the annual conference and in the library, there's a lot of great resource available, so just staying involved in that way. [00:18:00]  

[00:18:00] Michelle Smith: That's perfect. That's a great example of how our resources are best used, and our members are so generous with their sharing of policies and procedures and thoughts and ideas, especially when it comes to an emerging risk, which none of us are experts on, but we are stumbling through things together. So, any advice for those who aspire to win the Jenny Whittington solo Risk Manager professional scholarship next year at the Philadelphia Conference? 

[00:18:27] Michelle Powell: I would just say, just apply. I, it was my first time going to be attending a conference. I saw there were scholarships. I figured, Hey, what's the worst thing they could say? No? I might as well apply. I was brutally honest in my submission as I recall saying, Hey, I don't really know a whole lot here, at least I didn't feel like I knew a lot at that point, and would've appreciated the opportunity to make it an affordable trip for my institution and was able to get the scholarship. And so, I would definitely encourage anyone that is a solo risk manager apply. Don't [00:19:00] count yourself out yet. Make sure you do submit an application. 

[00:19:03] Michelle Smith: Yeah. Any additional tips, Rowela? 

[00:19:06] Rowela Lascolette: I think Michelle said it nicely. Apply. Be honest in your submission because what's the worst that can happen? If you didn't apply, then you won't even get the opportunity to potentially be awarded, so just do it.  

[00:19:22] Michelle Smith: Agreed. Agreed. It's pretty simple online application form and the committee reviews them, and we get so many app, great applications for our scholarships each year. It's a pleasure to be able to fund this one with a special shout out to Jenny, and, and all the work that she gave to the association over her, um, 19 years as a executive director and now as executive director emerita. In these last two years, so we really appreciate her generosity during that time and all the challenges that come to a solo risk manager. So, appreciate you both being with us today on [00:20:00] URMIA Matters. As we head into Giving Day, we'll have some special social media and shout outs to our membership to help us support these scholarships, and you two are certainly two shining examples of folks who were well deserved in getting the scholarship. So, thank you both for being with us today. This wraps another episode of URMIA Matters. Thank you. 

[00:20:25] Narrator: You've been listening to URMIA Matters. You can find more information about URMIA at www.urmia.org. For more information about this episode, check out the show notes available to URMIA members in the URMIA Network Library.