Paulette Patterson Dilworth, PhD

I attribute my success to persistence. Even during challenging moments in higher education, including periods of discouragement, I stay focused on the larger purpose of my work—helping students envision and work toward their futures. It is deeply rewarding to watch each incoming class grow over four years and transition into the next stage of their lives. I’m especially encouraged when former students reach out from around the world to share how something I said or did positively impacted them, often in ways I wasn’t even aware of at the time.

The best career advice I’ve ever received is simple: put your head down, do good work, and let your results speak for themselves.

I think it's important for women to embrace who they are as women in their roles, and not feel that you have to diminish your light so that other people can shine. Because sometimes I see where I see women doing that sometimes, especially if they're in areas that are pretty male-dominated, but just knowing that you don't have to diminish your light to be successful. And in fact, I would encourage them to do even more, you know, so letting their light shine, especially if they know that they were standing on solid ground with great ideas and things that they would make a contribution.

The opportunity is to just continue to put your head down and be able to do good work, given the current political climate that higher education is facing. In many ways, in many parts of the country, there's a lot of things at play. Some of it has to do with affordability, but it's just that it's taking on a new meaning. There's even some movement to control curriculum in higher education, and on some level that's counterintuitive to why universities exist.

I would say trust, developing trust with the people that you interact with, and so you operate with a level of integrity that sort of carries that message forward. And at the same time, humility, being humble, because I've had so many moments where experiences have taught me that humility goes a long way. When you work at a university, you're surrounded by a lot of smart people, and so it's always important to acknowledge that you don't have all the answers. So you operate in the space of humility and developing trust with the people that you interact with. I would also say respect, integrity, and showing people that you care about them as much as you do about your work. Because ultimately, we do the work because of the people, and not the other way around. So just extending space to let people know that they can trust that you're gonna deliver what you promised, and that you don't operate in ways that allows them to know that you are who you say you are.