I was deeply saddened to hear of Chancellor Emerita Rebecca ‘Becky’ Blank’s passing this weekend. She had shared the crushing news of her cancer diagnosis just as she was ready to become the first female president of Northwestern University this past summer.
Many people have posted tributes and notes of gratitude for her leadership. I had the good fortune to work with her closely as chair of the University Committee and later as chair of the Provost Search Committee. Every 1:1 meeting with her was like a leadership masterclass, and one had better come prepared and make one’s points quickly . There was no ‘winging it’ with her in the room. She knew what she wanted, she was in command of the facts (and expected everyone else to be as well), and when she encountered barriers betweeen what was and what needed to be (and there were many!), she had an idea of how to remove or sidestep or at least lower those barriers. I learned from her that progress can be difficult without a healthy dosis of pragmatism and that there is no point in getting frustrated if one cannot build unanimous consensus or if some people needed their moment in the limelight before decisions could be made. She embodied our state’s motto, “Forward!”
A more personal memory is attached to a day in 2017, when Rebecca Blank presided over the presentation of Distinguished Teaching Awards. My daughter, 9 years old at the time, was in attendance and observed her closely. As soon as the chancellor left the event, my daughter sprang forward, snatched her name tag, and put it on. Three years earlier, at a similar event, she mistook another woman for the chancellor (the woman in what she thought was the nicest dress). By 2017, she had figured out that it’s not the dress that makes the leader.
