Q&A with Amanda Vanni
Executive Director, Strategic Partnerships, USC University Relations
“I believe that the work of the Culture Journey is what we should be doing, and I want to be a part of the change.”
Q: As a leader, what role does attention to culture and values play in your priorities?
A: I think of culture and values as the high lantern that guides our work. It can be easy to get caught up in the busy-ness of day-to-day activities and forget about what’s most important: how we do the work and how we treat each other along the way. I try to remind myself, my team members and my colleagues to center our unifying values and – to keep the analogy going – to use our values as the light on the path of accomplishing our goals.
Q: Can you describe a current or past initiative in which you focused on the Unifying Values and/or Culture? Why was this focus important and what impact did it have?
A: I recently developed and conducted a retreat for our University Relations Leadership Team. In partnership with HREC, we designed a series of sessions to create a Team Charter – essentially a guiding document that helped us refine our mission and goals as a team, as well as explicitly discuss and develop our ground rules, communication processes, decision-making guidelines, and accountability procedures. At the outset, we reviewed our USC Unifying Values to frame our conversations, and throughout the various sessions, our discussions helped us make the implicit explicit. In other words, it helped us get clear on what our culture is currently as a team, and what changes we want to make as we strive towards growth and cohesion. This was a valuable activity for us since we have grown and changed as a leadership team over the past few years, and we are geographically dispersed among offices and locations (including Sacramento and DC). In terms of immediate impact, numerous colleagues expressed gratitude for the opportunity to connect and discuss the “how” of our work. We have also made improvements to our internal communications processes. Longer term, we are now beginning to refresh our Strategic Framework and are working to build in components that directly address the culture and values for our entire division.
Q: This semester, there are Report-Back and Discussion Sessions happening throughout the university to engage staff, faculty and students in conversations about the results of USC’s 2024 Culture Survey. These sessions are taking place at the institutional level in addition to at the individual school and unit level. You volunteered to become a facilitator for these discussions, and over the summer you underwent training to equip you to take on this facilitation role at USC schools and units outside your own. What went into your decision to volunteer to become a Culture Session Facilitator?
A: It’s simple – I believe that the work of the Culture Journey is what we should be doing, and I want to be a part of the change. We all contribute a patch that creates the quilt of culture, so we each have a role to play in our day-to-day actions and in advocating for change. My hope is that these sessions will create opportunities for everyone to feel as though they are part of the change process and that their voice matters.